Sermon Illustrations on Bigotry — page 2

Talking About Race Is the Key

Ezra 4:3

In 2006 Birgitte Vittrup, of Children’s Research Lab at the University of Texas, conducted a study on how parents influence the racial attitudes of their children. She recruited about a hundred families from the Austin area, all of whom were Caucasian with a child 5 to 7 years old,.

Her first step was to give the children a Racial Attitude Measure, which asked such questions as:

How many White people are nice?

(Almost all) (A lot) (Some) (Not many) (None)

How many Black people are nice?

(Almost all) (A lot) (Some) (Not many) (None)

During the test, the descriptive adjective “nice” was replaced with more than 20 other adjectives, like “dishonest,” “pretty,” “curious,” and “snobby.”

But according to Vittrup’s entry surveys, hardly any of these white parents had ever talked to their children directly about race. They might have asserted vague principles — like “Everybody’s equal” or “God made all of us” or “Under the skin, we’re all the same” — but they’d almost never called attention to racial differences.

They wanted their children to grow up colorblind. But Vittrup’s first test of the kids revealed they weren’t colorblind at all. Asked how many white people are mean, these children commonly answered, “Almost none.” Asked how many blacks are mean, many answered, “Some,” or “A lot.” Even kids who attended diverse schools answered the questions this way.

More disturbing, Vittrup also asked all the kids a very blunt question: “Do your parents like black people?” Fourteen percent said outright, “No, my parents don’t like black people”; 38 percent of the kids answered, “I don’t know.” In this supposed race-free vacuum being created by parents, kids were left to improvise their own conclusions — many of which would be abhorrent to their parents.

Vittrup hoped the families she’d instructed to talk about race would follow through. After watching videos with positive multicultural themes, the families returned to the Children’s Research Lab for retesting. To Vittrup’s complete surprise, the three groups of children were statistically the same — none, as a group, had budged very much in their racial attitudes. At first glance, the study was a failure.

Combing through the parents’ study diaries, Vittrup realized why. Diary after diary revealed that the parents barely mentioned the checklist items. Many just couldn’t talk about race, and they quickly reverted to the vague “Everybody’s equal” phrasing.

Of all those Vittrup told to talk openly about interracial friendship, only six families managed to actually do so. And, for all six, their children dramatically improved their racial attitudes in a single week. Talking about race was clearly key. Reflecting later about the study, Vittrup said, “A lot of parents came to me afterwards and admitted they just didn’t know what to say to their kids, and they didn’t want the wrong thing coming out of the mouth of their kids.”

Turning the Other Cheek: the Jackie Robinson Story

Luke 9:54

The words are famous even among those who know little about baseball: “I’m looking for a ballplayer with guts enough not to fight back.” They were spoken by Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey to the man whom he’d chosen to break baseball’s color barrier: Jackie Robinson.

We see this famous scene in the film, “42,” a biopic about Robinson. “42” — named for the number Robinson wore on his uniform — is a fine and memorable film starring Chadwick Boseman as Robinson and Harrison Ford as the immortal Branch Rickey. But the film all but omits the most significant factor in Jackie Robinson’s ability to endure almost unbearable insults and physical attacks on the field: namely his strong Christian faith.

Branch Rickey wasn’t the first person to teach Robinson that keeping his temper was more powerful than letting it blow. As I note in my new book, “Seven Men and the Secret of Their Greatness,” while he was a student at Pasadena Junior College, “Jackie met a Methodist preacher named Karl Downs. Downs knew that Jackie was a Christian and taught him that exploding in anger was not the Christian answer to injustice. But he explained that a life truly dedicated to Christ was not submissive; on the contrary, it was heroic.... Downs eventually led Jackie to a deeper faith in Jesus Christ. He began to see that the path to justice would be done not with fists and fury but with love and restraint.”

As “42” opens, we see Jackie Robinson sitting in the office of Brooklyn Dodgers manager Branch Rickey hearing the incredible news that Rickey wants Jackie to play for the Dodgers. Then Rickey acts out the vicious varieties of bigotry Jackie will face from white hotel managers, restaurant waiters, and fellow ballplayers — insults he will have to face with dignity.

How much more dramatic this scene would have been had “42” told the whole story. Rickey knew that Robinson shared his devout Christian faith, and wanted to reinforce the spiritual dimensions of the battle into which the two men were about to step. So Rickey pulled out a copy of a book by Giovanni Papini, “Life of Christ.” He flipped to the passage in which Papini discusses the Sermon on the Mount. There he referred to Jesus’ call to “turn the other cheek” as “the most stupefying of [Jesus’s] revolutionary teachings.”

Rickey’s faith told him that injustice had to be fought wherever it was found. As for Jackie Robinson, he believed that God had chosen him for this noble purpose. And he knew that if he committed himself to doing this great thing, God would give him the strength he needed to see it through.

Day after day, Jackie Robinson’s faith fueled his ability to play great baseball. And night after night, he got down on his knees, asking God for strength in the face of unrelenting hatred.

The reason I include Jackie Robinson in a book about some of the greatest men who ever lived is not because he played great baseball, but because he engaged in a heroic sacrifice. While he didn’t have to, Jackie Robinson followed Jesus and sacrificed his right to fight back.

Jackie Robinson changed America for the better. He did it by living out, on and off the baseball field, the revolutionary words of Jesus: Turn the other cheek.

________

======================

Another commentary by Terry Mattingly: "‘42’ glosses over truth of Jackie Robinson’s devout faith," April 26, 2013.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2013/apr/26/terry-mattingly-42-glosses-over-truth-of-jackie/

Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey knew that the first black player in Major League Baseball was going to go through hell.

That’s why the cigar-chomping, Bible-thumping Rickey set out to find a man who would keep believing — when facing scathing racial hatred — that the powers of heaven were on his side. As baseball writers often have noted, Rickey needed someone who could turn the other cheek — as well as a double play.

In writer-director Brian Helgeland’s new movie, “42,” Jackie Robinson states the challenge in blunt terms.

“You want a man,” Robinson asks, “who doesn’t have the guts to fight back?”

“I want a man who has the guts NOT to fight back,” Rickey says.

The fit was perfect. In Helgeland’s script, Rickey offers this churchy equation: “Robinson’s a Methodist. I’m a Methodist. God’s a Methodist. We can’t go wrong.”

That’s the stuff of movies, alright, but this kind of faith reference remains somewhat unusual in a Hollywood blockbuster, said Eric Metaxas, best known for writing the best-selling “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.”

The problem, he said, is that “42” omitted many details that would demonstrate that faith was crucial to the whole story.

There’s no doubt Robinson was a remarkable man, Metaxas argues in his new “Seven Men: And the Secret of Their Greatness.” But Robinson also was a remarkably courageous and devout Christian.

Thus, he included Robinson’s story in a book that explores the faith commitments of George Washington, William Wilberforce, Eric Liddell, Pope John Paul II, Chuck Colson and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

In the classic “Chariots of Fire,” which won the Oscar for Best Picture, the Olympic runner and future missionary Liddell is shown preaching and discussing the beliefs that led to his pivotal decision not to run in Sunday races at the 1924 Olympics in Paris.

“Try to imagine that movie without those scenes,” Metaxas said in a telephone interview.

The key “42” scene — when Robinson meets Rickey on Aug. 28, 1945 — could have depicted what actually happened at the time: Rickey pulled out a copy of a classic devotional work, “Life of Christ” by Giovanni Papini, and read aloud the passage in which the author discusses the Sermon on the Mount, including the reference that describes the “turn the other cheek” challenge as “the most stupefying” of the teachings of Jesus.

It wouldn’t have taken long to read the Scripture that so inspired Rickey and Robinson, Metaxas said. The Gospel of St. Matthew states:

“Ye have heard it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: But whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

The reason, quite literally, Rickey “chose Jackie Robinson was his strong moral character and his Christian faith,” Metaxas said.

“There were other great black players out there. But could they have taken the stand that Jackie took? ...

“That first meeting is the moment. That scene is the heart of this story and Jesus is right there in the middle of it.”

But movies are movies, and what often matters most are the visual images.

Thus, it’s crucial Helgeland didn’t include scenes in which Robinson is shown doing what he repeatedly said he did day after day in those tense early years in baseball — getting down on his knees to pray.

“I’m not saying that this is a horrible movie,” Metaxas said.

“Yes, Robinson is shown closing his eyes for 0.87 seconds before he runs out onto the field, and he’s hit by the occasional inspirational ray of sunlight. ... But why are people afraid of showing a true American hero getting down on his knees and praying? What’s so scary about that?

“It’s like people think that prayer is a sign of weakness. Well, getting down on his knees didn’t make Jackie Robinson weak.

“That’s what helped make him strong.”

________

Help Wanted -- A Prophet

Martin Luther King Jr.’s prophetic oratory during the March on Washington brought a searing indictment against a nation that had not only failed its founding principles but had ignored God’s righteous expectation.

King minced no words on that hot, humid day. With the Lincoln Memorial as a backdrop, he succinctly and bluntly identified as sin the societal segregation and institutional discrimination practiced and tolerated throughout America.

God used the words of the 34-year-old prophet to convict the conscience of a nation and inspire hope in those who had endured oppression. In just over 16 minutes he placed an exclamation point on the movement seeking racial equality.

Prophets, in the biblical sense of the word, seem to come few and far between. “The church of today is a non-prophet organization,” Vance Havner once quipped. His observation, spoken more than two decades ago, is as relevant as ever.

A prophet in the biblical sense is not someone who gazes into crystal balls or reads tea leaves in an effort to predict the future. A prophet is an individual who speaks God’s truth to his contemporaries, calls attention to sin and warns of the consequences for failing to repent of falling short of the Lord’s expectations.

Prophets are needed when a nation embraces practices and policies that transgress God’s clearly articulated expectations. When a society promotes materialistic hedonism, gangrenous greed and fiscal irresponsibility, a prophetic voice is needed.

When a culture derides sexual purity, accepts promiscuity and encourages all manner of sexual perversion, a prophet is needed. When a nation embraces the slaughter of unborn children as a normal part of life and even defends infanticide, that nation needs a prophetic rebuke.

Prophets are in desperate need when marriage is not approached with a holy commitment and the breakup of families is not just accepted but expected.

King understood that the church was to be salt and light to the culture in which it found itself. In a sermon titled “A Knock at Midnight,” he said, “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool.”

King continued, “If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without spiritual authority.”

There are some today who say the church should remain silent on controversial issues. Others insist a pastor should never comment on moral issues that have been politicized.

A man recently called the publication I edit and said he was canceling his subscription because of all the “Republican junk” we publish. When asked what he meant by “Republican junk,” he replied, “All the anti-abortion and anti-gay stuff.”

King did not believe the church should be silent on the issues of racial segregation and discrimination. Though both were controversial at the time and highly politicized, he stood boldly and spoke prophetically.

Charles Spurgeon said, “I often hear it said, ‘Do not bring religion into politics.’ This is precisely where it ought to be brought and set there in the face of all men on a candlestick.”

Spurgeon continued, “I would have the Cabinet and the members of Parliament do the work of the nation as before the Lord, and I would have the nation, either in making war or peace, consider the matter by the light of righteousness.”

Jesus insisted that His followers were to be salt and light to the culture in which they found themselves. According to Christ, it defied logic to light a lamp and hide under a basket. Light was to illumine and call attention to the righteousness of God.

Salt, Jesus said, was to be used according to its purifying, preservative purpose or it would spoil and become useless. When not used, salt became, in His words, “no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled by men.”

Could it be that America is suffering for lack of a prophetic voice? Could it be that the reluctance by many preachers to address the sins that so easily entangle our nation is why many in America see the church as an irrelevant social club?

It is true that prophets are rarely appreciated while offering their rebuke. Many are persecuted and some are killed. King was one such prophet. He was struck down by an assassin’s bullet less than five years after rebuking the nation at the march.

Prophets may not be appreciated, but they are sorely needed if a nation is going to please the Lord. Though they may be maligned, mistreated and even murdered, great is the heavenly reward of the prophet who will speak God’s truth to the cultural and societal power structures of his day.

A White Guy With A Razor?

John 1:46

One thing we must see about ourselves is that we are never neutral when we look at evidence. We never deal with pure facts. We always look at facts through our own grid, our own paradigm, through our own biases. That is why two people can see the same facts and come to different conclusions.

For example, in the 1940’s Harvard psychologists Gordon Allport and Leo Postman conducted a study on rumors with a group of white men. They showed the first white man a picture and he was to describe the picture to the next man, who would describe it to the next, and so on, until it made it around the circle. The picture showed a scene on a subway with a black man in a three-piece suit being threatened by a white man with a razor.

However, by the time the story made it around the circle, the white man was in the suit and the black man was holding the razor. Why? Because, at that time in white America, and probably today, our bias is to believe that the white man wears the suit and the black man holds the razor. The biases of those in the group affected the way they saw “the facts.” Your assumptions, what you believe, determine what you see.

Forgiveness In Charleston: Light Shining In Darkness

Luke 6:37

Some acts are so terrible, it seems masochistic to talk about them. Some acts are so gracious, we marvel at them and must talk about them.

Today, we felt compelled to talk about the events of last week [June 2015], the horrific killing of nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Why? Because we’re seeing in those events how light overcomes darkness. How love overcomes hate.

As you almost undoubtedly know, on June 17, a man described as “white, with sandy-blond hair, around 21 years old and 5 feet 9 inches in height, wearing a gray sweatshirt and jeans” entered Emanuel and participated in a Bible study led by the Church’s pastor, Clementa C. Pinckney.

At about 9pm, the man, subsequently identified as Dylann Roof, opened fire killing nine people, including Pastor Pinckney.

Scarcely had the news broken than pundits – both liberal and conservative – started using the shooting to further pet causes, from banning the Confederate flag to the need to permit people to carry guns in church.

But, remarkably, the people of Emanuel wanted to talk about something far more important: grace and forgiveness.

In an interview with the BBC, the children of Sharonda Singleton, one of the victims, told the reporter “We already forgive [Dylann Roof] and there’s nothing but love from our side of the family.”

And they weren’t alone. Stephen Singleton, Emanuel’s former pastor, told NPR that “we’re people of faith, and people of faith know that we heal. God helps us heal. This doesn’t drive us away from God. This drives us to God, and that’s why I’m here now.”

When asked what his former parishioners had told him, he continued, “There are a lot of broken hearts, a lot of sorrow and a lot of healing to be done. And that’s what we’re going to work on, and that’s what we’re going to focus on because if we get bitter and angry, we just make a bad situation worse.”

Thus, a relative of another victim, Myra Thompson, said “I forgive him and my family forgives him. But we would like him to take this opportunity to repent” and “give your life to the one who matters most: Christ.”

Senator Tim Scott, appearing on “Face the Nation” said that while Roof may have intended to ignite a war between the races, he brought the people of Charleston closer together.

And that’s because the people of Emanuel have responded in a way that is distinctly, if not uniquely, Christian: loving those who hate you, forgiving those who sin against you, and blessing those who would persecute you.

Christian ideas may no longer have power in our culture that they once had. But to paraphrase the Apostle Paul, against the kind of grace on display in Charleston there is no argument.

We even saw it on display in Roof’s capture. A North Carolina woman, at great personal risk, followed Roof’s car until she was sure it was him and then called the police. When asked why, she replied, “I had been praying for those people on my way to work ... I was in the right place at the right time that the Lord puts you.”

This was so reminiscent of the horrific event from years ago, the murder of five Amish girls in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. The members of the Amish community forgave the murderer. The families of the victims reached out to the widow of the perpetrator. And on this program then, Chuck Colson asked questions we should ask again today: “How are we working in our own communities to build cultures of grace? Are we teaching our children to forgive? Are we actively working to restore offenders and reach out in aid to victims? Are we overcoming evil in the world by good, as we are commanded to do?” And I would add: “If evil and tragedy come our way, are we ready to respond in love the same way our brothers and sisters in Charleston have?”

What happened in Charleston is a tragic reminder of the great darkness in the world. But in the aftermath we see the truth that the “light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.”

Resources

The Context of Forgiveness

Chuck Colson | BreakPoint.org | October 3, 2007

Tim Scott: South Carolina shooter has “brought our community together”

Rebecca Kaplan | CBSnews.com |June 21, 2015

Tip from Kings Mountain florists led to Charleston shooting suspect’s arrest

Gabe Whisnant | shelbystar.com | June 18, 2015

A dream that must be denied

Eric Frazier | Charlotte Observer | June 19, 2015

________

The Bible Speaks On Racism

John 3:16

Not long ago I preached in a downtown mission to a group of men who had been living on the street. It was a diverse group and I wanted to talk with them about racism in the wake of recent events that had raised tensions in various communities around the country.

I wanted to share with them what the Bible said about what they had in common beyond just their shared circumstances and how Christ gives us ultimate unity.

I noted seven biblical reasons why racism is wrong. Here they are:

God created all races (Genesis 1:27)

Every person from every race is created in the image of God. Races were not accidental or the result of sin. They are an expression of God Himself. He built diversity into the very DNA of mankind. If God created all races, then we must show value and respect for all races.

All races are fallen and sinful (Romans 3:10,23)

The Bible teaches that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There is no race that can claim to be better than any other when it comes to the degree of sinfulness. Romans 3:10 says, “There is no one righteous, not even one” (CSB). What applies to individuals is true of races as well. We are all equally fallen.

God loves all races (John 3:16; 1 John 4:14)

When the Bible says, “For God loves the world in this way ...” (John 3:16 CSB), it is talking about the people of the world of all races and nationalities. God did not just show His love to one ethnic group, but all. That is why John says later that He is the world’s Savior (1 John 4:14 CSB).

Christ died for all races (2 Corinthians 5:14-15; Hebrews 9:12)

The apostle Paul says that Christ died for all in 2 Corinthians 5:14-15. Christ died for all the peoples of the world. The only hope any person of any race has for salvation is in Christ. Hebrews 9:12 says that Christ entered the “holy of holies” with His own blood “once for all” to make the sacrifice for our sins. If Christ died for all races, then we cannot discriminate one over another.

Christ breaks down the wall between races (Ephesians 2:14-15)

Jesus not only broke down the wall of separation between us and God with His death on the cross, but the wall that separates us from one another. He broke down the barriers of hatred and division by giving us peace with God and peace with one another. This was not just true for Jew and Gentile but for all races.

We are one in Christ (Galatians 3:28-29)

The unity we experience in Christ results from sharing in a common faith in a common Savior that makes us part of the same family of God. That is why there is no more division between Jew and Gentile, male or female, slave or free. If we have all been saved by the same One, then we are all one in Him!

All races will join together in heaven (Revelation 7:9-10)

Ultimately, there will be people in heaven glorifying God around His throne from every nation, tribe, people and language (Revelation 7:9 CSB). We need to get used to joining together with people from other races because we are going to be spending eternity together! There will be no racism in heaven. That is just one of the things that will make heaven heaven!

I was visiting with a pastor who had received an anonymous letter from a person in his church recently lamenting the growing racial diversity in the congregation and the multi-ethnic expressions of worship. The letter said, “After all, this is the United States of America.”

I told the pastor that I hope that person knows that heaven is going to be filled with people from all races even more than the United States. He may not like it there! The Bible gives us plenty of reasons to know that racism is wrong. We just need to believe it and live it.

I Move We Fire The Preacher

We were wrapping up the monthly business meeting at my first pastorate, Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church near Quitman, Miss., a meeting where I, as pastor, was serving as moderator. At the time, Mississippi was caught up in a raging fire of racial tension as James Meredith became the first black to enroll in Ole Miss.

That tension spilled over and touched our little country church.

Our Sunday night meeting was all routine until I asked for new business. One of our men -- a man whom I loved, had visited often in their home, and he in ours -- rose to his feet and said, “I move we fire the preacher.”

Our peaceful world quickly exploded. At first, I thought he was kidding but quickly realized he was serious. As moderator, I called for a second. (Have you ever called for a second to your potential demise?) There was a prolonged silence followed by a muffled second.

Tom proceeded to tell me why I needed to go. Basically, in his own words, “You are an n---- lover.” Then he went into a litany of things I had said. Taking bits of conversations and messages out of context, he proceeded to attempt to justify his recommendation.

No one else spoke. The people were in as much a shock as I. I asked them to table the motion, give me some time to gather my thoughts and bring it up at a later date. I went into the nursery where Jeanette was rocking our daughter Kitty, knelt by her chair and blurted out what had happened. (My lady has some Irish blood in her DNA. I think her first reaction was just walk out the door and let them have the church.)

Instead of acting out of hurt and anger, Jeanette and I prayed about this disturbing state of affairs. I knew that racial bigotry was such an affront to the love and grace of God for all. In the truest sense, this was a mountain to die on.

The Lord gave me a game plan. I asked the church not to vote as I knew the potential for division among longtime members and friends. I promised that the following Saturday I would visit every home. When I appeared at their home, they just had to say one word -- either “Yes” or “No.” Yes if they felt I should continue or no if I needed to move on.

I told the congregation I would announce my survey results the following Sunday. I would continue serving as their pastor if they responded with yes or resign on the spot if the answer was no. We drove home with heavy hearts and our romanticized concept of ministry shattered. All kinds of thoughts raced through my head as I processed what had transpired. On a practical note, I thought about how I might notate being fired on my resumé.

On Wednesday night, a deacon Paul Patrick called me in New Orleans where Jeanette and I were living as I was also a student at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

“Brother Jim, do not visit any homes,” Paul said. “You are our pastor. Come by the station and I will give you the details.” (He ran the local gas station in the small logging village of Melvin.) Greatly relieved, I made that gas station my first stop on Saturday morning.

Mr. Tom, the one who called for my firing, apparently had decided to circumvent my request and had made visits in homes encouraging people to show up on Wednesday night to handle some church business. Word reached Paul and another faithful deacon, Bob Brewer, who made some calls and urged the people to pray and not act in haste. They crafted a statement that Bob read at the outset of the Wednesday gathering of a much larger than usual crowd.

I wish I had a copy of that statement. It went something like: “Our Baptist forefathers fought, bled and died that the pulpit would be a place where the preacher could freely preach the Word of God as the Holy Spirit led him. That has been the history of our church. Therefore, we move that our church continue to be a free pulpit where the pastor can preach in freedom the Word of God.”

The motion was made, seconded and then passed by a strong majority of the church. It sustained my continuing ministry there for another year.

I have pondered a thousand times the questions: What if they had voted to fire me? Would I still be in the ministry? What kind of attitude would I carry if I continued as a pastor? Could I ever trust people again?

One thing is for sure: The courageous action of those two deacons and the affirmation of a people living in the midst of a racial conflict with enormous ramifications carved a monument of deepest gratitude in the heart of a young preacher.

Dumb Blonde Catholic

John 1:46

A few years ago the famous news reporter, Barbara Walters, made a statement that shook people up. Instead of being a brilliant brunette Jew, she said she would rather have been born a dumb blonde Catholic.

Her comment was controversial because people thought it was a put down, but it wasn't. What Barbara Walters meant by it was that dumb women are more accepted by men, blondes have more fun, and Catholics have the hope of heaven. As a humanist, Mrs. Walters was admitting that she admired those who saw an ultimate meaning in life.

I Thought Christians Were Stupid Bigots

John 4:16

The following is an extract adapted from Finding More: Real Life Stories Worth Telling.

________

Rachel’s sexuality that was one of the reasons she became totally opposed to Christianity as a teenager. “I didn’t grow up in a Christian home at all,” she explains. “So I guess I started life neutral towards Christianity, and then, as I moved into my high school years, I became more opposed to it. The main reason was that I saw it as being for stupid people. Then, as I was about 16, I started to understand my sexuality more. I’d already had some sexual relationships with men — well, high-school boys, really. But as I started to be attracted to women and then act on those attractions, I was like, ‘Oh, this is where my heart is. The reason stuff with boys felt out of place was because it’s not my place.’ I gradually started to own that identity more and more. I knew from the culture that Christianity was against homosexuality. So by the time I was 18, I had concluded that Christians were both stupid and bigots.”

Rachel continues, “At college I became curious about the existence of God ... but at the same time I was ashamed about that curiosity. So I would secretly look up things about faith and Christianity on my computer. What I read about Jesus online was much more compelling than what I’d expected. So I was drawn in by this different Jesus — but at the same time, my sexuality was a big barrier. I knew that I wanted to marry a woman someday, and I knew that Christianity wasn’t OK with that.”

But somehow, Rachel couldn’t shake off her interest in Jesus. One day, she was in the room of a college friend and noticed a book on her shelf with an intriguing title: Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, the university-professor-cum-children’s-author who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia stories. “The title grabbed me, but there was no way I was going to admit that I was interested in Christianity by asking to borrow it. So I stole it.” As she read it, she had a dawning realization which she describes as: “Oh my goodness — God is real, and I am in a lot of trouble. Because not only is he real; he is perfect, and I am incredibly imperfect.” But there was an element of hope there too, she says: “I understood for the first time that Jesus had come to place himself as a kind of wall between God’s wrath — his right and fair anger at my sin — and me. I knew that if I trusted in Jesus, I was going to be saved. Now, did I understand the full implications of that? Certainly not. But I knew that I could be somehow be connected to Jesus and saved from God’s anger.

“I remember thinking, ‘Well, I like to drink a lot, I like the excessive parts of my lifestyle, I like to sleep with women — and all those things will have to go out the window. But it is stupid to pretend like what the Bible is saying isn’t true just because it’s inconvenient. I need to take this deal because I’m never going to get a deal like this again.’ I had a sense that I needed to pray, and so I just talked to God right then.”

A couple of days later, Rachel ran into the Christian student group on campus. “I had a ton of questions, obviously. I didn’t know anything! They were very good in giving me a Bible, showing me how to pray, taking me to church. The female friends who drew around me became very close to me, helping me fight through the sexual temptation and sexual failure that came. It became pretty clear to me after a little while that my attractions toward women hadn’t just gone when I became a Christian. Those first few years were littered with bad decisions. I was committed to Christ, but then I would choose a sexual relationship and get stuck in these cycles ... But my friends would lovingly keep calling me back to what I believed in.”

As I sit listening to her story, I’m left with a question: how could you just give up such an important part of your identity, something that had been so fundamental to your sense of self for so long? “Well,” Rachel says slowly, “it would definitely be tragic to give up something that valuable for something that is less valuable. And it would also be tragic to pretend like this real part of my life, my sexuality, is less than it is. But Jesus is more precious than even that very deep part of me, because of his great love. And...” she pauses for a moment with a smile, “that sounds really weird if you’re not a Christian, right? But the Bible talks about a Christian’s relationship with Christ being something we should be able to die for because it’s so precious. And celibacy and singleness are not death,” she says frankly. “Not having sex or not experiencing a romantic relationship is a severe thing, but I’d be willing to give up even more than that. In fact, giving up things is a very normal part of the Christian life. There are lots of people who give up sex, who give up their bodies, who give up their money. And you don’t really do it out of obligation — you do it out of love. You’re captured by Christ’s love, and it drives you to do things that you never thought possible before, because Jesus gives you this sense of security and purpose and an ultimate destination.”

Rachel concludes, “The reason that most people aren’t Christians is either because they think that Jesus isn’t really real or that he isn’t really worth it. But Jesus is both — really real and really worth it. Yes, I gave up some major things and some significant sexual relationships — but God has heaped upon me beautiful and good things in their place.”

Are Black People Cursed?

Genesis 9:18

She was a sweet white Christian woman in her sixties who was a seasoned saint. She even brought a Black friend with her to this particular author event on race. That is why her question baffled me.

“Are Black people cursed?” she asked. “Someone told me that a long time ago and they said it was in the Bible.”

I was stunned to find that even in 2022, there are some Christians who still believe a false message about the supposed “Black curse” placed upon the African race.

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda Africa is a reminder of how dangerous it is to claim racial superiority by misinterpreting Scriptures. The African Hutu tribe attacked the Tutsi tribe, and when the killing ended, around 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus were murdered — hacked by machetes, dismembered and slaughtered in other ways.

Although the conflict had several complex causes, one of the main drivers was the hatred the Hutus developed for their Tutsi brothers and sisters. They always had their differences, but that was magnified when European colonists brought the concept of race to the African tribes.

An online article explains how European colonists used the famous story of “The Curse of Ham” in the Bible to assign superiority to the Tutsi tribe and inferiority to the Hutu tribe. After years of racism and discrimination against the Hutus, they finally had enough. That is when the killing began.

According to the biblical account in Genesis 9:18-27, Noah had three sons — Shem, Ham and Japheth. Across time, Noah’s sons have been divided by historians into three races. Shem was assigned to the Semitic race (Jewish), Japheth to the European race (Caucasians), and Ham to the African race (Black).

As the Scriptures explain, Ham disrespected his father Noah in some way that is not fully understood. As a result, Noah did not curse Ham (Ham previously had been blessed by God), but cursed Canaan, who was Ham’s fourth son. Noah proclaimed that Canaan (and his descendants) would be slaves to the descendants of Shem and Japheth. Remember that later interpreters used this story to separate Jews and Caucasians from Blacks.

There are problems with this reasoning.

First, the exact time this biblical account took place cannot be known, but we can say it happened well over 4,000 years ago. That fact alone should pose the question: Has anything changed from then until now, and does this curse still apply today?

Yes, much has changed, and the curse does not apply today, nor did it apply during the pre-Civil War period. Many scholars agree the curse — if to be taken literally — was fulfilled in history long before the 17th century slave trade and the 1994 Rwanda genocide.

Second, according to this typology, it was Ham who represented the entire Black race, not Canaan. Ham was not cursed, but his fourth son, Canaan. That means Ham’s three other sons, Cush, Egypt (Mizraim) and Put, also members of the Black race — were not cursed (1 Chronicles 2:8).

And third, Jesus Christ received power over all curses when he died on the Cross and rose from the dead (Colossians 2:6-15). God did not want any race, including Canaan’s descendants, to be doomed forever under a curse — so he sent his only Son, in the likeness of humans, to die for the sins of the world and remove all curses. The Bible says Jesus became a curse for us so that we would not have to endure curses.

See Galatians 3:13-14 — “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us — for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’ — so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.”

Jesus took all the curses we deserved, whether inflicted by us or our ancestors, and nailed them to his Cross when he was crucified. That includes the curse of Ham’s son Canaan. No longer does any descendent of Canaan have to live with a 4,000-year-old curse. The blood of Jesus Christ killed the curse.

As Christian leaders, we often assume there is no need to address certain issues we believe people already should know. However, the old saying, “Better to be safe than sorry,” certainly applies in this situation. If someone asks you if Black people are cursed, now you can tell them the good news: No! The Blood of Jesus Christ is much stronger than the curse of Canaan. Jesus removed the curse!

Duke's Fast New Religion

John 3:3

A very sarcastic article by columnist Mike Royko expresses his doubts about former-Klansman David Duke’s professed conversion. Many public figures have claimed spiritual rebirth and it’s usually a gimmick.

“This transformation often happens while they are awaiting sentence or seeking parole. Theologians might consider studying the relationship between loving God and fearing a judge.”

“When the going gets tough, the tough get religion.”

“There was a time when sinners who wanted to cast off their wicked ways really made a project of it. You just didn’t go on a TV show, wave your arms, leap about, shout 'Amen, brother' a few times and come away with a soul that had gone through the normal soak, rinse and spin-dry cycles. For example, when he decided that he didn’t want to be loathsome anymore, he might have entered a remote monastery or some such place. That’s really the way to do it. ... He might have done as some saints did, especially those who had been youthful playboys and scamps. They cast aside pleasures of the flesh, wore itchy clothes, whipped themselves, went to work in leper colonies, washed the feet of beggars and really tripped out on misery. Had he done that, then appeared one day and said, ‘I have paid for my sins and want to be governor of Louisiana,’ nobody could have questioned his sincerity.”

I Thought Christians Were Stupid Bigots

John 4:16

The following is an extract adapted from Finding More: Real Life Stories Worth Telling.

________

Rachel’s sexuality that was one of the reasons she became totally opposed to Christianity as a teenager. “I didn’t grow up in a Christian home at all,” she explains. “So I guess I started life neutral towards Christianity, and then, as I moved into my high school years, I became more opposed to it. The main reason was that I saw it as being for stupid people. Then, as I was about 16, I started to understand my sexuality more. I’d already had some sexual relationships with men — well, high-school boys, really. But as I started to be attracted to women and then act on those attractions, I was like, ‘Oh, this is where my heart is. The reason stuff with boys felt out of place was because it’s not my place.’ I gradually started to own that identity more and more. I knew from the culture that Christianity was against homosexuality. So by the time I was 18, I had concluded that Christians were both stupid and bigots.”

Rachel continues, “At college I became curious about the existence of God ... but at the same time I was ashamed about that curiosity. So I would secretly look up things about faith and Christianity on my computer. What I read about Jesus online was much more compelling than what I’d expected. So I was drawn in by this different Jesus — but at the same time, my sexuality was a big barrier. I knew that I wanted to marry a woman someday, and I knew that Christianity wasn’t OK with that.”

But somehow, Rachel couldn’t shake off her interest in Jesus. One day, she was in the room of a college friend and noticed a book on her shelf with an intriguing title: Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, the university-professor-cum-children’s-author who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia stories. “The title grabbed me, but there was no way I was going to admit that I was interested in Christianity by asking to borrow it. So I stole it.” As she read it, she had a dawning realization which she describes as: “Oh my goodness — God is real, and I am in a lot of trouble. Because not only is he real; he is perfect, and I am incredibly imperfect.” But there was an element of hope there too, she says: “I understood for the first time that Jesus had come to place himself as a kind of wall between God’s wrath — his right and fair anger at my sin — and me. I knew that if I trusted in Jesus, I was going to be saved. Now, did I understand the full implications of that? Certainly not. But I knew that I could be somehow be connected to Jesus and saved from God’s anger.

“I remember thinking, ‘Well, I like to drink a lot, I like the excessive parts of my lifestyle, I like to sleep with women — and all those things will have to go out the window. But it is stupid to pretend like what the Bible is saying isn’t true just because it’s inconvenient. I need to take this deal because I’m never going to get a deal like this again.’ I had a sense that I needed to pray, and so I just talked to God right then.”

A couple of days later, Rachel ran into the Christian student group on campus. “I had a ton of questions, obviously. I didn’t know anything! They were very good in giving me a Bible, showing me how to pray, taking me to church. The female friends who drew around me became very close to me, helping me fight through the sexual temptation and sexual failure that came. It became pretty clear to me after a little while that my attractions toward women hadn’t just gone when I became a Christian. Those first few years were littered with bad decisions. I was committed to Christ, but then I would choose a sexual relationship and get stuck in these cycles ... But my friends would lovingly keep calling me back to what I believed in.”

As I sit listening to her story, I’m left with a question: how could you just give up such an important part of your identity, something that had been so fundamental to your sense of self for so long? “Well,” Rachel says slowly, “it would definitely be tragic to give up something that valuable for something that is less valuable. And it would also be tragic to pretend like this real part of my life, my sexuality, is less than it is. But Jesus is more precious than even that very deep part of me, because of his great love. And...” she pauses for a moment with a smile, “that sounds really weird if you’re not a Christian, right? But the Bible talks about a Christian’s relationship with Christ being something we should be able to die for because it’s so precious. And celibacy and singleness are not death,” she says frankly. “Not having sex or not experiencing a romantic relationship is a severe thing, but I’d be willing to give up even more than that. In fact, giving up things is a very normal part of the Christian life. There are lots of people who give up sex, who give up their bodies, who give up their money. And you don’t really do it out of obligation — you do it out of love. You’re captured by Christ’s love, and it drives you to do things that you never thought possible before, because Jesus gives you this sense of security and purpose and an ultimate destination.”

Rachel concludes, “The reason that most people aren’t Christians is either because they think that Jesus isn’t really real or that he isn’t really worth it. But Jesus is both — really real and really worth it. Yes, I gave up some major things and some significant sexual relationships — but God has heaped upon me beautiful and good things in their place.”

Will the Real Bigots Please Stand Up?

Jude 1:7

Will the Real Bigots Please Stand Up? - False Reasoning in the Debate over Homosexuality

Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) has committed what amounts to a postmodern equivalent of the unpardonable sin — he has made a statement about homosexuality that critics claim reveals a bigoted view of practicing homosexuals. The senator’s comments were intended to shed some light on the pending Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of a Texas law prohibiting sodomy, but actually have served to reveal more about the intolerance of the homosexual lobby toward persons of faith.

In an April 7, 2003, interview with the Associated Press, Senator Santorum, who is a Catholic, was asked to expand on an article he had written six months earlier, in which he laid the blame for the recent sex scandal within the Church on “moral relativism.” During the interview, the senator made the following comment in defense of the Texas sodomy law:

We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right

now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose.

Because, again, I would argue, they [acts of sodomy] undermine

the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the

Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual

[homosexual] sex within your home, then you have the right to

bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to

incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to

anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I

would argue yes, it does.

Homosexual organizations were quick to condemn Senator Santorum’s remarks, and called on the Republican leadership to strip him of his chairmanship of the Republican Conference. The reaction of Lorri L. Jean, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, was typical:

For the Republican leadership to throw their support behind

Santorum’s hateful comments so soon after their uproar of Trent

Lott’s racist comments is very telling. Republicans are

essentially saying that there is no room in their ‘big tent’ for

gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people and that it’s okay

to discriminate against an entire community that is represented

in all walks of life — race, religion, national origin, gender,

age, socio-economic status, etc. One word: disgusting.

Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), said:

Senator Santorum’s remarks to The Associated Press betray a deep

discrimination against an entire group of Americans that is

inappropriate for a senior leader of the United States Senate.

We need leaders who will unite the country, and affirm the

inherent dignity, value and equality of every citizen — not just

the citizens he happens to like. When Trent Lott made similar

comments, he lost his position as majority leader, and it is time

for the Republican Party to consider similar steps with Senator

Santorum.

And HRC political director Winnie Stachelberg said “Senator Santorum’s remarks are deeply hurtful and play on deep-seated fears that fly in the face of scientific evidence, common sense, and basic decency..... Discriminatory remarks like this fuel prejudice that can lead to violence and other harm to the gay community.”

Adding their voices to the criticism of Santorum were Democratic presidential hopefuls Senator Joseph Lieberman and Senator John Kerry, and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, as well as Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. Senator Daschle remarked, “I hope he clarifies that he was not equating homosexuality with bigamy or incest. Those sentiments are out of step with our country’s respect for tolerance, and I hope Senator Santorum would repudiate them.”

Republican Senators Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Olympia Snowe of Maine were highly critical of Santorum’s comments, but stopped short of calling for his resignation. Others in his party were more circumspect. Senator Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said: “Rick is a consistent voice for inclusion and compassion in the Republican Party and in the Senate, and to suggest otherwise is just politics.” Arlen Specter, the senior senator from Pennsylvania, said “I have known Rick Santorum for the better part of two decades, and can say with certainty he is not a bigot.”

What is common to all the complaints is the clear assumption that a person’s sexuality is defined by who he is and not what he does. The use of such terms as bigoted, along with the implication that science has somehow proven homosexuality is an inborn trait, contribute to this perception. Therefore, the term homosexual allegedly describes a person’s state of being, rather than simply a person who engages in acts of homosexuality.

Broad acceptance of this definition is a testimony to the cleverness activists have demonstrated in framing the debate over this issue, and is key to their relentless pursuit of sodomy as a civil right. Actually, there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that homosexuality is anything other than a deviant sexual behavior. Widely publicized scientific studies connecting the hypothalamus, genetic markers, hormones, or brain chemistry to homosexuality have all been dismissed as highly speculative and, in some cases, deliberately deceptive.

This specious distinction is evident in homosexual civil rights legislation that has successfully been enacted in a number of states and localities. It is notable that “sexual orientation” is the only special rights category that is “declared” and not self-evident. (An exception is religious faith, which is a matter of personal choice. But this is a right specifically guaranteed under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by our founders, who saw that freedom of religion was as fundamental and essential a right as freedom of speech or freedom of the press.)

In the typical legislation, no procedure is provided to establish how an individual can be “identified” as male or female homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual. In Maryland, for example, the law essentially recognizes the futility of attempting to verify an individual’s sexual orientation when the state added the following waiver:

An employer shall be immune from liability, under this article or

under the common law, arising out of the employer’s reasonable

acts to verify the sexual orientation of any employee or

applicant taken by the employer in response to a charge filed

against the employer on the basis of sexual orientation.

In California law, a “domestic partnership” is a “declaration” of shared responsibility between two “persons” of the same sex — the declaration is not made between two “homosexuals” since it is not possible to rationally classify someone by such a designation. In fact, the California law makes no mention of either “homosexual” or “sexual orientation” in the legislation. In order to establish a domestic partnership in California, same-sex partners need only meet certain social and legal responsibilities; opposite-sex couples cannot qualify as a domestic partnership unless at least one is eligible for Social Security.

It is clear, despite pleadings to the contrary from Senator Santorum’s detractors, that homosexual acts remain a deviant sexual behavior. Thus, there are no grounds for accusing him of bigotry.

_____________

For further reading:

BreakPoint Commentary No. 030502, “Tolerance Run Amok: Gunning for Santorum.”

Daniel S. Garcia and Robert E. Regier, “Homosexuality Is Not a Civil Right,” Family Research Council, December 20, 2002.

_____________

Al Dobras is a freelance writer on religious and cultural issues and an electronics engineer. He lives in Springfield, Virginia.

Articles on the BreakPoint website are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Chuck Colson or Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

God Had Trouble Getting In, Too

For more than a year a little old cleaning women, who lived on the wrong side of the tracks, had been trying to join a fashionable downtown church. The pastor was not eager to have a seedy looking person in faded, out-of-style clothes sitting in a pew next to his rich members. When she called for the fifth time to discuss membership, he put her off for the fifth time.

“I tell you what,” said the pastor, “you just go home tonight and have a talk with God about it. Later you can tell me what He said.”

The poor woman went her way. Weeks moved into months, and the preacher saw no more of her and his conscience did hurt a little. Then one day he encountered her scrubbing floors in an office building, and felt impelled to inquire, “did you have your little talk with God, Mrs. Washington?” he asked.

“Oh, my yes,” she said, “I talked with God as you suggested.”

“Ah, and what answer did He give you?” asked the pastor.

“Well, Preacher,” she said as she pushed back a wisp of stringy hair with a sudsy hand, “God said for me not to get discouraged, but to keep trying. He said that He Himself had been trying to get into your church for 20 years, with no more success than I have had.”

________

Unknown author, Pulpit Helps, Sept. 1990

Unleashing the Dogs: Why Are Christians Being Attacked?

Watching the news in the last few weeks, I couldn’t help but wonder: Who let the dogs out? And who decided to sic them on Christians?

At the University of Virginia, the school paper, THE CAVALIER DAILY, recently ran two cartoons that deliberately offended Christians. One, titled “A Nativity Ob-scene,” features Joseph asking Mary about a nasty rash. Mary tells him her rash was “immaculately transmitted.”

The second comic is titled “Christ on a Cartesian Plane.” It depicts the Crucifixion with a parabolic graph superimposed on the figure of Christ.

The CAVALIER DAILY initially refused to apologize for giving offence — even though editors apologized last year for a cartoon homosexuals found offensive. After more than two thousand angry calls and e-mails, the editors and cartoonist finally did apologize.

And then there were those charming comments from Rosie O’Donnell, speaking on the ABC TV program THE VIEW. While discussing the September 11 anniversary and the war in Iraq, O’Donnell compared “radical Christianity” to the beliefs of Islamo-fascist terrorists who murdered three thousand people on September 11. She declared, “Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America.”

Her comment shocked co-host Joy Behar, who said, “But Christians are not threatening to kill us. There’s that difference.” O’Donnell refused to back down.

Today even Christian vegetables are not immune to attacks. NBC recently began airing the popular VEGGIETALES cartoons on Saturday mornings. Each cartoon ends with a Bible verse. That is, they are supposed to. But just two weeks before the first episode was due, NBC ordered the producers of VEGGIETALES to edit out all biblical references. After all, they might offend people! Is this the same network that tells parents that if they are offended by prime-time sex and profanity to just turn the channel or use a V-Chip? Is this the same network that will allow Madonna to sing a song from her tour — the one she performs while suspended from a crucifix? Evidently, blasphemy and four-letter words are fine, but any positive mention of God is so offensive it has to be censored.

I may be particularly sensitive these days to religious bigotry because of what Prison Fellowship has lately endured. Last June, a federal judge shot down the InnerChange Freedom Initiative, an extremely effective pre-release program for prisoners launched by Prison Fellowship. Why? Not because of what the program did, but because of who we are. And we, as he defined us, were evangelicals who could not say or do anything without intending to convert someone else.

When we Christians see our faith treated with such hostility, our blood starts to boil. But we should remember that the Church was born into a hostile environment. Throughout history, the Church has always made its most profound witness when it was under attack. Why? Because then, more than at any other time, we have the opportunity to demonstrate the unmerited love, patience, mercy, and grace of God.

Indeed, when the culture sets the dogs on us, we have a biblical responsibility to speak the truth, yes, but to speak it in love. In so doing, we provide our greatest witness and unleash the greatest power: That’s the power of the love of God in Jesus Christ.

________

Speak Truth, Show Compassion: Christians and Sexuality

Can you truly love the sinner if you ignore the sin? It’s an old question, but in today’s culture it’s more important than ever that we get the right answer. Stay tuned to BreakPoint.

An article in the latest issue of the Atlantic Monthly describes how churches affiliated with Unitarian/Universalist and Episcopal denominations have embraced same-sex relationships.

But the embrace isn’t limited to liberal churches. For many younger evangelicals, “you can believe homosexuality is a sin and still believe that same-sex marriage should be legal.” Others take it one step further and say things like “Is Homosexuality a sin? I. Do. Not. Care.”

As Erick Erickson of Red State.org put it, younger evangelicals “want the world to like them and to think them a part of the world.” For them, remaining silent about these issues is part of what it means to love your neighbor.

Well, Al Mohler begs to differ.

In a recent piece on his website, Mohler asked “can we count on evangelicals to remain steadfastly biblical on [the issue of homosexuality?” His reply: “Not hardly.” He noted survey data showing “a significant loss of conviction among youth and young adults” on the issue.

It’s hard not to understand what’s behind the loss of conviction. Outside of the church, the cultural signals all point in the same direction. Whether it’s schools, mass media or peers, the message is the same: “homosexuality [is] a fully valid lifestyle,” and anyone who insists otherwise is a bigot and not entitled to respectful consideration of their views.

Thus, says Mohler, it is imperative that churches “teach the basics of biblical morality to Christians who will otherwise never know that the Bible prescribes a model for sexual relationships.”

Doing this requires the courage to swim against a very strong and unjust cultural tide. As Mohler writes, “Christian leaders must set an agenda for biblical confrontation, and not shrink from dealing with the full range of issues related to homosexuality.”

I agree.

Of course, doing this will almost certainly result in being called out for lack of compassion. But as Mohler rightly points out, “true compassion demands speaking the truth in love.”

The problem is that just as those seeking to be compassionate often lack the courage to speak the truth, those willing to speak the truth often lack compassion. According to Mohler, we must reach out to [gay people] with “a sincerity that makes that love tangible.”

Well, what would such a sincerity look like? For starters, it would make it clear that same-sex attraction itself is not a sin — acting on that attraction is what is sin. By and large, we cannot help to whom we’re attracted, but we can help what we do about the attraction.

Which raises another point: We need to embrace, in both word and deed, the truth that all Christians, regardless of sexual orientation and regardless of marital status, are called to practice chastity.

Chastity is not the renunciation of sexuality but “the right or reasonable use of it.” It is just as possible for married people to be unchaste as for unmarried people. Think about divorce and remarriage, which Jesus called adultery, or about flirtatious behavior, or the use of pornography.

While our persistent failure with regard to chastity doesn’t give us license to ignore the issues of same-sex marriage and homosexuality, it helps explain why people think we’re motivated by something besides a love for the truth.

Of course, presenting the whole truth about unchastity, heterosexual or homosexual, requires even more courage than merely speaking out about homosexual behavior. But both are sins and we should care.

________

A Key Figure In Mississippi Burning

Acts 23:16

Story of Delmar Dennis, a Methodist minister in the KKK in 1964 in Mississippi. After the local Klan killed three young civil rights workers, a massive manhunt began, codenamed “Mississippi Burning” by the FBI. Eventually one klansman revealed the location of the graves but no one would step forward to give evidence on who did it. Delmar knew as a Christian that murder was wrong, of whites or blacks, and became an informer for the FBI. Its local director called his testimony absolutely crucial. Delmar heard klansmen describing exactly how the killings were conducted (a deputy sheriff was the ringleader) and testified against them in federal court where 8 of them were convicted of violating the worker’s civil rights. They have never been tried for murder. Delmar Dennis was protected before the trial so they could not kill him, and now runs a restaurant. He still fears the Klan may try to take his life.

=====================

More on Dennis from http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/price&bowers/Dennis.htm

Delmar Dennis was a young Methodist minister and Klan member who became a vital witness for the government in the Mississippi Burning trial.

Dennis was a “handsome, strapping twenty-four-year-old” when he joined the Lauderdale County Klan and became the klavern’s kludd, or chaplain. Dennis tried without success to impose some Christian discipline on the group by setting a scale of fines for members who cursed, but cursing continued unabated and his efforts to collect were ignored.

In an authorized biography about Dennis, “Klandestine,” he claims that he was tricked into joining the Klan, but there is reason to doubt his story. (Dennis also claimed to have called Schwerner to warn him of the Klan plot against him, but that Schwerner hung up on him.) He did, however, appear to FBI investigators to be a somewhat reluctant Klansman and a possible weak link in the conspiracy of silence. Wallace Miller, the FBI’s first Klan informant, reported that Dennis had refused to buy the required gun when he joined the Klan and members had to take up a collection to get him a “.38.” Also of interest to the FBI was Miller’s report that Dennis, who attended a June 16 meeting that discussed the planned trip to Mount Zion Church in which the Klan hoped to find and kill Schwerner, declined to go along.

The FBI invested considerable effort in cultivating a friendship with Dennis, who proved much more articulate and intelligent than the average Klan member. Hours were spent discussing God, patriotism, and the races. Investigators told Dennis that he had the choice of being either a witness or a defendant in the trial that they said would inevitably come. Motivated perhaps more by self-interest than remorse, Dennis chose to cooperate. On the day of his decision to talk, agents compiled forty pages of notes on the conspiracy. Meetings between FBI agents and Dennis were held in Meridian cemeteries and at the naval air station.

In his trial testimony, Dennis described the June 16, 1964, Klan meeting in an abandoned school building in which the plan to murder Schwerner was discussed. He also described and explained a coded letter by Sam Bowers to Klan members urging silence in the face of the FBI investigation of the killings. Finally, Dennis may have sealed Bowers’s conviction by quoting a remark he made following the murders: “It was the first time that Christians had planned and carried out the execution of a Jew.”

Is Speaking Truth A Hate Crime?

Hate laws making their way through U.S. and British governments highlight the need for peaceful yet critical Christian witness. A 12th-century abbot leads the way.

In the run-up to the contest over the Federal Marriage Amendment last month, few journalists paid much attention to another bill making its way through the Senate. Drawing attention to a spate of violence directed primarily at Muslims, Sen. Ted Kennedy — one of the bill’s sponsors — called for severer penalties against those committing crimes for religious reasons. Kennedy noted such crimes included “murders, beatings, arson, attacks on mosques, shootings, and assaults.” The measure, an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2005 Defense authorization bill, passed on June 15 with a vote of 65-33.

Conservatives immediately condemned the legislation. The Republican Study Committee noted that the bill would require prosecutors to inquire into “an offender’s overall philosophy or biases.” The committee states, “The Kennedy bill makes philosophy, politics, biases, and general viewpoints the subject of almost every violent crime.” Robert Knight of Concerned Women for America warned that such measures undermined “the principles of free speech and equal protection under law. Any senator who voted for this is setting up our children and grandchildren for persecution as activist courts rule that biblical morality is ‘bigotry.’”

Curiously, a similar bill is making its way through the British Parliament under the direction of Home Secretary David Blunkett. The secretary wants to extend current legislation prosecuting crimes incited by racial prejudice to cover religious prejudice as well. To those worried it will restrict free speech, Blunkett argues, “The issue is not whether you have an argument or discussion or whether you are criticizing someone’s religion. It’s whether you incite hatred on the basis of it.”

Let’s hope Blunkett is being ingenuous here. If so, Christians have little to fear-and maybe something to gain-from laws protecting people on the basis of religion. After all, what benefits Muslims applies to Christians as well, doesn’t it? But Blunkett’s distinction between criticism and hatred may, in some cases, be difficult to draw. Does Franklin Graham’s calling Islam an evil religion a couple of years ago constitute a hate crime? What examples can we draw on to differentiate peaceful yet genuine critique from criticism that inspires acts of hate?

A Man of Peace in a Time of War

In 12th-century Europe, the shoe was on the other foot. Islam was a power to be reckoned with, having taken over more than half of the Christian Roman empire only a few centuries before. Muslims ruled not only the relatively remote Middle East and northern Africa but also significant territory on the European continent. Christians tried to resist the military invasion-the most notable success being that of Charles Martel, who stopped the Islamic advance at Tours in 732. Yet Christianity retreated throughout most of the early Middle Ages, as Muslim armies consolidated their gains and threatened the centers of Christian power.

In 1095, however, the balance of power began to shift. European aristocracy responded to Pope Urban II’s call to retake Jerusalem for Christendom, and over the next five years, crusaders carved out kingdoms deep in Islamic territory. For the first time, Muslims found themselves on the defensive. The Church’s enthusiasm was palpable — one of its leading authorities, the abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, threw his weight behind a new military monastic order called the Knights Templar, and he wrote a handbook defining and praising this new vocation. These knight-monks would go on to play a critical role in the wars fought by crusaders.

Not everyone was enthusiastic about this militaristic spirit spreading throughout western Europe. Peter of Cluny (also called Peter the Venerable), abbot of a rival monastic order to Bernard’s Cistercians, had grave misgivings about the real purpose of these crusaders. In a letter to Bernard, he reminded the abbot that the “Church does not have the sword of a king, but the staff of shepherd,” and he insisted that the only way Christians could rightfully wield any sword was through preaching the Gospel-even to Muslims.

The abbot knew that Christian knights, however motivated by the Christian cause, had no intention of endangering their military campaigns by pausing to engage in theological disputations. Peter worried that everything gained by the crusaders in war would be lost if these soldiers did not win the hearts of the people they conquered. In this, his predictions proved to be tragically prophetic.

Wielding a Gentle Sword

Peter knew that if Christians were to even have the opportunity to share the Gospel with their Muslim enemies, they must first understand what Muslims believed. And so in 1142, he traveled to Toledo, Spain-recently “liberated” from Muslim rule-to research vast Islamic libraries confiscated by Christian troops. Knowing no Arabic himself, the abbot commissioned two men fluent in the language to translate four documents into Latin, one of these being the Qu’ran itself. In the interest of accuracy and fairness, Peter even hired a Muslim to aid the men in their work.

The expedition was a success, and Peter desired that the material be put to use at once. Writing to Bernard of Clairvaux, he challenged the abbot to read the translations and construct a defense of Christianity for all of Christendom. “I have made known all these things to you especially … that I may animate that magnificent learning of yours, which God has so singularly granted to you in our days, to write against so pernicious an error [as Islam].”

But Bernard, intent on preaching a second crusade, neglected to take up the challenge. So Peter wrote two tracts of his own, the Summa Totius Haeresis Saracenorum, which laid out for Christians the central beliefs of Muslims and where they deviated from Christian doctrine, and the Liber contra sectam sive haeresim Saracenorum, a refutation in the form of a letter to the Islamic community. In the prologue of this letter Peter wrote, “The reason for my writing these things was precisely the reason for which the many great Fathers had. They could not suffer any or the slightest rejection of the Christian faith, nor did they tolerate the insane raving of all manner of heretics against sound doctrine. … It is the same for me. Nor must I, though by far inferior and unequal to them, be less zealous for the Church of God, the Spouse of Christ, than they.”

It may come as a surprise to many Christians today that Peter understood Islam not as a distinct religion but as a heresy of the Christian faith — with a little paganism thrown in. In his Summa, he notes that Muhammad “denies the Trinity with Sabellius, rejects the divinity of Christ with Nestorius, and he disavows the death of the Lord with Mani, although he does not deny his return to the heavens.” He goes on: “With pagans however, he rejects baptism, does not accept the Christian sacrifice of the Mass, and he derides penance and all the rest of the sacraments of the Church.”

An Approach for the 21st Century

So what does Peter have to say to us today? And would his criticisms be lumped with the “hate crimes” that western Muslims are intent on having prosecuted and dealt with severely? Peter would most assuredly write forcefully against Islam, pointing out inconsistencies and errors as he saw them, all the while making a case for the deity of Christ. And it is likely he would join the chorus of Christians and other conservatives worried that laws prosecuting hate crimes on the basis of religion would squelch any real criticism of the Muslim faith. After all, Peter wrote his polemical tracts with the protection of an extensive network of monasteries and Christian princes ready to defend the land from Muslim invasions.

But Peter would also urge his fellow Christians to abstain from any form of violence against Muslims, as that only serves to generate animosity. Could he have witnessed not only the failure of the Crusades, but perhaps more importantly, the bitterness and hatred that plagues Christian-Muslim relations even today because of those wars, he might have taken a direct stand against the militarism of Bernard and other crusaders. Peter would remind us that we should not approach Muslims “as our people often do, by arms, but by words; not by force, but by reason; not in hatred, but in love.”

Now that’s a message worth taking to Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Blunkett, and our Muslim friends and neighbors.