Coulter's remarks could have used some "perfecting"

"Coulter's remarks are outrageous, offensive and a throwback to the centuries-old teaching of contempt for Jews and Judaism," the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recently huffed in response to Ann Coulter. The commentator's remarks to an interviewer that Jews needed to be "perfected" by Jesus didn't set well, even if delivered with a winsome smile.

The ADL apparently doesn't have a clue about Christianity. So, let's review. Jews -- inspired by God -- wrote and revere the Old Testament, same as Christians. Jews daily read and meditate on that Testament, as do serious Christians.

And Jesus was a Jew.

Jesus was a Jew, however, who was a bit exclusive in His teaching -- "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Christians believe Him. Other Jews of His time believed him, not the least a gentlemen we would come to know as Paul of Tarsus. The early Christian faith was mostly a Jewish movement. Today, Israel has no better friends than the evangelical Christians of America.

Here is where Ann could have turned it on the interviewer named Donny Deutsch. "Donny," she might have articulated, "if this upsets you then you must turn your anger to Jesus. He said the 'I am the Way ... " things. Not me. I am just one of hundreds of millions alive today who have believed Him."

"Donny, do you have a problem with Jesus? Your listening audience would like to know. As C.S. Lewis once said, you cannot call him a great teacher if he was calling himself God and you think he was a liar. He was either a madman, a false prophet, or God. Which?

"And Donny, if you are mad and want to keep taking the 'how hateful, how anti-Semitic' line, then know this -- we will just have to love you until you change your mind. Yes, Donny, know that right now thousands of evangelical Christians watching this program are going to begin loving you through prayer to Jesus until you relinquish your life to Him who loves you more, Donny, than you could ever love yourself.

"You see, friend, we don't believe in hateful anti-Semitism. We believe in a Jesus that has taught us to love."

In the herky-jerky world of interview-entertainment on "serious" talk television, it is hard to believe that Ann could have ever had the uninterrupted time to deliver such thoughts. Still, it would have been a good reminder to all of us that yes, Jews need "perfecting," just like all men and women, boys and girls of all ethnic and religious stripes need the same. Jesus quoted twice from the Jewish Torah to let us all know how:

"'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

And then Jesus said, "Follow Me."

Is a National Day of Prayer really helpful?

The National Day of Prayer for this year has come and gone. It is time we investigated the whole concept a bit further.

I don’t have anything against such a “National Day…” Anytime God’s people get together to praise and thank, to confess and intercede, all the better. But the issue, which is addressed precious little these days, lies further on.

E. Stanley Jones, the late Methodist missionary to India, once said that “Where there is no effective prayer life, the heart of religion has ceased to beat and…becomes a dead body of forms and customs and dogmas.” And yet the vast majority of lay and clergy alike don’t practice a consistent and daily practice of prayer and thus fall as casualties before the admonition of James: “The prayers of a righteous man availeth much.” Righteousness is a matter of God’s grace and prayer is one of the chief means of that grace.

Jones continues: “If I were to put my finger on the greatest lack in American Christianity, I would unhesitantly point to the need for an effective prayer life among laity and ministers.” And then Kagawa is quoted. To second-generation Japanese Christians in America he said “Your greatest lack is that you do not know how to pray.” Christianity becomes anemic and feckless without personal prayer lives. (E. Stanley Jones, How to Pray)

And what has happened to the church prayer meeting? Once this nation was known for Wednesday night prayer gatherings where people labored in getting through to God. Now, if there is a prayer meeting at all, it is too often the most boring meeting of the week, little attended and the hour is crammed with singing, preaching and requests more than fervent prayer.

Pastor Jim Cymbala swears that Brooklyn Tabernacle went from “doomed” to dynamic after he sensed God speaking to him: “If you and your wife will lead my people to pray and call upon my name, you will never lack for something fresh to preach. I will supply all the money that’s needed, both for the church and for your family, and you will never have a building large enough to contain the crowds I will send in response.”

“Lead to pray.” In Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire Cymbala then quotes that great Charles Haddon Spurgeon:

The condition of the church may be very accurately gauged by its prayer meetings. So is the prayer meeting a grace-ometer, and from it we may judge of the amount of divine working among a people. If God be near a church, it must pray. And if he be not there, one of the first tokens of his absence will be a slothfulness in prayer.

All of this to ask: What use is a National Day of Prayer if no one has a prayer life, and local churches aren’t passionately interceding?

We need the following:

• Pastors who spend at least an hour a day in personal prayer thus leading by example in this most consequential church dynamic.
  
  
• Churches who reclaim a time for fervent intercession either during the Sunday service or at something like a Wednesday prayer meeting or both.
  
  
• We need pastors to begin beckoning their people to consistent and ardent prayer and fasting as a local church standard.
  
  
• We need seasons of prayer where pastors and laity alike are honing in on the life of holiness God desires for all of us.
  
  
• Then…we need to participate in the bigger vision of “National Days of Prayer.”
  

I just have this funny feeling that doing the last without the former won’t mean much to God. And that all of these together in abundant fashion across the nation will likely mean revival.

Why the increasing animosity towards Christianity?

Is it possible that a dearth of Christ-like characteristics -- such as integrity, holiness, forgiveness, compassion -- among believers is turning off "the world" to Christianity? Surely not.

OneNewsNow.com recently asked its Internet readers: What is the primary cause of the increasing animosity toward Christianity?

Readers said:

Anti-Christian media (39.58%)
Liberal public education (30.61%)
Political correctness (13.59%)
Indifference to religion (11.63%)
Anti-Christian politicians (4.59%)

On the Mississippi talk-radio show that I host, I asked the audience if a sixth answer might be appropriate. How about "Christians"? Could believers themselves be the primary cause of the "increasing animosity"?

OneNewsNow's poll was unscientific by polling standards. So were the answers to the talk show inquiry. But that day on the airwaves, 100% agreed that the Church has caused negative perceptions by:

• Lackadaisical response and/or silence in the face of national moral decline
• Mirroring the world's values
• Rank hypocrisy -- we talk a good talk, but our walk is well worth criticizing
• Powerless living
• Anemic involvement in addressing the nation's problems

Is there an antidote to the Church causing loathing among the wider populace?

The audience thought so -- integrity, for starters. Talk holiness, but live it even more. Forgive those who wrong you and wrong the culture. Reach out to the unlovable and the "untouchables" of our age with Christ-like compassion. Quit saying that prayer is the most important thing and act like it really is. Be humble.

Like most talk-radio conversations, it all came out a little choppy. But there is wisdom here.

I once participated in a televised, four-person panel discussing my community -- Jackson, Mississippi. The city council was in disarray as the president of the council and another councilman were headed off to jail. The council president, for his part, had made a behind-the-back deal with a strip club for the purposes of a re-zoning ordinance, was caught and found guilty of the crime, and was subsequently sent to a correctional facility.

The moderator, a local newscaster named Katina Rankin, looked at me during the give-and-take and, trying to get a rise out of me, asked, "Matt, whose fault is all of this?"

Mission accomplished. I suddenly became agitated. My face began to get red and I prepared to launch into a tirade about how we are a nation of laws and how the city council president had looked at that law, trampled on it, and tried to get some cash flow he had no right to have as a public official. If we were looking for culprits there was only one place to put the blame -- smack dab in the council president's lap as he sat in his well-deserved jail cell.

That is what I was going to say.

But I never got the words out. One of the panelists sitting next to me was a gentleman named John Perkins -- author, teacher, community developer, national evangelical leader, Christian statesman. As my index finger stiffened and my blood pressure rose, I prepared to answer Ms. Rankin when Dr. Perkins intervened before I got a word out.

"It's my fault," he answered Rankin.

All heads, quizzically, turned his way.

"I have lived in this community for decades as a Bible teacher," he said. "I should have been able to create an environment where what our council president did would have been unthinkable because of my efforts.

"You want someone to blame? I'll take the blame."

You could have heard a pin drop. Part of the silence was mine as I reflected on my own lack of involvement.

Whose fault? Our fault. And that is something we can change.

Containment? No...

America has many trenchant problems. Is there any chance that one of our woes could include pastors who consider merely preaching from a pulpit to be more Christ-like than lovingly traveling the wider community, as Jesus did, compassion in hand and a message of holiness on the tongue?

Three years ago I led an altar call at the prison where I preach. With no actual altar to work with, I asked the men who came forward to put their noses, belt buckles, and knee caps on the concrete and admit to being "dirty, rotten sinners" before the Lord. Michael was there that evening and responded, face flat on the floor. At a later date and out of prison on bond, he said that those words weren't nearly as formative as the word "surrender."

There in that prison cell -- A3 of the Hinds County Detention Center -- he heard a word that made immense sense in that divine moment and surrendered fully to the Lordship of Christ.

He was released on bond, reconciled with his wife, became a member of our church, and began discipling his four kids and paying child support for two others. He provided a holy example to his children and solidified that model by leading them in two devotional periods each day -- times that included praise and intercession and reading two chapters of Scripture.

On the work front, his longtime employer declared Michael the most godly man he knew, since his jailhouse experience, and the best employee he'd had in the last 25 years.

So, three years after he got out on bond, he went back to trial in a system anything but speedy and was found guilty (this pastor thinks him likely innocent, by the way). I had the honor of testifying at his sentencing. Among other things, I said he wasn't just a good man but a great one, and that his life "had been thoroughly redeemed by Jesus Christ." Michael could have received up to 30 years in prison. The judge ruled that he would serve four more (he has already served one).

A local television station, tipped off through the D.A.'s office that the judge might be lenient in this case, ran the story as part of an ongoing "Broken Justice" series. The segment which was aired in this case portrayed Michael, this pastor, and the church as being grossly on the side of injustice. As might be imagined, the phone lines of the station filled with outraged viewers and the next day talk radio in our community was buzzing with the subject.

One on-air comment suggested that the pastor should stick to the pulpit, and stop getting involved in affairs outside the church.

In seminary, I studied under a professor named Dr. Robert Coleman. He wrote the famous "Master Plan of Evangelism" which could alternatively be named "The Master Plan of Getting out of the Synagogue and Getting Into the Highways and Byways of Life With Disciples in Tow to Change the World." I wasn't one of Coleman's better students, but even so, if I am to be accused of many bad things, I trust it will never be said that I minded my own business and that of my congregants by merely keeping to a pulpit. Or, that I just didn't have the time or inclination to get involved at the abortion clinics, the prisons, the strip clubs, and the nursing homes. Or, that I didn't care for or stand up for the less fortunate, the downtrodden, the poor. Or, that I cared little about the unevangelized and refused to stand for the people God has entrusted to me with a good word when they were in trouble.

America has many trenchant problems. It might be proposed that all problems are, in the final analysis, spiritual ones. Is there any chance that one of our woes could include pastors who consider merely preaching from a pulpit to be more Christ-like than lovingly traveling the wider community, as Jesus did, compassion in hand and a message of holiness on the tongue?

The greatest, men like John Wesley, would have had nothing to do with a message of containment or simply taking care of the already well-mannered:

"Let us be employed, not in the highest, but in the meanest, and not in the easiest but the hottest, service -- ease and plenty we leave to those that want them. Let us go on in toil, in weariness, in painfulness, in cold or hunger, so we may but testify the gospel of the grace of God. (Acts 20:24) The rich, the honourable, the great, we are thoroughly willing (if it be the will of our Lord) to leave to you. Only let us alone with the poor, the vulgar, the base, the outcasts of men. Take also to yourselves 'the saints of the world': but suffer us 'to call sinners to repentance"; even the most vile, the most ignorant, the most abandoned, the most fierce and savage of whom we can hear. To these we will go forth in the name of our Lord, desiring nothing, receiving nothing of any man (save the bread we eat while we are under his roof), and let it be seen whether God has sent us." (John Wesley, "A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion")

Let it be seen, indeed.

New OneNewsNow column is up

And it has precious little to do with evangelism, a lot to do with politics.

We are now expected to get excited about Giuliani?

Pastors to blame for divorce epidemic?

We have a divorce epidemic in America today. And I am wondering how much pastors are to blame.

I am of the school that thinks that we usually put way too little expectation on the Church and its pastors for societal woes. And when it comes to the institution of marriage I think the vast majority of ministers have let the proverbial ball drop and by doing so have led the nation to the brink of disaster.

Too few of us (pastors, and I am one of them) take serious the words “holy matrimony” and by our lack of recognizing the importance of this expression assume that anybody who wants to should be able to enter into it and with our blessing. Afterall, not to perform such ceremonies could cause congregational rift and, as people who make livings by the offerings of that congregation, we allow almost anything.

But is it possible to have “holy matrimony” when one or both of the couples have no love relationship with the Lord? Do pastors query their young lovers about such matters? Or have we assumed that the pastoral office has no business budging into people’s lives in these all-important issues?

I heard a program on American Family Radio not long ago that had a number of family counselors on that were asked, “Would you marry a young couple that were determined not to have kids.” I listened intently on my side of the radio for the answers for I had never thought about such a thing. And, to my astonishment, every one of the people on that program said they would not marry such a couple. Afterall, biblically, procreation is largely what marriage is for.

Interestingly, I have never known a pastor to talk about a matter like this much less require such a thing.

Do church leaders require intense marital counseling? Not a couple of sessions and a blessing, but serious examination of a multitude of issues? I know that most do not, and by not training people for marriage we leave them vulnerable to the worldview of the less-than-successful marital culture they move in. Serious talk on finances, family, conflict resolution, personality match, friends and interests, communication, religion and values, parenting issues, etc. needs to be the tall expectation for every minister and the unions they counsel pre-maritally.

There is research out there that suggests when such matters are considered seriously and the church demands some significant things of those seeking marriage the divorce rate is lessened substantially. Where such matters are not taken seriously, we get what we are getting culture-wide - the breakdown of the family unit that threatens our very survival as a nation and a serious Christian community.

We pastors, and the churches we represent, are not to be “blessing machines” – throwing out words and sacraments willy-nilly to anyone who wants them. For in the end, we learn that by doing so we haven’t really blessed, but most assuredly have cursed the people we wanted to help with the lowest of views of the Church, of the institution of marriage and of the pastoral office.

Holiness and 'Just Showing Up!'

Sometimes, just showing up makes a difference.

Dr. Carolyn Knight from Wesley College in Florence, Mississippi started showing up several years ago outside of strip clubs in our community to try to talk to those going in about the Lord. Feeling called thereafter to the mission fields of the world she and her husband spent several years serving as a missionary in various countries of Africa. But she has since returned to Mississippi and has started showing up again outside the three strip clubs in Jackson, MS.

Except now she is there with college students in tow to try and evangelize any who will engage with them in conversation.

In the couple of months they have been taking their stand one kid has been punched. Carolyn has been kicked. A couple of students had a dog unleashed on them.

But they keep showing up.

This columnist was enamored enough with their persistence that I joined them one evening to stand outside these “adult” establishments to hold up a sign promising prayer and to observe. This isn’t a ministry for the feint of heart.

In my short time there one of the managers came out to threaten harm, yell, call police and laughingly promise a law suit. Even so, wearing a dress shirt and tie and holding a sign that read “We are praying for you” it was interesting to see pricey vehicles drive up, see that respectable citizens were standing outside and decide to drive on and do something else with their evening.

Not long after my visit Dr. Knight sent an e-mail that certainly encouraged:

I just wanted to tell you some good news. Today in chapel one of the security guards from (one of the clubs) showed up. He cried during the service and wants to come again. He shared that he had quit his job and desired a new life. He also said that another security guard had quit and that an assistant manager had quit. He said it was all due to the fact that we had started coming down there. Praise the Lord!

The secret? No secret, really. There is so much about effective ministry that is easily understood. Prayerfully show up. Play it by ear. Be willing to stay kind, gentle, reasonable. Be courteous but also be able to challenge. Don’t back down. Meet bullying with a heart of love.

Last weekend I saw the movie Amistad for the second or third time. I was impressed again that director Steven Spielberg showed the “religious right” of that day outside of the ongoing events with the Africans off the slave ship in a persistent, kind, gentle, reasonable, courteous, challenging, don’t back-down kind of way. Dressed in black and with Bibles and a song on their lips they were just always there providing the contra mundum (against the world) perspective in a nearly impossible situation.

And against enormous odds the Amistad Africans were eventually sent back to their homeland.

There is something here we need to be inspired by. Do something momentous in the culture wars if you can. Show up at the dark places of your culture – the abortion clinics, the prisons, the nursing homes, the strip clubs, the hospices. We should have a heart for effectiveness in these places, but even if our persuasive tongues fail us and we wonder what good we might do it is still amazing what happens when you persistently show up.

Holiness and decency taking a stand still makes a difference.

The Church and culture: Never give up!

My latest from AgapePress.

Displaying the cross, or carrying it?

There is a difference.