If you’re like me, part of you may just laugh when you hear of such actions.  In the end, however, it is no laughing matter because it brings up a host of questions.  For example, did the manufacturers of the sign mean mankind in general when they wrote “men working”?  It’s doubtful given the nature of the job where such signs are normally found.  And, yes, I’m being partly playful here.  Nonetheless, such a question probably could be raised when deciding a formal complainant.

More importantly though, at what point does the wrongful “discrimination” and rightful “inclusion” end?  At the end of the day, who will decide what is and is not offensive?  Who sets the standard for what is and is not discriminatory?  The standard, as illustrated in this case, is set by the defended party.  Good brought it to the city’s attention that she had been offended and working women were being discriminated against.  Thus, it was Good’s standard that was set and had to be decided on by the city.  This goes to illustrate just how powerful the individual’s “rights” have become in our culture.  If one person is offended then he or she has the “right” to file whatever form of complaint he or she deems suitable.  (David Wells notes this in The Courage To Be Protestant.)

One of the more obvious questions and particularly important ones to the church is at what point can we use “cultural artifacts” (to use one of Dr. Mohler’s terms) to make gender distinctions?  Can we ever use anything to distinguish our God-given gender roles?  If Good can make a case for “men working” signs then who’s to stop someone from filing suit against the church for saying, “In accordance with 1 Timothy 2:12 and 3:2, women shall not serve as Elders” (Article 3, Section 2, Clause 4 of TABC’s Constitution)?  This is not a question for a later generation.  It is one that is already being taken up now.

The second weakness was the vanishing of local churches. It became a matter of “personal choice” for whether or not the core principles needed to be lived out “primarily in an ecclesiastical context.” Thus, there was the rise of parachurch ministries, which lived to “strengthen the life of the churches” in the beginning. Since then, however, evangelicals have thought of their faith in “para” terms and apart from the church (10). This attitudinal shift coupled with the rise of church “marketers” resulted in many churches disappearing and becoming “entirely parachurch in nature! (11).

Wells concludes that this “disappearing trick would never have been possible if evangelicals were still thinking in doctrinal terms.” He continued:

The truth is that without a biblical understanding of why God instituted it, the church easily becomes a liablility in a market where it competes only with the greatest of difficulty against religious fare available in the conveniences of one’s living room and in a culture bent on distraction and entertainment. Few demands are made by television preachers, or on borrowed DVDs, and every pitch for a financial contribution is subject to death by the mute button. That cannot be said of the preacher in a church! This conquest by the market, accomplished silently and without any fanfare, has not only greatly diminished the church but, one has to say, has also greatly diminshed what it means to be a Christian believer (11).

I have not yet read the Manifesto in its entirety, but needless to say there will be much conversation about this document in the days and months to come. Justin Taylor has a very helpful summary you would do well to read. You can also download the Manifesto along with a study guide.

Clarity is invaluable when there is much confusion!

The Hajj is one of the Five Pillars of Islam expected of all adult Muslims physically and financially able (Quran 2.196-203). It is a once in a lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca located in Saudia Arabia, the birthplace of Islam. It is a week long festival filled with a variety of activities. Circling the Kabah that is centered in the Grand Mosque (picture above) and kissing the “Black Stone” is the apex of the Hajj. Yesterday pilgrims visited and prayed on the plains of Arafat where the Prophet Muhhammad preached his last sermon. Last night they gathered stones for today’s “Stoning the Devil” where they cast stones at the rock of Mina. At the end of the Hajj, pilgrims will sacrifice an animal, usually a sheep, in remembrance of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, Ishmael, not Isaac according to Islamic tradition.

If you want to know more about the Hajj, here is a good internet source. But in this post I want to point out two ways I think Christians can be praying for Muslims during Hajj.

1. Safety: Every year a number of Muslims die either to, from, or on the Hajj. They are trampled to death by the crowds, die from heat exhaustion, killed by sectarian violence (oh the irony since they dress in solid white garments symbolizing purity and global unity), and the list goes on. In addition, a Muslim is immediately granted Paradise and considered a martyr to die while on the pilgrimage. So it’s fitting to pray that God would see fit to spare many lives during this year’s pilgrimage.

2. Freedom from Spiritual Deception: From a biblical worldview, one of the best ways to describe Muslims is that they are spiritually deceived into believing in a false god and false gospel (injil).  For example, they believe Allah is the only true, eternal, wise, omniscient, transcendent god.  He begot none nor was he begotten.  Furthermore, Jesus was only a prophet and Muhammad came as the “seal” of all prophets with the fullest and final revelation – the Qur’an.  In addition, Jews and Christians (“People of the Book”) have perverted and falsified the scriptures.  Thus, they can no longer be trusted.  And for a Muslim to find favor with Allah, he is required to observe a number of things and included are the Five Pillars; one of which they are observing this week. 

Pray that Muslims will hear the gospel and know that God is finally not pleased with their sacrifices and pilgrimages.  Pray that they will no longer be deceived by the devil into believing the falsehood of Islam but will experience the freedom of knowing Jesus Christ who is “the way, the truth, and the life”.

The split stems from the ongoing battle within the Episcopal Church regarding the Bible’s authority, particularly as it relates to homosexuality.  “The church will inevitably leave the Bible behind at point after point,” said Bishop John David Schofield of San Joaquin to the diocesan convention on Friday, “but since on this view the Bible is the word of fallible men rather than of the infallible God, leaving it behind is no great loss.”

Let me encourage you to take the time to read this article and to keep an eye on the Episcopal Church.  Church history is chalked full of moments such as this.  In addition, it highlights the truth that the church of Jesus Christ will stand or fall on the Bible’s authority. 

(You can also find information on the diocese’s website.) 

For those who are too young to remember anything about the Bakkers before their fall, you may be interested to know that they represented to the world, and to evangelicals, much of what it meant to be Pentecostal along with others like Jimmy Swaggert, Oral Roberts, etc. They had their minor differences, but in the North among my very separatist roots, the Bakkers and others showed what the charismatics were like. It wasn’t fair of course to lump them together like that, but it happened. John Piper and others have made charismatic expressions more mainstream today, but it wasn’t so in the late 1980′s. Nobody wanted to seem like the Bakkers and company.

What should we be thinking today about Tammy Faye and the Bakkers? In some ways the Bakker scandal is very far removed. In other ways it remains fresh. It reminds me of the problems we all face of grasping for power, influence, success, etc. When mixed with religion it is a very dangerous potion. The results unfortunately can compromise the name of the church and of Christ. The Bakker’s lives became parables of that problem.

Today, Abbot wrote a post about whether LeBron James — 22-year old basketball superstar — should sign a letter rebuking China, host of the 2008 Olympic Games, for financially supporting Sudan (Darfur being in the Sudan). Here’s what I found amazing. After doing a bit of research, Abbot realized that while it might not make sense for LeBron to sign the letter, the 22 year-old could really make a difference:

Here’s my suggestion: LeBron James can be more than an activist here. He can be an executive. (Sign the letter or not — I don’t know. The wording is sufficiently vague, even if the intent seems to be shaming the Chinese and solving the problem with peacekeepers.) If he hasn’t already, he should pick up the phone. James has the best possible contacts at Nike. Nike has the best possible contacts in China. Couldn’t hurt for James to send word down the pipeline that he’d really like to see meaningful progress towards long-term peace in Darfur over the next year. That way, when the attention of the world is on James in Beijing next summer, James can congratulate everyone on their progress, instead of prodding them to do better.

So, here’s the deal. Genocide in Darfur and a 22-year basketball player is looked to make progress. What role do Christians have? What role does the church have? We live in a world where athletes have influence. I understand that. I long for the day when Christians make a difference. Some are.

I bring him up as an example of an evangelical politician who could not be stereotyped. Hatfield is firmly pro-life, he even opposed the death penalty. This is not your typical, evangelical position–but there are many Christians who agree with the death penalty in principle but oppose it in practice. He became very well known, and disliked by evangelicals, for opposing the Vietnam War but he supported invading Iraq. Hatfield is a conservative who sided with the Oregon’s timber industry for the sake of Oregon’s economy–but he was also one of the first to sponsor the Endangered Species Act. Again, he is not easily stereotyped.

So, for a Christian to be a one or two-issue voter rightly makes some issues hills to die on, but it does not make politicians who share this worldview cardboard cutouts with no other ideas that need to be seriously evaluated.

Second, was it “blessed” for southerners to take children from their parents and sell them? Was it right for slave owners to sell wives away from their husbands? Wedding vows were taken “until death or the master parts us”. How would you feel if you had to witness your wife being sold to take care of another man’s babies. Is that blessed to you? I know there were benevolent owners, and I don’t want to beat up on the entire South. But, it was very far from blessed. And it didn’t end in 1865. I can show you the statistics of lynching in the South as recently as the 1920′s. They called it “strange fruit” because what tree produces dead black men from its branches . . . ? I refer you to very eloquent words who acknowledged that judging in this instance should be left to the Almighty:

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.

A. Lincoln – Second Inaugural Address, 1865

First, because The Passion of the Christ is a serious movie about the Savior that millions of people consider a faithful portrayal of the most tragic event in history. For better or worse, the movie is connected with Gibson in a way that the Scriptures are not. Second, anti-semitism is real. My own grandfather, whom I never knew, suffered in pogroms in eastern Europe. He was hung in a tree and saved by his grandmother–and had the scar for the rest of his life to prove it. We live in a world of prejudice, where ethnic diversity stirs up scorn and even hatred. Third, alcoholism is ugly. Gibson fell off the wagon. When he did, not only did this lead him to drive drunk (though this is not drawing the ire of anyone as far as I can tell) but it led him to speak atrocious words. The question remains, is Gibson’s ranting a reflection of his true belief or was he driven by the alcohol to say things he didn’t believe? In other words, did the alcohol bring out his true self? The question is not unimportant. I know someone who, when drunk, phoned up a friend and threatened to kill him. Nobody believed this person really wanted to kill my friend–he was drunk.

The powers-that-be are ready to hang Gibson out to dry. Take Maureen Dowd, columnist for the New York Times (subscription required):

Mr. Gibson appears to believe that the Jews control everything. It is an ancient anti-Semitic insult. But now that he has gotten into trouble for his bigoted views, he has thrown himself at the mercy of the object of his bigotry.

Case closed, according to Dowd, he’s a bigot. She finds it ironic that in the wake of his behavior, Gibson has turned to the Jewish community seeking help. Self-serving behavior for a man in the public eye? Perhaps. Or, perhaps his apology is genuine:

I want to apologize specifically to everyone in the Jewish community for the vitriolic and harmful words that I said to a law enforcement officer the night I was arrested . . . I’m not just asking for forgiveness. I would like to take it one step further, and meet with leaders in the Jewish community, with whom I can have a one-on-one discussion to discern the appropriate path for healing.

We don’t know the true state of Gibson’s heart but we know that his actions can prove himself not to be a bigot. Would Dowd deny him that possibility? Furthermore, at least he had the courage to come out and apologize. He owned his words as his own, regardless of the fact that he was “under the influence.” This is an honesty that is not often found in the lives of public figures today–something worth considering. As for the anti-Semitism question, this is an opportunity for the Church to be reminded that prejudice is a live issue. As Christians, we should be first in line to confront this issue head-on, and not leave it to the pundits.

Wills in the article you linked to, Jonathan, goes too far.  I see no need for Christians in society to separate their Christianity from their political involvment.  If Christians want to engage in politics with explicitly Christian reasoning then that is their constitutional right and it is the constiutional right of our atheist, Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu friends to reject that reasoning.  I don’t see this as the imposition of a theocracy–I see this as Christians having their say in the marketplace of ideas.  He goes on to say that posting the Ten Commandments (I suppose he means on public property) is taking the Lord’s name in vain because Jesus never meant for the Bible to be used politically.  While I would not encourage the enforcement of the posting of the Ten Commandments, I certainly don’t think it is rises to the level of taking the Lord’s name in vain.   Why?  Because we just can’t say that Jesus rejected politics since His teachings have a dramatic effect on how we approach not just our personal lives but our public lives.  David Cook, a Christian ethicist at Oxford wrote:

If we believe that all of life belongs to God, we cannot neglect involvement in politics. Christians often hesitate because politics is a “dirty business”; but business will not improve until and unless Christians bring a different style and content to political life. The example of Wilberforce and his efforts to abolish the slave trade show the influence for good that Christians can have in politics. As citizens of earth, as well as of heaven, we cannot really complain about the political leaders we have, nor the decisions they make, unless we are willing to elect women and men of integrity who support policies that restrain evil and reinforce goodness and ourselves be involved in the political process, both by exercising our voting rights and opportunities and by encouraging suitable people into the vocation of politics.

This still leaves open questions of whether we vote for a particular kind of person as our political representative or for or against a party with a slate of policies we endorse or reject. Political decisions affect every aspect of our lives from taxation to issues like stem-cell research, abortion, war, and trade. Scripture is concerned with the totality of life and rule. (“What’s Your Attitude Toward Politics, Kairos Journal)

To your question, Jonathan, I think elders and pastors need to be very cautious about commending candidates and political policies from the pulpit and privately lest we give the impression that our opinion is somehow the Christian opinion.  However, there are times when the church must speak out.  There are issues that the Bible makes black and white (see Cook above).  There are political platforms that are inexcusable from a Christian perspective.

These are thorny issues that I must leave alone for now.  However, I didn’t want your question to be left hanging, alone and untouched in cyberspace any longer.

People pay $25-1,000′s of dollars to watch athletic games (and then $20 for a hotdog and Coke), wear their jerseys and specialized shoes, emulate their moves, buy the products they endorse, and hang their posters on the wall at home.  Teachers get yelled at, cursed, slandered, and marked out in the yearbook.  Do you really think we value them 66 times more than basketball players? 

I am astonished by how much we Americans value the opinions and lifestyles of the rich and famous.  There are multiple channels designated to sports and numerous shows that help the average Joe keep up with the latest celebrity news.  PBS cannot even get funding. 

Enough I say.  These salaries (while justified on a comparison basis) are godless.  One person accumulating this much wealth for playing a game so that, in many cases, they will become a bad role model for young people is not healthy for him/her or society.  I do confess I may be bitter because I miss the glory days on the gridiron–if only I could get paid for tackling people!     

“We have for a long time now watched helplessly the killing, maiming and destruction of Christians and their property by Muslim fanatics and fundamentalists at the slightest or no provocation at all,” Archbishop Akinola wrote. “Peace is absolutely necessary for realizing our dreams and aspirations for Nigeria.”

But Archbishop Akinola also sought to remind “our Muslim brothers that they do not have the monopoly of violence in this nation,” and the Church “may no longer be able to contain our restive youths” should attacks on Christians continue.

Dr. Sookhdeo, a convert from Islam to Christianity and a priest of the Church of England, agreed, noting, “peaceful conduct is all too often seen as weakness by Muslims.”

If Western governments and Church leaders “will not condemn the anti-Christian violence or even publicize it, can they be so surprised when non-Western Christians–goaded beyond endurance–finally fight back?” Dr. Sookhdeo said.

These are difficult days for our Christian brothers and sisters in Nigeria.  They need wisdom to know how to protect their property and, more importantly, their families in the face of this violence.

In a follow-up article, the Post noted that it is not simply about religion–there are long-standing ethnic and political divides separating these Nigerians. In other words, they are living in an already explosive, volatile situation and are, perhaps, looking for something, anything, to spark an uprising.

Let’s pray that the Gospel is not held in disrepute as the media covers this event as Christians retaliating with violence against Muslims. Let’s pray for peace in Nigeria. Let’s pray that these Nigerians who claim the name of Christ would have wisdom to know how to protect their families from further assault while at the same time protecting the name of their Savior. Finally, let’s pray that these world events would open up doors of evangelism for us. John Piper’s “Being Mocked . . . “ is good fodder for an evangelistic conversation on this topic.