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Issue 008 <previous< Issue 009
Volume 3 No 1 February 1997
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The order of the articles is
not in the same order as the print version. A Dangerous
Mixture For more than one reason, it seems regrettable that the Pat Robertson-Ralph Reed "Christian" Coalition, building on Jerry Falwell's "Moral" Majority, has thrust religious considerations into our political arena. What may be the source of this movement which claims a righteousness superior to that of Christians who do not support it? Why is this movement a threat to the faith its members seek to defend? What threat do these people pose to the nation's interests? Is there a chance that this movement may, to the surprise of most observers, lead to a healthy change in both religion and politics? Perhaps the ultimate source of this
basically fundamentalist movement is the traditional Christian claim to a unique
divine revelation which denies validity to all other religions.
This claim to the sole authentic knowledge of the mind of God is,
naturally, shared to some degree by all of the groups which bear the Christian
label. Being There I still remember the number forty years later, 21554196628. My dog tags hang on the wall in my office reminding me of two years (1957-1959) in the Army. I rose like a flash to PFC in the Military Police Corps. I can still make the traffic on a busy street corner flow with the best of them. After MP school in Ft. Gordon, Georgia, Judy and I went through Abilene, Texas on our way to White Sands Proving Grounds, New Mexico, my permanent duty station.
Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas had been our home for the
past four years. I told Dr. George
Graham, my mentor and friend and the Vice-President of HSU, that we were on our
way to Las Cruces, New Mexico. Church Secrets We Dare Not Keep
“You can’t hurt me anymore. I am stronger than you think I am.” The gentle voice I heard last weekend reflects the strength of the person singing it--a lady I believe to be one of the most courageous, caring, and spiritual people I have ever met. Decades ago, as an adolescent, Bette Rod was sexually assaulted by her own minister. Now, as her only daughter enters adolescence, she wrestles with a whole new layer of fear and confusion. Her torment is unending, but it is not about her own failures. It is about the failure of one who was supposed to be setting a moral example for his congregation.
In contrast to the many years she spent in isolation and pain, today
Bette is part of a huge network of men and women who are speaking out in the
hopes of waking the sleeping. Her
vibrant ministry takes her to both churches and secular support groups where she
sings out her painful testimony. Her
speaking has not been without consequence.
Each time she sings her songs or tells her story, Bette knows there are
some who will not understand. Still
she refuses to be silent. Dana
Whorton Danna Whorton doesn't seem to ask much of God. She just wants him to give her the strength to meet what life hands out. Usually she finds the strength. The one time she didn't, God stepped in. On the icy morning of January 2, 1977, lying in the pale green bedroom where she'd slept for 31 years, Mrs. Whorton felt too weary to rise. "I can't go on another day," she thought. She prayed not for a miracle, not for healing, but only that God would help. "Help me, Lord. Help me." That's all. For five years, she had nursed her husband, Preston, after two cerebral hemorrhages left him confined to bed. He couldn't talk or feed himself. Only his eyes moved, following her as she walked about the room. For the first two years, she wasn't even sure he recognized her. She hired a nurse for the day shift; she took night duty herself. Every two hours from 3 p.m. until 7 a.m., she shifted and turned her husband. Mrs. Whorton couldn't remember the last time she'd had a complete night's sleep. She was 71 years old and so tired. "Lord, I just can't make it another day," she prayed. That afternoon, Mr.
Whorton died. First They Came
for the Jews Corrupted forms of the famous saying by Martin Niemoeller are being widely circulated. Why? And why are essentially new sayings invented and circulated, falsely claiming the authority of the famous Christian opponent of the Nazis? First, who was Martin Niemoeller? Niemoeller was one of the most respected Protestant leaders in Germany. After a signal career as a young man, a decorated U-Boat captain in the First World War, he became an activated Christian. In 1933, when he became the most high profile of Hitler's Christian opponents, he was in charge of a prestigious suburban parish in Berlin-Dahlem. Niemoeller was a
leader in the mobilization of the Pastors' Emergency League, in the Synod that
denounced the abuses of the dictatorship in the famous "Six Articles of
Barmen," and in other visible joint actions and sermons that finally led to
his arrest on 1 July 1937. There were then a few honest judges still
functioning in Germany, and when the court let him go with a slap on the wrist
Hitler personally ordered his incarceration. Niemoeller was in
concentration camp, including long periods of solitary confinement, until the
end of the war. In Defense of Active Voluntary
Euthanasia:
Many die too late, and a few die too early.
We need, in love, to practice only this: Pontiac, Mich. [Wednesday, May 15, 1996]—A jury here Tuesday acquitted Jack Kevorkian of criminal charges that he helped two women kill themselves in 1991, a verdict that Kevorkian immediately declared should legitimize the practice of physician-assisted suicide in Michigan and elsewhere in the country. "I now consider this a legitimate medical service," Kevorkian said shortly after a jury, for the third time, refused to find him guilty of a crime. The 67-year-old retired pathologist…added that "the time has come for the medical profession to come forward and set down the guidelines on how this is going to be done."[iii]
Despite the fact that the law in Michigan and, until recently, in every
other state[iv]
makes physician-assisted suicide illegal, it increasingly appears that no jury
is going to find Kevorkian guilty of a crime.
Why? One plausible answer is
that most people support active euthanasia under certain circumstances and do
not believe that physician-assisted suicide should be viewed as criminal.
Regardless of the explanation of the juries' absolving of Kevorkian, few
events underline more graphically the emotional, moral, and legal complexity of
the euthanasia controversy.
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Is the Head of
the House at Home?
The phone rings just as I sit down to dinner. The voice asks, "Is this the head of the house?" Should my answer be brave or honest? I reply, "It depends on what you mean by head." The answer to the title question is similar. Yes, there is a head of the house at home, but probably not the one you had in mind. For the Christian household, Christ is the true head. Ephesians 5:21-6:9 is a Hausentafel (a code of household duties) and a central Pauline passage on the Christian home.[i] Often quoted in wedding ceremonies, these well-worn verses are sometimes used to support a traditional view of male superiority and female submission in marriage relationships.[ii] The thesis of this article is that Eph. 5:21-6:9 upholds a model of mutual submission under the lordship of Christ. Jewish and Gentile moralists commonly wrote
guidelines to govern the behavior of family members.
Biblical scholars presume Eph. 5:21-6:9 was part of catechetical
instruction given to new converts in Christian churches along with other
teachings (cf. Col. 3:18-4:1; Tit. 2:1-10; 1 Pet. 2:13-3:7).[iii]
The apostle Paul added a new element in his household codes--the
Christian home was to be different from the typical Graeco-Roman family.
Every member of the Christian family was to live under the lordship of
Christ, which revolutionized domestic relationships. Book
Review Living Faith If ever a book was aptly titled, this is it. American's most admired former president has written his best volume yet. It is intensely personal, profoundly theological, wonderfully readable. At the same time it is not maudlin. It captures a balance between the harsh facts of his experiences and the discernible emotions of an exciting pilgrimage of authentic Christian faith. In many ways it is Jimmy Carter's
autobiography. It gives us
important insights about his life and values.
Emerging is a truly beautiful picture of a quiet and deep faith in God,
which has colored and influenced every aspect of his remarkable life.
There are vignettes by the dozen which remind us of the old-time country
Baptist upbringing in the deep South. The
little country church, his remarkable parentage, Sunday School, Training Union,
revival meetings--all touching memories literally of a way of life and church
all but gone in the peculiar pressures of a nation which has radically changed. Living in Ambiguous World I must be a compulsive optimist. To most of the news of our mad world, my reaction is, "I give up!" Yet, I continue to try to sow beneficial seed, even though it is quite clear that much of the most useful seeds of wisdom sown by all the sages of all the ages have fallen upon inhospitable soil. My current seed is the suggestion that our world is, on the whole, inescapably ambiguous. Few choices are unequivocally clear; to the thoughtful, most choices must be made among undesirable options. The seed in this column is being broadcast in the improbable hope that, in the stony ground of anti-abortion activism, it may bear a bit of fruit. Perhaps the clearest illustration of inescapable ambiguity in life is in the field of economic philosophy. An economic philosophy based upon the practice of the Golden Rule is undoubtedly the ideal. This would mean, not a
dictatorial
Russian Soviet Communism, but cooperation rather than competition.
It would also entail a significant and voluntary sharing of all of the
good things of life. In economics,
this seems to be the ideal according to our Judeo-Christian heritage. The Kevorkian Epidemic Dr. Jack Kevorkian of Detroit has been in the papers most days this past summer and autumn helping sick people kill themselves. He is said to receive hundreds of calls a week. Although his acts are illegal by statute and common law in Michigan, no one stops him. Many citizens, including members of three juries, believe he means well, perhaps thinking: Who knows? Just maybe, we ourselves shall need his services some day. To me it looks like madness from every quarter. The patients are mad by definition in that they are suicidally depressed and demoralized; Dr. Kevorkian is "certifiable" in that his passions render him, as the state code specifies, "dangerous to others"; and the usually reliable people of Michigan are confused and anxious to the point of incoherence by terrors of choice that are everyday issues for doctors. These three disordered parties have converged, provoking a local epidemic of premature death.
Let me begin with the injured hosts of this epidemic, the patients mad by
definition. At this writing, more
than forty, as best we know, have submitted to Dr. Kevorkian's deadly charms.
They came to him with a variety of medical conditions:
Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis, chronic pain, amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis, cancer, drug addiction, and more.
These are certainly disorders from which anyone might seek relief.
But what kind of relief do patients with these conditions usually seek
when they do not have a Dr. Kevorkian to extinguish their pain? The Professional And Boundary
Issues Four years on the mission field was all it took to lose touch with the jargon and music of the day. When we left Dallas in 1987 the only boundaries I would consider relevant were those of the fence between my yard and my neighbor's. By the time I stepped back into the clinical world of a hospital everyone was discussing the need to set clear boundaries and loved Bobby McFerrin's musical instructions: "Don't Worry, Be Happy." It took awhile, but I finally heard the tune myself and found a way to understand relationship boundaries and was quite grateful to discover that boundary-setting hadn't been a problem for me in years. In the preceding article about clergy abuse the need for clear boundaries is alluded to. Do you know if you are susceptible to a boundary violation in your professional relationships?
Boundaries are the limits that allow for safe connections between
individuals. A
boundary is that defining space which clarifies "you" and
"me." Our understandings
of what are acceptable boundaries grow out of our family of origin.
A healthy boundary allows an
individual to relate with genuineness to others. Persons with healthy boundaries
know how to provide for their own personal privacy and safety (and by extension,
that of their young children). Appropriate
intimacy and the achievement of trust is possible in relationships because there
is no fear of losing "self" in establishing connections with others. Welfare State Came From Real Need
Last September, Professor Robert W. Fogel of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business gave a lecture at the American Enterprise Institute in which he argued that the turn of the century religious awakening “provided the intellectual foundation for the welfare state.” (Wall Street Journal, January 9) Perhaps the contribution of the religious revival either to intellectualism or to the New Deal is questionable. But it did, quite likely, stir the consciences of some leaders and awaken them to the plight of masses of people trying to make the transition from the agricultural, farm village world to urban living.
What was the real reason for the birth of the New Deal?
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