Page 4808 – Christianity Today (2024)

Would the Almighty really tell someone to build a statue of Christ out of toothpicks?

In San Dimas, California, where Bill and Ted of movie fame began their “excellent adventure,” lives a different sort of adventurer named Bob Haifley. According to the Los Angeles Times, Haifley spent five years, 2,500 work-hours, and a lot of glue building a life-sized figure of the crucified Christ out of 65,000 toothpicks. It hangs from a wire in his garage against a black backdrop, illuminated by a spotlight, looking so impressively lifelike that a 16-year-old neighbor could only say, “Whoa!”

What made Haifley, a humble water-department supervisor and nonartist, start collecting toothpicks and inviting the ridicule of his neighbors by building San Dimas’s answer to Noah’s Ark?

“God told me to do it,” he says.

According to Haifley, God not only commissioned the work one day as Haifley drove his pickup through San Dimas, but showed him how to do the spiky hair and crown of thorns after five years of indecision. God even gave him a title for the piece: The Gift.

Haifley would make a good candidate for straitjacket tester at a local brain laundry, you might think, except that his bright eyes and uplifted smile make him look like the sort of man you would want for your child’s soccer coach. And the Toothpick Christ is doing no harm, hanging there in bristling serenity. Haifley says he believes God is using him to inspire people.

Could it be that God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, really told him to do it?

Such a claim has been made before. There was Noah and an initially reluctant Jonah. There were the Samuels and Nathans and Jeremiahs. There was the apostle Paul and the emperor Constantine the Great, who, according to Eusebius, saw a cross in the sky at the battle of Mulvian Bridge and under it the words In hoc signo vinces (in this sign conquer). If God could have spoken to such as these, could he not speak to someone like Bob Haifley?

On the other hand, if he was speaking directly to the Toothpick Man, how about all the fire-starters, the tower-sitters, the cave-dwellers, the Christian skinheads, the Ku Kluxers, the abortion-clinic bombers, the Jim Joneses, the Son of Sams, and the David Koreshes who calmly tell reporters that God told them to do it? Do they all have direct hookups?

Even if I vow that “God told me” and I don’t care what anybody says, how are you to know what that means? I might be reporting any of the following:

• I saw a heavenly messenger in glorious raiment and heard his words.

• I heard clear words that seemed to come from God.

• God spoke to me in a dream.

• I felt a strong compulsion that I believe to be from God.

• I felt a strange pressure from somewhere outside of me.

• I think I knew what God would want me to do.

• I couldn’t resist.

• I wanted.

There is room in that list for everyone from Jonah to Jim Jones.

But when I am through being cautious, acting the role of the spiritual CPA, I am not really content. I see that glint of well-being in Bob Haifley’s eye. I feel the cathedrallike sanctity in the dark of his garage. I imagine the reactions of his visitors. And it is impossible for me not to be impressed by the magnificent triviality of the spiritual adventure he has undertaken, the portion of wisdom in his foolishness.

I do not want to live in a world where, as a rule, no God can speak through the hearts and minds of his creatures. I do not want to live in a world where truth and sanity are measured by suburbia’s crushed velvet and barbecue tongs. I want to suppose that God could speak to me, when I get close to him, as well as to any other.

But what if everyone walked around saying God told me this and God told me that? Who could be believed?

I don’t know if that is any more of a problem than it has ever been. As Christ said, “You will know them by their fruits.… Every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit” (Matt. 7:16–17). And the fruit of the Spirit is unmistakable, as Paul told the Galatians: it is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22–23). If the wisdom really comes from God, according to James, it will be “first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere” (James 3:17, NIV).

Somewhere in there, I think I can find room for Bob Haifley’s “excellent adventure.”

Paul Brand is a world-renowned hand surgeon and leprosy specialist. Now in semiretirement, he serves as clinical professor emeritus, Department of Orthopedics, at the University of Washington and consults for the World Health Organization. His years of pioneering work among leprosy patients earned him many awards and honors.

Confronting Christians’ fear of interracial marriage.

“Pastor, we really enjoyed your teaching,” the young African-American man said. “We just got married and we’re looking for a church home.”

The minister smiled and nodded as the man introduced his blond, blue-eyed bride. As the pastor shook her hand, he remembered how the congregation had turned and stared when the couple entered the sanctuary. Usually he introduced visitors to one of the deacons. This time he hesitated.

“Thanks for coming,” he said instead, ending an awkward silence, and turned to the next person in line.

The smiles on the young couple’s faces faded. Their hands interlocking, they turned and left the church.

The issue of interracial marriage was once far from my mind. As a native of India, it was expected that I would marry within my race and culture. But then I married a White man. My husband and I have been fortunate. Aside from a few startled stares, church members have made us feel accepted and loved. But our experience is not widespread.

A growing number of couples in America are crossing racial and cultural lines to marry. And they are searching for churches that feel like home. If national trends are any indication, the American church needs to prepare itself to face a growing phenomenon.

In 1966, 17 states still had formal prohibitions against some form of interracial marriage. All of them regulated only marriage between Whites and other races. The Supreme Court overturned all state antimiscegenation laws in 1967. But as late as the seventies, at least 12 states still had laws forbidding marriage between Whites and other races.

Despite slowly changing social taboos, the number of interracial marriages in the United States has increased significantly. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1970 there were 310,000 interracial couples—less than 1 percent of all married couples. By 1987, 799,000 American couples were interracial—2 percent of all married couples. Interracial marriages have increased by 250 percent over the past 20 years—compared with a 17 percent increase in all marriages.

The entertainment industry has attempted to keep pace with the increasing number of intermarrying Americans. Television shows such as General Hospital and L.A. Law and major Hollywood releases like Jungle Fever, Mississippi Masala, The Joy Luck Club, and The Bodyguard have all highlighted interracial romances.

This is one area where the media may be morally ahead of the church. In Black and White Mixed Marriages, Ernest Porterfield’s classic survey of interracial marriages, one fact stands out. The majority of couples actively involved in Christian churches before marriage discontinued church membership and attendance after marriage.

“There are people who are supposed to be religious,” said a respondent in Porterfield’s study. “Some of them will come to you and say: ‘If I had a son or a daughter that married a black, I would have killed them.’”

What is it about American Christianity that made these interracial couples pull away from the local church?

Marrying a Cush*te

Throughout our nation’s history, people have used religious arguments to justify laws forbidding intermarriage. “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay, and red,” argued a county court judge in 1967, defending Virginia’s antimiscegenation law. The judge continued, “The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

Evangelical Christians may no longer use this judge’s line of reasoning, but an honest self-evaluation may lead us to look beyond a vague discomfort to discover a subtle, unexamined prejudice.

Wichan Ritnimit, a Thai pastor married to a White woman, contrasts his Thai church’s joyful response to the news of his betrothal to the American missionaries who were less excited. “The missionaries, mostly Americans, demurred,” remembers Ritnimit. “Nationals crossing over the racial and social lines were an embarrassment.”

A monoracial couple generally finds support and encouragement from the church as they embark on their marital journey. Sometimes that support is not given to interracial couples. One Black-White couple interviewed by Porterfield reported: “Every couple has their own crisis period. But when we have ours, … the same church officials who are against divorce will turn around and recommend that we separate … not because [we] are man and wife, but because [we] are black and white.”

In several places in the Old Testament, intermarriage is strongly opposed by God and his prophets. When Moses gave the Israelites the law, he warned them not to intermarry with the unbelievers of the many nations in the land God would give them (Deut. 7:1–4). Ezra and Nehemiah, two of Israel’s God-ordained leaders, challenged the people to repent over intermarriage and encouraged divorce en masse. They described intermarriage with those who do not revere God as one of Israel’s most offensive sins (Ezra 9:10–15; Neh. 13:23–27).

A closer look at these passages, however, reveals that biblical opposition to intermarriage arises only when the people of God marry those who cause them to worship a God other than Yahweh. One of the purposes of marriage for Jews was to pass on and preserve their covenant relationship with God through their children. If marriage entailed the worship of the other spouse’s gods, the covenant would be broken.

The Old Testament clearly shows that God affirms racial intermarriage when religious compromise is not an issue. When Miriam and Aaron criticized Moses for marrying Zipporah, a “Cush*te woman,” the “anger of the Lord was kindled against them” and Miriam was struck with leprosy (Num. 12:1, 9–10).

There is no hint that Boaz was acting contrary to God’s will when he married Ruth, a Moabitess (Ruth 4:13–15), through whom both David and Jesus our Lord were descended. In each case where intermarriage is allowed in the Hebrew Scriptures, the non-Israelite spouse did not hinder the man or woman from serving God.

In the New Testament, the same principle applies: the only requirement is that the Christian not become unequally yoked with an unbeliever (2 Cor. 6:14). Race is not a barrier for Christians, since we are all one in Christ, “neither Jew nor Greek” (Gal. 3:28). In the Book of Revelation, John describes the bride of Christ as a great multitude “from every nation, tribe, people, and language” (Rev. 7:9). Certainly, particular couples are free to foreshadow this heavenly racial cornucopia in their marriages.

Celebrating radical unity

Unless interracial families live in cosmopolitan cities where interracial marriage is becoming more common, they will face a set of challenges monoracial couples can avoid. They will need to use more energy and imagination to balance, and celebrate, two cultures. They must be strong enough to endure being stared at, tough enough to keep working at their cultural differences, confident enough to raise confident kids.

Black-White marriages elicit more negative reaction than other types of interracial marriage, having to straddle the wide chasm between two groups that share a 400-year history of hostility and tension. For example, a study of 39 middle-class Black-White marriages in New York found that most of the couples had experienced being pulled over by police who suspected either that the Black woman was a prostitute or the Black man was a rapist.

How Our Children Surprised Us

Fred and Anita Prinzing know about interracial marriage. Their traditional family dreams were shaken when, in a two-year span, both their son and daughter married African Americans. The Prinzings never thought of themselves as racist, but being confronted personally by one of the most controversial of social taboos left them questioning their beliefs. In their book Mixed Messages (Moody), Fred, vice president and dean at Bethel Theological Seminary, and Anita share their story and examine interracial marriage from a Christian perspective. The couple recently spoke to CT.

Anita: One reason we chose the book’s title was that we realized we had probably sent mixed messages to our children. We had tried to expose them to missionaries and foreign students and people of different ethnic backgrounds; yet when our son announced that he was marrying a Black woman, it really took us by surprise.

I had to deal with my pride. My mother had come from the South and didn’t think she was prejudiced. She said she loved her mammy, but when I asked her about allowing the woman to sit at her dining table, I was told that that wasn’t done. And my father, although a loving man, was Archie Bunker in the flesh. I prided myself that I wasn’t prejudiced like my parents. Yet when it came to dealing with my son marrying a Black woman, I realized I had a lot of those same feelings.

Fred: My parents were involved in sending missionaries to Africa, and so all our lives we talked about Black people in Africa. However, the idea that anybody would think of dating or marrying a Black person was inconceivable. So, although my parents never talked about being prejudiced, they were probably just as prejudiced as Anita’s folks.

Anita: It was a spiritual struggle for me. For years I had prayed for our children that God would have the right person for them, and I could not believe this could be God’s will. Why did I even think of trusting him?

Finally, I tried praying about it, but because I was angry with God, I didn’t feel I was getting very far. One evening, after Fred had gone to bed, I was reading in Colossians. I cried out to God, “I have to have something. I’ve either got to accept this and have peace about it, or I’m just going to throw up my hands.” And just as I was pleading for peace, it came: “You are living a brand new kind of life that is continually learning more and more of what is right, and trying constantly to be more and more like Christ who created this new life within you. In this new life, one’s nationality or race or education or social position is unimportant; such things mean nothing. Whether a person has Christ is what matters, and he is equally available to all” (Col. 3:10–11, LB).

Fred: We’ve discovered that the real problem people have with intermarrying is not necessarily race but color. We found that the first questions we were asked were about color—how dark our daughter-in-law was. When our grandchildren were born, the first questions were, “How dark are they?”

It’s still primarily a Black-White issue. For instance, half of the female Asian immigrants are married interracially, but many don’t consider that interracial in the same way.

Our son married back in 1982. Our daughter got married in 1984. I think if our daughter had married first it would have been much harder on the family because of the stereotype of Black male/White female relationships. So we had two marriages inside of two years. And it was unbelieveable, because there was nothing in our kids’ backgrounds that indicated this would ever be a possibility.

Anita: We’ve learned that people intermarry for the same reasons that two White people or two Black people marry, and it’s basically for love. There are rare exceptions, such as when somebody’s trying to prove a point or punish someone or shock someone, but probably no more so than when other couples marry for the wrong reasons.

Once I got to know my daughter-in-law and son-in-law as persons, I could really appreciate them. When we get to know an individual, it makes a world of difference.

Fred: I think a distinction should be made between “prejudice” and “racism.” All of us are prejudiced. Prejudice means simply prejudging. You’re prejudiced because you don’t know. But with education and exposure, you can change that. However, racism is a sinful condition of the soul, when one believes that a person or group is superior to another because of skin color or physical features or heritage.

Anita: I had a friend whose son was engaged to an Asian girl. So I asked her how she was dealing with accepting a daughter-in-law of another background. And she said immediately, “Oh, I don’t have any problem with that, but if she had been Black, I would have.” I pulled back like a turtle and went into my shell. The first people I actually told were two women who were not Christians who had shared with me the struggles they had experienced with their kids. And because they had been vulnerable to me, I felt safe with them.

One person asked, “Why are your children trying to hurt you so much?” That had never occurred to us, because we knew our children. They have never been rebellious and purposely done something to hurt us. But in the eyes of some people, it was like this was the worst thing our kids could have done. But we realized they had married people they loved.

Then someone asked the opposite question, “What did you do right?” We didn’t purposely set our children up for marrying someone of another race. But we told them we were no different from anyone else. Yet, when it came to their taking us at our word, we had to own up that we had meant something else. Did we really mean that we were all equal in God’s eyes?

Fred: We are not promoting interracial marriage. But I think most families between now and the year 2000 are going to face this issue in a personal way somewhere in their family.

Christians need to be open and honest and discuss it within the church and discuss it with their children and those who are potential marriage partners. It’s no longer an isolated thing.

Interview by Edward Gilbreath.

Donald Rochon, a Black FBI agent married to a White woman, sued the FBI for harassment. Rochon’s family picture sat on his desk at work where only fellow employees had access. One day, Rochon arrived to discover a picture of an ape pasted over the faces of his kids.

Opposition to intermarriage may come from members within the minority group as well as from the majority. Some minorities object to intermarriage because they are afraid their culture will disappear into a cultureless melting pot.

In addition to these challenges from outside, the couple sometimes faces the most opposition from members of their own families. When somebody in the family is considering intermarriage, relatives often identify with Samson’s father and mother in their discomfort, asking, “Isn’t there an acceptable woman among your relatives or among all our people?” (Judges 14:3, NIV).

In each of these areas of possible conflict, American churches can become havens of safety and support for interracial couples. A pastor counseling an interracial couple before marriage may feel uncomfortable or ill-equipped to explore their racial and cultural differences. But helping them to count the cost and see potential benefits can make a big difference.

Despite the church’s potential to be a refuge for the interracial family in a racist world, the sad fact is that most churches are unprepared to minister to this rapidly growing group. Some day, America’s churches may better demonstrate Christian unity to a nation scarred by racial division and hatred. More creative, heterogeneous churches may emerge, becoming places that feel like home to interracial families. In the meantime, the church must acknowledge the reality of interracial marriage and accommodate the unique needs of these Christian couples.

Instead of wallowing in our doubts and fears about intermarriage, we should rejoice over the barrier-shattering potential each Christian interracial marriage brings to our churches. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul reminded Jews and Gentiles alike that Christ “made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.” In Christ, God wants “to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he puts to death their hostility” (Eph. 2:11–14, NIV).

Paul’s language—“making one out of two”—is reminiscent of the “one flesh” description of marriage given in Genesis. The “one flesh” of marriage binds family to family, culture to culture, and even race to race. It can make kith and kin out of people with a legacy of division and bitterness.

Where exploitation and anger have separated the races in society, an interracial family called by God is a compelling example of the gospel of reconciliation. Perhaps an even more profound witness to the world is for the church to embrace and celebrate interracial union, standing as a living example of what can be done in Christ.

The frame around the license plate of our car (a bachelor-party gift given to my husband) reads: “We’re Talking Radical Unity!” Christian interracial marriage vividly demonstrates the “radical unity” we have in Jesus Christ, who came to tear down every dividing wall.

Paul Brand is a world-renowned hand surgeon and leprosy specialist. Now in semiretirement, he serves as clinical professor emeritus, Department of Orthopedics, at the University of Washington and consults for the World Health Organization. His years of pioneering work among leprosy patients earned him many awards and honors.

Why strive to be Just as God Wants when he accepts me Just as I Am?

Larry has the most colorful background of anyone I know. He has a history of sexual liaisons with people of both genders. A recovering drug addict, he attends a 12-step recovery group almost daily, has recently celebrated his tenth anniversary of sobriety, and has become a substance-abuse counselor. He served in the marines but has since become a doctrinaire pacifist.

Along the way, Larry became a Christian. He says he was converted by two hymns, “Just as I Am,” and “Amazing Grace.” As he heard the words of those hymns, it sunk in for the first time that God really did want him to come just as he was. God’s grace was that amazing. In his own way, Larry has been trying to follow God ever since.

“In his own way,” I say: Larry admits he has not experienced the “victorious Christian life.” He overeats, chain-smokes, and sex continues to be a problem. And since he never manages to get up in time for church, he misses out on worship and Christian community.

Once, Larry stated his dilemma this way, “I’m stuck somewhere between ‘Just as I am’ and ‘Just as God wants me to be.’ ”

Exploiting grace

One summer I had to learn German to finish a graduate degree. How I hated that summer! On delightful evenings while my friends were sailing on Lake Michigan, riding bikes, and sipping coffee in patio cafés, I was holed up with a Kapomeister tutor parsing German verbs. Five nights a week, three hours a night I spent memorizing vocabulary I would never again use. I endured such torture for one purpose only: to pass the test and get my degree.

I had flashbacks to that summer of discontent—and to my conversations with Larry—when I recently read through the Book of Romans. As Paul constructs his magnificent summary of Christian faith, the apostle must deal with a theological problem that closely parallels my encounter with German and Larry’s encounter with grace.

What if the school registrar had said, “Philip, we want you to learn German and take the test, but we guarantee that you’ll get a passing grade. Your diploma has already been filled out.”

Do you think I would have spent my summer evenings inside a hot, stuffy apartment? No way.

In a nutshell, that was the theological dilemma Paul wrestled with. Romans 1–3 tolls a bell on the miserable failures of all humanity—pagans, sophisticated Greeks, pious Jews—with the damning conclusion, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (This and all following Scripture citations are taken from the NIV.) Like a trumpet blast introducing a new symphonic movement, the next two chapters tell of a grace that wipes out any penalty: “Where sin increased, grace increased all the more.”

Grand theology to be sure, but such sweeping declarations introduce one very practical problem, Larry’s problem: Why be good if you know your sins will be forgiven? Why study German if you’ve already received a passing grade? Or, to phrase the question in theological terms, why strive for sanctification when justification has been guaranteed in advance? At one time or another, every pastor of every church in history must have looked out at the people in the pews and wondered how the New Testament’s exalted words about holiness, sanctification, and being united with Christ apply to the people who straggle in on Sunday mornings.

Is God’s grace so amazing that it removes all incentive for obedience? The potential for exploiting grace troubled the apostle Paul, and in chapter 6 of his master treatise, he confronts these very issues. “What shall we say, then?” he asks in verse 1. “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?”

Paul gives a short, explosive answer to both questions, “By no means!” or, as the King James Version has it, “God forbid!” Then, recognizing the potential consequences of his assertions about grace, he proceeds to give four illustrations by way of response.

As a writer, I know that it breaks all rules of communication to layer one story on top of another. If a single, sharp analogy makes the point, then, Zing! you launch it like a well-aimed arrow and move on. An insecure writer might resort to two stories. But four analogies in a row! I tend to read the Bible from a different point of view than those who write commentaries. As a writer, I spend much of my time worrying over style and structure. Is my introduction too long? Do my points wander? Are there doglegs that should be eliminated?

I have learned much from peeking “behind the curtain” at the prose style of Paul, a master writer. Sometimes his sentences got a little out of control, but Paul knew how to balance abstract theology with practical application. He also knew when to insert just the right illustration to seal an argument. For this reason, I find myself wondering why Paul gives four illustrations.

I can think of only one reason. If I am writing about a very complicated issue and must lead my readers by the hand into deep waters, then and only then might I come up with several illustrations, each one progressively more complex and slightly closer to the whole truth.

That, I have concluded, is Paul’s method in Romans 6–7. Each of the analogies has become a classic of Scripture, repeated in other epistles, but here Paul links them all together because his exalted words about grace have raised an issue he simply cannot ignore. Otherwise, knowing human nature, the church in Rome may well slide down the same slippery slope toward decadence as the church in Corinth.

Road-kill religion

Paul’s first illustration speaks directly to the point. If grace increases as sin increases, then why not sin as much as possible in order to give God more opportunity to extend his grace? Although such reasoning sounds perverse, a few people in church history have actually followed such a philosophy. The Russian monk Rasputin, for example, claimed he was doing God a favor by living bawdily: just think how much grace God could bestow on him.

Paul has no time for such notions. He begins with an illustration that starkly contrasts death and life. “We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” he asks, incredulous.

To help Paul’s image sink in, I like to picture two dogs. One is a frisky pup from Pet Palace who wags his tail and licks whoever proffers a hand. The other is a dog on the highway that has been flattened by a truck. Which has more appeal, the road-kill dog or the Pet Palace puppy? The answer is obvious, and to Paul the solution to the theological dilemma is equally obvious. Sin has the stench of death about it. Why would anyone choose “wickedness” over “righteousness”?

“Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus,” Paul concludes, in a word of practical advice. He is giving a dose of reality therapy: Act as if you’re dead to sin, because essentially you are. Sin has lost its controlling power over you; hence, live out your actual state of union with Christ. Become what you are.

Wickedness, of course, does not always have the stench of death about it—at least, not to fallen human beings. Like Indiana pigs, we enjoy a good wallow in the mud. Flip through the ads in any current magazine and you will see temptations toward lust, greed, envy, and pride that make “wickedness” seem downright appealing.

And sin keeps popping back to life. Paul, a realist, recognized this fact, or else he would not have advised us, “Count yourselves dead to sin” and “Do not let sin reign in your mortal body.”

Paul’s first illustration lays out alternatives but does not plumb the deepest theological waters.

Slave religion

Before introducing his second illustration, Paul restates the dilemma in a subtly different way, “Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?” Even if grace does not provide a motive to sin, does it not offer a license, a sort of free pass through the ethical maze of life?

“I suppose there’s some reason for keeping rules while you’re young, so you’ll have enough energy left to break them all when you get old,” said Mark Twain, who valiantly tried to follow his own advice. And why not, if you know you will be forgiven? Again Paul lets out an incredulous, “God forbid!”

Paul’s second analogy, human slavery, adds a new dimension to the discussion. “You used to be slaves to sin,” he begins. Sin is a slave master that controls us whether we like it or not. Yet Paul proceeds to introduce a startling word of hope, a promise that the chains of slavery have been broken: “But thanks be to God … you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.” In effect, we have changed masters.

As in the first analogy, Paul urges us to live up to our new identity in Christ: “Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness.”

The slavery analogy neatly builds on the death analogy because both arrive at the same end. Compulsory slavery, that which we are born with, leads to death; voluntary slavery, that which we choose, leads to life.

Slavery strengthens the emphasis on personal choice and also introduces the new aspect of relationship. Barely. Is slavery really the best way to describe the believer’s relationship with Christ? Paul quickly moves on to illustration number three.

A second marriage

Paul’s third illustration, the most complex, includes some unexpected twists. He is describing his old legalistic approach to law keeping. At one point he was “married” to the law, a shotgun wedding that meant an endless cycle of rules, failure, and guilt. But then he died to the law, which freed him to take on a new spouse: “We have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.”

Paul conveys the marriage analogy in a few dense sentences and leaves it to us to work out all the implications. The basic analogy is not new, of course. From Hosea’s day on, God has presented himself as a lover pursuing a fickle bride. What we feel for the one person we choose to spend our lives with, that is the passion God feels for us. God wants his passion returned in kind.

Far more than death, far more than slavery, the analogy of marriage illuminates the answer to the question Paul started with. Why be good? There is only one sufficient reason to be good, the one expressed in Jesus’ first commandment: Love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength.

I think back to the memory that leapt to mind when I began reading Romans: the summer I wasted studying German. Why learn German? There are noble reasons, to be sure—languages broaden the mind and expand the range of communication—but these had never motivated me to study German before. I studied to finish a degree. Yet, I confess, today I remember very little of the German I crammed into my brain. “The old way of the written code” produces short-term results at best.

What would inspire me to learn German? If my wife, the first woman I truly fell in love with, spoke only German, I would have learned the language in record time. I would have stayed up late at night parsing verbs and placing them properly at the ends of my love-letter sentences. I would have learned German unbegrudgingly. The relationship would be my reward.

That reality helps me understand Paul’s “God forbid!” response to the question, “Shall we go on sinning that grace may increase?” Would a groom on his wedding night say to his bride, “Honey, now that we’re married I want to work out a few details. How far can I go with other women? Can I kiss them? Sleep with them? I know a few affairs might hurt you, but just think of all your opportunities to forgive me!” To such a Don Juan the only reasonable response is a slap in the face and a “God forbid!” Obviously, he does not understand the first thing about love.

Similarly, if we approach God with a “What can I get away with?” attitude, it proves we do not grasp what God has in mind for us. God wants something far beyond the relationship I might have with a slave master. God wants something better than the closest relationship on earth, the lifetime bond between a man and a woman. He wants us to serve “in the new way of the Spirit,” with the third person of the Trinity descending to live within us, transforming us from the inside out.

The struggle of a life

The fourth of Paul’s illustrations in Romans 6–8 is different from all the rest. It is Paul’s personal testimony, and nowhere else in the New Testament will you find the apostle in such travail. Paul turns the spotlight on himself, revealing how these truths have worked themselves out in his own life. He becomes the illustration.

I know how scary and even painful it can be when I expose the deepest parts of myself in print. Paul takes the risk of showing us how each of these illustrations applies personally, to him. He knows what it means to emerge from death to life: the first time he met the light of God’s grace it knocked him sightless to the ground. He knows the futility of slavery to sin and the strange fulfillment that comes from slavery to God. And now, in Romans 7 and 8, Paul shows us what it means for a flawed human being to love a holy God.

In Romans 7, Paul pulls out all the stops. “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do,” he says bluntly. “For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”

With remarkable candor, the apostle exposes in himself the rationalizations most of us revert to after failure. His contortions of language push the limits of grammar.

Bible scholars differ on exactly what time period Paul is describing (preconversion, midconversion, postconversion), but his personal struggle moves the discussion from the question “Why be good?” to the next level, “How can we be good?” Even if we want to love and follow God and have the purest motives, sometimes it seems utterly impossible.

Reading Romans 7, I hear echoes of the stories I have heard while visiting 12-step groups with my friend Larry. “I mean well, but something just takes over.… I know I made a vow last week, but I just slipped, that’s all.… This thing’s a disease, and it just won’t go away.” Anyone who has struggled with addiction can recognize the raw reality in Paul’s struggle with sin. We are born on an incline slanting away from God. Sin, like gravity, presses down relentlessly.

Alcoholics Anonymous has only one solution to offer a person who “reaches the end of himself”: an appeal to a Higher Power. And that is Paul’s conclusion about sin as well. “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Paul asks in despair. He interrupts with the first glimmer of hope: “Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Bright light floods in to chase away the dark. “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” Paul proclaims. He returns to the grand theology that launched this discussion on exploiting grace. Yes, grace really is as amazing as it seems. We have received a passing grade, in advance.

Furthermore, there is a solution to the human condition. The personal pronoun I, ubiquitous in chapter 7, barely makes an appearance in chapter 8. The Spirit takes center stage. The Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead now lives inside us, giving power to overcome temptation, reassuring us of God’s love. Despite his divine credentials, that Spirit never overwhelms but rather helps us in our weakness, even going so far as to pray on our behalf when we know not what to pray.

In Romans 8, Paul moves the camera from a personal close-up to a sweeping panorama of the cosmos. Not just we humans, but all of creation is groaning as in the pains of childbirth, waiting for liberation. Our daily lives express the “now” and “not yet” of the gospel, the two-stage promise of re-creation. We will never fully escape the stranglehold of sin on this earth, but we can live in assurance that God will one day restore us, and the whole universe, to his original, perfect design.

The real reason to be good

Why be good? In his illustrations, Paul has hinted at three motives for ethical behavior, and on reflection, they happen to be the motives the entire world runs by. To discern the first reason to be good, simply consider the alternatives. If everyone does what is right in his or her own mind, society unravels. Americans are beginning to sense what happens when violence and greed and infidelity become epidemic. Yugoslavia, Sudan, Liberia, and Somalia give even starker images to contemplate. A society without goodness has the road-kill stench of death about it. So does an individual life.

Fear of consequences is the second motivator. Like a slave master, governments—and parents, for that matter—encourage obedience by using the threat of punishment and the promise of reward. It can work, to a point.

But both these external motivators affect only outward behavior and do not truly change the person inside. Lasting change must come from inside. The best reason to be good is to want to be good. Internal change requires relationship. It requires love.

I am glad that Paul used four illustrations to describe the Christian life. Each is different, but all share one common feature: a happy ending. Although the Christian life may include times of struggle and temptation, we live our groping lives of faith with assurance that we cannot, no matter how hard we try, fall beyond the reach of God’s love.

The end of Romans 8, in fact, turns downright defiant, in abrupt contrast to the vacillation of chapter 7. “If God is for us, who can be against us?… Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?… Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” Paul concludes majestically, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” An infinite, unchanging God has sworn his allegiance to those he loves. Now, in the Spirit, he holds out the offer of a new life in union with him.

I think again of my friend Larry, the recovering-drug-addict-bisexual-VFW-pacifist. I rejoice that he has tasted of the wonder of God’s grace, an amazing grace that loves me “Just as I Am.” At the same time, I pray that he, and I, will grow in grace, maturing into a relationship with God that brings God delight.

If we grasped the wonder of God’s love, the devious questions that prompted Romans 6–7 would never even occur to us. We would spend our days trying to fathom, not exploit, God’s grace.

Paul Brand is a world-renowned hand surgeon and leprosy specialist. Now in semiretirement, he serves as clinical professor emeritus, Department of Orthopedics, at the University of Washington and consults for the World Health Organization. His years of pioneering work among leprosy patients earned him many awards and honors.

How five women leaders are reinventing the pro-life movement.

Many Americans did not grasp the severity of the Vietnam War until television news brought it into their living rooms. Flaming village huts and countless stretchers of broken young men: such images distilled the war for the masses.

Around the time the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam, another war erupted. The 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision sparked a civil war over abortion that has been escalating ever since. Like Vietnam, it is a struggle often reduced to pictures on the nightly news: scuffles at abortion-clinic doors, grim placards, handcuffed protesters loaded into police vans.

Last year the murder of abortion doctor David Gunn intensified the conflict. The broadcast media put angry pro-life extremists on everything from network news broadcasts to Donahue. To the casual observer, it might have appeared that these defenders of violence spoke for the pro-life movement.

Not only are defenders of the preborn said to promote violence, they are also accused of being anti-women. “Four, six, eight, ten,” the pro-choicers at the barricades shout at pro-life activists, “why are all your leaders men?”

But the media caricatures have missed the beating heart of the pro-life movement. Most of its mainstream leaders are women, such as the five depicted here. And for these pro-life leaders, it was their experience as women that led them to their positions.

Their profiles do not match the parodies. They are articulate, passionate, eccentric, witty, refreshing. They are Black, White, Hispanic. They are Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox. They include mothers, attorneys, home schoolers, and executives.

Their diversity accentuates what they have in common. They decry violence. Rather than advocating the politicized feminism of the militant women’s movement, they argue for a classical feminism rooted in the God-given dignity and equality of human beings created in God’s image. They head organizations that plead the cause of the unborn while working with creative, practical compassion for the born.

HINDU FLOWER CHILD

“I would have been proud of having an abortion. I didn’t happen to get pregnant, but if I had, I would have had an abortion in a minute. I would have seen it as a revolutionary act in which I declared my independence.”

With those words, Frederica Mathewes-Green sums up her views on abortion during her days as a campus flower child in the early 1970s.

Crowned by a cascading tide of long, curly hair that was usually decked with flowers, she wore muslin, Indian-print dresses. She stopped shaving her legs. After sampling a salad bar of Eastern religions, she settled on Hinduism. She affirmed gay rights, women’s rights, abortion rights.

During a semester in Washington, D.C., Frederica wrote for off our backs, the underground women’s newspaper filled with angry, rambling poetry and dubiously helpful articles about how to make recyclable sanitary products from natural fibers. When Roe v. Wade came down in 1973, she and the rest of the staff cheered wildly.

Then something odd happened. Frederica’s boyfriend, Gary, had to read one of the Gospels for a philosophy of religion class. He chose Mark—it was the shortest. An atheist, Gary was nonetheless intrigued by Mark’s portrait of Christ.

“There’s something about Jesus,” Gary would tell Frederica, looking up from the Gospel he was now reading over and over. “He speaks with authority.”

Frederica, furious, hoped this fascination was just a phase.

In May 1974, Frederica and Gary married, offering a Hindu prayer to bless their union, and then donned backpacks for a trip through Europe. In Dublin, as they toured yet another looming cathedral, Frederica stood before a statue of Jesus. “Behold the heart that so loved mankind,” read the emblem beneath it.

Suddenly she was on her knees on the cold, stone floor, weeping before the Christ. “I am your life,” she sensed Jesus saying to her. “You think your life is in your personality, your intellect, in your very breath itself. But these are not your life. I am your life.”

“I stood up,” says Frederica, “and I was a Christian. I read the Bible. There were parts of it I didn’t like. But I was now submitted to an authority greater than myself.”

Still pro-abortion for a year or two following her conversion, Frederica picked up the January 1976 issue of Esquire magazine. There Yale University surgeon and essayist Richard Selzer described his observation of a second-trimester abortion. To his surprise, the fetus jerked and writhed: evasive actions against the doctor’s needle. Wrote Selzer, “In the flick of that needle … I saw life avulsed—swept by flood, blackening—then out.… It is a persona carried here as well as a person … it is a signed piece, engraved with a hieroglyph of human genes. I did not think this until I saw. The flick. The fending off.”

“At that point I wouldn’t have yet been reading magazines like CHRISTIANITY TODAY,” says Frederica. “But this article in Esquire, of all places, upset my grid for the world. I had never thought about there being a real life in the womb. The article changed my mind.”

Today Frederica is director of Real Choices, a research project of the National Women’s Coalition for Life, a coalition of 15 organizations whose combined membership includes more than 1.8 million women.

Frederica’s research on postabortive women shows that most women facing a crisis pregnancy do not truly want to get an abortion. A woman “wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg,” she says. So Real Choices aims to identify the factors that make an unplanned pregnancy feel so desperate—and then to develop networks of people who can help women over these hurdles so their desperation will not result in the deaths of unborn children.

Former flower-child Frederica’s Nefertiti tresses are now cropped short; her “women’s power” jeans patches and earth shoes have been replaced with a briefcase with a Bible in it and navy-blue high heels. Gary, whose conversion began with Mark’s Gospel, is now an Orthodox priest. Their home in Baltimore is a haven of happy, holy confusion, populated by three cats, one Dalmatian, and three children.

“My heart,” she says, “is broken for my sisters in the pro-choice movement.” Frederica works hard to build relationships and share her research findings with those who are pro-choice. “I was there once, and I want to throw them a lifeline. My heart yearns for the women who are damaged, deceived, duped; the women whose arms will always be empty. Abortion leaves only the broken body of the child, and the broken heart of the woman.”

SINGING THE BLUES AT MOTEL 6

She holds “one of the most visible—and controversial—positions in American Catholicism,” the St. Petersburg Times reported about Helen Alvaré. As spokesperson for the National Council of Catholic Bishops, Helen heads the Catholic church’s public-relations campaign to present persuasively its pro-life position, and she does so with passion and panache, traveling the nation a hundred days a year.

But on any one of those hundred nights, look in that room with the light on in a Motel 6 in Muskegee or a Hyatt in Helena, and you’ll see another side of Helen Alvaré: barefoot, sitting on the side of the bed, playing the guitar, and singing the blues for all she is worth.

Helen has discovered that the torrent of words she expends on debate during the day does not abate when she gets to her room at night. So she had a miniature guitar built, and she packs it on every trip. During those evenings, she belts out the blues, clearing her mind for the next day’s debates, which she relishes.

A summa cum laude graduate of Villanova University, she received her law degree from Cornell University when she was 23, has a master’s degree in systematic theology from Catholic University, and is working on her doctorate. She has worked as a trial lawyer and has written friend-of-the-court briefs for the U.S. Catholic Conference on a variety of cases.

From a Catholic Cuban family, Helen attended her first pro-life rally in Washington when she was 13. She realized she was outspoken, “even a little pushy,” and that that pushiness could be used for others, particularly those who could not speak for themselves.

“Arguing on behalf of the underdog is its own reward,” says Helen, “but I am also compelled by the incredible cogency of the pro-life arguments. Then as I read abortion literature I am struck by the absolute inadequacy of their arguments.”

Opponents do not let that stop them. Helen cannot count the number of times pro-choice advocates have dismissed the Catholic church’s position on abortion because, after all, the church did not acknowledge that Galileo was right.

Helen frames the issue in terms of human rights. “We are confronted with human life. We can do no less than afford that life the dignity and respect that all human lives deserve. We can’t discriminate on things like size, development, lack of legal protection, lack of physical abilities. All must be treated with dignity, simply because they are human.”

The same arguments support true feminism, she says. Women are equal because they are human. Founding feminists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were staunchly pro-life; the abortion ethic utterly violates the feminist ideals of nonviolence and inclusiveness.

Helen’s articulate, persuasive point of view often surprises those who expect from the Catholic church dusty theological statements emanating from a graying cleric. She also has experienced the media’s preference for pro-lifers who fit their caricature. Several times she has prepared for national television interviews, only to be replaced at the last minute by others who espouse violence for the sake of the pro-life cause—a position that Helen unequivocally condemns.

In spite of such frustrations of life on the road, however, Helen’s travels have led her to believe that people are weary of the mindset of absolute license birthed by the abortion ethic. “People are looking for real freedom,” she says. “Freedom involves giving yourself over to God and being enabled to do what you ought to do, not whatever you want to do.” It entails discipline.

That discipline is not unlike the disciplines of art and music. It demands daily repetitions of the fundamentals. And that is why Helen Alvaré continues to practice the guitar, doing all those finger exercises in the Motel 6, so she can sing the blues with glorious abandon.

SAVING BLACK BABIES

Jean thompson lay on the examining table, her heart beating fast. She and her husband, James, had waited long and prayerfully for a child. But now, 11 weeks into her pregnancy, she was bleeding heavily. The doctor was telling her she needed a D and C.

“Doctor,” said Jean, “if you scrape out the womb, what will that do to the baby?”

“Baby?” the doctor responded brusquely. “What baby?” “You know I’m pregnant,” Jean said softly.

“You’ve passed tissue,” the doctor said. “You’ll have to have a D and C.”

Jean paused. “But the nurse said my cervix is closed,” she said hesitantly.

“Then we’ll just have to open it,” he said.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “My husband and I have been waiting 12 years for this baby. Isn’t there some other kind of test I could take to make sure.…”

“No, you don’t understand,” said the doctor angrily. “You are bleeding, your life is at stake, you need to have a D and C immediately.”

Jean said she would have to see another doctor. She signed papers absolving the doctor of responsibility. Her husband helped her walk to the car, and they saw another doctor.

After a physical examination, he did a sonogram—and there was her baby, alive and well. The doctor looked up from the flickering screen. “If you had let them do a D and C,” he said, “they would have scraped out a live baby.”

Today Jean Thompson relates that story with a mixture of tears and tenacity from her office at the Harvest Church International in Mount Ranier, Maryland. Jean and James copastor the 2,000-member church, and Jean is president of the International Black Women’s Network, an association that equips African-American women with job skills, community opportunities, and other resources. It is also a member organization of the National Women’s Coalition for Life. A large, framed portrait on the wall behind her shows Jean, James, and Sherah, a small, grinning girl in a white dress: their only child.

Narrowly avoiding an unwanted abortion has sensitized Jean to the insidious targeting of African Americans by abortion providers.

“Abortion is deadly in the Black community,” she says. “It’s not a friend.” Though Blacks make up only about 12 percent of the U.S. population, they account for 43 percent of abortions performed in this country. Seventy percent of Planned Parenthood’s clinics are in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods. This presence has not brought about a decrease in the number of pregnancies, but it has brought an increase in the number of abortions; for every three Black babies born, two are aborted.

Jean hears from the teenagers who attend her church how Planned Parenthood pressures them. Representatives regularly visit their schools, extolling a trinity of condoms, contraception, and abortion. “Pastor Jean,” one young girl told her, “they talk to us like we’re cats and dogs, like we just gotta go out there and do it, and if we don’t, we’ll go crazy.”

“The pressure comes not so much from other young people,” says Jean, “but from these organizations. They are encouraging promiscuity, which leads to pregnancy, which leads to abortion.”

Jean’s gentle speaking voice and attractive composure—she is a former Miss Black Virginia—do not soften her message about abortion. Invited in 1992 to appear on a Linda Ellerbee television debate on the issue, she carried a large handbag onto the set. When her turn came to speak, she reached into her bag, pulled out a thick, white noose, and placed it around her own neck. “Would you call this freedom of choice?” she asked the astonished panel. “This is what abortion does. It is a new means of Black lynching.”

Jean is careful to say that Christians must love and pray for those on the other side of the issue, but she minces no words in speaking up for the unborn. “Sometimes Christians say, ‘You can’t come on religiously.’ But I believe that Christians have not been articulating the Word of God enough. God says that the unborn person is a life. We must choose life.”

ADDING JUSTICE TO COMPASSION

It is july 23, 1993. the unblinking eye of C-SPAN focuses on the long, narrow table before the massive pulpit of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Witnesses are preparing to testify in opposition to President Clinton’s nomination of Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Leading the testimony is a tall young woman who speaks with surety. “My name is Paige Comstock Cunningham,” she begins. “I am an attorney, a graduate of Northwestern University Law School, a wife, and a proud mother of three children. It is likely that I have reaped, in my own professional career, from the seeds sown by Judge Ginsburg in her efforts to abolish sex discrimination.

“I am also the president of Americans United for Life [AUL], the legal arm of the pro-life movement.… [We are deeply disturbed by] Judge Ginsburg’s attempt to justify the decision in Roe v. Wade on the ground that abortion is somehow necessary for women’s equality.…

“Judge Ginsburg has testified before you that abortion is ‘central to a woman’s dignity.’ … I believe it has actually set the clock back on women’s dignity.… Abortion goes against the core values of feminism: equality, care, nurturing, compassion, inclusion, and nonviolence. If we women, who have only recently gained electoral and political voice, do not stand up for the voiceless and powerless, who will?”

The pleas of Paige Cunningham and others who testified that day did not stop Judge Ginsburg’s evolution into Justice Ginsburg. But for Paige, they represented an ongoing, dual appeal: first, a call to justice, to concern for the human rights of the voiceless unborn; and second, a call to compassion for the millions of women for whom abortion has not been a means of achieving dignity, but a degrading wound.

On C-SPAN, Paige looked like a coolly competent attorney, a woman whose life is a grid of flight schedules, interviews, and debates, yet who can emerge from an 18-hour day with her composure still intact. Yet Paige’s journey to her appearance before the Judiciary Committee was shaped most profoundly not by professional forces, but by intense personal suffering that has caused her to identify deeply with women who have been wounded by abortion.

Born in Brazil of missionary parents, Paige excelled at excelling. Academics, music, and maturity seemed to come easily. Yet through her stint at Taylor University, then law school at Northwestern, she often felt like an outsider.

That feeling extended to her faith: though she had committed her life to Christ as a young girl, she sensed she was missing an abundant life. She felt a subtle dissonance between the outwardly confident young woman who eventually married, had children, practiced law, and did it all, and the inner person who fought back tides of depression.

Paige maintained the veneer as she practiced law with two Chicago firms, then became associated with AUL, serving in various general-counsel capacities and later as a member of its board of directors. But eventually the multiple stresses burned her out.

Paige attended a three-day Episcopal church retreat; the unconditional love expressed by the laypeople there began to incarnate Christ’s love for her personally. She had known the truth of his love intellectually, but its power had been suppressed by the dark secret she had long hidden: a traumatic violation as a child by someone she trusted.

Some time after the retreat, while on an extended visit with her brother and his family, Paige immersed herself in the nurture of his Dallas-area church. During a small-group meeting, she asked for special prayer.

And then, Paige Cunningham saw in her mind’s eye all her sins upon an altar, with a mighty fire burning them away. She saw herself, a small girl again, timidly looking up at Christ on the cross. Then Jesus came down, flung his strong arms wide, and held her close. And then she knew that he would never let her go.

“For me,” Paige says today, “that was the beginning of deep, real healing.” And she began to feel, welling up from the pool of her own suffering, an intense compassion for women who had been violated, exploited, and hurt, women who had felt not the “empowerment” of “choice,” but chains binding them to make just one choice. And she found, with this new empathy and vulnerability, a paradoxical sense of confidence that propelled her to speak out with passion before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Paige sees her journey to compassion mirrored in the wider pro-life movement. “God is doing a new thing among us,” she says. “The first 20 years since Roe v. Wade have been characterized by justice. We’ve gone to court again and again, seeking to limit abortion. And these efforts must continue.

“But now we must set a pattern of mercy. Women facing crisis pregnancies have seen themselves as a kind of political football. Many have felt that to pro-lifers, they are merely a means to an end. Abortion hurts them, and they must know that we’re on their side. We must love the wrongdoer, without embracing the wrong. With compassion and mercy, we must touch women’s lives, saving not only women, but their babies as well.”

EXECUTIVE FOR THE UNBORN

It begins with her voice. never mind the Phi Beta Kappa key from Wellesley College, the Harvard MBA, the classically trained, logical mind that fueled high-level corporate planning and a controversial rise to the executive suites of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the Bendix Corporation, Joseph E. Seagrams & Sons—all by the time she was 32 years old. Never mind the humanitarian awards, the board of directors positions, the citation as one of the “most influential women in America.” Never mind her New York Times bestseller Powerplay.

No, Mary Cunningham Agee’s voice is the key to her persuasive power, for in it is the perfect merger of style and content: a modulated, seamless method of speech and a compassionate message of Christian love.

That message was shaped long before Mary came to the ivory towers of the Ivy League and the glass towers of corporate boardrooms. It began in a mossy rock garden, when Mary was seven years old, the morning of her First Communion. Decked in a white cotton dress, she sat on a small rock while Father William Nolan—her Uncle Bill—sat on a larger one.

It was a special day, but even happy days had a hole in them for Mary, whose father had abandoned their family a year and a half earlier. Uncle Bill had stood in the gap, but even he could not take her dad’s place. Now he was talking to her quietly about the Lord’s Prayer.

“As he did,” Mary says today, “I suddenly realized that as I prayed, ‘Our Father who art in heaven,’ God was a father to me. I had lost something very precious to me, but that loss made room for grace in my life. I learned that only in suffering and loss can we be prepared to be filled by grace.”

That childhood epiphany stayed with Mary, carried her through professional storms in the early 1980s, and comforted her when she experienced the most painful loss of her life. After marrying William Agee, former CEO of Bendix, now CEO of Morrison Knudsen Corporation, they joyfully anticipated the birth of their first child.

But after seeing her tiny daughter dance on the sonogram screen, Mary suffered a second-trimester miscarriage in January 1984. For months afterward, she stared at the empty nursery, aching within.

As she prayed, she began to think about other women who had lost children, but who were not surrounded by loving support, as Mary was, who had seen no way out of their predicament other than an abortion.

Feeling called to act on such women’s behalf, Mary called ten abortion clinics around the country. In each call, she asked the clinic to give her phone number to ten women who might be willing to discuss their experience with abortion.

Over the following weeks, 91 of those 100 women told Mary that if they had had any sort of reasonable alternative, they would have chosen to give birth. Abortion, for them, had not been a matter of making a choice, but of feeling they had no other choice to make.

Mary’s response was to found in 1986 the Nurturing Network, a nationwide resource providing women in crisis pregnancies practical support. Today, after serving more than 4,500 clients, Mary knows of only one who, faced with the helps the Network offers, chose abortion.

Pregnant women who contact the Nurturing Network through its 800 number (1-800-TNN-4MOM) are asked to do just one thing: fill out an extensive questionnaire about themselves, their dreams and goals, and the obstacles their pregnancy presents.

Some need a leave of absence from their current job and a similar short-term position in another company. Others need free medical care, or a transfer to a different university. Some need a safe place to live, or adoption counseling, or parenting training.

The Network, which now includes over 18,000 contacts, prides itself on creatively meeting those needs. Each client receives counseling. Seven hundred Nurturing Homes are on call. An informal coalition of doctors provides services for free or reduced rates. A network of employers and colleges accept short-term, pregnant employees and students.

Last summer, a CBS48 Hours crew filmed the Nurturing Network in action and talked with one young client. Tall, with curly brown hair spiraling over her shoulders, she held a relaxed, smiling baby in her arms. She confessed, “I wouldn’t have had an abortion; I would have just killed myself. Without the Network, I wouldn’t even be here. I would have been just another statistic.” Woven into the philosophy of the Nurturing Network is the truth Mary learned herself years ago: suffering and loss provide an avenue for grace.

In her calm, kind way, Mary counsels clients, “The pattern you choose in response to this pregnancy will be played out again and again in your life. Rather than flee the pain, embrace it, and you will see grace poured out. In sacrificing short-term ease for a long-term benefit for someone else, you have an opportunity for lasting personal growth.”

In her multiple roles as counselor, mother, home schooler, volunteer, and executive, Mary has an unlikely time each day to replenish the well of her energies. At precisely five minutes to three—every morning—she awakens. The house is quiet. She reads her Bible, prays, writes in her journal.

During one of these middle-of-the-night interludes some years ago, a phrase recurred in Mary’s mind: “The violence that is committed against women by society today.…” Reflecting on those words fuels her efforts to help women who have been led to believe that abortion is the only solution to their crisis pregnancies. “Abortion is really the ultimate form of violence, disguised in a slogan called freedom,” says Mary. “The Nurturing Network is just one little voice that is calling out to say it doesn’t have to be that way.”

Paul Brand is a world-renowned hand surgeon and leprosy specialist. Now in semiretirement, he serves as clinical professor emeritus, Department of Orthopedics, at the University of Washington and consults for the World Health Organization. His years of pioneering work among leprosy patients earned him many awards and honors.

Love In Black And White

Nothing brings out our hidden, forgotten prejudices like interracial marriage.

Shortly before Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed, he wrote about a woman who said to him that she had no prejudices: “I believe Negroes should have the right to vote, the right to a good job, the right to a decent home, and the right to have access to public accommodations. Of course, I must confess that I would not want my daughter to marry a Negro.”

King correctly pointed out that the woman’s failure to accept interracial marriage negated her claims. “She failed to see that implicit in her rejection was the feeling that her daughter had some pure, superior nature that should not be contaminated by the impure, inferior nature of the Negro.… The question of intermarriage is never raised in a society cured of the disease of racism.”

Has America, since King’s murder, been cured of racism? Has the church? Most evangelicals have long ago denounced the “curse of Ham” theology. We have published countless words about equality and reconciliation, exegeting that the “middle wall of partition” between races has been broken down by Christ. Yet the hard fact is, a great many still feel what the woman voiced to Martin Luther King, Jr.

For instance, the daughter of an evangelical pastor fell in love with a Black man. They married, and today the pastor lovingly visits them and his biracial grandchildren. However, it is very clear to the pastor’s daughter that she is not to bring her family to her father’s church. What does that say about this pastor and his parishioners?

I was stunned when a well-respected evangelical father in my community, upon learning that his daughter was dating an African-American, did not merely warn her about the many pressures and problems she would surely face. He made it clear that not only should she immediately end the relationship—but she herself would not be welcome in their home until she did.

Yet I must confess that I understand the feeling of this father all too well. Recently I approached a video store with my seven-year-old son, who is Black. I have two adopted sons and an infant daughter, all of whom are Black. We hug and kiss; we share the same pop bottles. They are fully family, fully loved. As we stepped into the store, a young couple passed us. She was very blond, like my other, older daughter; he was very black, like my young son beside me. And ironically, those old feelings born of countless images and comments flowed through me: “This just isn’t right. What was she trying to prove? What did he really want?” And I thought I was past all that.

Intermarriage is a tripwire that reveals our deepest attitudes about race. After all, it was only a generation ago—1967—that the Supreme Court struck down miscegenation laws. In Loving v. State of Virginia, a White man and a Black woman were finally freed to return home, having fled their state to avoid a year’s jail sentence for getting married.

The church must repent not only of bad theology, but also for failing to protest racist laws in the past. We must face up to the studies pointing to evangelicals as very prejudiced in this area.

God does not use race to separate humanity. The only “mixed marriages” Scripture objects to are of believer with nonbeliever.

Good intentions, bad results

None of this is to deny the difficulties inherent in interracial marriages. Both racial and cultural differences put pressure on the relationship. Some couples embrace interracial love for rebellious, escapist, or other negative reasons (as do couples of the same race). Parents want their children to be happy, and in a racist society, they know what happens to Black-White couples and their children.

However, exclusively emphasizing the problems rather than attacking the roots can simply increase those difficulties. In the name of saving children from prejudice, we may reinforce the barriers that create that prejudice.

The truth is, we are mostly all “cousins” anyway. Some estimate that 75 percent of the Blacks in this country have some racially mixed ancestry. The oft-heard argument that “cardinals and blue jays don’t nest together” did not mean much to slave owners who fathered children with a Black housekeeper, then left their new sons and daughters in the slave huts.

Intermarriage is sometimes strongly resisted by African-Americans. With the significant shortage of marriageable Black men, Black women can feel betrayed or deserted when a Black man marries a White woman. Some Black activists feel mixed marriages weaken African-American solidarity, and many Black parents object as strenuously to mixed marriages as their White counterparts. Yet, interracial marriage is increasingly common: According to a recent Time poll, 72 percent of those polled know married couples of different races. Throughout America, we see White-Black couples more and more frequently.

Is it possible God actually calls some Blacks to fall in love with Whites, and vice-versa? (See “Guess Who’s Coming to Church,” p. 30.) If that is true, then we should celebrate.

Yes, celebrate! Let’s rejoice over the beautiful children born to interracial marriages and do everything possible to make them fully accepted. Let’s recognize the contributions intermarriage can make toward breaking down prejudice. And though we may not necessarily promote interracial marriages, let’s take the lead in defending, protecting, and supporting them in our churches.

Our theology says Christ came to make all things new, where there is “neither Jew nor Greek.” Can we see the beauty of Black and White love as easily as we see love within a particular race? Can we equally celebrate the potential of a biracial child, a White child, a Black child? And as Christians, can we begin to lead the way?

By Harold Myra.

The Condom War On Children

Picture yourself as a high-schooler. Basketball games, rock and roll, and hormones raging like Niagara Falls in the spring. It’s Friday, first period, and your teacher reads the day’s announcements: “Condoms are still available from the nurse, but the principal is concerned that not enough of you are taking advantage of this service. Remember, safe sex is the best policy.”

Later that night, after the basketball game, you and your steady are settling on the sofa for some late-night, nonverbal communication. Someone turns on the TV to catch a bit of a movie. The program is punctuated by the ususal commercials, but one in particular catches your attention. A young man and woman are giggling in an obvious precoital wrestling match. “Did you bring it?” she asks. “Uh-oh. I forgot it,” he replies. “Then forget it,” she says. The voice-over states, “Next time, don’t forget it.”

Your parents’ tax dollars have paid for condoms in your school’s health office, and the same tax dollars have fully subsidized several new condom commercials that cost about $1 million to produce. You know what you want to do with your steady, but now you discover that the government expects you to do it. And that’s what is wrong with the Clinton administration’s condom ads. Casual sex between young, unmarried couples is glorified.

Sex in the 1990s is confusing enough as it is. On the one hand, eros saturates every fiber of our indulgent society. On the other hand, there are signposts testifying that the party is over. Casual sex, once held up as a virtuous pastime, is now understood to be a dangerous, potentially life-threatening activity. Often, both messages come through the same medium. Consider the September issue of Playboy magazine with its interview of Larry Krammer, founder of the hom*osexual activist group, ACT-UP. In the interview, Krammer, who has full-blown AIDS, exposes the myth of the sexual revolution that Hugh Hefner and Playboy helped create. The man who has been called the “Paul Revere of the AIDS epidemic” states:

“The road [of the sexual revolution] was taken for the most logical and perhaps virtuous reasons. But in the end it proved to be the wrong road. Let’s face it: That’s the life we were all leading, gay and straight. But it costs too much. I tend to be very hard on the sexual revolution.… Something inside me rebels against the notion of using the body as a thing. I think that’s the bottom line with the sexual revolution.” Yet despite this somber warning, the usual exploitation still graces the center pages of Hefner’s magazine.

Krammer, in his postpromiscuous, infected frailty is onto something—something that the administration missed with its condom ads. Sex is more than pleasure. The body needs more than protection from a piece of latex. True, condoms are better than nothing, but why not tell the entire truth in our tax-supported advertising? Why not insist that every ad include the Centers for Disease Control admission that condoms have a 30 percent failure rate when it comes to HIV transmission?

A responsible condom ad campaign will focus less on the beauty of two young bodies about to have sex and more on the fact that one should not think it odd to postpone intercourse until protected by marriage. James Pinkerton, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, puts it succinctly: “We don’t need to force adulterers to wear a scarlet letter, but it wouldn’t hurt to send a stronger signal that unacceptable behavior is … unacceptable.”

By Reed Jolley, pastor of the Santa Barbara (Calif.) Community Church.

Our society is turning stay-at-home moms into invisible women. Psychologist Brenda Hunter is not amused.

The Utne Reader, a kind of Reader’s Digest of the countercultural, “alternative” press, is not known for championing typically conservative causes. But a recent cover declared, “Mom and Dad are working, day care’s on the skids, our tots are strapped to latchkeys—Who Cares About the Kids?”

“If the Zoë Baird brouhaha showed us one thing,” one editor remarked, “it was how conflicted Americans still are about work and child rearing.”

That is especially true when it comes to moms. But Brenda Hunter, psychologist and specialist in infant attachment, believes that American society may encourage mothers who work, but it devalues mothers who don’t. Her book Home by Choice (Multnomah) has led to appearances on the Today show, Larry King Live, and Sally Jessy Raphaël. Her most recent book, What Every Mother Needs to Know (Multnomah), came out late last year. Here she discusses what fuels her convictions.

You argue in Home by Choice that our current cultural climate is hostile to “mother love.” What do you mean?

Our culture tells mothers they are not that important in their children’s lives. For three decades, mothering has been devalued in America. It has even become a status symbol for the modern woman to take as little time as possible away from work for full-time mothering.

I believe it started in the 1960s. We can’t blame everything on radical feminists, but some of them suggested that work in the office would take care of women’s angst. In the 1980s, we saw the emergence of the myth that anyone could care for a mother’s children as well as Mother herself. And in the 1990s, we hear that fathers are unnecessary, that children thrive in any family setting, whether it be hom*osexual or single-parent.

“Dan Quayle Was Right,” the much-discussed article in the Atlantic by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, stated that children do better in intact, two-parent families. Unfortunately, we’ve made it too costly psychologically for many women to take time out from careers and stay home with their child.

What kind of cost do you see?

The mother at home is either forgotten in the secular media or she is denigrated. This past Mother’s Day weekend, I read the Washington Post and USA Weekend, and most of the articles in one way or another put down the mother at home. On that day, at least one national daily chose to say that the mental health of housewives was poorer than the mental health of employed mothers. It’s not a happy image for mothers who are struggling with little kids.

Then why are more mothers staying home, as you point out in Home by Choice?

In 1990, for the first time since 1948, the number of women in the work force dropped. Also in 1990, the birth rate rose 10.5 percent from 1980. In 1990 the Roper Organization found that for the first time since 1980, the majority of women polled—51 percent—said they preferred to stay home. Poll after poll indicates that about two-thirds of mothers would prefer to spend more time home with their children if money were not a problem.

I’ve heard from mothers across America whose hearts are home even if their bodies are at the office. Some say, “I’m not home now but I will be in six months,” or “after my second child is born.” After I was on the Today show on a Saturday, over 100 mothers called, inquiring about working from home.

Don’t mothers find support in the church?

I hear younger women saying all the time, “Where are the older mothers? Grandma’s on a career track or on a cruise. Where is the kind of woman mentioned in Titus 2 who can help me with my life?”

Fortunately, some churches are starting mentoring programs. As a psychologist, I know that women are better wives and mothers if they have sufficient emotional support.

You argue that the issue is more than one of modeling or getting training in parenting techniques, but of healthy patterns of intimacy established in infancy. What do you mean?

The eminent British pyschiatrist John Bowlby believes that a baby’s emotional bond or attachment to his mother is the foundation stone of personality. If my parents are emotionally accessible and they love me, I feel loved and worthy. If not, I feel unloved and unworthy. That in turn affects my ability to be emotionally accessible to my children in adulthood.

But is maternal deprivation more damaging than paternal neglect?

That’s hard to answer. And I believe that mothers and fathers are equally important. I do not believe they are interchangeable. But I believe that mothers and fathers do different things for children. Children learn to be intimate primarily from their mothers in that early maternal relationship. Freud emphasized the singular importance of the mother or mother figure in the child’s early life as “unique, without parallel … as the prototype of all later love relationships for both sexes.” I believe that Mother is very much the architect of intimacy. Cross-culturally, infancy seems to belong to mothers.

What about the mother who feels emotionally unequipped for parenting? Is it better for the child for her to be home?

Women who stay home need to keep the intellectual life alive. I’m not trying to put people on a guilt trip. But I suggest that there are many things a mother who stays at home can do to thrive. If a mother is depressed at home, she may need to recognize that there is an absence of nurture in her past and work through this pain through psychotherapy or nurturing relationships with older women. Some in the mental health profession have discovered that older women can provide an invaluable resource to younger, struggling mothers. Why the church doesn’t do more with this is a mystery to me.

If children need accessible parents, when does that need stop?

Obviously children of school age need less time with their mothers than babies and children. That’s why I encourage women to develop their gifts at home. Lots of women go back to work. If they can have a full-time job that lets them off after school, great. I’m big on at-home careers; what I am against is the empty house. Children do not flourish in the empty house. I once heard an authority on teen pregnancy say that usually a girl has her first sexual experience in her or her boyfriend’s empty house.

Newsweek said there are some 10 million latchkey children in this country. I was a latchkey child. I know what it feels like. I know about the fear of the burglar. I used to look under the beds and check the closets every day when I came home. And I felt lonely. Having my mother telephone and say, “How are you?” helped, but a phone call is no substitute for a mother’s presence.

My girls were in high school when I went back to school for my doctorate. I had an experimental psychology lab late in the afternoon twice a week. I didn’t think my girls would notice. But I remember Holly—a high-school senior—commenting several times that she missed me. It was important for me to be there to talk to and have a cup of tea with my teens after school.

What’s at stake in all this?

We have to put it into a larger, cultural perspective. I recently reread Brave New World, and it was frightening. When we weaken attachments between parents and children, all kinds of anomalies occur, as Huxley showed. We’re headed there. In the book Generations, William Strauss and Neil Howe argue that the twentysomething generation has the highest incidence of maternal employment and parental divorce of any American generation. It’s also the most aborted generation. It has the highest rate of incarceration and the second-highest suicide rate. Moreover, I believe we already have a daycare generation among us, and we’re working on another.

So I appeal to parents and churches and ask, What about the children? In our career pursuits—mothers and fathers—let’s not forget them. Our lifestyles as mothers may have changed, but our children’s needs are the same.

By Jill Zook-Jones, a homemaker and freelance writer in Carol Stream, Illinois.

A corporate mission statement is a professional necessity in today’s high-stakes marketplace, and we invest countless hours drafting one. Knowing where you are going as a company, and the part each employee plays in getting there, is a key to business success.

Our families, too, need a vision. Moms and Dads sometimes act as if it is enough simply to feed, clothe, shelter, and educate their children. They hope their kids will automatically become men and women of purpose, integrity, and compassion. But how?

Even the “good kids”—those who don’t get involved with drugs, sex, or violence—are often at loose ends. Every family needs a vision statement of its own to keep the household focused and enthusiastic.

We found that by putting our family vision in writing, we greatly reduced lying, stealing, fighting, gossiping, and self-centeredness. Parents and children cease to be adversaries when they share a common vision. We discovered for ourselves the biblical truth that “a house divided against itself … cannot stand.”

But how does a family go about drafting a vision statement? Here are a few suggestions:

• Call a family meeting. To take ownership, everyone must have input.

• Ask the key questions: Why were we given to each other? Why this particular mix of personalities and temperaments? What special gifts, talents, and insights does each family member bring to the table? What are the biblical standards for our success as a family? How can we maximize our effectiveness as a family team?

• Create a draft statement based on the common goals stated in that meeting. Bring it back to the family to edit.

• Post your family vision in a high-traffic location where everyone can read and affirm what you stand for.

• Broach the vision at dinner periodically and ask how the family thinks it is measuring up.

Here is what our family of six agreed would be the Kelly family vision statement: “We have been given to each other in order to spur one another on to personal excellence. We will pray, encourage, cheer, and weep with one another until and beyond the point each is able to stand life’s gale without falling. We will give love unconditionally, forgiveness without measure, comfort at a moment’s notice, and a good report always. We will create a family life sorely missed when we are absent, one to be mirrored should any child of this family one day be favored with a home, spouse, and children of his or her own. We will seek and support ways in which each of us can express our faith in God to the world at large. We will, with God’s help, make a difference.”

The biblical standard for personal excellence is exceedingly high. It is a stretch, and in our humanity, the Kellys fail often. If we want high results, we must set high goals.

We saw some dramatic outcomes: Arguments lost their steam when we met in the living room to pray aloud for the family member immediately to each person’s left.

And we experienced some emotionally charged times. When one of our children was caught shoplifting, we called a family meeting. What affects one, affects all. We prayed, wept together, forgave, and encouraged the fallen one to repent, make restoration, and move on in victory. Our support said, “We’re with you through thick and thin.” The shoplifting stopped.

Be open and honest when someone’s actions fly in the face of your carefully crafted vision. When our son took the family van without permission in the middle of the night, we discovered it was not the first time he had clandestinely gone to visit a girlfriend.

I told him I was surprised by what he had done and was at a loss to know what to do. I asked what he would do if he were me. To my surprise, he chose a punishment more severe than the grounding I would have given him.

Maybe one day your grown daughter will come to you, as mine did to me, and say, “Thanks, Dad. You know, I never wanted to do anything wrong for fear it would come to a family meeting.”

By Clint Kelly, author of Me Parent, You Kid! Taming the Family Zoo.

Speaking Out does not necessarily reflect the views of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Heavenly Sports

I read with enjoyment David Holmquist’s “Will There Be Baseball in Heaven?” [Jan. 10]. His title reminded me of this good news/bad news story:

Two preachers loved to play baseball. They made an agreement. Whoever died first would come back in spirit form and tell the living preacher if baseball was played in heaven. One died. He came back and said, “The good news is that they do play baseball in heaven. The bad news is you are pitching Friday.”

Claude A. Frazier

Asheville, N.C.

Unfair review?

I was appalled by Edith Blumhofer’s review of Jack Deere’s Surprised by the Power of the Spirit [Jan. 10]. The title, “Dispensing with Scofield,” prejudices the reader to perceive the book in an iconoclastic light, as does the accompanying cartoon. Instead of reviewing the book, the reviewer devoted more than half the space to explaining differences between Scofieldian dispensationalism—with its cessationist view of miracles—and Wimberian Pentecostalism—with its belief that God still works miracles—and then insinuating that Deere seeks to substitute Wimber’s hermeneutic, which the reviewer finds unacceptable, for Scofield’s, which the reviewer finds equally appalling. This bias reaches a climax with the reviewer’s rhetorical question: “In laying aside Scofield’s grid, has Deere replaced it with another that is equally or more manipulative in its use of God’s Word?” This embodies a fallacious assumption and casts a false aspersion.

But Deere does not seek to develop a formal hermeneutic, as Scofield did. And he shows a deep reverence for and a scrupulous, thoughtful handling of God’s Word on every page.

John J. Hughes Whitefish, Mont.

Your review points to an issue that never arose in historic Christianity. Must we settle for either Scofieldism, or Pentecostalism, for that matter? Not at all. Even evangelical books like Why I Left Scofieldism, by William E. Cox, and A Search for Charismatic Reality, by Neil Babcox, point the way away from either alternative.

There has to be another, indeed a better, way.

Scott Robert Harrington Erie, Pa.

Compassion and reason

As a 30-year Southern California resident, I read with interest “The Alien in Our Midst” [News, Dec. 13]. Illegal immigration is a perplexing, paradoxical problem that compounds itself, particularly in a state that borders Mexico.

The notion presented here, of “compassion versus reason,” is often used to debate illegal immigration issues and other seemingly moral, controversial issues. But compassion and reason are not dichotomous, polar opposites. Rather, the most reasonable, rational, truthful response is always the most compassionate response. To dichotomize these terms is to further perpetuate and cloud the problem.

We cannot continue to think in terms of the most expedient action—usually considered the “compassionate” alternative, as with caring for and housing illegal immigrants—when the long-term result is a lie. This is not compassion, but an unwillingness to see to the heart of the matter—which is simply that no matter how badly we feel for our impoverished fellow man, our entire nation has suffered, economically, socially, and educationally, and will continue to do so when people are allowed rights and privileges without having to work for them.

LuAnn Craik

Yorba Linda, Calif.

“The Alien in Our Midst” rightly addresses the issue of immigration in the context of Christian compassion.

As an American, I am thankful the United States remains a desirable destination for immigrants. The CT article did not fully consider the worldwide scope of would-be immigrants to the United States, however. U.S. consular officials daily face long lines of visa applicants around the globe, most of whom would like to move permanently to the U.S., usually for financial reasons. Perhaps instead of working to bring new immigrants to America, U.S. Christians should seriously consider leaving the comforts of home to renew the “graying” ranks of missionaries and other Americans overseas who labor to improve the lives of persons where they live.

Russell P. Ingraham

American Embassy

Bucharest, Romania

Take Two Aspirin And Go To Church

For the most part, society has missed the role churches could play in solcing the health-care crisis. I’m not talking about applying theological principles to the social debate. I have in mind something more practical: All doctors should be encouraged to prescribe churches that can remedy parients of their ailments.

Instead of expensive physical theraoy for those recovering from knee sugery, for example, why not prescribe a church that specializes in genuflection? These services weekly should keep the joints flexible.

For those needing shoulder or arm exercise, a charismatic church is the way to go. Sinus trouble? A smells-and-bells Episcopal church should help clear things up. TMJ? Avoid those Methodist hymnsings, and try a silent Quaker tetreat.

Fighting insomnia? Instead of traquilizers, a church where the preaching is longer than it is good (and where the pews are padded) is just the antidote.

Blood pressure problems? Avoid potluck dinners and budger debates.

With this plan, people would ger healthier, and church attendance would increase. Who knows, maybe people would actually pray about their problems. Ah, now we’re talking about a real solution.

That Lutheran sex report

David Neff’s editorial about the report by the human sexuality task force of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America disheartened me [“How Lutherans Justify Sex,” Dec. 13]. Like so many others who have rushed to calm the furor caused by this report, he criticized the media for reporting on the controversial but missing the commendable portions of the statement. Have we sunk so low that orthodoxy is the “real” news?

I am glad Neff sees the value of the traditional gospel-centered approach to the Scriptures in Lutheranism. Unfortunately, among the neo-Lutherans in the ELCA, “Was Christum triebt” has become a principle for playing one Scripture off against another. Neff adeptly spotted examples of this in the task force report, but he attributed it to inherent weakness in the Christological, evangelical approach to Scripture. In truth, the faulty conclusions of the task force stem from the neo-Lutheran aberration of the traditional Lutheran approach.

Rev. Tim Oswald

Living Word Lutheran Church

Windom, Minn.

With all due respect, Neff did more to obscure the problem with the ELCA task force’s conclusions regarding hom*osexuality than to clarify them. The problem was not, as he asserted, that the task force considered the matter Christologically, but rather precisely that they did not consider the matter Christologically.

The notion that one can be a “hom*osexual” requires that a person be turned inward toward the self, giving definition to him- or herself in isolation. Christ, on the other hand, can only be understood to turn us away from ourselves, and therefore away from death and destruction, toward his own life. It is in turning toward God in Christ that we recognize who we are as human beings created in God’s image, male and female.

If it was Christology that led the ELCA task force to its conclusions, then it was a tragically impoverished Christology indeed.

Phillip M. Hofinga

Duke Divinity School

Durham, N.C.

The ELCA is one of several Lutheran bodies in the United States. Any doctrinal statements they publish represent their views, but not necessarily the views of all Lutheran churches in this country.

Doug Coup

Frazer, Pa.

The task force’s feeble position on the hom*osexual issue may have been due in large measure to the fact that there were two hom*osexuals, one male and one female, on the committee. This is revealed in an editorial by Edgar Trexler in the December issue of The Lutheran.

Gordon Ginn

Fortuna, Calif.

Good news

I read with interest the CT Institute article “Muslim Mission Breakthrough” [Dec. 13]. If even half the mission claims are true, it is still good news! However, I am uneasy about the so-called historic Assembly of God churches in southern Egypt sweeping “20,000 nominal Christians into the kingdom.” I smell a rat. Protestants have spent much time and money trying to “reconvert the converted” in Egypt. The Coptic Church has been there through centuries. Rather than trying to “convert” Christians, evangelicals should support and cooperate with the Copts, who trace their spiritual lineage to Saint Mark. They belong to the real historic church in Egypt.

Rev. Lyle H. Rasch

Cincinnati, Ohio

Secular education’s value-escapism

Thank you for Christina Hoff Sommers’s effort to expose and expel the value-escapism in the secular classroom, especially for its diminishing returns [“How to Teach Right & Wrong,” Dec. 13]. As one who has “done some time” in public schools, I have tried to get at the heart of the matter: how did this begin? It is surely a part of the larger social slide—from unquestioned majority standards, to emancipated personal choice, to moral anarchy—which parallels in the body-politic the transfer of focus from The Significant Other to (more-or-less) significant others, to the self. What began as a gloriously liberal experiment in America has degenerated into a morass of libertinism. In short, the individual has priority over the community, even in the classroom.

House-cleaning begins at home. The unredeemed community is not hearing a harmonious, saving summons from its Christian peers, much less its Master. If we who willingly follow his voice cannot meet him on the mountain and thunder down to the needy below his unalterable moral truths, who can? There is a fine line between being a fool and being a “fool for Christ.”

John Schwane

Broken Arrow, Okla.

“How to Teach Right & Wrong” was a major disappointment. I kept looking for the words God or Scripture but instead found only allusions to “learning from 2,000 years of civilization,” a traditional Jewish tale, moral common sense, and Aristotle. The critique of “moral dilemma” morals education was good, but, honestly, wouldn’t any secular magazine print this? What we have learned from 2,000 years of Western civilization is that there is no basis for morals and values apart from God.

Pastor Michael Sharrett

Fort Worth Presbyterian Church

Fort Worth, Tex.

The danger of Momentus

Thank you for your news article “Momentus Loses Momentum” [Dec. 13]. People need to be aware of this extremely dangerous movement. I have seen, firsthand, how Momentus has destroyed lives. The people who claim they are now closer to God have become very exclusive with whom they now dialog. Not once have I heard what makes this a Christ-centered, biblically orthodox program. Momentus started out as a scam, and it will continue to be a scam in whatever form it disguises itself.

Joachim Randeen

Palos Verdes, Calif.

My wife and I took the Momentus Training in May 1983, and since then have seen many blessings in our lives, as well as among our family and friends. I find myself praying more, reading the Scriptures more consistently, and thinking of others’ needs more often. I read Christian literature, including your magazine, and want to fellowship with other believers. I am praising the Lord and sharing God’s Word with others who would not have heard the gospel had it not been for the experience they had with the Holy Spirit during Momentus Training.

Dan Stockemer

Geyersville, Calif.

Clapp right on target

Thank you for Rodney Clapp’s “Let the Pagans Have the Holiday” [Dec. 13]. His point that Christmas is the ultimate Pelagian holy day is right on target. Would that evangelical churches with their singing trees and pageants galore would recognize not only the problem, but also the solution. Only when the church preaches the message of the Cross and stops scratching itching ears with consumer-speak will the matter change. Please, more articles like Clapp’s, less of the claptrap!

Pastor Thomas E. Troxell

Hope Presbyterian Church in America

Gilbert, Ariz.

Clapp says, “Paul nowhere speaks of Jesus’ birth.” But Galatians 4:4 states: “When the right time came, the time God decided on, he sent His Son, born of a woman, born as a Jew” (TLB).

Pastor Bufe Karraker

Northwest Church

Fresno, Calif.

Stephanou still Orthodox

In your December 13 news article “Unorthodox Behavior?” you incorrectly stated that Stephanou “considers himself retired and says his privately owned ministry functions independent of the Greek Orthodox Church hierarchy.” It is our Renewal Center of St. Symeon the New Theologian with its land and property that is privately owned, however, not my ministry, which is divinely owned, because it is divinely appointed. I remain formally part of the Greek Orthodox jurisdiction, despite the disfavor of the ruling hierarchy over the prophetic and evangelical nature of my renewal ministry.

Rev. Eusebius Stephanou

Orthodox Renewal Center of St. Symeon

Destin, Fla.

Brief letters are welcome; all are subject to editing. Write to Eutychus, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 465 Gundersen Drive, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188; fax (708) 260-0114.

Men want to entrap women, take away their choices, and turn them into baby-producing machines. Women, on the other hand, want choices. Becoming pregnant should not force a woman to begin a family. For the state to deny women access to abortion is to violate a woman’s right to be responsible for her own body and for her own life. Abortion is about freedom.

Many of the professional spokespeople for the feminist movement—such as Gloria Steinem, Molly Yard, Patricia Ireland—repeat the above narrative so often that many in our society have come to accept this line of thought as “the woman’s perspective” on the issue. But this overhyped scenario is missing some important ingredients—without which the narrative leaves the realm of journalism and steers toward fiction.

What is missing is the fact that abortion is also about babies. And the category of humanity most attuned to the needs and cares of children are mothers. That is why, despite what our culture has come to believe, the pro-life movement is not a male plot to oppress women. In fact, the movement is overwhelmingly led, staffed, and run by women.

We think this truth is worth shouting about because it explodes an inaccurate and harmful stereotype. Two years ago we shouted by doing a cover story on the quiet work women were doing in crisis pregnancy centers (CT, Aug. 17, 1992). This time we decided to look at some women who are doing some shouting on their own. In “For Women, Against Abortion” (p. 20), we profile five leaders in the pro-life fight. For the role of image slayer, we turned to veteran journalist Ellen Santilli Vaughn, coauthor with Charles Colson of The Body and the mother of Emily.

MICHAEL G. MAUDLIN,Managing Editor

This column got me invited to the White House. Someone put on the President’s desk the column I wrote last fall about the alarm I sensed among evangelicals over policies of the Clinton administration—“Why Clinton Is Not Antichrist.” In October, President Clinton invited 12 evangelicals to a private breakfast. Some represented church or parachurch organizations; some hailed from Christian academia. I got invited thanks mainly to the catchy title on my column.

“The President has no agenda,” we were assured. “He simply wants to hear your concerns.” I knew Clinton had recently been quoting from The Culture of Disbelief, by Stephen Carter of Yale, who warns that our society is relegating religion to the fringes. In an address at Yale, Clinton commented, “Sometimes I think the environment in which we operate is entirely too secular. The fact that we have freedom of religion … doesn’t mean that those of us who have faith shouldn’t frankly admit that we are animated by that faith, that we live by it—and that it does affect what we feel, what we think, and what we do.”

I called some people for advice on what message to bring the President, and to my surprise, a few cautioned me not to go. One questioned the President’s motives. “Sinister would not be too strong a word,” he said. “I believe there is a plot to try to divide evangelicals. Bill Clinton cannot possibly be sincere about his faith and hold the views he does.” I weighed his advice, but the once-in-a-lifetime chance to have breakfast at the White House proved irresistible.

The question “What would Jesus say in such a setting?” crossed my mind, and I realized with a start that the only time Jesus met with powerful political leaders his hands were tied and his back was clotted with blood. Church and state have had an uneasy relationship ever since.

The spiritual-orphan syndrome

Last October 18, instead of eating Fiber One™ out of a Melmac™ bowl in my living room, I found myself eating eggs and bacon with Bill Clinton and Al Gore in the Family Dining Room of the White House. “I love hosting these breakfasts,” said Clinton. “It’s the only time they let me eat eggs.”

The visit gave me a better understanding of the “spiritual-orphan syndrome” that worries some of the Clintons’ friends. When the First Family goes to church, it turns into a media circus, hardly conducive to a worship experience. Moreover, this nation is brutal to its leaders. Hillary Clinton is the butt of obscene jokes, and Chelsea has been roasted on Saturday Night Live. When the President jogs through the streets of Washington, he sees bumper stickers like this one: “A vote for Bill Clinton is a sin against God.” Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry calls the Clintons “Ahab and Jezebel.” And Clinton’s own Southern Baptist denomination has entertained a motion to censure his home church in Arkansas for not kicking the President off its membership rolls.

I came away impressed with Clinton’s ability to articulate issues in spiritual terms, as well as his knowledge of the Bible. I also came away encouraged that God has his people in Washington who consider it their calling to minister to those in power. Yet I was sobered by the alienation that exists between evangelicals and the current administration.

Some of the evangelical leaders around me discussed the cost involved if word got out that they had visited with Clinton. “I’ll lose financial supporters,” said one college president. Have we gotten to the place where it now takes courage to go to the White House and address our concerns? Issues such as abortion and hom*osexual rights are of grave concern, to be sure—but do we really want to cut off all access because of disagreements over these issues?

Talking more, shouting less

Clinton himself expressed sadness at the polarization. “I expect criticism,” he said. “I admit I’m a sinner and have no problem when someone reminds me of that. But I believe we could do better if we talked to one another more and shouted at one another less.” One of the guests, Jack Hayford, delivered an eloquent “apology” for the un-Christ-like way in which many Christians had treated the President. Richard Mouw of Fuller Theological Seminary spoke about civility, and I think the meeting convicted us all about the need to bring more civility to the dialogue.

When the President expressed to us the need for prayer, I could understand why. Our meeting was squeezed into a schedule that included foreign-policy briefings on Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia, as well as task-force meetings on the health-care plan and “reinventing government.” His daily decisions affect the entire world.

President Clinton acknowledged that our nation’s problems—violence, poverty, urban decay—would never be solved apart from involving the religious community. He agreed to oppose government policies that stymie Christians who are combatting those problems. And he asked for our help. “A lot of the changes we need in this country have to come from the inside out,” he said.

Mostly, though, the President listened to each one of us. He is a seasoned listener with an active, responsive mind. The meeting was a beginning, merely that, but I hope it leads to improved communication with the White House.

The best line of the day came, surprisingly, from Al Gore. When Clinton showed him my column, Gore looked at the title, “Why Clinton Is Not Antichrist,” and quipped, “Well, Bill, you’ve got to start somewhere.” Indeed.