Another Fine Mess

In my work, I come into contact with a large number of self-employed builders, bricklayers, carpenters, roofers, kitchen fitters and plumbers. In a large number of cases, I am the only Christian contact they meet on a regular basis. I have gotten to know some of them and there are good guys and bad guys, some that I would want to do work for me and some I would not let near my home.

Brian (name changed) came in to see me last week. He’s a meticulous workman, and every time you see him or his van, they are neat, clean and well presented. He’s also a glass half full man. But he was down, psychologically, and I had to ask how I could help. Then it came out. His wife wants to ‘get some space’ and is moving out into a rented house about 1/4 of a mile away from the family home where they have two boys of pre-teen/early teen age group. He is devastated and can’t understand it.

I know Brian well enough to know that he was telling me the truth when he said that since they had begun to go out together, he had never even wanted to look at another woman.

Now I’m not just posting this to ask folks to pray for Brian, his wife and their two boys, although I would like folks to pray for them all, but to bring the principles of divorce for irretrievable breakdown of marriage to the fore. If Brian’s wife simply continues to live apart from him and he agrees, she can start divorce proceedings in two years, or, if he refuses she can instigate the divorce without his consent after five years.

I think that most of my readers know that I feel that the whole governance of the UK has moved significantly away from the rules that were laid down by God when He delivered His laws to Moses. Divorce was only allowed in Israel when certain rules were broken, primarily when on party to a marriage committed adultery. Not only was this a sin against the spouse, but also against God. In Britain today, it is easier to get out of a marriage than it is to obtain release from an onerous business contract. Is this where we want to be?

I will end this by again asking for prayer. I still want you to pray for Brian, his wife and their children, and I also want you to pray for our legislators and our parliamentary draughtsmen who write the bills that become the laws, We need to pray that this latter group will start to produce laws that are in accordance with God’s laws.

How Precious is Human Life?

We are told in Genesis

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

As a society we seem to have become callous and hard. Weekends are filled with binge drinking, and some folks think that if they can remember any of their night out, it couldn’t have been very good. Homosexual activity, illegal 60 years ago, is almost compulsory. In heterosexual relationships, we have gone from a culture in which women guarded their virtue to a hook-up culture where, I am told, it is possible for a man to go to a club and meet a girl for the first time and take her to bed the same night. Related to this is an acceptance of divorce, even in the church. One by-product of our sex-obsessed culture is the conception of children. Alongside the change in attitude has come a change in sex education in schools such that the children are left to feel that there are no psychological effects of having sex outside of marriage, which sounds like state-sponsored encouragement of promiscuity, although that word is probably politically incorrect these days.

Contraception is meant to be much more effective now than it was in the early 1960′s, when, according to one writer, sex was discovered between the publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and The Beatles first LP. Not only are condoms physically stronger and less likely to break, they are thinner and “more sensitive” – don’t even ask how an inanimate thing can be sensitive – and female hormonal contraception is available free to all girls on the NHS, generally as a tablet but also as injection or implant. But even so, in Britain we still have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in Europe. Either contraception is less effective than the authorities tell us, or the educators are not managing to get the message through to the children in school that you need to take contraceptive precautions if you are going to have sex but do not want to have a baby.

However, when we have over 300 conceptions in girls aged under 14, that is more than two years below the age of consent, and over 1,400 in girls aged 14, we do have a tragedy on our hands. what seems even more tragic is the effects on those girls, because the proportions of conceptions that end in abortion is highest in the 14 and under groups at over 60%. Given that under-age sex is often an indicator of psychological and social problems, one has to wonder what further problems are being stored up for these children.

This short video by Ray Comfort shows that while people see killing adults as wrong, they often do not think through what they think about abortion. there are no graphic scenes of abortion in the video. I urge you to watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y2KsU_dhwI

The Word of God brings life to the Soul

After a few weeks with much going on in my private life, my wife Gabriella and I had a long weekend in London for a break. We saw #2 daughter, who is studying there and went around Henry VIII’s pleasure palace, Hampton Court, with her. We laughed when she took a photograph of part of the gardens on her phone and posted it saying that she had found the perfect house for her next year’s studies which even had a garden, and laughed even more when one of her flatmates asked her how she could afford such a nice place.

But for me the highlight of the weekend was on Sunday morning, when we visited Duke Street Church in Richmond on Thames. The Old Testament reading was from Jeremiah, Chapter 2, vv 4 to 13. The New Testament reading was John 4 vv 1 to 26.

In the Old Testament reading, we hear God’s complaint against Israel, that they gave up worship of the one true God for worship of other gods that were no gods at all. In the New Testament reading we hear of someone who was told she worshiped what she did not know, yet the One who could fulfill her every need asked her to give Him water.

God had wanted Israel to have a relationship with Him, which is why He provided manna and quail in the desert. Jesus knew, supernaturally, that the Samaritan woman’s need was in relationships (You have had five husbands, but the man you have now is not your husband). She sounds like the sort of woman that many of our tabloid newspapers complain about, yet it is clear from the encounter recorded in the Gospel that she is desperately seeking some sort of satisfaction in relationships.

Here we saw at both a corporate and an individual level the message that the only relationships that can bring lasting satisfaction are those with God at their centre. As individuals, we cannot rely on another human being to meet all our needs, but we can rely on God in Jesus to do all that we can ask and even more than we can imagine. As a body, whether we are talking about a nation or a church, we need to be in relationship with God, listening to what He has to say and obeying Him.

But God is not only a God of love and kindness, He is also a God of justice. In the Jeremiah reading we find the words “Therefore I bring charges against you” (v9) and “My people have committed two sins”(v13). Jesus not only said, “Suffer the little children to come to me” but also took a whip and turned the traders out of the Temple, saying “My House shall be a House of Prayer but you have turned it into a den of thieves!”

On both sides of the Atlantic, there are countries in which the peoples have exchanged God for gods which are no gods, leaders who are steering their peoples further from God rather than encouraging them to be God-fearing, and individuals who mock and sneer at Christianity and the whole morality that is built up from the Laws handed down to Moses when Israel were in the desert. There are also people who are hurting and who do not know where to turn. When Jesus returned to His Father, and Our Father, He left us with a Helper, the Holy Spirit, to guide our actions. Let us all listen to what He has to say to each one of us, because for each of us it will be different depending on our circumstances. We should aim to emulate Jesus, or where that is not possible, follow the example of John the Baptiser, who pointed others to Jesus, the true Light that came into the world.

More Thoughts on the Trial of Kermit Gosnell

Frequently the view is expressed in the UK that to be Christian one must be in favour having many services performed by the public sector of the economy. There are complaints that the coalition government is attempting to privatise the NHS, that the railways ought to be in public rather than private ownership, that gas and electricity ought to be private rather than public and so on.

Maybe some folks have short memories of just how bad things were before Margaret Thatcher’s government, when you had to go on a waiting list for up to six months to get a telephone, when trains were frequently late and the toilets in the carriages were more often blocked than working and bodies were piling up because local authority workers were striking and preventing funerals from taking place.

One area that I had always thought hitherto ought to be reserved for the public sector was that of regulating the providers of services, because of the need to be impartial and to be able to be fair towards all providers.

I have now read much of the Grand Jury Report into the case that is now the Kermit Gosnell murder trial in Pennsylvania. For those who have a strong stomach, it is in the Court of Common Pleas, First Judicial District of Philadelphia, Criminal Trial Division. It has the reference Misc 0009901-2008. For details of the bodies who could have prevented these tragedies continuing for so long look to pages 137 to 217

The details of what Dr. Gosnell did are gruesome enough, but what truly shocks is that the staff of the bodies set up to protect the public seemed so happy to let anything that happened happen without any need for them to involve themselves in monitoring what was happening. At least two women died at the hands of this doctor and there were several malpractice suits, but, with very few exceptions, none of the public servants whose duty to the residents of Philadelphia was to ensure the safety of the women who attended clinics like the Women’s Medical Society appear to have done anything other than stop investigations from taking place. Indeed the Grand Jury make the observation that nail salons were more regulated than such clinics.

In the UK there is heard from business from time to time the complaint that regulations are boiler-plated and are tougher than they need be. In Philadelphia, we had a Department of Health senior manager telling members of staff that they should not co-operate with law enforcement operatives when they raided a clinic on the grounds that they believed it to be illegally and wrongfully a source of prescriptions for controlled drugs which were likely to be abused and had a high price on the black market. In Philadelphia, we had a Department fo State which regulated certain professions including medicine, and a Department of Health which was responsible for regulating clinics which did not cross check information with each other such that neither knew the extent to which the clinic was failing to comply with the rules or the frequency of complaints made against a medical practitioner or the amounts of damages that his malpractice insurance was paying out with what frequency. There was a tendency to have the bureaucracy produce opinions on how to administer the law based more on what the perceived views of the Governor were rather than on what the law required.

It should not matter whether the regulator is the Environmental Health Department of the local council, the Health and Safety Executive, an Examinations Board for pubic examinations like Edexcel or a court, all should enforce the law consistently and objectively. It appears that some at least in Philadelphia managed to convince the Grand Jury that they only wanted to collect their salaries with as little effort as possible on their own part.

So what has all of this got to do with being a Christian you ask? Well, aside from failing to render unto Caesar, the metaphorical worldly authority, what is Caesar’s, (Mark 12:13-17) but there is the even older statement in Leviticus 19:15, “Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor of favouritism to the great, but judge your neighbour fairly” and then in v16 “Do not do anything that endangers your neighbour’s life. I am the LORD.”

What do we do about the likes of Kermit Gosnell?

When we consider how we should treat other people, our first point of reference should be Scripture. Forget asking “What would Jesus do?” Rather ask, “What does God command of us?”

We know that God is the same yesterday, today and forever. His requirements never change. But where in Scripture should we be looking? Exodus 20, looking at the ten commandments? Leviticus looking at the details of the Law? I would rather we looked at Luke, Chapter 10 verses 25 to 37. I can imagine some folks saying, “That man is a mass murderer. Are you suggesting that I go to him and try to make things better for him? Why are you suggesting that the parable of the good Samaritan is the appropriate section of Scripture in this circumstance?”

Not only do I believe that we have an ever-loving God, but I believe that God created everything that is, both seen and unseen. I also happen to believe that there will be virtually no-one around to meet a need if that need is not in existence. It is clear that there was a perceived need for women to obtain abortions in Philadelphia and that those women were desperate to have that perceived need met. Just as the man going from Jerusalem to Jericho had a need after an interaction with the robbers, so some of these young women have a need after one or more interactions with men who have left them pregnant. These women need loving, in the agape sense of the word, properly, and holistically, and not sexual exploitation. What are we doing to help them?

I know that in many instances, christian organisations have had to withdraw from offering adoption services because they and their trustees felt that they could not comply with the requirements of the state with respect to placing children with same sex couples or unmarried cohabiting couples, but that does not preclude them from helping pregnant women who are in dire straights. We have to be careful that we do not create institutions like the Roman Catholic Church did in Ireland which became the byword for cruelty, but we need to do something. James tells us that faith without deeds is dead. What deeds are we performing to show that our faith is not dead? We cannot just say to one of these desperate women, and sometimes they are not much more than children, “Do not have an abortion!” We need to be saying something more like “There are other routes open to you. If you would prefer to have your child and then give him or her up for adoption by a couple who will love that child, we can help you get through the next nine, eight, or however many months it is.”

It may be that the person concerned is both young and lacking in skills necessary for life and perhaps the churches could get back to their roots in education, instead of playing at running schools in which there is minimal Christian content, help people learn how to cope with life.

If churches and their members did help women who would otherwise go to Keremit Gosnell’s fellow abortionists, perhaps we would see a reduction in the number of abortion clinics as well as a reduction in the number of human lives brought to an untimely end when they are in an environment where they are supposed to be nurtured and protected. Then perhaps, this poem would be nothing but a reminder of a disgusting period of human history. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJgUHsRZLak

Editing the News

We all accept that we do not hear everything about everything, but why have we heard so little about the trial of Kermit Gosnell.

A very disturbing post at Archbishop Cranmer’s blog says it far more eloquently than I. The report in “The Atlantic” is equally gruesome reading. I would not described either as a good read, but a necessary read, especially if you believe in a woman’s right to choose abortion if she so wishes.

http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/dr-kermit-gosnell-silence-of-mainstream.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/why-dr-kermit-gosnells-trial-should-be-a-front-page-story/274944/

If you read nothing else today, please, read one of these.

There is nothing new under the sun.

As a Lent course, ‘my’ bible study group worked our way through “Finding a Voice” which took parallels from the film of “The Kings Speech” with the Christian who is reticent to speak out about his or her faith in modern Britain.

The leaders of the group were asked to look at something about the death and resurrection of Jesus for the period after Easter, and we came upon a book called “Life by His Death”.. This is a re-working of the book “The Death of Death in the Death of Christ” by John Owen, who lived from 1616 to 1683. Owen was personal chaplain to Oliver Cromwell for several years, as well as pastoring three churches.

I must confess, I was brought up Presbyterian. My co-leader was brought up Methodist. So we have a group led by a Calvinist and an Arminian. And the Arminian chose this book.

The foreword by JI Packer states that the work was prepared to show “..that the doctrine of universal redemption is unscriptural and destructive of the Gospel.”

So far it has been interesting, in part because it has reminded me of some things I had long forgotten, or had misunderstood.

We are mostly all aware that Jesus had three roles, as Prophet, Priest and King. As prophet, He showed men what the Father actually wanted, obedience, love and justice rather than sacrifice. As priest, He interceded with the Father and made a sacrifice as a permanent sin offering, and as king, He requires that men do His perfect will.

What I had forgotten was how the two priestly roles are so intertwined. Jesus the man was perfect. He never sinned. So He was the only one who was able to come into the presence of the Father on our behalf. He is still at the right hand of the Father (Romans 8:34) intereceding for us. As I said, Jesus is the perfect priest. His prayer is heard by the Father, and just as he said that he was and is one with the Father, we can be sure that His prayer is in the Father’s perfect will. This priestly role of intercession continues to this day. It was His sacrifice that was once for all upon the cross. But the ‘all’ is not every single person on this Earth. It is those for whom He prayed in John 17, those whom the Father has given Him.

Let us remember this fact when we are tempted to give up our faith and conform to the ways of the world. In the short term it is easy to live that way, but in the long term we know that it leads to eternal separation from our destiny, to know God and to praise Him for ever.