Couldn't Help Noticing

A tangled web

Yet another report emerges of the dangerous consequences of legal euthanasia in combination with flawed medical ethics—this time, with three lives (perhaps more) being devastated.

It is reported that a Swiss doctor, working for the euthanasia group ‘Dignitas’, has committed suicide not long after learning that a German woman to whom he recently administered a lethal injection was not terminally ill as he was led to believe, but merely depressed.

It appears that the woman requested a false report from her own GP, saying that she needed it to get sick leave from her employment. The report that stated that she was suffering from a terminal liver disease, was then used to request the assistance of Dignitas to end her life.

As a result, two people are needlessly dead. The GP that provided the false report will probably face prosecution and is presumably sorry for his dishonesty. And no doubt there are many other devastated family members of all these people.

Giving people the “right to end their life with dignity”? It just doesn't seem to be that simple.

Spiritual Gifts

Karen's recent post got me thinking about spiritual gifts. Christians in America are obsessed with spiritual gifts. Churches give out books, advertise seminars, and run group assessments all about spiritual gifts. The discovery of one's spiritual gift has become the Holy Grail for the Christian.

As good as it is to encourage someone to use his/her spiritual gifts, there is still much to be cautious about:

1. The heavy emphasis of gifts of the Spirit is out of balance with Scripture. Paul's letters devote little space in discussing these gifts.
2. Scripture places more emphasis on cultivating the fruits of the Spirit—love, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, etc. To most Christians, these things are old hat. They want something new and exciting. There is little enthusiasm and devotion for any training in righteousness. As such, there is no deep concern for sincere piety.
3. The thought of suppressing one's gift for the sake of the community (as Karen suggests) is unheard of here. There is such intensity in cultivating one's giftedness that it would be considered cruel and oppressive to suggest that a person not exercise their God-given gift.
4. Ecclesiastical hierarchy is rejected by younger generations of Christians. However, it seems to be reintroduced, in a different form, through the backdoor by over-emphasizing spiritual gifts. A church can survive without someone having the gift of woodworking (as one spiritual gift inventory book suggests there is) but it can't go on without the gift of music. Thus, music ministers and those who can teach about such spiritual gifts are elevated to the level of spiritual gurus.
5. There is a culture of laziness and complacency bred by such an emphasis. People easily dismiss their need to help out with behind-the-scenes activities for the church because they don't have the gift of ‘help’ or ‘administration’. On the flip side, good behind-the-scene workers tend to reject their responsibility in helping with the teaching and outreach programs of the church. They brush off their need to be involved with regular serious Bible study and prayer because they lack such gifts.

These observations may be nothing new for some CHN readers. However, hardly anyone is pointing this out in America, and it is a much needed reminder that sometimes the topic of spiritual gifts should be left unopened, for the sake of the gospel.

So gifted and talented

Like a proud parent, God especially enjoys watching you use the talents and abilities he has given you. God intentionally gifted us differently for his enjoyment. He has made some to be athletic and some to be analytical. You may be gifted at mechanics or mathematics or music or a thousand other skills. All these abilities can bring a smile to God's face. The Bible says, “He has shaped each person in turn; now he watches everything we do.” ²²

You don't bring glory or pleasure to God by hiding your abilities or by trying to be someone else. You only bring enjoyment by being you. Anytime you reject any part of yourself, you are rejecting God's wisdom and sovereignty in creating you. God says, “You have no right to argue with your Creator. You are merely a clay pot shaped by a potter. The clay doesn't ask, ‘Why did you make me this way?’” ²³

In the film Chariots of Fire, Olympic runner Eric Liddell says, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast, and when I run, I feel God's pleasure.” Later he says, “To give up running would be to hold him in contempt.” There are no unspiritual abilities, just misused ones. Start using yours for God's pleasure.

(Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 2002, pp. 74-75.)

Endnotes:

²² Psalm 22:15 (Msg)

²³Isaiah 45:9 (CEV)

To say that you must use the gifts and talents that God has given you or else you are holding God in “contempt” is a great lie. Though God has gifted us differently, we must remember that our gifts have been given to us for the for the “common good” (1 Cor 12:4-11, see especially v. 7). It may therefore be right and proper for us to refrain from using those gifts for the sake of others.

Even though you might be a consummate pianist, able to play through the regular repertoire with your eyes shut, you might choose to not play to allow someone else the chance to serve in that capacity. Or you might devote your time instead to training others in how to play so that there will be more pianists available to serve the church if the time ever comes when you have to find a replacement for yourself. Even though you might have a real gift for medicine, you might choose to give up your career as a doctor to go and teach the word to Bible college students in Kathmandu. Even though you might have a gift with words and you have the potential one day to become the next winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, you might choose to give all of that up in order to devote your time to caring for your husband and children.

This is not holding God in contempt. This is serving his commmunity in love. God has given us many gifts but sometimes we should abstain from using them.

Confessions from a reviler

I read this the other day:

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Cor 6:9-10)

I think I've always skimmed over the word ‘reviler’ because I didn't know what it meant. I assumed it meant something similar to ‘slanderer’ (since the NIV uses ‘slanderer’ where the ESV has ‘reviler’). It occurred to me that perhaps I should find out what a reviler is, just in case I was one. So I went and looked it up in the Macquarie Dictionary:

revile: assail with contemptuous or opprobrious language; to address, or speak of, abusively.

And, while I was at it:

slander: a malicious, false, and defamatory statement or report.

Apart from having to skim over ‘opprobrious’ because I didn't know what it meant, I found this little dictionary exercise to be enlightening and challenging. You might even call it ‘defining’ (sorry).

For example, do you ever find yourself thinking along these lines: Person X has done something about which I am frustrated or annoyed or irritated or angry or upset. I'm only human, so for my own wellbeing I need to vent. But if what I am saying about person X is true, then it isn't slander. It isn't false. So it's ok, even if it's bad.

But in my venting, I'm more than likely speaking abusively, and so being a ‘reviler’.

Or try this on for size: Person X has done something about which I am frustrated or annoyed or irritated or angry or upset. Of course, I'm only human so for my own wellbeing I just need to vent. But as long as I don't name person X, I can say what I like about them because no-one knows who I'm talking about. So technically it's not slandering or reviling them.

It's a bit pharisaic, isn't it? It doesn't matter if no-one else knows who I am talking about. God knows. And I know.

It reminds me of Matthew 15:18-20:

But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person.

So, with God's help, no more of those thinly-veiled (or not-so-thinly-veiled) whinges, now that the dictionary has helped to reveal my reviling.

New Year’s Resolutions

Coming into mid-November, I wonder if there is anyone reading this that is still on track in keeping faithful to their 2005 New Year's resolutions list? I once made such lists. However, after multiple failures and subsequent guilt, I resolved merely to give up the practice.

To make me feel even guiltier, I recently reread Jonathan Edwards' list of resolutions that he made when he was nineteen.

The following are excerpts from his Resolutions list of 1722 (found in A Jonathan Edwards Reader, Yale Uni. Press, 1995):

Being sensible that I am unable to do anything without God's help, I do humbly entreat him by his grace to enable me to keep these Resolutions, so far as they are agreeable to his will, for Christ's sake. Remember to read over these Resolutions once a week.

8. Resolved, to act, in all respects, both speaking and doing, as if nobody had been so vile as I, and as if I had committed the same sins, or had the same infirmities or failings as others; and that I will let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself, and prove only an occasion of my confessing my own sins and misery to God.

24. Resolved, whenever I do any conspicuously evil action, to trace it back, till I come to the original cause; and then both carefully endeavor to do so no more, and to fight and pray with all my might against the original of it.

25. Resolved, to examine carefully, and constantly, what that one thing in me is, which causes me in the least to doubt of the love of God; and to direct all my forces against it.

28. Resolved, to study the Scriptures so steadily, constantly and frequently, as that I may find, and plainly perceive myself to grow in the knowledge of the same.

31. Resolved, never to say anything at all against anybody, but when it is perfectly agreeable to the highest degree of Christian honor, and of love to mankind, agreeable to the lowest humility, and sense of my own faults and failings, and agreeable to the golden rule; when I have said anything against anyone, to bring to it, and try it strictly by the test of this Resolution.

37. Resolved, to inquire every night, as I am going to bed, wherein I have been negligent, what sin I have committed, and wherein I have denied myself: also at the end of every week, month and year.

56. Resolved, never to give over, not in the least to slacken my fight with my corruptions, however unsuccessful I may be.

Any one or all of those would be excellent resolutions to try and keep even until the end of this year.