Couldn't Help Noticing

Signs of Grace

There's been a bit of a stir in the media in the last day or two in Sydney. It must be a bit of a slow news week.

Apparently there is ‘controversy’ over a syndicated church sign which says “Jesus loves Osama”.

What a great topic to discuss with work colleagues around the drink cooler or with other parents at the school gate!

The people behind the sign, Outreach Media, have an excellent web page explaining what it all means.

Memorize this!

The most important verses Paul wrote are Romans 1:16-17. Here they are:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

They are the guts of the book. If you understand those two verses, you understand everything Paul has ever written. That's why when I teach my daughters to memorize Romans, it doesn't really bother me too much if they only memorize a small part of it. It doesn't really bother me too much if they forget everything else. But if they can at least file these two verses away before their sixth birthdays, they will know enough to be right with God.

Once they understand that the Christian life begins and ends with trusting God's righteous promises, they are, as we say in Sydney, laughing.

Beyond abortion

Britain's Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology has suggested that the health profession should consider legalizing “active euthanasia” for seriously disabled newborn babies.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics is conducting an inquiry into “the ethical issues raised by the policy of prolonging life in newborn babies”. According to this article in The Sunday Times, the inquiry wasn't going to consider euthanasia because it's illegal in Britain. But the College has managed to get the inquiry to consider euthanasia as one of the ways of “widening the management options available to the sickest of newborns”.

Let's be clear: we're not talking about non-resuscitation, or the withdrawal of treatment or treatment decisions, or any of the issues involved in artificially prolonging life. We're talking about active euthanasia.

The College's arguments in support of their proposal are the usual arguments used in this kind of debate—arguments based on the desire to reduce/avoid suffering for the affected person and their family. There's nothing new there.

What alarms me, though, is the boldness evident in their language. Gone are the attempts to disguise what they are really talking about by using language that makes babies sound like lifeless body tissue, and murder sound like a routine medical procedure. No longer are these people hiding behind words like ‘foetus’ and ‘termination’. We are now seeing full and frank discussion of killing infants and newborns. For example, take this quote from the College:

A very disabled child can mean a disabled family. If life-shortening and deliberate interventions to kill infants were available, they might have an impact on obstetric decision-making, even preventing some late abortions ...

Even more alarming is this, from Professor and bioethicist John Harris in support of the College's proposal:

We can terminate for serious foetal abnormality up to term but cannot kill a newborn. What do people think has happened in the passage down the birth canal to make it okay to kill the foetus at one end of the birth canal but not at the other?

Well, exactly. I wholeheartedly agree, but isn't that an argument for criminalizing abortion rather than legalizing active euthanasia? If this horrific language causes people to actually be horrified by the idea of killing babies, I'm glad that someone is being so bold and honest about what they are arguing for. As it is, I think it will just desensitize people so that “in the futility of their minds”, they will simply add to the number of babies already being killed (Eph 4:17).

Removal from office

Think of your dream job. Ponder for a moment why it would be such an ideal job.

Now think about how you would feel if someone unexpectedly replaced you in that job.

It would hurt, wouldn't it? But how badly? Would you put it on a par with any of these:

• dying young;
• leaving your children fatherless and your wife a widow;
• having your children go hungry and homeless, with nobody to show them any pity;
• having any prayer you utter to God counted as sin against you;
• knowing that your father and mother can never be forgiven for their sin;
• being so shamed and dishonoured that your descendants blot you out of the family tree.

Would you rank the pain of losing a job—even your dream job—in that sort of list?

King David does in Psalm 109. In that Psalm, he prays for God to deal with his accusers—those who are opposing him and falsely accusing him. He asks for God to bring them down. He asks God to deal harshly with these wicked people who are opposing God's appointed king with lies and hate.

Amongst these other curses listed above, David prays “may another take his office” (v. 8). It's an odd sort of curse for any of us who are anything other than basket-case workaholics.

But in Acts 1:20, Luke appropriates this curse to describe the fate that has befallen Judas, the betrayer of Jesus. All of a sudden, that curse takes on new significance. Judas is about to be replaced by Matthias in the office of Christ's apostle and witness. He has been denied the opportunity, not just of a lifetime, but of all time. He could have been one of the twelve men hand-picked to take the greatest message the world will ever know to the ends of the earth on behalf of the risen, conquering Messiah. Yet he had opposed God's appointed King and was removed as a result.

Perhaps we sometimes underestimate the privilege we have of being God's fellow workers in mission. What a curse it would be if we were removed from that office!

Compassionate Conservatives

Way back in Briefing #51, in a kind of proto ‘Couldn't help noticing’ column, we noted the interesting findings of Gary Bouma's book The Religious Factor in Australian Life. Bouma was discussing the results of an extensive ‘values survey’ that measured (among things) how tolerant people were, as indicated by their willingness to live next door to certain ‘undesirable’ groups (such as people with criminal records, people of different race, homosexuals, heavy drinkers, and so on).

When the results were correlated with religious affiliation, the outcome confounded popular stereotypes. Of the five religious groupings used in the survey—Roman Catholic, Anglican, PMU (Presbyterian, Methodist, Uniting), Right-wing Protestant and No Religion—by far the most tolerant were the Right-wing Protestants, and the least tolerant were those who had ‘No Religion’.

A new book has come to a similar conclusion—this time in relation to generosity and compassion. Who Really Cares: America's Charity Divide—Who Gives, Who Doesn't and Why It Matters by Arthur C. Brooks shows that when it comes to shelling out to charitable causes, red-necked, free-market-loving, Bible-thumping conservatives give considerably more than blue-state, bleeding-heart, make-poverty-history liberals. The average ‘conservative’-headed household gives 30% more to charity than the average ‘liberal’ household, despite earning 6% less annually. Of the 25 states where charitable giving was above average, 24 were won by George Bush in the 2004 presidential election.

And the biggest single predictor of charitable generosity? Religiousness. (Read a review of Brook's book.)