… if you are looking for a truly outstanding parable about the difference between knowing what’s right and doing it. You need to click over to Chris Gonzales’ Home Front and read the post The Religions of Good and Right.

In a similar vein, if you’re searching for a really powerful one about misplacing the object of worship and losing the power of worship, you’re just a click away from Fred Peatross’ abductive columns, specifically the post titled Parable of the Bridge.

You won’t find them here.

Children who lived in the inner cities as I was growing up knew the sign and what it meant: an 8-1/2 x 11″ poster in the window of a neighboring house with a big red hand pictured on it.

It meant they’d be safe there.

They could run there when they were in trouble at home, at school, or on the street.

They’d be taken in, any time of day or night, and protected.

They’d find the kind of home they may not have had at home.

They’d find a father-figure, or an older-brother figure, who would keep them from harm.

When troubled people are in our assemblies and hear us speak of such a father and brother in our songs and prayers, do they find that kind of home?

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! — Luke 13:34

Remember the really immemorable Star Trek movie, number V: The Final Frontier? The one where the Enterprise suddenly went from having twenty-some decks to seventy-some? Where a bargain-basement special effects menace tried to pass itself off as God? Where Captain Kirk had the audacity to ask it: “Excuse me … what does God need with a starship?”

There’s at least one almost-redeeming moment near the last of the film, where Federation crew and their Klingon guests are tossing back a few together in the officer’s lounge. Kirk, with Spock and McCoy, ponders the futility of their quest for “God” at the “center of the galaxy” – that’s some shielding the ship now has, too! – and posits: “Maybe God is right here” (and he touches his chest) “in the human heart.”

Pretty profound for the galactic humanist (and shameless womanizer). When I first suffered through the movie at a theatre near some of you, my journey through the cosmos was still at a point where that thought was brand new and had to be weighed.

God, as we all knew, was in his heaven and all was right with the world. The Christians I knew believed the right thing, occasionally did the right thing, and anyone else was on his/her own. We were in Him; not vice-versa.

I had to think: In the human heart? Like, like being possessed? Like … being bought with a price? Like … are we talking the Holy Spirit here?

In the human heart?

Looking back, I imagine that the inspired Hollywood writers who contrived the script were probably just saying, “You know, the concept of God is fine for anyone who wants to believe in it.”

But I’ll always be grateful for the inkling of insight that I probably read into that movie moment … and for the fact that it opened the door of my heart a little wider to the possibility of God in me.

That isn’t the most profound thing Kirk said, though. I think that came when Dr. McCoy challenged his description of the trio’s relationship as brothers: “I thought you said men like us don’t have families.”

He smiles the Kirk smile in reply: “I was wrong.”

One of my favorite books as a junior high-schooler was The Gospel According to Peanuts by Robert Short, and though I think he’s gone way off the deep end in his universalist beliefs, he did a great job of using Charles Schulz’s immortal characters to illuminate everlasting Scripture for my young mind.

Most of my other favorite junior high reads had Star Trek in the title.

So it’s no real surprise that from time to time I find a nugget of universal truth buried in the interstellar quagmire of rampant humanism that is Trek.

One instance popped into my mind today as I read Greg Taylor’s blog review of Two Views of Hell: A Biblical and Theological Dialog by Edward Fudge and Robert A. Peterson. Though I haven’t read the work, Greg’s review is so comprehensive that you feel you’ve got the major gist by the time you’ve read it! (And he cites Seinfeld, which is almost always a good thing.)

What came to mind as I read it was a scene from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, where Admiral Kirk is trying to wrangle permission from his commander, Admiral Morrow, to return to the newly-created Genesis planet to retrieve Spock’s body (and hopefully his katra, or soul) at his father’s request.

(Okay, if you don’t follow Trek, this is probably already too bizarre for you to pursue.)

Morrow shakes his head, “Honestly, I never understood Vulcan mysticism …”

But Kirk sees through his reluctance: “You don’t have to believe,” he interrupts. “I’m not even sure that I believe.”

The nugget of truth?

Not understanding something is often our excuse for not believing it.

The trouble is, if we wait until we understand everything eternal in this life … we’ll never believe.

Whether it’s the theodicy of tsunamis, fatal car accidents, everlasting punishment, or some mystic process by which life can be returned to a lifeless body, we’re not likely to grasp it as a prerequisite to believing.

It’s not that God doesn’t want us to reach, and wonder, and ask – just as Job did; as Fudge and Peterson and all the rest of us do. Quite the opposite!

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9) | “Look to the LORD and his strength; seek his face always.” (I Chronicles 16:11; Psalm 105:4)

Tomorrow at 4 p.m. Central before evening services at 5, there will be a prayer service at the church I attend asking God’s protection of our troops in Iraq, especially in the days preceding free elections there.

Our minister’s sermon afterwords will be about prayer, and I’ve been asked to read two scriptures: Luke 18:9-14 and Psalm 51.

I haven’t been asked to pray at the prayer service before, and I confess that I’m relieved.

I wouldn’t know how to pray among my siblings, the vast majority of whom have a very definite perception of the war in Iraq and the policing/nation-building activities that continue. Having neither the writing talent nor the wit of one of my literary heroes, Mark Twain, I would be unable to equal, let alone excel, his deservedly reknowned War Prayer. Still I wondered yesterday, as I was driving home from work, how I would pray genuinely if I had been asked, and this, in prettier words, is what I prayed:

Father God,

I don’t know how to ask this, because I don’t know where Your heart is in this matter. There was a time when You commanded Israel’s armies to give over to You entire cities – men, women and children – by completely destroying them … something there’s no word for in my language. My heart believes that’s a good thing, because at a later time Your Son taught people to be peacemakers; to offer the other cheek to those who would strike them … Someone whose most violent act was to drive animals out of Your house and flip over the tables of swindlers there.

I don’t share the belief of many of my brothers and sisters in Him that our nation engaged in a “just” war; that it was the right war in the right place at the right time. As nearly as I can tell, we were misinformed or even misled about the reasons we sent our soldiers to Iraq. Thousands have paid for that error or lie with their lives.

I’m troubled because it feels like it was an act of vengeance – which I know should be Yours when wrong is done – whether it was to avenge the attack on our nation, or on Kuwait years ago, or even for the promises to pay others who would terrorize and kill our citizens, even our current President’s father.

At the same time, I have to agree that some good has been done. That genocidal despot who tortured and murdered so many of his own has been toppled like the statues he built at their expense; captured and jailed. I am grateful for that.

The evil of some of his places of torture somehow seemed to have infected our soldiers, Father; yet there are so many more of them and of other volunteers who have gone far beyond their mission to rebuild schools and hospitals; to help little children; to see that food and clean water and electricity get to where they are needed.

And too many have been ambushed, kidnapped, and even executed to repay this kindness. Now we have asked them to put their lives on the line to make it possible for the people of Iraq to freely choose their own new government.

Please, God, protect them as they extend this gift. Bless them with good judgment and kind hearts. May the election proceed untroubled by violence. May it lead to a beneficent government. May it lead to peace. May it be to Your glory.

Bless and protect Mike and Dara and Scott and their sweet families and all the thousands I don’t know, Father. Keep them from harm.

Frustrate and confound the ones who kill others and themselves in the name of Allah. Untwist their hearts and intentions. Help them to see good for what it truly is: not killing, but healing; not forcing one’s will on others, but letting others choose.

And if they cannot and will not be reached by Your love, then when they have exterminated themselves in their own futility, may the meek truly inherit the earth.

All of this I pray not knowing what Your will is in this matter, so I must add the “nevertheless” Your Son added in Gethsemane … and I ask Him to bring you this prayer and all of the other groanings which only Your Spirit can put into words.

Amen.

If as a follower of Christ you can accept the premise below that passing new laws about abortion and homosexual marriage without explaining WHY to non-Christian culture is pointless, then you and I are left to puzzle out HOW to do that.

Right off the bat, we’re confronted with a Pauline dilemma about judging others: “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside.” – I Cor. 5:11-13.

However, it seems to be permissible for us to judge the acts of those outside, some of which he mentions in verse 11: sexual immorality, idolatry, swindling, slander and drunkenness.

Then HOW do we explain the WHY?

This post would be too long to try to deal with both questions, so let’s just pry into one for now.

Scripture only seems to mention abortion specifically maybe only twice, both times in the Old Testament. In Exodus 21:22-25, a brawling man who hits a pregnant woman and causes a miscarriage (spontaneous abortion?) must pay whatever fine her husband requires. In Numbers 5:11-21, a husband who suspects his pregnant wife of infidelity may ask a priest to force her to drink water mixed with dust and pronounce a curse upon her if she is guilty. The curse may or may not be correctly interpreted to mean that her womb is to miscarry – hard to tell because of the possibility of euphemisms.

Neither of these instances deals directly with an abortion chosen by a woman … probably because Jewish women of that era apparently saw childbirth as a privilege and blessing; the means to perform one doubtless existed, but no woman would have wanted to.

David may well have recognized God’s power in Psalm 139:13: “You knit me together in my mother’s womb; I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Yet David also said “Even from birth the wicked go astray; from the womb they are wayward and speak lies.” (Psalm 58:3) And Job, at the extremity of temptation and suffering, wished he had never been born or even conceived (Job 3:1-19).

Can we rush to condemn all abortion wholesale when God commands Israel’s armies to utterly destroy their enemies, men women and children? (Deut. 7:2, 20:17, Judges 21:10-11)

It’s a complicated question. When does it become wrong?

Several years ago, my friend Char became pregnant and something went very wrong. The fetus inside her became cancerous, and the pregnancy threatened her life. You can be sure that she and her husband prayed about it. They chose to abort as soon as possible. (They have had two beautiful children since, thank you.)

Another friend, Cindy, was pregnant with her second when in-womb testing revealed that the fetus would almost certainly not survive to full term, though it was no threat to her. You can be sure that she and her husband prayed about it, too. They chose to carry to full term. The baby was born, lived a few minutes, and passed to his next life. (They have since been blessed with a handsome son to keep his older sister company, thanks.)

I’m not wise enough to say that their choices were right or wrong, or would have been right or wrong had they chosen the other alternative.

I just know that at the funeral for Cindy’s baby, her minister shared (with their permission) that they had told him:

“We don’t know why God took our baby home. But we also don’t know why He blessed us with his beautiful sister, or anything else in this life.”

How could anyone express the “why” more eloquently?

Next in this series: The One Where I Just Lose

I’m titling this entry in the grand tradition of the TV series “Friends,” fully expecting to lose a few.

Because I dare to ask the question: What good does it do to pass laws against abortion and homosexual marriage?

Will laws put a stop to abortion? Will laws keep homosexuals from living together just like married people?

Will a new law cause a woman who is considering having an abortion to suddenly think, “Hey! That would be illegal! There must be some reason it’s been made illegal. It must be a sin, and would displease God, and would reserve a place for me in hell. I’d better not do it.”?

Will a new law cause a gay couple to realize: “You know, our lifestyle must be a choice after all, and it must be the wrong choice. If so many people dislike it, it must surely be against God’s will, and worthy of His condemnation. We’d better split up and go straight.”?

Or do such laws just further polarize and alienate the very souls that Jesus laid His life down so that we could reach, and teach, and persuade?

Are we so lazy about His great commission that we just want laws to do the job for us?

Do laws like that really do the job, or just reinforce the perception that Christians are the people who say “I’m saved and you’re not; I’m good and you’re bad; God loves me and hates you, so nyah nyah nyah!”?

What good does it do to pass these laws?

If you say, “Well, it shows where we stand as Christians,” my response is: Was there a doubt before? And are Christians supposed to stand, or to go? teach? disciple?

If you say, “It protects our marriages, our children, the unborn, and our culture,” my response is: how?

If you say, “It’s just the right thing to do,” my response is …

Well, you just read it.

Next in this series: The One Where I Lose More Friends

That’s what Mike Cope’s blog about TEENAGE BREAST IMPLANTS has become, with 51 (so far) responses to his request for comments. That’s probably some kind of record. Many, many of those comments are top-heavy with spiritual wisdom and insight, however (sorry, mine isn’t) and that helps maintain the balance. In case you haven’t dropped by, click the link above.

I just wanted to keep you abreast of the issue.

I was surprised when I got on the plane for Memphis Saturday morning. It was a pretty big plane, an Airbus 319, and completely full. I didn’t know why until I read the airline magazine on my second flight to Indianapolis – a half-full little DC-9: Saturday was the birthday of Elvis.

Undoubtedly, a pretty good percentage of my fellow passengers on that first flight were making their first or second or annual pilgrimmage to Graceland.

A pilgrimmage is an interesting thing. All adherents to Islam are expected to make one to Mecca at least once in their lives. Many of my acquaintances have longed to make one to Israel, and a few have even braved the dangers to do so.

I had to ask myself: Would I?

It’s not a high priority on my list of future travel destinations. In fact I’d rather see Vancouver, Portmeirion or even Charleston for the first time. Or San Francisco again.

But, more important, would I make a pilgrimmage to the places Jesus would have me go?

To the flood-ravaged, the famished, those ill from AIDs, the drug ghetto-trapped, the poverty-stricken, the war-decimated, the hopeless, the imprisoned, the unsought and untouchable and unloved?

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” -Matthew 25:44-46

I obviously need to change my travel plans.

And book them early.