A Thundering Answer

/ W. Keith Brenton / 10 Comments

 “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!”

Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.”  The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.

~ John 12:27-29

jesusprayingrockI have prayed and prayed. My soul, like my Lord’s, is troubled as surely as His was on that day when, still freshly arrived in Jerusalem, Phillip brought to Him two Greeks who wanted to see Him. And He told them it was time for Him to die.

That a seed must die before it can grow.

That one must hate life to save it.

That one must follow and serve Him.

My soul is troubled, because life as I knew it and wanted it to be will change in the weeks and months to come; will be overshadowed by fear and pain and death — and none of us in our family knows what those days will hold for us.

I have prayed and prayed. And, like Jesus, I don’t know what to pray for anymore. The very Son of God, God in essence talking to Himself in prayer, shared my perplexity about what to pray.

But Jesus’ answer came immediately, and it has come to me this morning. Thundering. Unnerving. Blowing me away.

“Father, glorify Your name.”

He can glorify it by taking away Angi’s pancreatic cancer and liver lesions; by completely conquering the depression that Laura has been courageously battling these many months. I understand that. It’s what I want, and what I’ve prayed for.

Yet, I also know somewhere deep within that He can also glorify His name by doing only one of those things, or neither, or something exceeding abundantly beyond all that I can ask or imagine. I don’t understand that. It’s what I’m afraid to want, and what I’m unable to pray for.

Jesus’ answer is simple: “Trust Him.”

He doesn’t need the thundering answer from His Father or through an angel; it’s for our benefit. For my benefit:

“I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.”

That, of course, it what must matter most.

Not because God is any less if His name is not glorified, but because we are.

Not because God will shrivel up into a powerless dry myth if His name is not made known, but that the power of His name will not be made known in order to explode the dry myth into powder.

Not because God will be blown away, but because sometimes “me” needs to be blown away, and replaced with “He.”

I write these words now while I can still write them in faith, because I know me and I know I will need to read them again later as my faith is stretched and pulled and yanked out of socket by the unseeable future. I will need to remind myself of the commitment of faith I’ve made to praise Him as the only One whose name is to be hallowed; to pray “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven;” to offer as my only plea, “Father, glorify Your name.”

I will still tell Him what I want and need and beg for in His unique love, mercy and providence.

Yet I will still need to temper my petitions with the recognition that He knows me better than I know myself; He knows what we need more accurately than we do; He knows and loves my family more dearly than I ever could.

He alone can — and will — do what will best glorify His name, to the blessing of all whom He loves.

And His grace will be sufficient.

Your Prayers Needed for My Family

/ W. Keith Brenton / 30 Comments

20130219-201831.jpgThe Brenton family needs your prayers, because we need two miracles.

Angi has been a little ill – digestive difficulties – since January and it got bad enough that she went to the doctor early last week. They did some blood tests and a CT scan Friday, 2/15. The preliminary diagnosis we got the next day from the scan is pancreatic cancer – a golfball-sized tumor near the bottom of the pancreas, and unfortunately, signs that it has spread to the liver.

The prognosis for this type of cancer is never good, and life expectancy if caught early is usually about nine to twelve months – less if other organs are affected.

She will see an oncologist in Asheville Thursday, one who specializes in this type of cancer, and we’ll know more then.

This has been a shock for all of us, and we have been informing family members and friends. It has been especially difficult for our 16-year-old daughter Laura, who has been battling depression for some months. The day Angi’s scan was taken, we were admitting Laura to the local hospital’s ER for a comprehensive evaluation. We agreed (including Laura) with the evaluating team that she needed to be placed temporarily at a hospital which specializes in treating depression, and one of us was with her at the ER 24 hours a day until a bed opened up Monday evening 2/18, just 3-1/2 hours away. We have taken her there, and she’ll be in that program to help restart her life about 5-7 days.

I preached Sunday morning and longed to explain to our church family at Sylva why I was so earnestly seeking their prayers, but I couldn’t until we had been able to tell extended family – our moms, kids, sisters and Angi’s cousins – and a few working colleagues. Each one of our church family respected that, and prayed in faith that God knew what was best for us and would provide.

That’s what we’re asking from all of you: prayers of faith. Be as specific as you want to be in your prayers, but we really need two miracles. I’ve only asked for a miracle once before – my dad’s recovery from a heart episode and coma at age 66, 20 years ago. God didn’t answer as my family and I had hoped or asked at that time, but we still believe in His limitless power and desire for what is best for us.

Thank you in advance for your grace in doing this. We may not be able to respond to every kind word you send while we try to cluster our far-flung family in prayer and hope. But please know how much we appreciate your prayers, love and well-wishes.

Situation Ethics

/ W. Keith Brenton / 21 Comments

Forty and fifty years ago, Christian preachers of every stripe, color and denomination so soundly and roundly condemned this philosophical principle that people have feared to even utter the words lest they be laughed at for their stupidity as they be spirited away by hell’s flame-winged demons.

I have no fear of these two words situation ethics. I have no fear of the philosophical principle which they describe.

And I have no fear of people who would roundly and soundly condemn me for uttering them, and defending even a part of that principle.

Part of it is what I wish to defend, and all that I wish to defend.

As long as we all understand that it does not supersede scripture.

And that the end does not justify the means.

There are serious difficulties and aspects of the principle that are just plain wrong — and by that, I mean indefensible in light of scripture. But there is also a truth or two at its core that we cannot, must not so easily dispense with.

One of Satan’s most powerful tools in the war against Christianity is his myth that any given action must-be-and-is intrinsically (of itself) either right or wrong.

And we have swallowed that lie as if it were a draught from the river of life itself.

Let me state this plainly:

Not every possible action we can take is, in and of itself, morally right or morally evil.

Some actions are morally neutral. We perform thousands of them each day: Tying a shoe. Walking out of a house. Driving away in a car.

It is the situation in which those actions or objects are found that can make them morally right or morally wrong.

Tying someone else’s shoes together without their knowledge is wrong. Tying your own shoes together is stupid, but at least you’re only wronging yourself.

Walking out of a house that is on fire without telling anyone else that it is aflame is wrong.

Driving away in a car you’ve just stolen is wrong.

You get the point.

Even scripture recognizes this.

Paul wanted to take with him on his mission trips a young man named Timothy, who had not been circumcised. In order for Timothy to enter a synagogue (where Paul initially always went on those trips), he needed to be circumcised. There was nothing wrong with it circumcision just wasn’t a prerequisite to salvation (Acts 15). Paul had Timothy circumcised (Acts 16:3).

On a trip back to Jerusalem, however, Titus would not be compelled to be circumcised (Galatians 2:3) because it would have seemed to support that false doctrine, that circumcision was a prerequisite to salvation.

Is circumcision morally right or wrong?

Well, obviously, in one situation it helped the gospel and in another situation it hindered the gospel.

Isolated example, you say?

Then you need to read the entirety of Paul’s letter to Rome, but especially Romans 14. Believers were asking Paul to make rules about whether it was right or wrong to celebrate certain holidays; whether it was faithful or evil to eat meat of unknown origin; meat which might have been partially sacrificed in honor to a pagan god or idol. Paul’s response is that the good or evil of it is in your own heart; follow your conscience. If you violate your conscience, you do evil. But you cannot violate someone else’s conscience nor can they violate yours, because a conscience is a deeply personal, individually formed thing.

Christian speakers of a previous generation would have liked for Romans 14 to have ceased to exist, and they avoided and refuted it (by re-interpreting or limiting it) as much as possible. Having every action declarable as right or wrong makes things easier to control; makes it easier to judge and condemn others and frankly, too much of Christianity has been in the business of doing those things for so many centuries that a blanket condemnation of situation ethics was a very comforting blanket indeed.

Don’t start on me. There have always been, and always will be, scriptural injunctions against specific acts of evil and encouragements to specific acts of virtue. They will not change. Ever. God meant for us to discern good and evil, or the potential for it would never have been placed in the garden east of Eden, right next to the tree of life. (This, by the way, is where the principle of situation(al) ethics goes awry; it does not ask if loving God is important or if expressing it by obeying His will for us is important. It considers only love for others.)

Don’t warn me of the slippery slope. Every day we live and breathe and have our being; every moment we make moral choices, we’re facing a slippery slope. Each time we sin, it gets a little easier. It doesn’t matter what the sin is. Each time we sin, we drive a little more wedge between ourselves and God.

That’s why it’s so vitally important that we understand that this world of choices was never created in moral black and white or even just shades of grey, but in every conceivable, perceivable color and hue and shade and texture and sound and smell.

God put man in the garden to see what he would do; to see what he would name the animals; to see if man would understand that there is a difference between good and not-good, and that being alone is not-good. God gave man choice in order for him to be able to discern good from evil because He knew that we learn best by doing. Man chose the easy way, the knowledge of good and evil in one great gulp — and learned the hard way that evil has consequences and that evil separates one from God.

That was the situation God put man in.

He puts us in our situations to be able to discern good from evil, too; to act out our own ethics and learn from the experience; to taste what is good and see that it is good and to taste what is evil and to see that while it is pleasurable and self-satisfying and seems good to self, self, self … it is bitterness and poison and death in the end.

Now this puts us in very uncomfortable territory. It would just be easier to have a big book of rules and follow the rules and make God happy and generally be ignorant about life and discernment and wisdom. It would be easier for God to just keep everyone under control by giving us a big book of rules and smiting anyone who disobeys.

But that violates the very nature of God, the very meaning of the Word/ Logos, the very Spirit of Holiness. Because that one Word which makes sense out of everything that’s hard to discern is love.

God IS love.

Love the Lord your God with everything that is within you and is you.

Love your neighbor as dearly as you love yourself.

Do this, and you have the key, the linchpin on which the law hangs and the world revolves.

In any situation, it is the defining ethic.

In matters clearly defined by scripture, follow scripture. It is God’s word; God’s revelation of His very nature and His will for us. But it is not a mere rule book. It does not cover every possible and conceivable action, let alone every situation in which that action can be taken. If you’re not sure about any action you feel compelled to consider; doctrine you’ve been taught … if you can’t find it in scripture (not everything God would like to see us do and become is explicitly spelled out there!), then measure it by this golden rule:

Do for others as you would have them do for you.

That’s the way God operates. That’s the way Jesus lived and lives in you. That’s the way the Spirit moves.

He has given and given and given. He has loved and loved and loved. He wants the joy found in that life to be yours, forever.

There is no joy in judging others.

He does not want that for you.

That will be His task, as little joy as it must give Him in far too many cases, for He alone is competent, worthy, righteous, just, merciful, forgiving, perfect.

We are not.

That, my dear ones, is the situation in which we find ourselves … and find our God … and find that He has placed us.

For our own good. For everyone’s own good. And for His own good.

Time to Pray for My Friends Again

/ W. Keith Brenton / 17 Comments

Praying for CFTF, Day 4In this instance, the friends I’m praying for are the folks preparing and gathering for the 2013 Spring “Contending for the Faith Lectures.”

I had such hope when I saw on the sponsoring church’s home page that the topic this year would be “Christ – The Great Controversialist.” I dared to think that the practices of the past might be done away with in this year’s lectures, and that the presentations might actually be Christ-centered, and elaborate on His controversial teachings, life, death, and resurrection – the gospel that saves us.

But here’s their list of topics and speakers, and I greatly fear that the topics (in many cases, at least) indicate a focus on repeating questionable doctrines generated by men and attributing them to God as if scripture relayed them from Him word-for-word, and no human logic or inference or deduction or conclusion was involved. And I suspect that these topics will serve as an opportunity for lambasting as apostate those who disagree with the speakers’ logic, inferences, deductions and conclusions — as well as disagreeing with their insistence that these constitute God’s own doctrine.

I fear these things because of the tenor of these lectures in the past (2012, 2011, 2010, etc.), and so many of the names are the same, and the odds of a change of heart among so many are not very good, really.

So as speakers and attendees prepare, I will again be praying for them the same things I have prayed in years past — and these are the same things I pray for myself and anyone else who desires to speak about, for and in partnership with God, His Son and His Holy Spirit.

I would so very much like to be proven wrong about the things I fear.

I Don’t Really Like To Argue

/ W. Keith Brenton / 5 Comments

AeropagusI’m probably much closer to a conflict-avoider than a peacemaker, and I don’t have any real hope that Jesus’ blessing in Matthew 5:9 to include conflict-avoiders like me.

But, apparently, arguing — and arguing persuasively — is very much essential to the spread of the gospel. At least it is, if you’re looking at the example of Paul.

When on a mission trip, he almost always went first to a synagogue. (Acts 9:20; 13:5, 14; 14:1 – “as usual”; 17:2 – “as was his custom”; 17:10; 18:4, 19; 19:18.) That makes sense:

  1. It’s what Jesus did (Matthew 4:23; 9:35; 12:9; 13:54 and parallel/other references in the companion gospels). And Paul was all about imitating Christ (Philippians 2:1; 1 Corinthians 11:1). 
  2. Jews and proselytes in the synagogue would already have a basic familiarity with one God, the law and the prophets. So Paul could start from there to prove that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, who had to die and to be raised from death. Maybe the most complete sermon of this approach was to Pisidian Antioch, recorded in Acts 13:13ff.
  3. There, the folks in the synagogue asked for a word of encouragement; Paul preached the gospel, but he did so proving each point from scripture. Not a bad example to follow.

In many instances, he encountered opposition. That means he couldn’t just preach. He had to argue with the Jews who refused to believe (Acts 14:2-7; 15:1-2; 17:1-5; 18:5-6). It was important to demonstrate, both to those who believed and those who doubted, that there was no backing down from the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Once again, Paul was imitating Jesus — who would not back down from persuading people to reach the conclusion that He was the Messiah, the Christ, who had to die and live again.

He didn’t argue much with pagans; there was too much teaching to do. And God had a tendency to either defuse tense confrontations with pagans (often with miracles) or to place Paul in them under circumstances of trial as a Roman citizen so he could teach, as Jesus had prophesied in Matthew 10:19 and Mark 13:11 (which he did, often with remarkable humility and humor – see Acts 26).

So I find that the teaching of scripture is that believers who want to share the gospel …

  1. need to spend their words and passion teaching those who do not know God, not so much arguing with them.
  2. may have to argue from time to time with those who believe in the one God — sometimes even those who believe in His Son Jesus (as was the case with the circumcision party in Acts 15) — to prove persuasively that the gospel is not a matter of obeying man’s law, but of accepting the forgiveness of God through the grace shown in Jesus Christ.

This is difficult for me. I don’t really like to argue.

But, sometimes, that is what I am called to do.

Look At Him

/ W. Keith Brenton / 2 Comments

Jesus the Bread of LifeSometimes random thoughts occur to me, and I’m never quite sure where they come from.

This morning when I awakened, the thought was:

“Jesus didn’t say what I’d say if I were hanging on a cross.”

In particular, I realized that probably what I’d be saying over and over again, to those few friends and kinfolk clustered at the foot of my cross would be: “Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me. Don’t, please, don’t look. Don’t remember me this way.”

I wouldn’t want them — especially my mother — to see me naked and shamed and beaten and tortured and condemned.

But I’m not Jesus. As we traditionally order His seven short sayings from the cross, the third one is quite the opposite: “Woman, look at your Son.” And then to John: “Look after your mother.”

He was naked, to be sure, but though He carried all sin to the cross, none of it was His. There was nothing about being naked before all that was shaming to Him. He’d lived His whole life as transparently as humanly possible before everyone around Him.

He was beaten and tortured and condemned, but had done nothing to deserve it:

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
~ Isaiah 53:5

In so few words, He revealed so much:

  1. Father forgive them, for they know not what they do (Luke 23:34). He was the sinless sacrifice for sin.
  2. Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise (Luke 23:43). He was the embodiment of the righteous Judge.
  3. Woman, behold your son: behold your mother (John 19:26-27). He wanted to be looked upon. He loved and cared for family and friends. His last thoughts were for others.
  4. My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? (Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34). He fulfilled prophecy, and called His purpose to our attention by asking.
  5. I thirst (John 19:28). He was fully human. His pain and suffering and dehydration were all real.
  6. It is finished (John 19:30). He had accomplished His mission.
  7. Father, into your hands I commit my spirit (Luke 23:46). His Spirit was His own to keep or surrender or take back or give away as He pleased.

I believe He wants us to look upon Him as He hangs on the cross. I don’t necessarily believe that is the only way He wants us to remember Him, whether or not we’re gathered at His table, but I do believe He does not want us to forget this pivotal moment in His life, our lives, and all of creation.

Look upon Him there, and see what sin does. Your sin. My sin. All sin.

Avert your eyes if you must, but look upon Him again. This time when you open them, see what else He meant for you to see:

This is what grace means.

Row vs. Wade vs. Hoist Sail

/ W. Keith Brenton / 3 Comments

I understand this is sensitive, especially this close to a Roe v. Wade anniversary, but …

Surely at least you folks who assured everyone that gun control laws will not stop mass shootings must understand that criminalizing abortion will not put a stop to the practice?

I’m all for repealing legislation that requires taxpayers to fund abortions against their consciences — it’s just wrong.

Yet if we really want to reduce the number of abortions, we Christians need to quit putting all our eggs in the anti-abortion law basket. We need to be about the much harder business of meeting, befriending, loving and accepting young unmarried women who are pregnant — especially those who have no history of parental love, no knowledge of a loving and forgiving God or His Savior Son, and no visible means of financial support. We need to be willing to open our hearts, homes and maybe even wallets to help them to choose a better option. We need to be willing to set up vocational training and day care opportunities through our churches. We need to establish fellowships for adoption and scholarships for career-seeking young women who intend to keep their babies.

We need to be willing to provide foster homes for babies given for adoption, and legal assistance with fees, and help in connecting birth-mothers with adoptive families.

We need to be ambassadors of God’s grace in this world, not spigots of judgment and condemnation, and/or legislators of morality.

Anyone can sign a petition, cast a vote, badger a legislator to pass a law, and go back to their lives the next minute, able to salve their consciences that they didn’t make a wrong choice that led to pregnancy and they’re not responsible.

If we’re really serious about saving the lives of unborn children, then we need to face the hard choices, too.

I’m a parent of two awesome adopted children, and I owe more than I can ever repay to some exemplary people who made some very tough choices.

We can try row upstream against the river of public opinion with nothing but anti-abortion legislation, continue to wade through it, or hoist sail by expressing the love that explains why we oppose it and also Who died so that God’s family could grow.

Are We There Yet?

/ W. Keith Brenton / 1 Comment

Today we celebrate Martin Luther King Day, and remember that he was a complex person in a time when hatred was a simple fact. I would say that where he was strongest and most right — and where he was weakest and went most wrong — was his bias toward love.

He was many things: visionary, activist; saint, sinner; minister, martyr.

His world was polarized in a black-versus-white conflict, and he was determined to make us realize that we were all merely different shades of brown, and that the true polarization in the world was between — not black and white — but light and darkness; good and evil; love and hatred.

He took us farther down the path toward love. We have come a long way since he lived, loved, and died.

But we Americans are still polarized. We still choose up sides and smell armpits. We love our President, or we hate him. We love the party that opposes his, or we hate them all. I recognize that much of the difference between political parties is ideological, but most of it is simply partisan, and probably some of it is racial and prejudicial — on both sides of the color extremes.

The fact remains that we have simplified the complex so that we don’t have to cast a vision of unity and actively pursue it. No, it’s much easier to say that “my side is right about everything and therefore good, and anyone who doesn’t agree with us on everything is wrong and evil.”

None of that justifies the venom, the spleen, the gall, the threats, the mass distribution of lies and innuendoes and accusations and outright hatred that we have attached to our sacred rightness.

If you think about Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and ask, “Are we there yet?” the answer is a resounding “no.”

Racism still exists, and while its proportions have been reduced, it is still a horrible reality in a nation where rights for all were declared to trump the rightness of some.

We may have made strides in our battle against racism, but in many ways, we have simply traded black and white for red and blue.

We’ve traded the American dream for just another nightmare.

We owe ourselves, each other, our children, and our children’s children, a few moments to listen to and meditate on the eloquent phrasing of the dream by one of the few visionaries who tried to help make it reality and lost it all for love:

I Will Not Own a Gun

/ W. Keith Brenton / 1 Comment

I’m fine with you owning one, but if you do, or own a permit for one, or are licensed to carry one:

I think you need to be as rigorously tested about your knowledge of guns and gun laws as anyone who gets a driver’s license is about laws regarding driving a car.gunonwhite

I think you need to be as insured for gun ownership as any auto driver is required to be against accidents, withbenefits payable to the victim(s) of any crime or accident that occurs with any gun registered to you.

I think you should store your guns unloaded and locked up securely. A glass display case with a decorative key-lock is not secure. (If you don’t own a gun, you should lock up your prescription medicine the same way.)

I know this will not stop violent gun crime, but if you own and carry, you owe it to the people who do not to be as responsible as you can be about your right, to help keep stolen and illegal weapons out of the hands of violent criminals, and to prevent accidents due to loaded and unsecured weapons.

Now for the shock:

I don’t think this ought to be law.

It ought to be the recognized, self-enforced responsibility of every gun-owner to observe these suggestions as the natural course of living in society while owning a gun.

Guns don’t kill people, but people with guns do kill people.

The plain fact is, when disturbed and angry people set out to kill a lot of other people, they don’t generally reach for a baseball bat or a knife or set about the complicated process of securing the materials and building a bomb. There are exceptions, and history is full of them, and the news takes note of them because they are the exceptions.

I don’t know what the breakeven number of murders is to classify a crime as “mass murder,” but we have tended to become numbed to news stories of three, four ,five, six and even more people being shot to death as just a part of life to flinch at but not remember.

We’re saddened when we read a tiny news story buried back in the paper — or an obituary — about a child who was killed by finding a loaded gun in the house and playing with it.

But we don’t take note of it or remember it in the same way that we do when stories of multiple killings are broadcast over and over again on the news and splashed on the front page of the newspaper.

If you own one gun or many, please:

Do what you can to keep guns out of easy access to people who want to kill people — or who don’t know how to use them.

Break Free

/ W. Keith Brenton / 2 Comments

I’ve become convinced that one of the most enslaving temptations is the one to judge. It just leads to all kinds of harm to others and self under the pretense of making you feel better about yourself by comparing yourself favorably to others.

As if we were somehow better.

What bullarkey.

The year is new. The opportunity is before us. It’s time to break free.

Judge the rightness of words and actions for yourself (Luke 12:57).

Don’t judge other people (Matthew 7:1; Luke 6:37; Romans 14:4-10).

Jesus didn’t (John 8:15) but will (Acts 10:42; 17:31).

Then again, He has an advantage we don’t have (John 8:16).

So leave it to the Expert (Romans 2:3).

Your time will come (1 Corinthians 6:3).

Do yourself and others a favor. Try the Greg Boyd shopping mall experiment:* Stop judging people around you and just love them today.

Then repeat 365 times.

You’ll have a full year of freedom from the terrible burden of judging others, and the freedom to love others sans judgment.

Keep trying. Chances are, with experience, we’ll all get better at it.

Take a stand for freedom in 2013.

__________

*Click on the link to “Look Inside,” then on the one for “First Pages.”