Aim High (no pun intended)

"Let's make it a little bit harder for our kids to get gunned down."  

~Barack Obama

We have a president who wants to "make it a little bit harder" for mass murderers to gun down children. Remind me, again, why I did not vote for such Ivy-League, Constitutional-law-professor, highest-IQ-of-any- president-ever, Nobel-prize-winning genius.

Someday, children in schools will read in textbooks that George Washington was our first president; Abraham Lincoln led our nation through a horrific civil war and brought freedom to slaves; John F. Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country"; Ronald Reagan returned economic prosperity after years of decline and restored the world's respect for America; and Barack Obama made it a little bit harder for a crazed murderer to walk into their building and gun them down.

So if President Obama's goal is to make it a little bit harder for murderers to gun down school children, does that mean that instead of killing twenty children and six adults, the next gunman might only be able to kill fifteen children and four adults--because it's a little bit harder? Maybe we should make gunmen wear blindfolds to make it even more challenging yet. Tie one hand behind their backs too? Make them spin in a circle for thirty seconds before they start shooting? Yes, yes, indeed, let's make it a little bit harder for our kids to get gunned down. That's a worthy goal. That's what hope and change looks like.

And if anyone out there is wondering, yes, this is sarcasm.

Drugs for Being Human

As both a former teacher and mom of boy(s), I have often feared that we are drugging our boys for the illness of being . . . boys. Rather than shaping our schools to meet boys' needs, we shape the boys with chemicals to make them  meet the school's needs. I often wonder what we'll be learning about those medicated boys' health conditions twenty or thirty years from now when they are raising boys of their own. Chemicals have consequences.

As one who has grieved deeply the loss of a young sister and a young husband, I have also known those who think the answer to grief is a pill. And you can take pills, and I have, but the person you grieve remains dead. There is no pill for that.

In a recent conversation among the three of us who live together in this house that sprang from an observation that those who have become known as hoarders are mentally ill, we observed the absurdity that seemingly everything has become a mental illness, and if everyone who ever does anything from stupid to  seriously damaging is only mentally ill, then he or she isn't responsible. He or she should just take a pill.

This editorial in the New York Times speaks eloquently of the illness of being human.

Humility the Antidote to Scandal

It's interesting how nearly every writer, every news reporter comments on one outstanding characteristic of Pope Francis I: his humility.

Perhaps we appreciate it so much because it was such a significant characteristic (perhaps the most significant?) of Jesus and we find it so difficult to achieve ourselves (at least I do):

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. (Phil. 2:4-6 NKJV)

As she often does, Peggy Noonan shows great insight in today's column, expressing appreciation for the new pope's humility and hoping that this trait in him will bring about reform in the Roman Catholic Church. She sees that the opposite of humility has caused the scandals that have plagued the Church of Rome:

"The Catholic Church in 2013 is falling into ruin. The church has been damaged by scandal and the scandals arose from arrogance, conceit, clubbiness and an assumption that the special can act in particular ways, that they may make mistakes but it's understandable, and if it causes problems the church will take care of it."

While Reformed Protestants have many differences with Roman Catholics, we do share this in common: we all fall into sin. Like the Roman Catholics, we can be guilty of "arrogance, conceit, clubbiness, and an assumption that the special can act in particular ways." These sins, unaddressed, can lead us into scandal.

May we seek the antidote to our "unhumility" at the cross, where we see the greatest display of humility in history. May this mind be in us which was also in Christ Jesus.

"The stage is set for potential pastoral tyranny"

At Ref 21, Dr. Trueman has a series on the importance of confessions for churches. In part 2 he considers "the way in which [confessions] bind elders and people together by setting the terms of their relationship and provide the necessary foundation of a relationship built on transparency and accountability." He explains, "If a church has no confession, or has a confession that is so minimal that it does not touch in significant ways on a relatively comprehensive set of topics covering Christian doctrine and life, [or, I might add, if a church has a solid, biblical confession and the elders choose to ignore it], the stage is set for potential pastoral tyranny. What Trueman writes is always worth reading, and both parts of this series ("I Confess") are valuable.

White as Snow

“Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:

though your sins are like scarlet,

    they shall be as white as snow;

though they are red like crimson,

    they shall become like wool" (Isaiah 1:18).

It has been a snowy February here in Grand Rapids. My heart sank just a little when I looked outside just now and saw the brick sidewalk that Jonathan and I cleaned off a couple of hours ago now dusted with snow. I've never been a fan of winter, and every year about this time as friends fly off to warmer temperatures, I find real challenges in fighting off the temptation to covet their sandy beach/fun-in-the-sun experiences. And this year, with my husband's new job as the systems analyst for a large local snowplowing company, snow has meant his staying up all night (for several nights in a row--whenever there is a "snow event") or setting the alarm for odd times like 3:00 am so that he can get up and send out the message to the plow drivers to get busy . . . again.

But those of us who live in snowy climates do have an advantage over those who live in places where mittens, ear muffs, and snow boots exist only in movies or picture books. Every winter, when the snow falls, we do get a lovely picture of what is described in Isaiah 1:18. Before that first snowfall, everything is dead. The grass is brown and lifeless, tree branches so recently arrayed in crimson and gold hang naked, and everything is ugly and brown. And then the blanket of white gently covers the grass, decorates the naked tree branches, and sometimes, when the sun shines, sparkles like diamonds on top of what must still be brown, lifeless grass and mud. But we forget about all the death and ugliness underneath, because everything is white as snow.

And then we pray, "Heavenly Father, thank you for sending the snow to remind us of what we look like to you when we are clothed in your Son's pure righteousness. Because even though once our sins stood out red, like crimson, impossible to be missed, they have become, in your sight, white as the snow that blankets the earth, white like wool. Thank you for the snow."