BIBLE ENRICHED SPIRITUAL TRUTHS: March 2020

Tuesday, 31 March 2020

Death Can Still Sting

By fighting to save physical lives, the church imitates Christ.

The shutdowns are worth it, said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (Democrat) at a recent press conference. “And if everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy.” Bringing New York City to a grinding halt and risking national economic turmoil more severe than the Great Depression is all worthwhile, Cuomo argued, if it lowers the death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic even a little.

In an immediately controversial essay at First Things, the journal’s editor R. R. Reno roundly rejected Cuomo’s claim. “This statement reflects a disastrous sentimentalism,” he wrote. “There are many things more precious than life.” Anticipating allegations of hypocrisy citing his advocacy against abortion, Reno insisted these are dissimilar concerns. The “pro-life cause concerns the battle against killing,” he said, “not an ill-conceived crusade against human finitude and the dolorous reality of death.”

The germ of this argument is clearly in the air. Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick (Republican) argued that elderly people like himself should be willing to die of COVID-19 so their grandchildren can keep “the America that all America loves.” Radio host Glenn Beck made the same proposal. And in conversations with Christian family members about the value of social distancing, I keep running into similar logic.

“None of us gets out of life alive,” they say, or, “The Lord will take me when he takes me.” Physical death is not something Christians need fear, they argue, because Christ conquered death itself (1 Cor. 15:54–57; 2 Tim. 1:9–10). Dramatic measures to control the deadly spread of COVID-19 aren’t a good thing. State ...

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Every Child Is On The Altar

Suffer the little children to come unto me.

Today’s musical pairing, chosen to illustrate the meditation below, is Flight from the City by Jóhann Jóhannsson. See the video embedded below. Note that all the songs for this series have been gathered into a Spotify playlist here.

“When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, ‘Abraham! Abraham!’ ‘Here I am,’ he replied. ‘Do not lay a hand on the boy,’ he said. ‘Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.’”
Genesis 22:9–12

Day 10. 838,061 confirmed cases, 41,261 deaths globally.

When the shadow of death touches the doorstep, we draw our children close. We fear more for them than we fear for ourselves. What should happen to them if the virus finds its way into their veins?

The majority of the suffering and death in the pandemic is concentrated among those who are grown and full of years. Yet statistics and probabilities are no comfort when it comes to the thought of losing your children. Or the thought of your children losing you.

Children are watching their parents go to the hospital and are never seeing them again. Fathers are saying their farewells through windows. One mother spoke her last words to her children through a walkie-talkie. Even those without children of their own are praying for the children they know.

To become a parent is to let love overflow in all its miraculous creativity. To be a parent is to love ...

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Asian Americans Call on the Church to Preach Against Coronavirus Racism

Hundreds of Christian leaders sign into a landmark statement denouncing the spike in xenophobia.

Inspired by their convictions around human dignity and their hope in the body of Christ, Asian American believers are asking the church to take the lead in opposing anti-Asian racism fueled by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Asian American Christian Collaborative today released a statement describing the current rise in anti-Asian incidents—by some counts, more than 750 reports just last week—as the latest in the long history “yellow peril” tropes in the US.

The statement denounces xenophobia, stands in solidarity with victims, and directs Christians to speak out and make changes in their churches, schools, and communities.

“Our hope would be that people would address this from the pulpit,” said Ray Chang, a leader of the new collaborative. “There is no Good News without the bad news.”

The statement evokes the Christian commitment to neighborly love, calling for signatories to “engage in whole-life discipleship in your churches, and embrace the teaching and work of Jesus, by actively combating anti-Asian racism from the pulpit, in congregational life, and in the world.”

Hundreds have signed on, from prominent Asian American Christian leaders like North Park Theological Seminary professor Soong-Chan Rah and Evangelicals for Social Action director Nikki Toyama-Szeto to the heads of major evangelical entities like Fuller Seminary president Mark Labberton and World Relief president Scott Arbeiter.

Asian American Christians have been vocal about racist remarks, characterizations, and violence since the earliest days of the outbreak.

“‘America first’ or ‘my own race first’ is not living out the Parable of the Good Samaritan, where Jesus defined our ...

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Is it All About the Weekend? Not Now, and Should Not Have Ever Been

Customer-centric Sunday experiences have weakened the church— Coronavirus is pushing us to a better way.

Life looks rather different today than it did a month ago. All parts of life—home, community, work, even church. In fact, the Sunday morning gathered experience has been dethroned as the primary focus of our churches. Yes, it’s a painful thing for those of us who like to get together to learn and pray and worship together. We are simply following the tradition that Christ-followers have lived out for millennia.

And yet, for the sake of those around us, we cannot be together. For a season. For the sake of our world. It’s hard, and lonely.

But I would argue that in the midst of all this pain, some good can come.

Dethroning the Queen

I played competitive chess in high school. When you want to better yourself in competitive chess, you and your competitor take the queen off the board and you play with the other pieces.

Here's why: When you have inexperienced chess players, the queen is zipping around the board taking knights and various pawns. What is happening is that the whole game, the whole board, is revolving around the queen.

That’s fine unless you play against someone in competitive chess. In this case, you won’t have a chance. If you want to win in chess, you have to use all the pieces and use all the pieces well.

That can apply to church as well.

If our churches are to be effective at gospel work, we need to engage all the men and women that God has given us. They’re not pieces and they're not pawns, but neither is the Sunday morning worship service the queen. Right now, the queen of Sunday worship has been removed for some time and looks remarkably different than she did even last month.

The queen is dethroned. There is a sadness about this, sure. But I would argue that this allows ...

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Playing God: Pandemic Brings Moral Dilemmas to US Hospitals

Two Christian bioethicists on life or death issues that American doctors may soon face.

Medical professionals across the US are preparing COVID-19 units in a suspenseful quiet, while others in places like New York are already overwhelmed with patients. The city has ordered hospitals to increase capacity by 50 percent, and they are looking at ways to use temporary facilities, including a recently arrived Navy hospital ship, hastily built field hospitals, and even hotels.

In the midst of all this, doctors and nurses are preparing to face agonizing ethical decisions as their Italian counterparts have already in recent weeks. According to some estimates, the number of projected coronavirus patients needing ventilation in the US could reach anywhere between 1.4 and 31 patients per available ventilator.

There are three main ethical concerns that medical professionals are now facing, according to the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity: protecting the vulnerable by not overwhelming health care systems, allocating insufficient medical supplies, and keeping medical workers safe who lack the proper protective equipment against the virus. The questions are very real: Who should receive medical care when there aren’t enough resources to go around?

Two ethicists aiding US medical workers with these dilemmas are Carol L. Powers, a lawyer and the co-founder and chair of the Community Ethics Committee out of Harvard Medical School’s Center for Bioethics in Boston; and David Stevens, a physician and CEO emeritus of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations in Bristol, Tennessee who spent 11 years on the front lines of the HIV/AIDS and malaria epidemics in Africa.

CT spoke to Powers and Stevens about how Christians should approach issues of life or death.

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Playing God: Pandemic Brings Moral Dilemmas to US Hospitals

Two Christian bioethicists on life or death issues that American doctors may soon face.

CT spoke to Powers and Stevens about how Christians should approach issues of life or death.

from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/2WXULGn

Playing God: Pandemic Brings Moral Dilemmas to US Hospitals

Two Christian bioethicists on life or death issues that American doctors may soon face.

There are three main ethical concerns that medical professionals are now facing, according to the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity: protecting the vulnerable by not overtaxing health care systems, allocating insufficient medical supplies, and keeping medical workers safe who lack the proper protective equipment against the virus. The questions are very real: Who should receive medical care when there aren’t enough resources to go around?

Two ethicists aiding US medical workers with these dilemmas are Carol L. Powers, a lawyer and the co-founder and chair of the Community Ethics Committee out of Harvard Medical School’s Center for Bioethics in Boston; and David Stevens, a physician and CEO Emeritus of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations in Bristol, Tennessee who spent 11 years on the front lines of the HIV/AIDS and malaria epidemics in Africa.

CT spoke to Powers and Stevens about how Christians should approach issues of life or death.

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