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Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Slaughter of the Innocents—40th Anniversary

by Rick Blumenberg / @rickblumenberg

     
It is difficult to imagine a man like Herod. He was pro­bably one of the cruelest men who ever lived. Because of a pervasive fear someone would take his throne and he would be killed, he was vicious toward any threat, real or imagined. When he heard wise men had come to wor­ship a new Jewish king he called them to his palace to find and destroy the baby Jesus. (Matthew 2:13-23) His plot was foiled when God directed the wise men to go home by another route, but Herod devised another plan so vile we can hardly imagine it. He att­em­pted to destroy Jesus by taking the lives of every baby boy born in that part of the world who was under two years of age!
     
As horrible as that may seem, Herod's evil scheme was far surpassed in horror and bloodshed when the Supreme Court of the United States made it legal for anyone who chose to do so, to destroy their own unborn children through the practice of legalized abortion.
     
As we think about the 40th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, now more than 55 million children have had their lives callously snuffed out in hospitals designed to be in­stitu­tions of healing. In hospital mater­nity wards and nur­series throughout the world, doctors struggle to save babies youn­ger and smaller than those being destroyed in legalized abortions!
   
Abortion by choice is a self-inflicted death-blow to the home. If we can so easily destroy our unborn children, our living ones come next. When “pro-choice” groups first advocated legalized abortion as a means of birth control one reason in its favor was that it would diminish the incidence of child abuse since unwanted children would no longer be born. We don't hear this much anymore because we all know that since the legalization of abortion the incidences of child pornography, child abuse and child molesta­tion have literally skyrocketed upward. When we devalue any person or people, we devalue us all.
  
Any mother who has ever carried a child to term, any father who eagerly awaits the birth of a child, or any parents who lost an eagerly awaited child by miscarriage, will tell you that at eight months the baby is very much a per­son—a living being with an already developing personality. Thus life (as an individual hu­man being) must begin at conception or somewhere between conception and eight months....or is it seven? Six? Two?
      
Conception is the only answer that makes sense.
     
When we claim the unborn child is not human, it is only a small step to saying the helpless child, senior adult, mentally handicapped, or some other less than “perfect” beings are also less than human and they, too, can be exploited. Even as I write this, persons come to my mind in all of these categories and I remind myself they are all perfect just as they are!
     
When we claim unborn children are somehow less than human and therefore reasonable targets for abortion, we return to the mentality that produced slavery, the persecution and near destruction of the Native American peoples, and the holocaust of Jewish and Gypsy peoples by the Nazis. When we want to do a really evil thing to an­other human being we always seem to rationalize it by pretending they are not human, or, are somehow sub-human.
     
Someday history will look back on the abortion massacre of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries with the same revulsion with which we remember these other self-inflicted plagues of humanity.
     
On this January while we recognize the 40 anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, I know some of you who read this may have been deluded by the abortionists and agreed to a procedure for yourself, a loved one, or perhaps for unknown persons in an abortion mill. That agreement now leaves an ache in your heart that seemingly cannot be healed. I assure you Jesus Christ can heal your aching heart. He loves you and will bring grace and peace if you will surrender the pain to him. The Bible tells us there is “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1) so I urge you to trust him for complete healing.
     
I’m Rick Blumenberg and that’s My View from Tanner Creek.
   

Monday, January 21, 2013

The Christ Impact in Washington



by Rick Blumenberg / @rickblumenberg

In the words of Wikipedia, “The widow of a slain Mississippi civil rights leader Medgar Evers will help open the inaugural ceremony Monday. President Obama has selected activist Myrlie Evers-Williams to deliver the invocation. She's the first woman and lay person to have the honor.”

This is now past tense instead of future and she did well, bringing honor to her gender, her race, to that great host of godly laity she represented but especially to Almighty God and his Son, Jesus Christ, in whose name she prayed.

I joined with Mrs. Evers-Williams as she prayed for blessings on our nation and on every family throughout our land, followed by a rousing and prayerful rendition of the Battle Hymn of the Republic by the awesome Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir and wonderfully sung again by pop singer Beyonce.

Before President Obama and his family came to the ceremony they joined the congregation at St John’s Episcopal Church for a time of worship, as has been the custom of presidents through the years.

When Associate Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor swore in Vice President Joseph Biden it was in the name of God. When Chief Justice John Roberts swore in our president, the oath included and ended with the words “so help me God.”

I know we are not perfect and have many failings, but I am convinced we are still “One Nation Under God”. Sometimes we don’t act like it and many who are blessed by Almighty God to live in this land do not recognize or worship Him.

When our president began his speech with words from our Declaration of Independence, including “we  hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” he was recognizing our relationship, as a nation, with the God of all creation, the only true and living God. I don’t know how deep his faith is, but I am convinced that leading this nation of believers draws the president closer to God. It doesn’t matter how the president feels about it when he/she comes into office, serving a praying people who hold him up in prayer day after day, soon makes him realize he could not survive without those prayers and in becoming thankful for those prayers becomes ever more believing as he senses the strong support of Almighty God in this awesome task as leader of this great nation.

I don’t know how many people in the United States are believers in God. Most are Christians, (about 73%) many are Jewish and a few are Muslims and other God-worshipping religious groups. Although many believers in God do not recognize Christ as Savior, they are nevertheless blessed by their relationship with God and they are blessed by the coming of Jesus, whether they know it or not.

But all in all, we are a Christian nation. Some scoff at such a concept and others scorn it if it were true but don’t believe it is, but that powerful praying, preaching, believing horde of godly men, women and children, who undergird our nation with their petitions to God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and who do their best to serve God day after day—they are the ones who make this a Christian nation. It is their faith that sustains us and brings us the favor of Almighty God.

Some question whether or not our president is a Christian, and we know faith in Christ is not required to serve in that high office, but regardless, we heard our president conclude his speech with these powerful words, “Thank you and God bless you, and God bless these United States of America”. We need to recognize that we really are a nation under God and we remain a Christian nation, if for no other reason than the sheer number of Christ-followers who make up the people of our land.

I’m Rick Blumenberg and these are my thoughts on the Inauguration of President Barack Obama—My View from here on Tanner Creek.
 

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Children of God!



by Rick Blumenberg / @rickblumenberg

In the Church of God, the church group where I grew up and where I have ministered most of my life, we, like all Christians (and really all people) love to sing. Music is just one of the marvelous gifts of God for which we should be and are, totally grateful. Many of our ministers and laity have been gifted by God with the ability to write beautiful gospel songs to assist in worship and praise to God. One of those songs is “A Child of God”, written by Barney Warren, who grew up here in Southwest Michigan.(Geneva Center, in Van Buren County, Michigan), not too far from our home in Bridgman.

The first verse reads,
"Praise the Lord! My heart with His love is beaming, I am a child f God;
Heaven’s golden light over me is streaming, I am a child of God."

Much of our theology is expressed in songs such as this. We believe as do most Christians that all human beings are children of God by virtue of creation and thus, all mankind, of every race and culture, are siblings in the family of God. However, we also believe that we are “born again” when we accept Christ as Savior and Lord, at which time we are born spiritually into the family of God and live in the joy of being a child of God, with all the benefits of family and fatherhood.

If we can only experience what this verse of song sings about, to have our hearts beaming with the love of the God of creation, the father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and thus know that wherever we are and whatever we do, if we are serving God faithfully, “heaven’s golden light” is “streaming” over us, bathing us in the protective warmth of God’s love, we are most blessed.

Every child should be taught, as soon as they are able to learn, that they are children of the true and living God and that just being alive grants them this marvelous relationship. They are loved by God as his very special creation and family. They are siblings to all humanity and the whole earth is filled with their “kinfolk”. The result of such an understanding should be love for all humanity.

But it gets even better! God’s plan was not just to create a people who are his earthly family. He has also made provision for that family relationship to be eternal through the redemptive work of his son, Jesus Christ! Even while here on earth, if we accept Christ as Savior, he gives us His Holy Spirit to live in our hearts and be our guide, comforter, mentor and most intimate friend.

God’s Holy Spirit helps us to be like Jesus in our love for God, for his marvelous family, and all of his amazing creation.

I’m Rick Blumenberg and that’s My View from Tanner Creek.
  

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Using Godly Weapons



by Rick Blumenberg / @rickblumenberg

"For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strong­holds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." (2 Corinthians 10:3-5

We are at war—not with guns or bombs, but a war be­tween good and evil. Sometimes it almost seems as if we Christians surrender by using Satan's weap­ons and ignoring the weapons of God.

In the past few years there has been a rash of shootings—mass killings totally beyond the comprehension of most people. Every time it happens, the battle over whether or not guns should be allowed, or if certain high-powered, automatic weapons should be allowed, rages. I won’t take sides on that issue, or even discuss it here.

In this article I am more concerned that God’s people use His divine weapons to win the spiritual battles we face. If we try to do God’s work with Satan’s weapons, we may become involved in satanic activity. But if we use the weapons of God, they destroy the enemies of God, not by killing, but by transforming them into friends and lovers of God. The apostle Paul was a good example. He hated Christians and tried to destroy them until he came to know Christ, who radically transformed his life so he became a godly man and perhaps the most influential man in the history of the world other than the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

So what are the weapons of God?

Prayer is one of God’s primary weapons when we learn to pray, discover the influence of prayer and then pray—so God’s power is released into our human situation. Prayer cannot be used to get God to do bad things—he just won’t cooperate. But anything good that needs to be done can bring God’s support with this powerful weapon of prayer. All that’s required is enough faith to pray to God and trust him to help. Understandable, we know God sometimes says no because in his wisdom he knows that what we ask for in prayer would not be good for us or for the persons we pray for. “No” from God is just as loving as “yes”.

Another of God’s weapons is Holy Scripture. The Bible has the power to transform our lives and change us from sinful to godly. The wisdom of the ages is found there and even more so, the wisdom of God, waiting for us to read, apply it to our lives, and teach it to our children and others, by word and deed.

The weapon of a godly life is one of the most powerful against evil because a godly life includes all other divine weapons. Friends of mine both grew up in non-religious homes. When they married, they had no knowledge of God and no desire to get to know him. But the husband worked for a godly man and he was so amazed at what he saw in this man’s life that he wanted to be like him. When he discovered the man was a Christian, the couple went to church and accepted Christ as Savior. The result was that their children grew up in a home full of love with lives full of the knowledge of God. A Christ-like life, lived consistently in the power of the Holy Spirit, is God’s most powerful weapon against evil.

God has a huge arsenal of weapons to use against evil. Such weapons as kindness, blessing, and encouragement, lived out in the lives of good people, can transform the lives of families, friends and co-workers to the glory of God and for the good of all mankind.

I'm Rick Blumenberg and that's My View from Tanner Creek.