Church Voices

From here:

A Spanish mother has taken revenge on the man who raped her 13-year-old daughter at knifepoint by dousing him in petrol and setting him alight. He died of his injuries in hospital on Friday.

Antonio Cosme Velasco Soriano, 69, had been sent to jail for nine years in 1998, but was let out on a three-day pass and returned to his home town of Benejúzar, 30 miles south of Alicante, on the Costa Blanca.

While there, he passed his victim’s mother in the street and allegedly taunted her about the attack. He is said to have called out “How’s your daughter?”, before heading into a crowded bar.

Shortly after, the woman walked into the bar, poured a bottle of petrol over Soriano and lit a match. She watched as the flames engulfed him, before walking out.

I guarantee you that there are many people (perhaps even most people) who will applaud this woman.

In fact, here’s a few comments on that article:

Serves him right.

Way to go lady!

Congrats to her on doing a righteous thing

I feel terrible for this woman. I would have done the same thing without being taunted if somebody did anything to harm my children. She’s suffered ever since her daughter’s rape. Let her go with time served.

The forum I took these comments from is one that is hostile to religion in general and Christianity in particular. I only make that point to demonstrate that our culture, in many ways, is highly attuned to morality. Even those who would be the furthest from Christian theology are outraged by the immorality that is before them. Jesus spoke of this very situation:

“You parents—if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him.
Matthew 7.9-11

Of course Paul speaks directly to this issue:

Even Gentiles, who do not have God’s written law, show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it. They demonstrate that God’s law is written in their hearts, for their own conscience and thoughts either accuse them or tell them they are doing right.
Romans 2.14-15

There’s nothing particularly Christian about recognizing sin and condemning the sinner. Anyone from any background can do that. The scriptures tell us this, and the story I posted above illustrates this. Even the people who condemned the woman for torching her daughter’s rapist do the same thing, just in a slightly different way.

What is uniquely and specifically Christian is recognizing that the grace of God, through Jesus Christ can extend to both the rapist, and victim’s mother, just as the grace of God, through Christ extended to us.

We all know King David committed adultery and murder, and eventually repented of it. Reflect for a bit on how his sin was brought to his attention. A prophet named Nathan told him a story of a man with a pet sheep. This man’s sheep is stolen by a rich man who has many sheep, who aren’t pets, they’re just sheep. David is outraged by this man’s loss and demands to know who this man is so he can demand his life.

And then Nathan delivers the devastating line: “you are that man”.

The Christian thing to do isn’t to be outraged by someone else’s sin. It is to recognize the outrage we feel against someone’s sin applies to our sin as well, and the grace we’ve been given, extends to that other as well.

For whatever reason, I found myself reading through a comment thread that was all about how back when the commenters were kids kids were really disciplined, why if you interrupted an adult you would be executed on the spot and afterwards you thanked your father for your death.

That may be a slight exaggeration. One commenter, however, seriously related a fictional story in which one of the characters (a young boy) nearly falls through the ice and into a river. His father just tells him he should be whipped for his foolishness, and the boy agrees. The commenter then notes that there’s no fawning over him after a near miss. This example is held up as the ideal and is contrasted with how terrible things are now.

Really? This is the ideal picture of a father? Because, I hate to disappoint everyone who yearns for mythical stoicism of the past, but if my son nearly dies I’m not going to tell him he’s stupid and I ought to spank him for still being alive.

Of course, the real issue here isn’t with parenting style, its with our view of God. God describes himself as our Father over and over again through scripture. When Jesus gives his disciples an example of prayer he begins with “our Father in heaven”. So, when our picture of the ideal father becomes a distant disciplinarian who barely blinks when his son almost dies, that’s not just a skewed view of what a father should be, its a skewed view of what The Father is.

6Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba,[a] Father.” 7So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.
Galatians 4.6-7

This article from the Sports Economist illustrates at least a little bit of the reason why God’s grace is so much larger than ours.

The author makes this note about the chances of baseball players who used performance enhancing drugs on getting into the hall of fame:

Beyond McGwire, what will be the fate of others caught up in the bad press? A Cincinnati Enquirer piece by John Erardi poses this question for A-Rod along with Bonds, Sosa, McGwire, Clemens and others. In a very small sample (10) of baseball writers who have Hall of Fame votes, 7 came out against any of the players while 2 were willing to consider a partiucular guy from their city

Then, from the general to the specific:

The trouble with that view is that players who did not use such substances stand at a disadvantage, albeit an arguable one. The Astros ace, Roy Oswalt, speaks very forcefully to the views of at least one impacted non-users on MLB.com:

“A-Rod’s numbers shouldn’t count for anything,” Oswalt said in a phone interview with MLB.com. “I feel like he cheated me out of the game.” … “The ones that have come out and admitted it, and are proven guilty, [their numbers] should not count. I’ve been cheated out of the game,” Oswalt continued. “This is my ninth year, and I’ve done nothing to enhance my performance, other than work my butt off to get guys out. These guys [who took PEDs] have all the talent in the world. All-Star talent. And they put times two on it.

Of course, like the writers, Oswalt is more gracious to a former teammate, Roger Clemens, than he is toward others.

So, it looks like whether you’re a baseball writer taking a principled stand against the exploitation of the game by dirty players, or a clean baseball player angry that your ability to earn is being reduced by talented players having an unfair advantage the familiarity with a player will result in having a softened attitude towards him.

Consider, then, that God is intimately familiar with each of us. He is our creator and our sustainer, we’re told he knows us well enough that the hairs of our head are numbered. Could it be that God’s intimate familiarity with us results in a grace towards us that is far greater than the grace we offer each other? The concluding verses of the book of Jonah seem to indicate this is the case:

Then the Lord said, “You feel sorry about the plant, though you did nothing to put it there. It came quickly and died quickly. But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness,[a] not to mention all the animals. Shouldn’t I feel sorry for such a great city?”

If the church is going to be a place where grace is received and given among God’s people, it is necessary that we cultivate relationships with our brothers and sisters. Its easy to condemn unknown baseball players for outrageous sins against the game of baseball, its easy to condemn Christians we have never met for sins that are publicly revealed, it is easy to grow cold hearted towards people who sin against us who we only say hi to once a week before services.

But its very difficult to not offer grace to someone who we are so familiar with that we love.

I’m always amazed at how many different reactions there are to tragic situations. I’ve seen anger, despair, loss of faith, strengthening of faith, and every thing in between.

People…. who gets ‘em?

From here:

I think Driscoll is a much worse preacher since he decided that the one hour barrier was there to be broken. He needs a month of Fred Craddock. In their good days, the mainlines produced great preaching (Craddock, Buttrick, Willimon) who all knew how to preach a great sermon with a point and good application in 25 minutes. Evangelicals decided to emulate the Puritans and measure good preaching by time. I’ve heard hundreds of preachers that I’d like to punch for wasting my time when all they had to do was work a bit harder themselves in the study, especially on editing. Believe it or not guys, everything you think isn’t worth preaching. If you can’t revise and edit to a more focused sermon, you’re probably being indulgent.

And yes, there are always people who tell you your sermons are wonderful. Thank God for them….and don’t pay any attention to them. Have your own standards that you’ve learned from good communicators.

So true, especially those last lines.

Well, I had a big post up on art, and why American protestants seem to be so bad at it, but I lost the whole thing, so instead you get a booby prize.

Enjoy!