THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT OF CHRISTMAS!

 I read a Christmas Day sermon by early Christian church father, Saint Leo the Great (400-461): 

 

“… In the fullness of time, chosen in the unfathomable depths of God’s wisdom, the Son of God took for himself our common humanity in order to reconcile it with its creator. He came to overthrow the devil, the origin of death, in that very nature by which he had overthrown mankind.” 

“… Beloved, let us give thanks to God the Father, through his Son, in the Holy Spirit, because of His great love for us He took pity on us, and when we were dead in our sins He brought us to life with Christ, so that in Him we might be a new creation. Let us throw off the old nature and all its ways and, as we have come to birth in Christ, let us renounce the works of the flesh.”

 

That is the whole point of Christmas! This is where the real joy of Christmas lies for all humanity. This is the real reason to rejoice. Christ is the Christian’s Joie de vivre. 

There is a mystery we see in a baby’s smile, yet unsullied by life’s disappointments and sin; they are still close enough to their mother’s womb and the presence of God they experienced there, even before they took on form.[1]  

 

I am an old man now, but bells of Christmas still call me back to my own simple early childlike joy. So many frosty Canadian Christmas mornings throughout adulthood I awoke to see my wheelchair beside my bed. The cold steel could not steal joy from my soul at the very real presence of the Holy Spirit deep within me (the same Spirit that has warmed the hearts of small children and Christians through the centuries). 

 

Twinkling lights of a Christmas tree greeted me when I whirred in the living room in my electric wheelchair. The violence occurring to my brain could not extinguish the peace in my mind. Christmas joy shone bright deep within me.  For more than three decades, my body slowly became more and more like a corpse with multiple sclerosis, but my soul hummed knowing God has loved me since before I was formed in my mother’s womb. Nothing can separate me from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.[2] He came to reconcile with God the likes of sinful people like me.[3]

 

This was the message of Leo the Great’s homily. As he finished his sermon he said: 

“Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. … Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God’s kingdom.” 

 

The star of Bethlehem shone through the darkness of night. It gave witness to the Light of the world being born in a dank lowly manger, come to take away the sins of the world, for all who believe in Him. The road from Bethlehem led inexorably to Golgotha. From cradle to cross, Jesus brought a light to mankind. 

 

Another cold Canadian Christmas season is holy and warms my heart. Frigid northern winter night air whispers of hope, forgiveness, and joy to all who will listen with their soul rather than their ears. They will see with their heart rather than their eyes the love of God all around them now and throughout the year. 

 

Beneath a mountain of blankets, I turn in my bed. The wheelchair is gone. My legs are alive once again.  Sleep comes easy in the abiding peace of Christ. 

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight. — Mark 

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[1] Psalm 139:13-16.

[2] Romans 8:38-39.

[3] John 3:16-21; Romans5:8-9.

RESPONSIBILITY OF THE LIVING TO THE DYING AND THE DYING TO THE LIVING

Palliative care should not be about dying; it should be about the last phase of living. With modern pain control methods, medications and techniques, all physical pain can be eliminated, without leaving the patient in a drugged stupor. Dying time can be good time with proper palliative care. The dying process can have the effect of stripping away all things extraneous to life, leaving only that which is essential. It is a time when we can love our own, or reconcile with estranged friends or family. It is a time to show love and care toward an abandoned or unloved person we may not even know. In doing so, the living and dying enrich expressed love. That is beauty.

I know this first hand: Like the boy in the photo above, a quarter of a century ago, my son walked his great-grandfather through his final days. Great-grandpa was blind, he had Parkinson's disease, diabetes, and finally a stroke. He was dying. He knew it and we knew it. He could not be cured so we cared. My son was able to show his great-grandfather he loved him. He expressed his love through little things: he shaved his great-grandfather, washed him, turned him in his bed, and just kept him company. The intimate beauty of those hours and days were beyond description—not only for great-grandpa but my son, and those of us who watched.  My son and his great-grandfather were able to say their last quiet goodbyes. Something beautiful happened in that hospital. Did my son grieve his great-grandfather's death? Yes he did but is was healthy grieving.

Canada made a dreadful mistake when it legalized assisted suicide under the guise of a law it euphemistically called "medical assistance in dying." That is not what Canada actually legalized. What we got was medical killing by lethal injection of the disabled, sick and dying. 

For the sake of assisting a defeated person kill themselves, we killed so much more. We broke an ancient moral code not to murder. In doing so we killed a precious quality of a civilized society and interdependent community that holds up the intrinsic value and worth of every human being—even if they have ceased to believe in their own innate natural dignity. We killed individual's consciences. We killed the taboo never help someone commit suicide. We killed physician/patient trust. And it killed individual responsibility to the greater society.

I have had multiple sclerosis for 37 years. At some points, it became so serious that my physician doubted I would live more than a few years. Even when I hung over the abyss of potential quadriplegia, my grief did not absolve my responsibility to others, or posterity. I had a responsible not only to the sanctity of my own life but every other life. My agony did not diminish that sacred ideal or my obligation to it. I had to look beyond my own predicament, my own pain and fears. Although I was suffering, I still had a duty not to leave this world poorer because of my decisions or actions. 

Society must provide every support to the disabled, sick and dying. It must never give in to misplaced compassion and kill a person who asks for it.  We have a responsibility to moral integrity—developed across centuries—not only for the safety of society but to our own consciences (regardless of how seared or cynical they may become). 

We all have a responsibility to uphold the sacredness of every human life now, and those yet to be born. 

MDP

INDWELLING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT AND DISCERNMENT

“This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.

But you have not so learned Christ,  if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:17-24.)

I have come to a point in my life where I no longer give the same credence to the views and opinions of secular people as I do people with a Christian mindset, and who place their first loyalty with Jesus Christ. It’s a crap-shoot if non-Christians or lapsed Christians or anti-Christians will get moral issues right, and they always get things wrong when it comes to spiritual matters. Non-Christians tend to align their moral views with whatever clever sounding catchphrase or fashionable thinking is dominant at any given time.  

To identify as Christian on a census form is not enough either. That may be good for statisticians and government planners, but it means nothing to God.  Cultural Christianity is not Christian.  God wants a personal relationship with people. A living faith in Christ, and trust in His Word. He is the word. He has always been with God. Jesus Christ is God.[1]

Not only is Jesus Christ God, His unfathomable love for humanity is the reason He took on human form.[2]Imagine that! The creator of all things, seen and unseen, entered the world that He created and became part of our temporary reality so that we might become part of His eternal reality.

God is more concerned with your inner self than your outer self. Your physical self is continually aging. Through Christ your inner self can continually renew.[3] God speaks to your heart and mine. His law is written on our hearts.[4] The Holy Spirit witnesses and teaches God’s truth to us.[5]  Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to God’s children (sons of God)[6] The world that has rejected Christ is ignorant of the Holy Spirit;[7] for this reason it cannot receive the Holy Spirit (the 3^rd member of the Trinity).  Faith in Christ comes first.[8] He is the 2^nd member of the Trinity. God is the 1^st member. There is no other way to God except through Christ.[9]

The Holy Spirt Christ dwells in the heart of the believer  This is not some airy-fairy concept. In Luke 11.13, Jesus said God gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask. It really happens! I know this from personal experience.  Someone reading this post may think to themselves: “Poor chap, the MS has affected Mark’s mind.” Even if that be true, how would that cynic explain the countless millions upon millions of people now — and throughout the past 2,000 years — who have experienced the indwelling of the Holy Spirit? 

To bring a small contemporary example to mind, how do they explain the twenty-one Coptic Christians willing to die rather than deny Jesus Christ. They were beheaded on a Lybian beach in 2015. With ISIS knifes at their throats, they called to Christ and committed their spirits to Him.[10] (I bet you didn’t see that part on liberal western media.) 

Can anyone realistically say those twenty-one men did not know Christ or hear His voice? The Holy Spirit was with them, and in them, as they were martyred and entered the Kingdom of God. 

“Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who before you.” – Jesus[11]

Somebody else reading this post might scoffingly say, “Are you saying you hear voices?” — to draw similarities to something akin to schizophrenia or infer some other mental illness. To make my claim sound like fiction, they make up their own.  Yes, I am saying I communicate each day with Christ and He with me, and so do hundreds of millions of other Christians! 

This is why genuine Christianity is not about religion: It is about a personal relationship with Christ. It is my experience that He sends the Holy Spirit to guide me in matters of faith, morality and conduct; the Holy Spirit has comforted me in the terrors of serious neurological disease, and cancer, and when I have been excluded or falsely accused. It is the Holy Spirit who convicts me of sin and calls me to repentance, and back to God through Christ. Anti-Christian atheists just don’t get it. Why would they? How could they? They have rejected Christ.

Christians must be careful. There is a need to discern which spiritual voices are from God or the evil one? Satan can masquerade as an angel of light.[12] The Apostle John instructed us how to discern what is of God and what is not.

“… [D]o not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world. ...”[13]

“You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them.”[14]

Any spirit that contradicts the Word of God is not of God. We who have met Christ and have given our lives to Him must always pray for more discerning discernment. The world is increasingly wily, cunning, and seductive in making evil seem good and good seem evil.  Be on guard. Put on the full armour of God.[15] Surrender your whole life to Him and let the Holy Spirit reign in you. 

MDP

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[1] John 1.1.

[2] John 1.14. John 3.16.

[3] 2Corinthians 4.16.

[4] Jeremiah 31.33, Hebrews 10.16.

[5] Jeremiah 31.15, John 14.26 & 16.13, 1Corinthians 2.13.

[6] John 1.12-14, Ephesians 1.5, Romans 8.15.

[7] John 14.17a, 1Corinthians 2.11-14., Ephesians 1.5.

[8] John 3.5-7, Acts 2.38., Ephesians

[9] John 14.6, Acts 4.12

[10] See “Widow’s joy: He Didn’t Deny Christ When Beheaded” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD16TqLaZe0  

[11] Matthew 5.11-12.

[12] 2Corinthians 11.14.

[13] 1John 4.1-3.

[14] 1John 4.4-5.

[15] Ephesians 6.10-18. 

RELIGION VERSUS JESUS CHRIST

Over the years, I have noticed that Christians who are losing their faith (or have lost it) stop talking about Christ and start speaking about "religion"—usually in a negative way. The word 'religion' has a generic quality that allows a person who has lost their faith to use a shotgun approach in their attacks against Christianity. They attack the sins of Christians, or people posing as Christians, past and present. If they were once Christians, they should know that Christianity is not about religion. It is about Christ. It is about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The ex-Christian, or ant-Christian, talks much about sins of the church and little about forgiveness found in Christ — experienced by hundreds-of-millions of people throughout the last 2,000 years! Genuine Christianity is about Christ, so why don’t they attack Christ? 

 

There are anti-Christians who DO attack Jesus Christ, but again they
often base their attacks on the failures and sins of Christians. There is also a set of darker people whose wicked hearts hate Christ because He is God. He is the Word. He is Truth. Jesus Christ is the source of all that exists, visible and invisible. He is the only source of salvation.[1]

 

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and without Him not one thing came into being.”[2]  

 

Anti-Christians and people who have lost their faith and turned away from Christ, choose darkness rather than light.

 

“What has come into being in Him was life, and the life was the light of the world. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”[3]

 

Some people have lost their faith because they are disappointed or angry with God. Their lives did not go as they planned or wanted. They are disappointed or angry because disease, disability, divorce, or the loss of a loved one, or loved ones. Perhaps their bitterness is rooted in being betrayed, abandoned or rejected by those they love most. Their hearts are broken and they blame God. 

 

Other people hate Christ because His light shines into their darkness and exposes their sin. They like their sin and want to continue. They prefer darkness of the soul.  Still others execrate Christ because they are anti-Christian, they are anti-Christ. They have given themselves over to the prince of darkness. 

Do not dismiss the idea of the diabolical at work in the world. All you have to do is watch the Hollywood’s movies about demons, witches, possession, and celebrating all forms of evil and sin. Look and the number of books with demonic themes, witches and wicca. Can’t you see the spirit of the age? 

 

Jesus spoke of Satan as a real being.[4] He spoke to Satan and Satan spoke to him.[5]  Jesus spoke about hell as being a real place.[6] Sceptics may say that references to fire and brimstone and gnashing of teeth are not meant to be taken literally. How do they know? 

Mike Livingstone wrote:

 

“The images of fire (Matt. 25:41), darkness (Matt. 8:12; 22:13; 25:30), the weeping and gnashing of teeth ” (Matt. 8:12; 13:42,50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30; Luke 13:28), and being cut into pieces speak of the horror of hell.”

“Are these vivid images of hell literal or figurative? If they are meant to be figurative, then the imagery is pointing beyond what human language can convey. In other words, hell—if not a literal fire and literal darkness—is immeasurably worse than those images and inexpressibly worse than we can even imagine or describe. As heaven is more wonderful than our finite minds can comprehend, hell is more horrible than we can comprehend.” (see footnote 5.)

Jesus also spoke of heaven as a place that is perfect, a place of joy, rewards and treasures. Shari Abbott wrote: “What Did Jesus Say About Heaven?” (https://reasonsforhopejesus.com/what-did-jesus-say-heaven-hell/). Heaven is a place where Christ is: I want to be with Him. I want to see the face of the One who has loved me and been with me throughout a life of trial, pain, disease and disability. I want to finally know why. I want to know as I am known.[7] And I want you to be there too.

There are so many traps, deceptions, temptations, addictions, and practices that seem harmless yet can draw believers away from Christ. Do not be drawn into them. If you are a Christian, your relationship with Jesus Christ is the most important thing in all your life. As Saint Paul said, put on the Whole Armor of God.[8] Fellow Christian! Summon all your spiritual resources! Submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee.[9]

MDP

__________

[1] John 14:6.

[2] John 1:1-3

[3] John 1:3b-5.

[4] Matthew 13:19 & 25:41; Mark 4:15; Luke 10:18, 11:18, 22:31-32; John 12:31, 14:30; 16:11.

[5] Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13.

[6] Matthew 5:29-30, 10:28, 15:33, 25:41; Luke 15:15; 16:23.

[7] 1Corinthians 13:12.

[8] Ephesians 6:10-18.

[9] James 4:7.

MEMORIES OF REFLECTIONS

Saint Augustine said:

Love,

Endures in adversity

It shows prudence in prosperity

It is strong in suffering

It rejoices in good deeds

It is safe in temptation

It is generous in hospitality

Cheerful among true brothers

Patient with the faithless

It is the soul of the Scriptures

The virtue in prophecy

The salvation of the mysteries

It is the strength of knowledge

The bounty of faith

It is wealth for the poor

Life for the dying

Love, is everything.

 

I have suffered with disease and creeping disability most of my adult life. Diagnosed with aggressive multiple sclerosis at thirty, I endured a muriate of frightening neurological symptoms for decades. I am an old man now. Looking back, I’ve come to the same conclusion: Love is everything. Even when the body fails, love remains.  Love is the only possession we can take from this life. 

 

Saint Paul wrote about love. He said that even if we were to possess all knowledge and have profound spiritual gifts, and have faith that can move mountains, if we do not have love, we are nothing. 

 

Loveless faith is harsh, unbending, legalistic. Loveless faith lacks the love of Christ. Real love has certain characteristics. Augustine spoke of them in the passage above.  Paul said:

 

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”

My life has been a journey toward love—at times halting and uncertain, jealous and envious, often miserly in its expression. But God has been slowly teaching, wooing, chastening then blessing.   

“Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

Again, Saint Paul’s words. Saint Augustine understood. No doubt, he drew much of his understanding on love from the 13^th Chapter of 1Corinthians. It has blessed and inspired humanity, and read at countless weddings.

For me, it was a passage of the holy Scriptures I kept in mind and close to my heart during my worst attacks of multiple sclerosis. And they were bad, so bad that my doctor did not think I would live more than a few years after being diagnosed. The best doctors could do nothing to stop the savage attacks and slow degeneration. My wife had to watch it all ! She was convinced she would be widowed as a young mother with two children.  That’s how bad things got during the 1980s and ‘90s.

American author, lawyer and senior Fellow for the Discovery Institute’s Center for Human Exceptionalism met me. He described what he saw:

“I met Mark in the early 1990s and we became good friends. When I met him, he could barely walk using two canes because of his progressive MS. Over time, I observed his physical condition worsen, to the point he became triplegic, that is, was only able to use his left arm. He had no use of his legs whatsoever.”

Yes, the MS also began to affect my left arm and hand. My neurologist had exhausted all his treatment options. He resorted to administering the chemotherapy drug mitoxantrone (at that time still an experimental treatment for MS) to try and stave off quadriplegia. It had some ugly side-effects and was discontinued. 

During those dark days, the knowledge that I was loved, and had always been loved, became magnified—it was my comfort and my consolation. One night I was lying awake on my bed in the middle of the night, gazing at the shadowy hoist hovering above me (used to help get me out of bed). I thought about what I'd lost over the years: My career, my health, use of my body, many friends and family. The words of Job came to me:

“I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19.25-27)

 

Throughout the ages, a great sea of heavy-hearted humanity have identified with Job's words, the words of a man who lost everything: his health, his children, his wealth. His "friends" Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar taunted him under the guise of comfort. Even Job’s wife taunted him: “Do you still retain your integrity? Curse God and die.” (2.9).  And yet, even in his deepest sorrow and discouragement, Job cursed the day he was born, but not God. 

 

Those of us who have passed through that great sea of heavy-hearted humanity, can learn much from Job. Even if we die having lost everything in this world, through faith in Jesus Christ, we will have everything in the next world. Job reminds us that although our flesh will be destroyed, we shall see God. 

 

The love we take from this life will be perfected as we enter God's perfect love. All things will be made new for us who believe in His Son! 

Mark 

 

 

HAITI NEEDS VISION AND HOPE

Sustainability and self-sufficiency are most often the keys to raising people out of poverty. Personal initiatives, small businesses, and responsible farming must be encouraged. I think of the oft quoted pearl of wisdom: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” 

 

In the years after the devastating Haiti earthquake of 2010,

many appeals were made to the world for essential things like clothing; clothes were given. The pleas kept coming; so in 2013, my wife, LaRee, packed 5 sewing machines on a plane and flew to a Haitian orphanage. She taught the older children to sew and left the sewing machines there. (My wife is a maternalistic sort of woman with an immensely practical orientation.) LaRee ascribes to the view that giving people a hand up is better than just giving them a handout. LaRee is a grandmother with an older school of thought rooted in practicality and resourcefulness. Decades before it was fashionable, she repaired and patched clothing, and reused fabric in what might be called “re-purposing” or “retro” today. She simply calls it frugality, and not being wasteful. 

 

[Give a child a garment and you’ve clothed him until he grows out of it. Teach him to make his clothes and you have clothed him for a lifetime. Teach him how to mend and alter clothing and you’ve given him a profession.]

 

That’s my LaRee. Practical. Hands-on. Never mind all the highfalutin hoity-toity international declarations. proclamations and promises of aid. As Larry the cable guy says just “Git-er-done!”

 

Before anything meaningful can be done for sustainability, Haiti’s chaos, rampant violence and societal disintegration must be brought under control and stopped. Haiti needs the expertise and assistance of businesspeople and their “know how.” Haiti needs community development from the ground up. Farmers need to be supported, Their farming techniques must be updated and modernized. That will take the form of on-the-ground agricultural expertise to help farmers and farm families. Corporate investments must play a role in Haiti’s economy. The UN, other nations, international and private foundations and philanthropists have a role to play. 

 

This has been done before in other places. Twenty-five years

ago, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown took a delegation of business executives to former Yugoslavia to explore possible business opportunities that might re-build the war-torn region and make a meaningful difference in the Balkans. Unfortunately, the delegation of 34 died in a plane crash in Dubrovnick, Croatia. But it did not stop the rebuilding and America played a significant role.

 

Throughout his presidency, I corresponded with Bill Clinton on a number of occasions, usually about disability issues and public policy supporting the Americans with Disabilities Act. In a much wider context, I also encouraged the president’s administration in its efforts to rebuild the Balkans and create an economy where free enterprise could flourish and people thrive.  (I believe that the sanctity of human life and being pro-life is also concerned with how people live to reach their full potential.) After his Secretary Brown’s untimely death, I sent a letter of condolence to the President. He responded by saying, in part:

 

“Dear Mark: Thank you for your heartfelt message of condolence on the death of Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown and the 34 people who accompanied him on his mission in support of peace. … Ron Brown knew the meaning of the American Dream and, as a member of my Cabinet, fought to secure it for everyone willing to work for it and believe in themselves. He and his colleagues lost their lives in their quest to bring the benefits of economic renewal to the Balkans and to strengthen the peace. …”

 

We can take the sentiments expressed by Bill Clinton and apply them to Haiti. Haiti needs someone to ignite a spark of a Haitian Dream that brings hope to Haiti’s people. They need to believe they can succeed. They need to embrace a vision that they can honestly achieve their dreams of prosperity, and better their communities, if they only believe in themselves. 

There is a Biblical proverb that says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”[2] It is not a vision seen with the eyes, rather the heart—that internal place where dreams are born. Remember the words of the fox to the Little Prince: “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”[3] 

 

I believe that Haiti’s primary problem is that they are a people

without hope. They have no vision. That needs to change. It can
change! Creating an environment that is conducive to economy renewal, encourages investment, restores law and order, supports local businesses and farming, and, most importantly, brings Christian hope to the people that only Jesus Christ offers. 

 

Imagine that dreams really can come true, then make it happen. Theodore Roosevelt once said “Believe and you’re half the way there.” 

 

Mark Davis Pickup 

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[1] Cindy Wooden, “To feed the world, start with family, pope says” Our Sunday Visitor, 26 July 2021. https://www.osvnews.com/2021/07/26/to-feed-the-world-start-with-family-farms-pope-says/

 

[2] Proverbs 29.18.

 

[3] Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince.

[3]

THE PEWS ARE EMPTY!

I remember when the cultural madness became apparent to me, at least to my boy's mind. It was the early 1960s. My vague early memory of the 1950s was a world still deeply influenced by western Christian civilization with its morals, culture and mores. Life made sense and had order. 

 

Not everyone was Christian or even attended church. But you would have been hard-pressed, for instance, to find someone who did not know the ten commandments. They may not have followed them, but they knew they ought to. I remember when people were not afraid to walk alone at night on city streets, when people did not lock the doors of their houses or cars. More people told the truth than lied. I remember people whose word was their bond, and a handshake was as binding as any written contract. It’s hard to believe things were that way but they were. I remember it.

 

At a personal level, I was surrounded scholarly, ordered conservative men of manly good natures, like my father and grandfather. My grandfather's world was made up of music, tweed, a living room with overstuffed brocade chairs and sofa, and an ancient faded Persian rug.  A mantle clock sat on his fireplace. Its gentle steady ticking marked the hours, days, months, years, and decades dating back the early 20^th century. His house smelled of coffee, old books, and pipe tobacco.  I loved being there.

 

In today’s world of the 21^st century, men like my father and grandfather would be reviled and scorned as patriarchy.  It must have rubbed off on me—recently I was called “a patriarchal piece of S...t.” (I rather like the title.) The word ‘patriarchy’ is a dirty word now, but not to me. It evokes dear memories of security, family, Christian moral order, honesty, and decency. 

 

My father encouraged young people of both genders to rise to their full potential.  In fact, after his death in 1970, a Junior high school was named in his honour because of his love for education. But none of that fits into the mentality of 21^st century moderns, the woke crowd, cancel culture, or ideologues of alternate gender fiction. (I’ve lost count of how many genders we are supposed to believe exist.) They cancel the memory of such men.  After all, men like my father were white straight men. They had “white privilege” despite being raised in the Great Depression of 1930-1940, then fighting a world war that claimed between 22-30 million military lives—and the same estimated number of civilian deaths.[1] 

They defeated the Nazis! Some white privilege! If my father’s and grandfather's generations were still alive, moderns would call them Nazis—but then the vocabulary moderns tends to be limited. They call anyone they disagree with a Nazi. Of course those who level the white privilege and Nazi accusations didn’t experience any of that history. They prefer to alter and rewrite history to suit their own agendas and worldviews. 

 

My father lived just long enough to see the beginnings of the 60s liberal church take root and abandon absolute truth for relative truth. They renounced the ancient tried-and-true Christian moral code for an experiment in social reconstruction of society. The stupidly audacious 1960s. My dad was a member of the United Church of Canada. It was, at one time, the largest Canadian Protestant denomination (or so they claimed). The 1960s saw a falling away from sound doctrine and Biblical truth. The early shifts were small—so small my father felt petty even mentioning them. But as surely as night follows day, one slight deviation after another, the falling away from Biblical truth became more and more apparent until: The Virgin birth was denied, the miracles denied, the validity and authority of the Bible was questioned, even the bodily resurrection of our Lord was denied with attempts to explain it away (remember the ridiculous 'swoon theory'?). By the time my father challenged the falling away, it was too late. A few years before he died, he said that one morning he woke up to realize he had nothing in common with his church anymore. When he challenged the church leadership’s direction, they invited him to leave (a fine display of liberal tolerance and accommodation). My father spent the last few years of his life at a local Anglican church that had an evangelical vicar.

 

Today the United Church of Canada is dead—a hollow shell of its former self. The local United Church where my father was a member—and was invited to leave in 1966—is now permanently closed. It died a slow death one empty pew after another until the last task of the minister was to turn out the lights and turn off the power. The closed church stands as a dismal monument to the failure of liberal compromise and accommodation of the culture. 

Liberal Christianity is just secularism cloaked in religious vestments.  

When denominations succumb to liberalism’s superficial allure, or "progressive Christianity," their people become starved of Biblical truth and the moving of the Holy spirit. Pews begin to empty. 

People don’t need more liberal blather and soft soap. They get enough of that from the media, governments, schools, tenured university professors and the entertainment industry. People do not need comforted consciences, they need conviction. In every heart-of-hearts, people know their own inner darkness; it only grows deeper the further they drift from God’s Truth, holiness, and divine love that has beckoned them since their earliest memory. They need the blazing light of Christ's objective truth, not relative truth. Objective truth convicts human hearts; it is the source of true healing and peace. Jesus said “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14.6) There are not many ways to God, there is only one way and Jesus Christ is it. Either that or Christ lied. Should I believe Him and His unchanging Truth or the ambient culture of uncertain brutal progressivism and fluid political correctness?

In his penetrating book Mere Christianity, (an important part of my own Christian conversion), C.S. Lewis said, “If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.” 

 

That is why I became a Christian more than forty years ago. I was a liberal, and ever so progressive. Ultimately, I only found regress in liberal progress. Relative truth that started with comfort and comfortableness eventually broke my heart in despair. 

Christ’s truth gave me comfort despite terrible storms of neurological dysfunction of MS, and then cancer. He has been with me throughout it all. Don’t give me the gooey fat of liberalism. I need the solid meat of Biblical truth to rely upon and the Holy Spirit to guide me. 

MDP 

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[1] History on the Net, How Many People Died In World War 2, https://www.historyonthenet.com/how-many-people-died-in-world-war-2