Tag Christian

Peacemaking Stones

Todd R Leave a comment

In the Old Testament, King David wanted to build a temple for God, reasoning that people lived in houses, but God has only ever lived in a tabernacle (tent).  Why should people live in a nicer place than God?  However, David was not allowed to build the temple, but God said his son Solomon would build it.  David gives the reason in a speech to Israel from 1 Chronicles 28:2-3:

“I had it in my heart to build a house of rest for the ark of the covenant of the LORD and for the footstool of our God, and I made preparations for building.  But God said to me, ‘You may not build a house for my name, for you are a man of war and have shed blood.’” (emphasis mine)

Since becoming king, David had to fight many of Israel’s neighbors in order to establish peace, which was accomplished by Solomon’s time as king.  But David was not idle regarding the temple; he made many preparations to make Solomon’s job easier when the time came.  After David’s death, Solomon, preparing for construction, worked with Hiram king of Tyre to secure lumber.  In his letter to Hiram, Solomon wrote:

“You know that David my father could not build a house for the name of the LORD his God because of the warfare with which his enemies surrounded him, until the LORD put them under the soles of his feet.  But now the LORD my God has given me rest on every side. There is neither adversary nor misfortune.” – 1 Kings 5:3-4

God wanted His temple – His dwelling place – built under peaceful conditions, by a peaceful leader, not by a warrior.  Under Solomon’s leadership, God’s temple was completed.

Solomon’s temple is no more, but God is now building another temple – another dwelling place – His church.  How do we know this?  Peter wrote that Christians as “living stones are being built up as a spiritual house”[1] and Paul that Christians “also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”[2]  God now spiritually lives in and among His people, not in a physical building.

What does David and Solomon’s experience teach us about the temple God is now building?  We know that Solomon’s temple had to be built by peaceful people, and Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5:9, that:

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”

In the Greek language used in the New Testament, the word for peace comes from the verb “to join,” so peacemaking has to do with joining people together.  Between believers, this means that the more we live like Christ, the more we are able to join together in unity.  From believers to unbelievers, this “joining” means we offer them the love Christ gave us and hope and pray they will join with Him.  When discussing all issues non-essential to salvation, this means we seek to join and not separate, to promote peace instead of discord.

So, with God now building a temple of peacemakers, Paul urges us to be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”[3]  Pray that this Spirit can grow in each of us and in His people worldwide!

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”

[1] 1 Peter 2:5
[2] Ephesians 2:22
[3] Ephesians 4:3

Jesus is the Best Fisherman

Todd R 2 Comments

During His life on earth, Jesus called 12 men to special positions as His disciples or apostles.  Out of these 12, at least 4 and possibly 7, were fishermen, a common trade at that time.  The gospels have many fishing stories, including one in Luke 5 when Jesus is about to call His first disciples.

One morning after Simon Peter and some other fishermen had been working all night without catching anything, Jesus decided to preach from Simon’s boat to the crowd that was following Him.  After teaching, Jesus told Simon: “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”[1]  Simon answered: “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.”[2]

Simon ended up obeying, but not before objecting: “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing!”  Some questions may have gone through Simon’s mind: Did this travelling rabbi just tell me how to do my job?  Nighttime was the best time for fishing, and they caught nothing, so why did He tell them to try again?  Maybe Jesus, as a non-professional, didn’t know that?  Maybe the felt like “I’m the expert here!”

However, Jesus knew what He was doing because when they obeyed, “they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking.”  There were so many fish that, they “filled both the boats, so that they began to sink.”[3]

One lesson of this story is that Jesus can perform miracles by controlling nature.  Another is that Jesus had an unlimited ability to help Simon and the others do their jobs!  And if Jesus was better than professional fisherman at fishing, what does that mean for other jobs?  Jesus always knows better than we do about any job!

So, whether you’ve had a productive day, or you feel like you’ve “toiled all night and took nothing” don’t hesitate to ask Jesus for career advice! As Simon (later known as Peter) wrote in his own letter, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” – 1 Peter 5:6-7

[1] Luke 5:4b
[2] Luke 5:5
[3] Luke 5:6-7

Sound of Hope: Movie Thoughts

Todd R 2 Comments

Tagged as “Christian Propaganda” on IMDB.com, Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot is a powerful movie based on the true story of a small black church in East Texas where 22 families adopted 77 of the most difficult children in the local foster care system.  If this is propaganda, I wish there was more like it.

Donna Martin is one of 18 children but has only 2 children of her own and hears God speaking to her, telling her to share the love her mother had with more children.  She begins exploring how to adopt children in the foster care system.  Her husband, Reverend WC Martin, reluctantly agrees after considering their limited resources and the fact that they already had one special needs child.  However, WC eventually preaches to the small congregation of his church that Jesus calls His people to sacrifice themselves for the needs of others, and quotes James 1:27 – “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” – to show that orphans are often the neediest among us.

WC gives a clear spiritual message, but the movie doesn’t delude us into thinking God’s call for us is easy, if we decide to follow it.  For me, the best part of the story is that it doesn’t shy away from the terrible experiences of these foster children, who have often suffered beyond what many of us can imagine.  It also doesn’t shy away from the difficulty of bringing these children into a Christian home and the struggles to convince them that they are truly loved, both by their adoptive parents and by God.  Donna, as the story’s narrator as well as a main character, says that we only really understand the depths of God’s love for us and His power when we are stretched by faith to our breaking point.  There are many temptations for them to give up along the way.

The movie doesn’t stop at its own story.  It challenges everyone to do something, to not just look away from the pain of children in the foster system.  While not everyone can, or will, adopt a child, those who do adopt have many needs that other Christians can help meet.  Those needs may be physical and financial, or they may just be emotional and spiritual support through relationship and prayer.

The movie, from Angel Studios, is still in theaters and I highly recommend you see it while you can!  It may inspire and challenge you to listen for God’s call for your life.

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”

The Miracle of the Toothpicks

Todd R 4 Comments

In 1989, Rain Man, a movie starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman, won the Oscar for Best Picture and Hoffman won for Best Actor in a Leading Role, playing Raymond, an autistic-savant.  Long before autism was widely recognized, Raymond showed that those with autism have amazing talents, personalities, and human dignity just like anyone else.  In the movie, Raymond wins the affection of his selfish, arrogant brother Charlie, played by Cruise, who was initially only interested in Raymond because of his inheritance.

In one of the movie’s more well-known scenes, Raymond performs what in another context might be considered a miracle.  You can watch the 1 ½ minute clip here or read my summary below it.

In the clip, a waitress drops most of a box of toothpicks on the floor and in just a couple of seconds, Raymond counts that 246 of them scattered on the floor (he also counts three groups of 82).  At this point of the movie, Charlie still sees Raymond as someone he has to put up while he chases down his inheritance.  The waitress says the box had 250 toothpicks, so Charlie says Raymond guessed “pretty close” because he just wants to leave.  But when the waitress says, “there’s 4 left in the box”, Charlie realizes something amazing has just happened.  It wasn’t a guess.

It’s easy to be skeptical of miracles, or to choose to ignore them, but some of the Bible’s miracles aren’t much different than Raymond counting toothpicks at super-human speed.  We can’t explain why some people count faster than others, or run faster than others, or have photographic memories while others don’t, yet if we call something a “miracle,” many people will demand an explanation.  Other very abnormal things we just take for granted.

One miracle is recorded in Matthew 21:18-19, which says: “In the morning, as [Jesus] was returning to the city, he became hungry.  And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, ‘May no fruit ever come from you again!’ And the fig tree withered at once.”  This tree was eventually going to wither anyway, so all Jesus did was change the speed of a natural process.  True, Raymond was special because of his own speed, and Jesus controlled the speed of something other than himself, but still part of what makes it a miracle is the speed.

If the speed of a natural process, like counting or the growth of plants, can be variable and manipulated, why not also the direction of the process?  In Mark’s gospel, the word “immediately” appears in at least 5 references to healing miracles[1].  The word “immediately” means the speed was part of the miracle.  Jesus not only healed a paralytic in Mark chapter 2, but the paralytic “immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all,”[2] without months or years of physical rehabilitation therapy.  From everyday experience, we know that different people recover from injury at different rates, yet why do we demand an explanation when its immediate?  If we don’t know what process took place to make this man a paralytic, why is it hard to believe that process could go backwards, and quickly?  It’s partly a miracle of degree, not of kind.

Of course, we shouldn’t believe every miracle: some are mere hoaxes, and some signs are done in opposition to God.  But also, we should not be too quick to dismiss the possibility of miracles we didn’t expect or can’t explain.  And while Rain Man does not claim to be based on a true story[3], the Bible does.  And Jesus, the one who could control the speed and direction of what we consider “natural” processes, claimed to be the God who put those processes to work in the first place.

“As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.” – Ecclesiastes 11:5

[1] See Mark 1:42, 2:12, 5:29, 5:42, and 10:52
[2] Mark 2:12
[3] The movie was based on a novel, but Raymond’s abilities were modeled on a real person named Kim Peek, who you can read more about at this link.  https://allthatsinteresting.com/kim-peek-real-rain-man

Marlboro Man Needs the Gospel

Todd R 2 Comments

Marlboro Man was a character used to advertise Marlboro cigarettes starting in 1954.  He became a cliché of a rugged man, often shown on horseback with a cowboy hat and some rope, confidently smoking a cigarette, and was portrayed by several different actors until 1999.  However, the origin of this famous ad campaign isn’t as well known.

Before the manly Marlboro Man manifested in 1954, Marlboro was sold as a feminine cigarette, with a red-colored filter at the tip.  Ads had phrases like “Ivory Tips Protect the Lips,” and touted that lipstick on the cigarette wouldn’t matter since it was red anyway.  But later, when the health risks of cigarette smoking came to light, Philip Morris & Co. wanted to sell Marlboro to men on the idea that filters made smoking “safer.”  However, given Marlboro’s feminine image – created through advertising – Philip Morris had to overcome that connotation, so the red tips were removed, and Marlboro Man was born as a way to sell Marlboro cigarettes to men concerned about lung cancer and other health risks.

Marlboro Man ad on a Warsaw, Poland building.

With hindsight, we know that filters don’t make smoking safer.  Ironically, and sadly, five different men who appeared in Marlboro advertisements died of smoking-related diseases, earning Marlboro cigarettes the nickname “cowboy killers.”[1]

Also with hindsight, we can see the massive power of advertising to shape our perceptions.  The Marlboro Man campaign is considered in the ad industry to be one of the best of all time, changing a “feminine” product into one of stereotypical masculinity almost overnight.  But the campaign also shows us that “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death”, as Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25 say.  In this case, it was very literal death in this world.

To make Philip Morris money, the ads declared that smoking was not a “way to death,” but that it was “right to a man” to be like the Marlboro Man.  It’s not entirely unlike the line “the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist,” which was spoken by Kevin Spacey’s character in the 1995 movie, The Usual Suspects.  This line was a paraphrase of a line at least as old as the 1850’s.[2]

I recently heard a sermon where the pastor said, “the culture is trying to kill you,” and I don’t think it was an exaggeration.  Just as Marlboro ads first convinced people it was a feminine product, then turned on a dime to convince people it was a masculine product, without any real change to what was being sold, we’re all bombarded by dangerous messages every day, and many will only be seen in the broader culture as dangerous with the benefit of hindsight.  Smoking used to be considered normal.

I’m not writing this to condemn smokers, because we all have our bad habits, but to spotlight the importance of an eternal perspective.  Any culture is limited to the perspective of its leaders in that time and circumstance, and the pull of peer pressure is real.  Every culture in this world has “a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death,” but also every culture needs the gospel more than it needs effective advertising campaigns.

Therefore, as the apostle Peter wrote in 1 Peter 3:8-9 – “Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.  Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing.”

Marlboro Man needs the good news of the gospel, not condemnation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlboro_Man
[2] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/03/20/devil/