“A Piece of My Mind”
January 2023 Newsletter
Advancing Christian Faith and Values,
Defending Religious Liberty for All,
Supporting Civility and the Common Good
through Preaching, Teaching, Writing,
Activism and Reasoned Conversations
A Scripture to Start the New Year
My son, do not forget my teaching,
but let your heart keep my commandments,
for length of days and years of life
and peace they will add to you.
Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you;
bind them around your neck;
write them on the tablet of your heart.
So you will find favor and good success
in the sight of God and man.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
– Proverbs 3:1-6 ESV
Message of the Month
My “Thorn in the Flesh”
“…in order to keep me from being conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me,
‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’”
– The Apostle Paul (2 Corinthians 12:7-9 NIV)
It happened in the middle of the night in the fall of 1955. I still remember hearing my father’s painful groans. Our doctor quickly came to our home to examine him. Likely a kidney stone. The doctor sent him to the hospital.
My dad lay in the hospital for days and days at $8 a day. Finally he had surgery. His kidney was so damaged that it was removed along with the stone. Again he lay in the hospital for days, it seemed. When at last he went home it was for a long, slow recovery. I remember the long scar over his hip.
His remaining kidney eventually failed and he died of renal failure in 1972.
A year after my father’s episode my mother had a stone attack in the middle of the night, almost a carbon copy of my father’s incident. She too had surgery and a long scar but did not lose a kidney.
So my odds were not good. My first stone attack came in my early 30’s with a pain second to none. I passed it later that day in the hospital while being
X-rayed. The second stone came painfully two years later. Since then I’ve had several. Some by surprise with no pain; some with moderate pain.
In the 1980’s I heard about a new process called lithotripsy—the use of shock waves to knock a stone apart, allowing it to pass without surgery. I was carrying a stone, so I got on the list. I was glad for total anesthesia, because I learned right before the procedure that they put you in a sling wearing only the clothes you were born with. They moved you across the room in plain view and lowered you into a tank full of water.
He flew through the air with the greatest of ease,
The naked young man on the flying trapeze.
The doctor put your kidney in the crosshairs of two screens and fired surely the world’s largest spark plug hundreds of times till the stone broke up. The next day you felt like a horse had kicked you, but it beat surgery and a scar.
It’s all very different now. Last year and last month I had lithotripsy twice. You are wheeled into the procedure room and you scoot over onto a special cot. And that’s all I remember. The stone fragments (and there were many, like sand) pass over the next few days. I did have to go to the emergency room once because of pain. One stone I passed was 3/16” (4.76 mm). Rather large, I thought, to go down such a small tube.
And O yes, I prayed during the times of discomfort. I prayed a lot. “Lord, take this thorn away from me.” So far the Lord has been silent, though the “thorn” did pass. Paul’s word about God’s strength showing through us when we are weak bears remembering along with God’s assurance, “My grace is sufficient for you.”
The Apostle Paul didn’t precisely identify his “thorn” and that makes the scripture mean more for us. Assuming it wasn’t a literal “thorn,” Paul spoke about a messenger from Satan who afflicted him.
Some people are “thorns in the flesh” to put it milder than the metaphor of being a pain in another body part.
Are you facing down a thorn in the flesh?
Has God removed it in answer to prayer or is he ministering sufficient grace to you, to enable you to bear it?
Has it been a channel for God’s power to be experienced and seen in ways that would not have happened, had we been spared the pain?
Every Business Needs a Prophet
Biblical Values in the Workplace
“Hell Hath No Fury Like a Jilted Widow Seeking Justice”
(About the Duty of Those Who Serve the Public)
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’
“For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’” [“…otherwise by continually coming she will wear me out.’” – New American Standard]
And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly.”
– Luke 18:1-8 NIV
Jesus’ point is that God is not like that judge. He doesn’t have to be pestered. Justice is his middle name and he stands ready to render it (see James 5:1-9).
The justice implications of this story for today have not been well explored.
Jesus called the judge “unjust” because he dragged his feet in doing what his position required. He only thought of himself. Now I want to apply this to how businesses ought to be responsive to their customers in our modern era. I don’t think I’m taking undue liberties with the text.
This past Fall I tried to process a matter with a reputable company that handles some of my retirement accounts. It was not a complex issue.
First I encountered long waits on the “customer service” line that made the phrase an oxymoron. If a company has to say over and over, “Due to an unusually high volume of calls…,” then its time to add more lines and people to answer them. If a company says, “Your call is important to us,” then it should answer the call within ten minutes or the call ISN’T important to them.
Then, after a 40-minute wait on the fifth try a representative answered. He said he would email me several documents that would handle my issue. Then the call was lost. When I got the documents (6) I saw they were all wrong and of no use. On his email he was identified as a temporary “contract employee” so he apparently did not know his work very well. Not good for the company.
I called the company’s local office, which had been helpful in the past. But now their number just connects you to the dreaded “customer service.”
This now called for “The Penpoint Solution”! I needed to write two letters.
The first letter went “To Whom It May Concern” at the local office of this company. I briefly explained my issue and problems. Within a few short days I was contacted by a local rep who sent the forms I needed. I returned them, she reviewed them and submitted them. All is solved!
My second letter, as is my custom, was written to the company CEO. I knew he wouldn’t see it, but it might get “kicked down” to one who would see it and act. I prefer this over a “bottom-up” approach, and I often get good results.
I commended the company’s local rep. I expressed my frustration over the “your call is important to us” system and the rep who sent the wrong stuff. “I do not commend the poor customer service I had while trying to work with your phone-in system. You seriously need to improve this. Thank you for considering my concern.”
That yet awaits a response. I hope this company will no longer be “unjust” like the ruler who avoided helping his constituents. “Every Business Needs a Prophet” and all need to ponder how Jesus’ story about unjust treatment of constituents could implicate them.
We Need More Like “Good King Wenceslas”
Here’s a post-Christmas Carol we rarely sing. It’s about a good king, very different from the “unjust judge” of Luke 18. He used his position of authority to render a gracious act of kindness to a needy subject in his realm. “The Feast of Stephen” puts the song on “The 2nd day of Christmas.”
“King Wenceslas” actually was a 10th century Duke of Bohemia. The nineteenth century author of the carol was John Mason Neale and the tune “Tempus adest floridum” dates to the 13th century.
Good King Wenceslas looked out,
On the feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about,
Deep and crisp and even.
Brightly shone the moon that night,
Though the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight,
Gath’ring winter fuel.
‘Hither, page, and stand by me,
If thou know’st it, telling,
Yonder peasant, who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?’
‘Sire, he lives a good league hence,
Underneath the mountain,
Right against the forest fence,
By Saint Agnes’ fountain.’
‘Bring me food and bring me wine,
Bring me pine logs hither,
Thou and I will see him dine,
When we bear them thither.’
Page and monarch forth they went,
Forth they went together,
Through the cold wind’s wild lament,
And the bitter weather.
‘Sire, the night is darker now,
And the wind blows stronger,
Fails my heart, I know not how,
I can go no longer.’
‘Mark my footsteps, my good page,
Tread thou in them boldly,
Thou shalt find the winter’s rage,
Freeze thy blood less coldly.’
In his master’s steps he trod,
Where the snow lay dinted,
Heat was in the very sod,
Which the Saint had printed.
Therefore, Christian men, be sure,
Wealth or rank possessing,
Ye who now will bless the poor,
Shall yourselves find blessing.
Religious Liberty Vigilance –
“I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from inter meddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises.”
– Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Miller, 1808
UPDATE: Religious Freedom and The “Respect for Marriage Act”
With great fanfare President Biden signed the “Respect for Marriage” act on December 13, 2022.
Simply put, here’s what the “Respect for Marriage Act” [RMA] does:
• Repeals the “Defense of Marriage Act” (1996), which defined marriage as between a man and a woman. The Supreme Court had already nullified it.
• Requires states to recognize same-sex marriages that were solemnized in other states. (It does not require states to allow same-sex marriages.)
• Gives the Department of Justice the right to take civil action and give “harmed” individuals the right of private action when a violation of RMA is perceived to have occurred.
• Recognizes a marriage “between two individuals” if it is valid in the state where it occurred. Polygamous marriage is clearly not recognized.
• As amended by the Senate it specifies that RMA does not impact religious liberty or conscience. “Nothing in this Act, or any amendment made by this Act, shall be construed to diminish or abrogate a religious liberty or conscience protection otherwise available to an individual or organization under the Constitution of the United States or Federal law.”
• As amended it specifies that non-profit religious organizations [with a list of examples] including faith-based social agencies and educational institutions are not required to provide any services or goods for the purpose of solemnizing or celebrating a marriage and cannot be subject to any civil claim or cause of action.
My observations after December 13, when the bill was signed into law:
1. One who has followed the religious freedom assurances in this new law (as I have) would think something entirely different was signed on December 13 the way the news media reported on the signing ceremony.
News coverage and politicians either ignored the religious freedom protections (Section 6), or gave a token word about them. To say no clergy will be forced to perform a same-sex marriage is to convey a protection in search of a problem. Except for an extremist fringe (personified in Beto O’Rourke of Texas), no one has called for forcing clergy to perform a marriage. Such abuse of power would never stand the scrutiny of the First Amendment.
Likewise, the need to protect interracial marriage by this legislation is, in today’s America, another protection in search of a problem.
2. I heard comments about the need now to push for new legislation—specifically, the “Equality Act.” With its repudiation of religious liberty protection, the “Equality Act” would be a disaster for religious freedom.
3. Only the naïve would think RMA is the last word on polygamous marriage.
4. The Supreme Court’s “Obergefell v. Hodges” decision (2015) set up a potential conflict between LGBTQ+ rights and First Amendment religious freedom rights. Language in RMA somewhat removes this potential conflict.
Without the “Religious Liberty and Conscience” exemptions RMA would be flawed by its one-sidedness. I previously decided I would without great enthusiasm support RMA because of the religious liberty amendment which, though incomplete, preserves the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and is needed. (“Support without great enthusiasm” is a far cry from giving it an “endorsement.”)
5. Please note the position statement on RMA by the National Association of Evangelicals (an appendix at the end of this newsletter).
For comments of support of RMA by the Mormon Church see: https://www.deseret.com/2022/11/28/23482594/respect-for-marriage-act-religious-freedom-latter-day-saints
“Roe v. Wade” Would Have Been 50 This Month!
When “Roe v. Wade” reached its 25-year mark in January 1998 I wrote the following opinion piece. It was published as an op-ed in the Long Beach (CA) Press-Telegram on January 22, 1998, the 25th anniversary of the day the Supreme Court rendered its decision.
Of course, “Roe” didn’t survive to reach its 50th birthday. It was reversed by the court in its “Dobbs v. Jackson” decision of June 24, 2022. Decisions about abortion were returned to the several states where they belong. The court rejected the claim that abortion rights were rooted in a “right to privacy” to be discerned in the U.S. Constitution’s “penumbra.”
As you read this op-ed, think about how relevant its statements continue to be. Or are they outmoded and now replaced by—what?
Does not my comment about the continuing debate even today still resonate?
“Rather than resolving the great debate, Roe v. Wade fueled the most acrimonious polarization of our time which shows no signs of abating.”
Roe v. Wade at 25 – Abortion Debate Still Rages
By Donald P. Shoemaker
Senior Pastor, Grace Community Church of Seal Beach, California
Chairman, Social Concerns Committee, Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches
My aunt and uncle live in a fine Southern California retirement community. During a recent visit I was taken by my uncle on a tour of the community’s nearly completed state-of-the-art facility for Alzheimer’s patients.
We looked inside one room that would soon house a patient. There was no mirror in the bathroom for there is no need for a mirror. The patient who would eventually stay there has no awareness of who he or she is.
Relatives of the patients will be able to visit with them in a comfortable sitting area. But there will be no depth of communication, for the Alzheimer’s patient no longer has a capacity for an “I-Thou” relationship.
As this disease takes its toll, connection with the past and present is lost. All sense of futurity is gone.
When my uncle and I tried to leave we had a problem. There was no way to open the facility’s door from the inside without knowing a special code. This is needed because Alzheimer’s patients no longer have a sense of “here” or “there” and must be protected in their movements lest they wander aimlessly and into danger. We located a worker who could let us out.
The best of care will be provided for these dependent patients. And so it should be, for the spark of human dignity remains in them. As Christian teaching would affirm, they yet retain, in spite of their physical brokenness, the Image of God.
Since my visit to that care facility I have often thought of the issue of “personhood” and how a debate on human personhood and abortion has raged for three decades since permissive abortion laws were first put on the books in the 1960’s. Originally designed for “those truly tough cases,” the laws triggered an abortion avalanche and were themselves swept away by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision 25 years ago today.
“Right to Life” advocates have argued for a genetic understanding of personhood. Human life, it is said, begins at conception and ought to be respected and protected from violent assault from then until natural death. Personhood is tied to the biological fact of being human, one of “us” rather than an “it” or one of “them.” Right to Life advocates have argued for the full person of unborn humans or at least that enough claim to personhood exists for the life of the unborn to be worthy of protection.
Others have seen personhood as a developing value throughout the prenatal state. In this case, our unborn have a greater and greater claim to life and protection and any termination of their existence requires increasing grounds for justification the longer they exist in utero. As a result, these people join with the “Right to Life” advocates in wanting to ban late-term abortions, especially the gruesome and barbaric “partial birth” (dilation and extraction) procedure.
Defenders of permissive abortion laws, of course, do not see matters that way. Personhood is connected to socializing capabilities, or perhaps to intellectual capacities.
Philosopher Mary Ann Warren has argued that there are five traits central to the concept of personhood which we can summarize as (1) consciousness, (2) reasoning, (3) self-motivated activity, (4) the capacity to communicate and (5) the presence of self-concepts and self-awareness. Not all of these need be present for a “person” to exist, but a measure of them must exist and a being that lacks all of them is certainly not a “person” in a moral sense.
The late medical ethicist Joseph Fletcher had a long list of personhood criteria, including self-awareness, time consciousness, a sense of futurity, a sense of the past, the capability of relating to others, communication and control of existence.
Criteria like these clearly exclude the unborn from the realm of “persons.” Abortion can be endorsed as an acceptable moral practice secured, as the Court saw it, by a “right to privacy” implicit in the U.S. Constitution.
What may surprise others but which certainly does not escape the notice of thinkers like these is that infants aren’t “persons” by this standard either. Nor are the comatose and others who lack self-awareness and self-control. Infants lack a moral claim to personhood and therefore are disposable, although we may value them for their potential and charm or for other utilitarian reasons.
As the issue of human cloning rises on the scientific and ethical horizon, a justification could be made for cloning human life and harvesting body parts to serve the rest of us who have successfully achieved our personhood, at least in the eyes of those who control things.
Which brings me full circle to the excellent care facility for Alzheimer’s patients. By the thinking that has prevailed to give us abortion, these patients are not persons. Unlike the unborn, their futurity and their social and intellectual potential are gone. As their disease has progressed, they have gradually but surely lost all claim to the care and love and protection personhood would afford.
In Roe v. Wade, the court threw up its hands and professed agnosticism on the issue of when personhood begins. Incredibly, it then proceeded to adopt a particular view of personhood (you have value at birth) and imposed a model of prenatal “trimesters” and a latitude which, in effect, have given us abortion on demand. The court never allowed the open public debate and legislative deliberation on this issue that is appropriate in a free and democratic society.
When the Supreme Court ruled on doctor-assisted suicide last summer, this practice did not receive the constitutional “green light” its advocates had hoped for. One might have expected the court to declare a right to assisted suicide on the same “right to privacy” grounds that gave us abortion on demand. But the court saw the need to guarantee “an earnest and profound debate about the morality, legality and practicality of physician-assisted suicide [that should take place] in a democratic society.”
That statement may be the closest thing we will hear from the court that sounds like an apology for Roe v. Wade. Rather than resolving the great debate, Roe v. Wade fueled the most acrimonious polarization of our time which shows no signs of abating.
My aunt passed away in October 1998 and my uncle passed in January 2006. They are interred in Arlington National Cemetery, where I was honored to officiate at his military funeral.
More from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks…
Campus Intolerance vs. the Collaborative Pursuit of Truth
“[My year at Oxford University] was a glorious experience, thrilling, bracing, mind-expanding. I discovered that university was a place where you listened respectfully to views radically opposed to your own, in the knowledge that others would listen respectfully to yours.”
“Since then, university campuses throughout the West have become places of swirling intolerance of a kind I never thought I would see in my lifetime.”
“A cluster of concepts that has invaded Western university campuses [his examples: micro-aggressions, safe spaces and banning of speakers] has had the cumulative effect of putting at risk academic freedom and the role of the university as the arena of intellectual diversity, reasoned argument, civil debate, respectful listening, and the collaborative pursuit of truth.”
– Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Morality—Restoring the Common Good in Divided times (Basic Books, 2020), from pages 169-74
Maturity in Christ
By Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
[W]e should speak of the “measure of the fullness of Christ,” to which we are called to reach in order to be true adults in the faith. We should not remain infants in faith, in a state of minority. And what does it mean to be an infant in faith? Saint Paul answers: it means “tossed by waves and swept along by every wind of teaching arising from human trickery” (Ephesians 4:14). This description is very relevant today!
How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking… The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves – thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. Every day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error.
…[R]elativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and “swept along by every wind of teaching,” looks like the only attitude (acceptable) to today’s standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.
However, we have a different goal: the Son of God, true man. He is the measure of true humanism. Being an “Adult” means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today’s fashions or the latest novelties. A faith which is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ is adult and mature. It is this friendship which opens us up to all that is good and gives us the knowledge to judge true from false, and deceit from truth.
…At the hour in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus transformed our rebellious human will into a will shaped and united to the divine will. He suffered the whole experience of our autonomy – and precisely bringing our will into the hands of God, he gave us true freedom: “Not my will, but your will be done.” In this communion of wills our redemption takes place: being friends of Jesus to become friends of God. How much more we love Jesus, how much more we know him, how much more our true freedom grows as well as our joy in being redeemed.
Thank you, Jesus, for your friendship!
Excerpts from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’ homily on the opening day (April 18, 2005) of the Conclave that would elect the next pope following the death of Pope John Paul II. Cardinal Ratzinger, who died December 31, would be elected the following day and become Pope Benedict XVI.
APPENDIX: The Position of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) on the Respect for Marriage Act
The Position of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) believes God designed marriage as an exclusive covenantal relationship between a man and a woman. We cherish the freedom to preach, teach and practice these core convictions, while respecting our fellow citizens who do not share these beliefs. For this reason, we welcome the religious liberty protections in the Respect for Marriage Act (RMA).
The NAE does not agree with the understanding of marriage expressed in this bill. But precisely because our beliefs are not shared by many of our fellow Americans, we welcome the additional protections that Congress provided in this bill for those who do hold traditional beliefs about marriage.
Some of the religious freedom provisions in the bill include:
• Congress finds traditional beliefs about marriage are reasonable and deserve respect. Congress for the first time has declared, on a bipartisan basis, that “[d]iverse beliefs about the role of gender in marriage are held by reasonable and sincere people based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises. Therefore, Congress affirms that such people and their diverse beliefs are due proper respect.” This reduces any threat to the tax-exempt status of religious organizations with the Internal Revenue Service. There is no basis in this bill for a national policy equating support for traditional marriage with racism or bigotry.
• Existing religious freedom protections are reinforced. The bill acknowledges the existing constitutional and statutory protections for religious freedom, and none are diminished by this act. This includes the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which some in Congress have worked to diminish in scope, as well as the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.
• New protection for religious schools and nonprofits. The bill expressly provides that religious nonprofits and their employees “shall not be required to provide services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges for the solemnization or celebration of a marriage.” These organizations and persons also cannot be sued for exercising this right.
Since the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision in 2015, same-sex marriage has been legal in all 50 states as well as in all U.S. territories. The Respect for Marriage Act does not change that. In the unlikely event that the Supreme Court were to overturn Obergefell, the RMA would require states to continue recognizing same-sex marriages licensed in other states, but it would not require any state to issue same-sex marriage licenses. The significant change with the RMA is that religious organizations receive the religious freedom protections outlined above.
These freedoms were not contained in the original version of the RMA passed by the House of Representatives in July 2022, nor were they in the initial Senate version. We issued a statement reaffirming our convictions about marriage and the need for robust religious freedom protection in any legislation. Several senators negotiated the additional provisions that became part of the final bill including, notably, Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Rob Portman (R-OH), with the support of the bill’s chief sponsors, Susan Collins (R-ME) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI).
The NAE will continue to support efforts that strengthen religious freedom protections for all people. The bipartisan process leading to the inclusion of religious freedom protection in this bill demonstrates that, despite deep and significant disagreements, advocates of religious and LGBTQ rights can work together to reduce hostility between our communities. This opens new doors to respectful relationships and a more winsome gospel witness and ministry with all our neighbors.
December 9, 2022
www.donaldshoemakerministries.com
Don has been a member of the clergy in the Long Beach, California area since 1970. He now serves as Pastor Emeritus of Grace Community Church of Seal Beach (where he was senior pastor 1984-2012) and as Senior Chaplain of the Seal Beach Police Department (2001+). He previously was an assistant professor of Biblical Studies at Biola University (1976-84) and chaired the Social Concerns Committee in the Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches from 1985 to 2019.
His graduate work includes a Master of Divinity from Grace Theological Seminary, a Master of Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary with a concentration in Christian ethics, and a Doctor of Ministry from American Baptist Seminary of the West (now Berkeley School of Theology) with a concentration on the Charismatic Movement. His law school studies included a course on the First Amendment. He and his wife Mary have been married for over 56 years. They have two children and six grandchildren.
© 2023 Donald P. Shoemaker