Advancing Christian Faith and Values,
Defending Religious Liberty for All,
Supporting Civility and the Common Good
through Preaching, Teaching, Writing, Activism and Reasoned Conversations

www.donaldshoemakerministries.com

Thanksgiving When Blessings Aren’t So Evident

(Many of our American ancestors celebrated in times when life was
quite tentative and prosperity very uncertain)

Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
– Habakkuk 3:17-18

I was privileged to be Palmer Luckey’s pastor for many years. Always a curious and creative fellow, he invented a head-mounted virtual reality display and founded Oculus, which was later purchased by Facebook. In 2014 he received the American Ingenuity Award in the Youth category from the Smithsonian.

Do a Google search of his name and you read this under “Palmer Luckey –Wikipedia”: “Palmer Freeman Luckey…is an American fascist and the founder of Anduril Industries, a defense technology company…” [bolds mine].

But if you actually access Wikipedia, you read this: “Palmer Freeman Luckey…is an American entrepreneur and the founder of Anduril Industries, a defense technology company…” Entrepreneur, not fascist.

What’s with Google?? Has somebody hacked its search results for Palmer?
By contrast, I read “entrepreneur” and not “fascist” when I searched with Bing. Who would do this smear? Is money involved? What should Google do about it? What should Wikipedia do? I’m curious if any readers know the answers.

Note: my search was done on September 25.

Pastor Greg Laurie speaks of the death of Jarrid Wilson

“Tragically, Jarrid took his own life. Sometimes people may think that as pastors or spiritual leaders we are somehow above the pain and struggles of everyday people. We are the ones who are supposed to have all the answers. But we do not.”
A point both pastors and church members should always keep in mind.

Message of the Month –
Beware of Leftist Fundamentalism

“Fundamentalism” is not just an American religious movement. Its dictionary definition includes “strict adherence to any set of basic ideas or principles.” More than that, fundamentalism is a mindset with typical characteristics.
So you can be very secular and still be a fundamentalist.

What are some common characterizations of fundamentalism?

Fundamentalists are absolutists. In the mind of the clergy or the party faithful there is but one Truth. It is precise and detailed. It is not open to re-examination or dialogue. All information is sifted through the screen of ideology and presuppositions.

Therefore fundamentalists are also closed-minded. Why not be, if you already have all the truth in your back pocket?

Fundamentalists are separatists. They repudiate their polar opposites but they especially loathe those who could be their fellow travelers—those who embrace most of their tenets but not their mindset. Religious fundamentalists loathe evangelical Christians who aren’t as strict as they are, or who don’t cross every theological “t” their way.

Leftist fundamentalists loathe liberals who are not “the true faithful” as they think they are. * Many don’t have any meaningful contacts with thinking conservatives (an oxymoron to them) and never dialogue with conservatives. Some are even proud they don’t.

Fundamentalists are idealists. Whenever data does not conform to their presuppositions it is “flawed” or biased or incomplete. If we just had a little different scenario or a little more data than the past or present has given us, they are sure that the fundamentalist ideal would then be vindicated.

This idealism is seen in leftists’ thirst for more government revenue. Big government has the compassion and answers, but not enough money. If it just had more money, the shortcomings in its visions would not be there.

Finally, fundamentalists are self-righteous. Their cause is the correct and moral one, pure and simple. Everyone else is wrong (if not evil), ignorant, laughable and mean-spirited. Leftist fundamentalists never apologize for their sacrifice of the intellect, their costly errors or practical failures. What counts is the righteousness of the cause, not the empirical facts and certainly not the results.

Are there any differences between religious and political fundamentalists? O yes there is—at least one. And it is huge! Religious fundamentalists have traditionally been apolitical. They just want to be left alone—free to indoctrinate their own, practice their faith, and preach the gospel. Only for rare and significant matters have religious fundamentalists tried to impose their moral views on society. **

Leftist fundamentalists, on the other hand, are transformationist zealots and crusaders from the get-go, out to reshape America, by coercion if need be. That makes them scary.

George Will captures both the self-righteous and coercive spirits of leftism: “Progressivism has become a compound of self-satisfied moral preening and a thirst for coercion” (“Progressives are all too willing to cut constitutional corners,” The Washington Post, October 16, 2019).

Fundamentalists, religious and political, have every right to bring their agendas to the national table and to try to persuade others. That’s one great thing about America. But once their ideologies are laid out for all to see, the American process of open debate and reason leads to their tempering or rejection.
Fundamentalism, whatever its stripe, just doesn’t “play well in Peoria.”

* For a great example see: Michael Taube, “The Left Targets One of Its Own” in The Wall Street Journal, October 28, 2019.
** The misguided effort to bring organized prayer into public schools was one example. Critics cite Prohibition as an example of faulty imposition of morality. Perhaps so. But many supporters of Prohibition were mainstream religious people (and non-religious people) who saw it as a positive social solution to keep families strong and financially solvent. They were not fringe religionists trying to shape America according to sectarian dogma. In reality, all legislation reflects moral positions at some level, and activists who believe in “the cause” strive to impose their views on others by coercion if persuasion doesn’t work.

Religious Liberty Vigilance – Presidential Candidates’ Disdain for Religious Liberty

““Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
– The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

I take no personal pleasure in upholding religious liberty in the face of its challenges, especially when the disagreements are with friends.

Had you asked me thirty years ago what the main pressure would be against religious convictions, I would have cited challenges against the right of parents to raise their children according to each family’s faith. Wrong!

When same-sex marriage was legalized in California in 2008, an editorial in my local newspaper told religious people who didn’t support same-sex marriage to relax. “Conservative religionists have nothing to fear. Their religious practices and their personal definition of marriage are intact.” Wrong again!

“Live and let live” is not a value embraced by the secular left.

It is appropriate to note that not all gay rights activists think like the left.
Tyler Deaton is one of many gay rights advocates who also support genuine religious freedom (The Hill, March 28, 2019). Andrew Sullivan is another. Religious freedom can be protected if the determination is there.

At a CNN “Equality Town Hall” hosted by the Human Rights Campaign in Los Angeles on October 11, Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke was asked by CNN’s Don Lemon if he would favor stripping tax exemption from religious institutions if they opposed same-sex marriage.
O’Rourke’s answer was very clear: “There can be no reward, no benefit, no tax break for anyone or any institution, any organization in America that denies the full human rights and the full civil rights of every single one of us. So as president, we’re going to make that a priority and we are going to stop those who are infringing upon the human rights of our fellow Americans.”

Freedom of religion is not a right that applies except when it doesn’t.

More alarming than his answer itself were the great applause from the audience and the concurrence of the other candidates.

Marriage is one of the Sacraments of the Catholic Church. Will government step in and judge a church that safeguards its sacraments for those who qualify in accord with the church’s convictions? O’Rourke says yes.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, quoted above, is the great bulwark against all attempts to control others and eclipse their rights. The right to free speech and to the free exercise of religion, among other enumerated rights, doesn’t just apply when speech or religion is fashionable.

Fashionable speech or religion needs little protection. The real test for liberty comes when the speech or the religion is out of the mainstream or regarded as repulsive, ugly, unworthy of defense.

The First Amendment never says “however” or “unless” or “except.” Freedom of religion is not a right that applies except when it doesn’t. All the rights secured in the First Amendment are near-absolutes.

“To deny an exemption to claimants who engage in certain forms of speech is . . . the same as if the State were to fine them for this speech.”
– U.S. Supreme Court (1958), quoted by George Will (Washington Post, October 16, 2019)

My deep concern is that many presidential candidates, many who embrace the goals of the Human Rights Campaign, many secular leftists don’t really care about freedom of religion. They care about their vision for America and the conformity it requires. Religion be damned if it gets in the way.

Bible Insight – Scripture as the Foundation for Our Human Dignity and Duties

(NOTE: I originally wrote these points as a portion of Resolutions presented at my denomination’s annual conference in July. Producing resolutions was a task I had as chair of our Social Concerns Committee from 1985 to 2019. The points have been expanded for this “Bible Insight” section.)

1st Principle: God is the creator of the heavens and the earth and all it contains.

Genesis 1:1 – “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Psalm 24:1 – “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.”

Dennis Prager observes that Genesis 1:1 is “the most important verse in the Bible.” If it is false, nothing that follows it matters. (See: Dennis Prager, Genesis: God, Creation and Destruction, vol. 1 of The Rational Bible, pages 1-14)

2nd Principle: God created humanity as his highest creation, making humanity alone in his image and after his likeness.

Genesis 1:26 – “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule…over all the earth.’”
Psalm 8:4-6 – “What is man that you are mindful of him…? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands.”

3rd Principle: God created man as male and female, both as bearers of his image.

Genesis 1:27 – “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” The inverted repetition in the second phrase gives emphasis to the first phrase. The third phrase further articulates what is intrinsic to our humanity.

4th Principle: The woman was made from the man, she alone being equal to him yet different from him, to complete the duality of human existence and make marital union possible.

From Genesis 2:18-24 – “Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken from the man. The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called “woman,” for she was taken out of man.’ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and they will become one flesh.”

5th Principle: God appointed mankind as stewards over creation.

Genesis 1:26, 28 – “Then God said, ‘…let them rule over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ …God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.’”
See also Psalm 8:6-8

This is not to be an exploitive, selfish rule that exhausts the earth, but one of careful oversight with enjoyment (see my “Conservation as a Christ-like Cause” in the July-August, 2019 Newsletter).

6th Principle: God chose Israel, the object of his love and protection, to be his special people and a blessing to the whole world.

Genesis 17:7-8, 21 – God said to Abraham, “I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants… The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.”
“But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you…”
See also: Genesis 12:1-3; Amos 3:1-2; Zechariah 2:7; Romans 9:4-5; 11:28-29

7th Principle: Human sinfulness deeply afflicts OUR RELATIONSHIP TO GOD AND TO ONE ANOTHER (including how men and women, parents and children, rich and poor, strong and weak, and people of differing races treat each other) and also afflicts OUR UNDERSTANDING OF OURSELVES (who we are as human beings), tempting us to define ourselves in subjective humanistic ways rather than according to our creator’s design.

Genesis 6:5-6 – “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.”
See also: Genesis 3:1-19; 8:21; Romans 1:18-32; 3:10-18

From these seven foundational principles I draw several ethical implications—17 in fact! Here are two, and more will follow.

1. All human life (including the unborn, those with mental and physical infirmities and those who are terminally ill) is precious and worthy of our protection and care.

2. The loss of any human life by the actions of another is tragic. Nonetheless, taking human life is justifiable in narrow circumstances such as self-defense or defense of others (whether exercised by an individual or by the magistrate). Yet even this is tragic, for God himself takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 33:11).

“Science doesn’t teach right from wrong—or even that there is a right and wrong. The purpose of Genesis 1 is not to teach science. It is to teach about God, man and nature.”
—Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Genesis

Don’s Recent Ministry

Lead Prayer Time at Seal Beach Prayer Breakfast on November 2. Locals can sign up for this event at:

www.gracesealbeach.org under “Resources”.

November 12 – Speak on issues of death and dying to the Grace Leadership Network, 10:00 a.m. at Grace Brethren Church of Norwalk CA, 11005 Foster Rd.
Don’s message of July 28: “Jeremiah—Right Man for the Right Hour” (Jeremiah 1-20) can be heard at www.gracesealbeach.org under “Resources”.

We All Need to Remember
“The Loyal Opposition” – a phrase fond to Dr. Charles Krauthammer

“Originally a British parliamentary term, it encapsulates a concept critical to democracy: that whoever holds power, all sides must respect the fundamental legitimacy of their political rivals; that their differences be seen not as treasonous or out of bounds, but rather as healthy disagreement within our divided and adversarial system of government, which as a whole — and only as a whole — retains ultimate authority. Members of the other party may be your opponents, but within the walls of our democratic constitutional order, they are not your enemy. Where freedom and pluralism reign, you must convince, not overpower.”

– Daniel Krauthammer, speaking of an essential phrase that was fond to his father, Charles Krauthammer (“Charles Krauthammer championed civil debate,” The Washington Post, October 25, 2019)

Reformation Day—October 31

And finally, a Reformation thought, October 31 being the 502nd anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation. On October 31, 1517, German theologian Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the Wittenberg Castle Church door.

Luther on the dialectic of Christian freedom:

“A Christian is the most free lord of all, and subject to none.
A Christian is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to all.”

– Martin Luther, On Christian Freedom (1520)

Website: www.donaldshoemakerministries.com
Contact me at: donaldshoemakerministries@verizon.net