It's Gut-Check Time for American Christians

Small groups of protesters, representing, at most, about 30% of the American people, have been protesting social distancing and sheltering-in-place orders lately, claiming them to be infringements on their personal freedom.

But here's what I think, folks, from my perspective as a Christian and a student of American history.

My freedom ends when it infringes on your freedom.

The Constitution's Framers never believed in unbridled rights or allowing freedom to become license.

Babies and adolescents believe that freedom is being able to do whatever you want to do.

But when you grow up, you understand that, in Justice Holmes' famous example, freedom of speech does not allow you to yell, "Fire!" in a crowded theater.

The vast majority of Americans want a slow, controlled, and, when needed, easily-reversed, return to more normal social distancing. They want government to fulfill its function as pronounced in the Preamble of the Constitution, to form "a more perfect union" by striving to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity..."

Freedom does not, whether from a Christian or a constitutional perspective, give anyone the right to willfully endanger others. The apostle Peter writes in Scripture to Christians, "Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God's slaves." (1 Peter 2:16) To be a slave of the God we know in Jesus Christ means to be set free to live lives of love for God and love for neighbor.

Yes, there are economic implications to continued sheltering-in-place. Our unemployment systems, operating on antiquated software, need to be updated. Government and all of us will probably have to do much more over the next year-and-a-half to help each other through this unprecedented crisis.

But on our currency, we Americans claim as our motto, "In God we trust," not "In money we trust." If we can take sensible, if sometimes unpleasant, actions to get through this crisis together, we will emerge stronger for it. We will preserve the most precious economic assets we have: healthy, living human beings.

It's gut-check time for Christians in America. Will we be full-tilt pro-life? Or will we join the pro-death advocates who say that having a few more bucks in their pockets is more important than the lives of their neighbors?

The answer should be clear. And most people know that.

[Armed protesters in the gallery of the Michigan State Senate chamber in Lansing four days ago.]

Saturday This and That

Things that caught my eye this past week...

Typography geeks say that résumés should never use Times New Roman...
...typeface and that Helvetica is the way to go.

Helvetica is safe, and it "feels professional, lighthearted, honest," designer Brian Hoff tells Bloomberg.

The article from The Week points out that Helvetica has a whole movie about it. Nerd that I am, I have seen it. I like to use Arial.

Have you heard about Plenti?
Received a mailing this past week, inviting us to join Plenti, a cross-brand customer loyalty program presently involving lots of retailers, including Macy's, Rite Aide, AT & T, Hulu, Nationwide, and others. People who use their Plenti cards or numbers, earn and redeem points for purchases from the participating companies. I hadn't heard of this program until we got the mailer. According to this article from the March 18 edition of USA Today:

...70% of the U.S. population lives within 5 miles of at least two participating locations. And brands without physical locations, such as Hulu, still have broad national reach online.

The article also says that a similar program has existed in Germany for about fifteen years in which almost half of all German households participate. What's the catch? Can't see an egregious one. American Express, the catalyst behind Plenti, seems simply to want to spread more plastic--nothing new there--and the retailers think that by joining an all-for-one, one-for-all loyalty card, they'll increase sales. Haven't signed up myself. But I could see it as a win, at least in the short run, for consumers.

For Christians, there's a difference between freedom...
...and license.

As of Tuesday, according to Chris Cilizza, Hillary Clinton has answered...
...seven questions. The Washington Post's Cilizza then enumerates them. My reaction: While it may be in a candidate's interest to speak to the press, Clinton isn't legally bound to do so. If she wants to reach the public with town hall meetings, advertising, conventional campaigning, and social media releases, that's her choice. But it's likely to backfire on her...even if this is the opening "listening" phase of her campaign. In the linked piece, Cilizza also lists seven questions he would like to ask the former Secretary of State.

God bless Ashlea's family as they grieve her passing...
...and kudos to the Reds' Skip Schumaker for being the only player in Saint Louis that day to take the time to meet and visit with Ashlea before the Reds-Cardinals matchup. Heard Reds color commentator Chris Welsh say, in discussing this visit and Ashlea's passing, that Schumaker may not be a starter, but he is a leader in the club house, precisely for gestures like this.

The 'Louie Louie' singer nobody could understand...
...has died. Like Lenny and T.B. in That Thing You Do, singer Jack Ely left the Kingsmen just after he recorded the lead vocal on the best-selling cover of the song.

Hey Jude

Read the short New Testament book of Jude for my morning devotions today. This is a book for our times.

And it smacked me right in the face, reminding me again that my life as a follower of Christ--an imperfect, often haphazard, fitfully faithful one--is meant by God to be lived in simple response to His undeserved gifts of forgiveness and new life with my whole self.

Jude is upset with the scoffers within the Church, those who have come to regard the truth of God's self-disclosure in Jesus and in His Word, as dispensable. These folks in Jude's time saw grace as the license to do whatever sinful human nature prompted them to do. From Jude, as in other places in Scripture, we learn that that's simply false.

Grace isn't a license to ignore God; it's the freedom to be the person Christ died and rose to let us be...under Christ's lordship.

Reminds me of an old Randy Stonehill song: "He understands the human heart/His mercy is complete/But His grace was not intended as a place to wipe your feet."

I was talking with someone yesterday. I said, "Sometimes, God calls us to do things we don't want to do, things that aren't easy...Check that, every single day of my life, God calls me to do things that I don't want to do, that aren't easy." He also calls us--commands us--to not do things we want to do.

What Jude insists on is that when we follow our own ways, we are condemned.

When we travel the grace path following Christ, Christ sets us free for a deeper, more significant life. Often we can't see the depth and significance as we're unwillingly submitting, but submitting nonetheless, to Christ.

But we don't need to see. Only God does.

That, I'm learning, is where faith comes in. Faith is trust in Christ even when everything inside us chafes or doubts or fears or can't understand.

Faith says, "I'm no longer pretending to be in charge. Because every time I thought I was in charge, I know I was only pretending anyway. Despite my pretense, I surrender to the God of grace and love I know in Christ."

If you're like me, you'll have to surrender like that about a hundred times a day or more. Such surrender isn't natural to us. That's okay. When we surrender to Christ, we learn that grace, true grace, grace that is acceptance of us without approval of our sins, grace that is accepting of us and then rolls up its sleeves to change us into Christlikeness, is natural to Him.

If we're willing each day to part with our sins and our conceits of self-sufficiency and of having God and life and everything figured out and of being able to pick and choose what authority we will give God over our lives, Christ can help us.

If no such willingness exists, Christ can't help. He doesn't force His help on us. That's how grace works.

The Quotable Daniels: Freedom

License and freedom are two different things. God will let us take license, but, in Christ, wants to give us freedom.

(See here)