The Divine Right Of County Commissioners
In politics I have an affinity for lost causes. If they’re not lost when I join them, they quickly gain that status afterwards.
A few years ago I agreed to help a friend in his bid for the mayor’s chair. I threw myself into the job of publicist with my creative best. We came in a distant third in a field of three.
Using that experience as a springboard I next moved into county politics as publicity manager for another friend, who was running for county commissioner. I helped prepare snappy newspaper ads, radio commercials, and outdoor posters. We were beaten—soundly.
A further example of my ability to pick losers: every single candidate I voted for on November 7 lost.
Even though I wasn’t directly involved in any campaign this time, some of the defeats were hard to take. Particularly hard on me was the loss suffered by my candidate for chairman of the county commissioners.
In many ways the quality of life in our locality is determined more by who sits on the county commission than by who sits in the White House. Our new chairman, Mrs. Lasalle, is a typical fuzzy-headed idealist.
All this brings me to the latest lost cause I’m espousing: the Divine Right of county commissioners. The egalitarian spirit prevailing in the Western world since the French and American revolutions makes that doctrine as archaic as a thirteen-star flag.
The divine right of rulers has always been more popular with rulers than with the ruled. In its crudest form it held that the king was responsible only to God and therefore could do no wrong—that is, he could do nothing for which he could be called to account by anyone else.
However, what I mean by the divine right of county commissioners is that all government is instituted by God and that no governor comes to power apart from God’s knowledge and concurrence. All rulers are the vice-regents of Christ for the promotion of public good and will have to answer to him.
That’s why God reminded his people in the days of Moses that “you shall not revile God, nor curse a ruler of your people.”
It’s also why Peter could write, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be the emperor as supreme, or to governors sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right.… Fear God. Honor the emperor.”
For that reason I shall honor Mrs. Lasalle, support her when she’s right, humbly oppose her when she’s wrong, and pray for her in every case.
Oh yes, this principle also extends downward to such positions as President and prime minister.
EUTYCHUS V
GREAT RUSTLING
Just finished reading “A Rustling in the Leaves” (News, Oct. 13) and thought it was great.
E. A. PATCHEN
Executive Secretary
National Educators Fellowship
South Pasadena, Calif.
As a missionary who has served many years in France and will return to the field in a few months, I was quite interested in the article by E. E. Plowman. I realize that one cannot make a comprehensive study and report on Europe by a quick trip. There are a couple of things in which I am disappointed.
1. It gives an almost overall opinion by saying that “other groups talk privately about the need to develop a strategy for working in and through the Catholic Church.” He should have talked with those using the New Testament method of church planting and he would have found out that many oppose such a strategy. Several have asked me as past field-chairman what we did. I simply have to reply that Mr. Plowman’s study was not comprehensive. We do not practice this method.
2. Also, I was disappointed that those involved in church planting were omitted. TEAM is a leader in France in this ministry. Also our “Jeuness Ardente” youth ministry in France. Too bad!
However, it was refreshing to see Europe presented as a great field for evangelism.
I. “PETE” PETERSON
The Evangelical Alliance Mission
Wheaton, Ill.
Plowman’s report on what the Lord is doing in Europe was stimulating and colorful. I am in no position to compare notes re the Continent; but as for England, and in particular Cambridge, his report is tinged with certain inaccuracies. It seems to me that he is reporting not so much what God is doing through his people, but what God is doing through his young people of charismatic persuasion; and the two are not synonymous.
I have no desire to demean fellow believers who encourage a charismatic emphasis; I am happy if God is working, regardless of the persons he chooses as means. But to read Plowman’s report, one would gather that the Lord is choosing to do nothing through local churches, or the mushrooming “reformed evangelical” movement, or people over the age of twenty-five. In point of fact, God is working through people from the broadest spectrum. Here in Cambridge, of the six most active, spiritual, and growing churches, only one is neo-charismatic, and all of them, while numbering scores of young people, are also well represented by older believers.
There is a small cloud, about the size of a man’s hand. Perhaps God in his grace will give us the showers of blessing for which many of us pray. But please, in your reporting, do not confine God to the young and to the charismatic movement.
Emmanuel College
D. A. CARSON
Cambridge, England
FILTERING LUTHERANISM
Re your frequent editorializing on the current debate in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (both on your editorial and “news” pages), I would remind your readers that the evaluation they are receiving is coming through a non-Lutheran filter. If many within the Lutheran Church are still unclear on the genius of Lutheranism, it could hardly be expected to find many outside Lutheranism who could evaluate it fairly.
As a fifteen-year graduate of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, I have seen a change in the stance of that institution. It has moved consistently away from a Biblicism that treats the Bible as an encyclopedia of religious facts to an ever stronger Gospel-oriented and Christocentric approach to Scriptures. As a Lutheran, I can only rejoice and be glad!
KEN FRERKING
Campus Pastor
Campus Lutheran Church
Columbia, Mo.
STUDYING RELIGION?
Thank you for your recent editorial (Oct. 13) “Religious Studies on Campus.” I am considering whether or not my calling leads to graduate school, and it is helpful to have the opinion of an evangelical who keeps track of the national situation.
DALE A. SCHNEIDER
Old Saybrook, Conn.
QUALIFYING THE QUARTERBACKS
Please have at least token courtesy to Canada by considering it part of planet Earth even if not suitably Americanized. Your November 10 editorial on Jackie Robinson wrongly states: “When he died last month, there were still … no black quarterbacks in professional football.” Chuck Ealey is black and played quarterback last year for the University of Toledo; this year he plays QB for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats here in Ontario. Maybe he does receive only $30,000 a season, but it’s still professional football. And he wasn’t the first: Sandy Stephens, a Heisman Trophy winner QB, played QB for the Montreal Alouettes in the early sixties for a similar salary.
Please use the qualifying adjective “American” in your descriptions in the future—or endeavor to learn the facts. Toronto, Ont.
DON GREENWOOD
PAWS AND TYRANTS
In your editorial of October 13, “On Leaving It to Hanoi,” it is obvious that you are (either deliberately or through gross ignorance) distorting both the positions of Senator McGovern and the history of U. S. involvement in Indochina for the purpose of showing agreement with and editorial endorsement of the policies of Richard Nixon.
I am not even going to attempt to show where your knowledge of either Senator McGovern’s stated policies or current history is defective; if you don’t know already, then you must be either hopelessly slow learners or willing propagandists for Mr. Nixon. What I am going to try is to draw your attention to the connection (which you probably are unaware of) between this editorial and one in the same issue entitled “Greece: Cornelius Still Awaits Peter.” You see, what you fail to comprehend is that in mindlessly echoing the propaganda and lies of Mr. Nixon you are aiding him in his program of support for the dictatorial and totalitarian regime of South Viet Nam and for the dictatorial and totalitarian regime of Greece.
While Mr. Nixon’s right hand grasps warmly the friendly paws of Communist China and Russia, his left hand is busy setting up petty military tyrants to keep their states from going red. Meanwhile, though you applaud the efforts of Nixon’s flunky in Saigon to keep the people of Viet Nam from imposing their will on him, you start complaining when Nixon’s flunky in Athens (former C.I.A. agent, former S.S. agent) starts putting our brother evangelicals in prison for evangelizing or passing out Bibles. Feels different when it gets close to home, doesn’t it? Well it’s going to get a lot closer to home unless we wake up to the growing web of deceit and tyranny the Washington regime is weaving around the world.
BOYD MARSHALL HOLLIDAY
Durham, N. C.
I’m glad that you criticized the Palestinian gunfighters and their North Vietnamese supporters, but it saddens me a little that you did not extend your criticism to the Israelis and us Americans, who also kill non-combatants for political reasons.… “On Leaving It To Hanoi” could have been a Christian outcry against the killing of non-combatants for political ends instead of the partisan statement that it was. The implication that we Christians value Israeli lives higher than those of Arabs or North Vietnamese is a poor witness to a good portion of the world’s population.
Whitestone, N. Y.
CHARLES E. LEHMAN
COUNTERING PABLUM
I was sorry to read the opinion expressed by the writer of “Too Much Dry Cereal?” (Eutychus and His Kin, Sept. 29). I hasten to reassure you that I subscribe to your nourishing (and to me, appetizing) magazine in preference to several others offering Christian pablum. I appreciate especially J. D. Douglas, John Warwick Montgomery, and the “professionalism” in lengthy articles, especially in fields of art and literature.
My only suggestions would be to replace the “What If …” cartoon with almost anything and to invite Eutychus IV to return in place of V. Henryville, Pa.
PAULINE FOX
LANGUAGE STUDY
I wrote a poem today, inspired by the review of Tongues of Men and Angels (Oct. 13):
Really and truly, dear brother linguistic,
Does it not seem a little bit odd
That you’d try to discern language patterns
Of a language that’s given by God?
With all due respect to degrees you have earned,
The things of the Spirit are just not so discerned!
FURMAN MILLER
Athens, Ala.
Athens College
MUSICAL CONTRASTS
Wayne Pederson’s “New-Songs and Joyful Noise—In Our Church?” (Oct. 27) in which he likens understanding “musical language to a spoken language” is good as far as it goes. I am sure that he would agree that there is a step more, i.e., a bilingual or multilingual person gets much greater enjoyment in living generally than one who speaks only his native tongue. Accordingly, one who knows both modern and classic forms in music is much better equipped to enjoy a wider range of stimuli than one who knows only the one or the other. The editorial in the same issue, “Music For God’s Glory,” points to some of this “old” music which for youth to miss would be such a tragedy. The current vogue of Afro-oriented music will pass away, but that which has endured through the centuries will still live for centuries to come.
Salisbury, Mo.
JAMES A. ADAMS
Pederson certainly makes a point to the over-thirty generation. But a word or two of caution about the current church music:
1. Does it meet the injunction, “God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints, and to be had in reverence of all them that are about him” (Ps. 89:7)?
2. Is it possible that the world’s music—rock, etc.—has won a temporary victory? “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15).
3. Are fads necessary to attract people, young or otherwise? “Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning” (1 John 2:24).
Franklin, Tenn.
J. A. GUNN
UNSPOKEN BEATITUDE
Thanks for the “What If …” cartoons. Please don’t let some of our somber friends kill this off. One of the aspects of Christ’s life that we often ignore is the certainty that he had a sense of humor. Somehow, I just can’t picture so many people being attracted to him if he was always serious and humorless. We need to balance our serious view of sin and salvation with an appreciation and enjoyment of the funny things in life. One of the unspoken beatitudes must have been, “Blessed is the man who can laugh at himself and others, for he shall live a balanced life.…” Keep it up, please, for we don’t want to be overrun by sacred cows.
G. P. ALEXANDER
Riverview Baptist Church
Great Falls, Mont.
A NEW REFERENCE
Your column “Two times Two” (Eutychus and His Kin, Sept. 29) again poses the old conflict between works and faith in a new reference. The child learns mathematics by himself—it is his own production, his own thing. It is part of the school “works.” But the lessons of the Christian life are “learned” differently—if they are learned at all. Nicodemus knew the rules, but he was missing the Christian life. Jesus gave him the answer: Ye must be born again (John 3:7).… The Christian life is not a set of rules, but we like to make it that way, and thus we fail. The only way the Christian life can be made pat is by and through and with Christ.
Fort Myers, Fla.
CLARENCE H. SCHILT
