Letters

Youth, Faith—And Baptism

I approached with great interest “The Mystery of Building Faith: How a Child Learns to Love God” [CT Institute, June 13]. I was disappointed: You did not include a traditional Lutheran point of view in the discussion. Not to include a conservative, confessional Lutheran is all the more amazing in that a Roman Catholic theologian was one of the conversational partners. On the surface there seemed to be little difference between his view and that of the evangelical position that sees the age of accountability as necessary for baptism. It becomes clear that Lutherans and evangelicals are operating with a different concept of faith. A more nearly complete point of view would have been reached if the Lutheran view would have been included. As one of my colleagues remarked, that concept of infant faith is unique to the Lutheran position.

Lutherans hold with evangelicals to the same firm convictions of the inspiration and inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures. This common conviction makes it all the more necessary that Lutherans be allowed to engage in dialogue with evangelicals where their differences are contributions that could not be made by others.

DAVID P. SCAER

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, Ind.

I noted the emphasis on the presence of the parents. However, a basic contradition gnaws away at my conscience. How can mission boards mandate or even encourage missionary parents to place their children in a school hundreds of miles from their home?

Is there any adequate justification for this practice that continues to tear apart the very fabric of the family unit you have so poignantly focused on as the role model for spiritual training?

There appears to be a contradiction when an evangelical expert states that “there is no substitute for the parent—a parent who not only lives with the child, but interacts with the child …” (Joy). Yet the message to missionary parents is that theirs is a godly sacrifice. Does a double standard exist?

MARJORIE ALFANO

Vincentown, N.J.

I understand darku not as a verb, “the way he should go,” but as a simple possessive noun, “his way” (Prov. 22:6). Simply put, “Train a child in his [own] way; even when he is old he will not turn from it.” Let a child have his way and even when he is grown up, he will be a spoiled brat.

Too many Christian parents have mistakenly taken the traditional King James rendering as a promise of God and let their teen and adult children stray without a word, hoping in that promise of restoration. Parents should pray for and plead with their children who have turned away from faith. Proverbs 22:6 is a warning for child rearing.

REV. MICHAEL J. IMPERIALE

First Presbyterian Church

Greenlawn, N.Y.

Job’S Journey Of Faith

Thank you for Philip Yancey’s insightful look at Job’s experience of the journey of faith [“When the Facts Don’t Add Up,” June 13]. I am grateful for his opening for me new vistas of the mind and love of God. Surely, it helps us to see that the reality of the Sacred Pages is a theology of the Cross, rather than of glory—until we reach that glory.

This one article is well worth the price of a year’s subscription.

REV. N. F. SPOMER

Christ Lutheran Church

Egan, Minn.

Yancey’s analysis of the Book of Job is one more demonstration of his insight into the issues of pain and faith. I would, however, come to the defense of Job’s friends on one score: As soon as they heard of their friend’s misfortune, they came and sat with him in silence for seven days and nights. Perhaps Job could have done without the insipid advice that followed this vigil. I wonder, though, if he would have forgone the close companionship his friends offered. (In fact, Job never dismissed his friends, only their counsel.)

And I wonder how often we offer the Jobs of our world our prayers rather than our presence. Job tells his friends, “If only you would be altogether silent! For you, that would be wisdom.” To come alongside the injured and share their sufferings in silence would, for many of us, be wisdom.

STEVE SWAYNE

Seattle Pacific University

Seattle, Wash.

In this life, so often filled with difficulties, one often comes to the conclusion, “Boy, could I write an article about the meaning of suffering after this experience is over,” only to open CT and find an article such as Philip Yancey’s on the meaning of Job’s suffering has said it so much better. It has been this way time and time again.

LESTER H. HOLLANS

Southern Free Enterprise Center

Birmingham, Ala.

Yancey’s Job article was excellent. His writing is cogent, his imagery lucid. Each paragraph pushed me to the next.

RICH KUBOW

Jackson, Miss.

Card Shuffling

For years I’ve read, enjoyed, and tried to support Christian magazines. But alas, their persistent annoyance in one area has almost driven me mad. It’s those insufferable “blow-in” cards.

You know what I mean: those little subscription cards they insist on sticking in the magazine even though the person holding the magazine obviously already has a magazine.

At first, I felt some sort of misguided responsibility to “save” the silly things. I would attempt to make them useful as bookmarks. I saved them in shoeboxes until I ran out of closet space. I tried to convince friends and family they were a novel collector’s item of the future.

The problem is that they all appear so—valuable. Coupons, savings vouchers, no-risk offers, certificates; soon I found myself tentatively opening hymnals, Bibles, commentaries, even closet doors, always expecting little cards to blow out.

I know I sound a little irrational or unstable. And I have been seeing a therapist. He’s encouraged me to use the cards for gift subscriptions to my friends, thus converting a source of frustration and hostility into a positive act that benefits others. So tomorrow I’m going to put my frustration to rest. I’m mailing in my 15 shoeboxes full of coupons from 1959 to provide gifts for all my friends—at over 93 percent off the current cover prices.

EUTYCHUS

The Mystique Of Celebrity Aid

Charles Colson [“We Aren’t the World,” June 13] provides Westerners, especially Christians, with some excellent food for thought concerning our malnourished view of helping starving people. He helpfully challenges the burgeoning mystique of celebrity aid, but he also points toward the fact that providing food for the starving people of the world is a complex and sensitive matter.

Giving people food in crisis situations and enabling them to more adequately feed themselves are acts that need to be done with careful thought, fervent prayer, and deep humility. Doing this only when an emergency hits the headlines is not enough. As someone said at the MCC [Mennonite Central Committee] discussion on food aid and development: When the media discover a famine, Christian aid agencies should already be preparing to move to other areas of still-invisible crises.

LARRY KEHLER

Conference of Mennonites in Canada

Winnipeg, Man., Canada

I believe Colson is completely off the mark when he compares musicians’ well-publicized efforts to biblical allusions to displaying one’s piety in public. But these musicians do not need public acknowledgement of their actions. They make their public displays very obvious for another, completely different, reason—which also has biblical parallels. If we are given a gift, do we hide it under a bushel? No; we put it on a stand so that all in the house will have a light to live by. Similarly, these musicians have been given a gift of tremendous media attention. They have taken this gift and put it on the pedestal so that the world can see the good they are doing and be moved to action.

Colson is correct in his assessment; yet it would do us good to give the performers the benefit of the doubt. The bottom line is this: It would behoove Colson to admit that these events are sincere, heartfelt efforts by their organizers to heighten consciousness and to spur action for the downtrodden.

STEVEN M. GANDT

Topsfield, Mass.

Money? Evil?

I was amazed that a journal as theologically sophisticated as CT would print a statement that “Money is evil” [“Reflections,” June 13]. Scripture states that “the love of money is the root of many evils,” but nowhere does it condemn money as evil. Affluence, whether of individuals or institutions, produces a need for extra vigilance. But so do the cares of the world or persecution and tribulation, legalism, youth, et cetera. Yaconelli’s approach reminds me of someone I heard who was going to do away with crime by abolishing money because money is the root of every evil. Wouldn’t it be nice if wickedness could be so easily abolished?

DAVID F. SIEMENS, PH.D.

Thousand Oaks, Calif.

No Disarmament

I must comment in response to Kenneth Kantzer’s “One Cheer for Carl Sagan” [Senior Editor, June 13]. Throughout Jesus’ teachings, or those of the other New Testament writers, I see no reference to disarmament, peace negotiations, or even any political action. Instead, I see Christians playing the part in society that they are uniquely prepared for, telling the lost about salvation. That is how we will preserve this planet or make political change!

STEVE HEESE

The Church in South Denver

Denver, Colo.

Timely Words On Alcoholism

The editorial “Tough Is Not Enough,” by Kenneth S. Kantzer [May 16], has come 40 years too late—but yet, at a most opportune time. As a Lutheran, I was raised to react to life that goes by me. Yes, we should punish this, yes, we should send this man to drunk-driving school, and yes, we should support MADD. Times are changing; the system doesn’t work. Kantzer is correct when he says, the “root answer: an abiding concern.”

RICHARD L. JENSEN

Mission Hills, Calif.

Kantzer’s editorial only grazes the surface. Drunk driving is merely part of a much deeper problem. For years, prosecuting attorneys have fumed because jurors would not convict drunken drivers. In today’s society, drinking is accepted as a normal life pattern. Beyond that, during the last decade, sales of retail liquor stores have increased almost $1 billion each year. Christians, one hundred million strong, must recognize and emphasize to others the heavy toll taken in lives by alcohol. This occurs not only in front of careening cars—but behind closed doors.

CHARLES W. JAMISON

Santa Barbara, Calif.

Kantzer states: “We need to be committed most fully to the current research into discovering a chemical pill to counteract the effects of alcohol on the human brain.” This is no more a solution to the problem of drunk driving than abortion is to the problem of unwanted pregnancy. What society really needs is self-controlled individuals who are disciplined enough to abstain from this potentially deadly drug that offers absolutely no good consequences.

PAMELA A. POULHUS

Mohopac, N.Y.

Heresy Hunters’ Paradise?

Your presentation on the New Age movement (May 16) makes us think—and sometimes this is a painful experience. Congregations are weary of the steady reminder that man is a miserable, hopeless, self-destructive sinner.

People hunger for a more spiritually uplifting message that awakens in them newborn thinking, that stimulates them to be twentieth-century practitioners of Christ’s more abundant life. In short, the great put-down has gone far enough.

Did we bring the New Age religious movement on ourselves? Is it all so bad? Christianity should be out front, ahead of the pack, not engaged in creating a heresy hunters’ atmosphere.

DR. JOHN CHRISCI

South Miami, Fla.

I read the Burrows article with great interest since I have spent the last several years studying the New Age movement. He states that Cumbey and Hunt are incorrect when they imply that “the NAM rejects Christianity and that it is intent on exterminating it.”

With my extensive study of the New Age movement, I can assure your readers that it is Cumbey who is correct, not Burrows. I can emphatically state that the NAM is very definitely planning to exterminate the Christians. Seeds of Peace, a New Age newsletter, states that “those who are attached or committed to a belief system [Christians] will also fall along with the system when it’s eventually shattered.”

DR. CATHY BURNS

Mount Carmel, Pa.From the Senior

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