Letters

Sensible Reasoning

Charles Colson’s sensible article in the issue of December 15 concerning prolife activists was stimulating [“How Prolife Protest Has Backfired”]. There must be a better way to get the message across.

The abortion practice is the result of turning the church into an entertainment center. Godly, biblical joy is turned into carnal, fleshly happiness by clowns acting as preachers. If God is not first of all holy, he is not God. And if there is no God, there is no morality—and then abortion cannot be wrong.

John Renno

Danville, Pa.

I am distraught over Colson’s article. I feel he has grossly missed the point of the rescue movement and fallen for the argument of the prochoice movement in matters of rape or incest. Those who risk arrest at abortion clinics are not protesters; they are there on a rescue mission. Anyone who cannot attend a rescue without displaying anger should not go; but please don’t say no one should go because a few have been photographed with un-Christlike expressions on their faces.

I do not understand the concern over what the media says or does. Anyone involved in the prolife movement knows that the secular media’s agenda is prochoice and discrediting of prolife people. This gives us cause to be careful in how we conduct ourselves, but it should not cause us to back down from strategies that have proven to save lives.

Dianne M. Hoover

Marietta, Ga.

Thanks to Charles Colson for bringing sanity to our insane world (both secular and Christian). I look forward to reading his latest book. The Lord has given him great wisdom and insight into our culture.

Franklin Ross

Tucson, Ariz.

I am not out every day with the prolife cause, but I have never seen Christians with faces twisted with hate and anger while screaming and waving their Bibles. In every instance, it was the other way around, with Christians singing hymns and praying. In an emotionally charged atmosphere, the self-control of Christian prolifers has seemed remarkable, making me feel proud and grateful for this fellowship of repentance.

Eleanor Reed

Boston, Mass.

Fresh Insight On The “New Russia”

We really enjoyed Terry Muck’s article, “Under the Eye of the Big, Red Machine” [Dec. 15]. As a fan of Argentine-born evangelist Luis Palau, I was particularly glad to see you cover at least partly the success of one of his evangelistic campaigns. This excellent article gave us fresh insight into the New Russia.

Rev. David Macfarlane

Toronto, Ont., Canada

Muck’s excellent report on his recent visit to the Soviet Union has missed at least one item. He writes that Protestant churches have no seminaries in Russia. This is incorrect, because the Seventh-day Adventists operate one not too far from Moscow.

Rev. Jeremia Florea

Bee Branch, Ark.

The December 15 cover painting by [Soviet artist] Vladimir Smirnov was exquisite. Bravo!

David Luma

Birmingham, Mich.

Missed Point?

CT’s report on the Religious Right [News, Dec. 15] misses the point—the Religious Right now passes itself off as mainstream. I’m hoping 1990 is the year CT does something worthwhile on this most significant story in evangelical Christendom.

Stephen M. Fox

Collinsville, Ala.

Euty’s Cussin’

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like more and more of my friends from church are, um … ah … cussing. We’re not talking your good, clean evangelical expletives: gosh dam, heck, or holy crimenee. We’re talkin’ the big time. Four letters and counting. The stuff they used to say made a Teamster blush.

Now, I’m no prude. I realize there are things that really can make a preacher swear. Like when your teenage son uses the car all weekend and then forgets to put it in the garage Sunday night; it rains, the windows were left open, and the fuel gauge is on empty. Gosh dam hardly seems expletive enough.

But come on, folks. It’s bad enough that we look like the rest of the world. Do we have to talk like them, too?

It’s time someone came up with some really good evangelical swear words. Crimenee is okay, but kind of wimpy compared with … well, you know what I mean.

So here’s my list of certified swear words worthy of that occasion when you open the envelope and learn the IRS would like to look over last year’s returns:

Pit: Sounds naughty, but it is totally clean (and used to be a fun game, to boot). It’s best used in situations of total frustration, as in “Aw pit, I thought the war was on drugs, not people who run a yellow light!”

Mikhail Gorbachev: I’m tired of hearing both our Lord’s and Judas Priest’s (like jeez, a euphemism) names being taken in vain. There’s nothing in the Bible against swearing by the name of a Communist leader, is there?

Fibula: Ever wonder why various body parts became the expletives of choice? Instead of calling someone an … um … well, you get the picture … why not just call him a less offensive part of the anatomy, as in “stay in your lane, you stupid fibula.”

You say pit, Mikhail Gorbachev, and fibula are patently more ridiculous than gosh dam and heck? You’ve got no argument from me. But let’s face it. Trying to swear Christianly is a lot like trying to turn the sanctuary into a theme park.

Maybe it would be better just to say no to sanctified (as well as regular) swearing.

EUTYCHUS

Top Ten

The feature on 1989’s top ten [news stories] was interesting [News, Dec. 15]. It is always valuable to put things into perspective. The adult Sunday school class I teach made our own list. Without informing the class of your choices, I asked them the question to determine the top ten news stories with greatest impact for the church.

This is our list:

1. The abortion issue—Supreme Court rulings and all.

2. Diminishing trust for televangelists.

3. The events in Poland specifically, and all of Eastern Europe as well.

4. Awareness of world missions.

5. Disasters, and the relief projects by the church.

6. Multiple family issues, including divorce, new definitions of “household,” further fractioning of families, single partners, and so on.

7. The plight of the homeless.

8. The increasing emphasis on “me” in America.

9. The unity of Europe and its prophetic ramifications.

10. Church-state issues in America, such as home schooling, religious displays in public places, and so on.

The importance of any list is to help us use history as a window for the future. Events are changing so rapidly in the world that historical perspective is mandatory. Perhaps today, the class would add the events in Central America.

Dwain C. Illman, M.D.

Bloomington, Ind.

The War Will Get Hotter

Kenneth Kantzer’s editorial, “A Winning Prolife Strategy” [Dec. 15], was right on target. The abortion war is not over and will probably get hotter in 1990. Christians must continue to pray and educate the public so that at least the 95 percent of those aborted now for trivial reasons can be saved. Unless the moral attitude and values of this country change, we are going to be in trouble. Mother Teresa said it best recently: “If a mother can kill her own child, then what is left of the West to be destroyed?”

Howard DeWitt

Alamogordo, N.M.

In devising a prolife strategy, we dare not enter into a conscience-salving compromise for the sake of popularity. All of the exceptions are for human convenience. Even the life of the mother—except where mutual destruction is assured—is suspect. I realize this is heretical, but God is nowhere obligated to cater to human convenience. We often hear: “It would take a saint to do that.” Well, we are called to be saints.

Richard W. Bliesman

Creston, Iowa

Needed: Middle Ground

Your editorial “Epitaph for the Eighties” deserves comment. All the eighties really prove is that conservatism in whatever form is not holy ground. The spats within the evangelical community and the moral outrage unleashed by greedy televangelists suggest that the seeds of its own destruction are as present within the Right as the Left!

Give us an ethical middle way: that’s what the nineties plead for.

Brian Witiver

Ft. Wayne, Ind.

I take issue with your comments about “the disarray of theological liberalism.” Evangelicals have been taunting the so-called liberal mainline churches and organizations like the NCC in vain because the “liberals” are in the evangelicals’ ranks! That which was secular-humanist behavior at the turn of the century is now being taught in many conservative evangelical colleges and seminaries.

The “grassroots poor people’s” churches have come of age in the 1980s and are themselves the establishment and status-quo churches that mainline churches once were. In the 1990s evangelicals are going to have an identity struggle. I wonder how long evangelicals can try to appeal to all sides of the theological spectrum, yet maintain their identity and a degree of integrity of what it means to be “evangelical.”

Rev. David Coffin

Malinta, Ohio

Toward Pulpit Excellence

Kevin Miller’s column, “We Ask for Poor Sermons” [Speaking Out, Dec. 15], was timely and topical. Most of us who are pastors feel extraordinary time pressure at the Christmas season, when we face the most strategic services and searching congregations. It is a wise and exceptional church that realizes its best investment is neither in facilities nor electronics, but rather in time given to the pastor to probe, study, pray, and think through to pulpit excellence.

Rev. Wayne A. Detzler

Calvary Baptist Church

Meriden, Conn.

There are other elements to this issue. Beginning from our seminary days we pastors are groomed to splinter ourselves in the ministry. Many seminaries require a smattering of Hebrew and Greek, a smattering of counseling courses, and similar dabs of church history and theology. Meanwhile, in the distance are visions of megachurches that represent success in the ministry.

The message a prospective pastor gets subliminally is that there are formulas for success. Among the ingredients in most formulas is seldom “much time in secret.” Often the “successful pastor” is a good administrator rather than a scholar. Few pastors I know—I am tempted to say no pastors I know—are intimately acquainted with their Hebrew and Greek Bibles. It is very hard work with meager practical dividends. Once in the ministry, interlinears may be the closest many pastors will come to the original languages.

For whatever reasons there might be, few congregations want meaty preaching that has been hard-won in the packing house of the pastor’s study. It is not expected that the pastor be a learned person. Instead, the common ideal seems to be a friendly, earnest, pietist who is “practical” in the pulpit. I’m really not certain how “meat” from the pulpit is to be defined. “Popular” and “meaty” are not synonymous.

Rev. Stuart D. Robertson

West Lafayette, Ind.

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