About "Issues"

 I'm skeptical of "issues."  They primarily serve the purposes of politicians, who manufacture them at every opportunity.

Manufacture them because issues are a guaranteed way to get people to take "sides:" the work-of-the-flesh that Galatians 5:20 calls "factions."  As I've noted many times here, the Greek word is haireseis, from which we get our English word "heresy."  Strong's glosses haireseis as "a self-chosen opinion:"

If scripture classes "factions" as fleshly sin, we must know it has no place in a Christian's life.  The fact it manifests "self-chosen opinion" should tell us where taking "sides" about issues positions us in regard to Christ, The Word and The Truth.

Capital punishment has been one such "issue" in our society all my life.  I was thinking about it today: thinking especially that the worst thing that ever happens to a moral question is that it be framed as an "issue," subject to politicians' self-serving manipulation.  The worst thing we do with a moral question is take it on politicians' terms, and take a partisan "side" towards it according to our "self-chosen opinions."

I certainly have an "opinion" about capital punishment, and probably most people do.

But I was thinking of the times I hear a news-story about some murderer's sentencing.  In their "victim-impact statement" to the Court, it's surprising how often families of murder-victims use that opportunity to tell the murderer they forgive him.

More than once, I've heard family-members say they forgive because "I have to," as did some family-members of the nine Bible-study victims of white-supremacist murderer Dylann Roof.  Their desire to obey Jesus compelled them to forgive others, as they know they are forgiven in Him.

More than once I've heard families of murder-victims even ask that the Court not sentence the murderer to death.

When that happens, it's delusional to respond by "opinion," or even think opinions matter.  At such times, followers of Jesus will be powerfully moved in their spirit by the manifest working of His Spirit.  Amen.

Capital Punishment

Again from Bryan Stevenson's book "Just Mercy;"

"I told the congregation that Walter's case had taught me that the death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit. The real question of capital punishment in this country is, Do we deserve to kill ?" (p. 313)

Drawing the Line II

Ted Williams was the last man in major-league baseball to bat over .400. He credited his hitting ability to his visual acuity, which tested at 20/10 when he entered the Navy in 1942. Williams claimed that he could see the spin of the ball's stitches from the moment it left the pitcher's hand, which told him the ball's future motion and placement when it reached home-plate.

An interviewer asked Williams about his legendary batting skills. It was simple, Williams said: he didn't swing at any ball except those which touched the strike-zone.

"But with your eyesight," said the interviewer, "surely you could have hit pitches that were only a sixteenth of an inch outside, or an eighth of an inch. Couldn't you have gotten even more hits that way ?"

"NO !" Williams said. "If I did that, where would I draw the line ?"

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I cited this anecdote in a previous blog-post, that American Christians also need to draw the line: in our case, against the creeping worldliness that has led us far astray. It came back to mind today in a different connection: who draws the line ?

Ted Williams understood the strike-zone was built into the rules of the game. He simply determined to observe those rules.

So who draws the line ?

When I started work for the Post Office in the late '70s, they were still talking about a recent employee who'd been convicted of murdering her boyfriend. The testimony was that she'd shot and killed him after an argument one hot afternoon. Her defense ?: "I told him not to move that fan."

If "every man does what is right in his own eyes," who can say I'm wrong to kill anyone who displeases me ? I draw my own line, for my own reasons: and don't you dare move that fan.

Or if the armed anarchistic autonomy some clamor for today is not to our taste, are the brawling tribes of the earth better able to draw the line ? Don't we have the example of all history, that they will do as they have always done in their national moral autonomy, and find it laudable to murder in defence of "national interests" ?

We who believe that God Alone Fathers life, Creates "the game" and its rules: is He not Alone the Only righteous Judge fit to rule when the life He has given should be forfeit ?