Darrow Miller and Friends

A Response to Obama’s Blinding Style

  1. Obama’s Blinding Style, Part 1
  2. Obama’s Blinding Style, Part 2
  3. Obama’s Blinding Style, Part 3
  4. Obama’s Blinding Style, Part 4
  5. Obama’s Blinding Style, Part 5 & Final
  6. A Response to Obama’s Blinding Style
  7. More on Obama’s Style & Abortion

Because there are so many in our current culture asking the same pressing questions in regard to politics, I thought it would be good to include Darrow’s recent response to a comment he received on this past series:

Good Morning JRice

Please, there is no sense of your being a pest or disrespectful. There is no need to apologize.

I hear someone who is concerned and wants to engage in an honest dialogue. Our hope is that the Disciple Nations blog is a place where sincere people, who have a heart to see their nations transformed can wrestle with ideas and their application.

You have written “I don’t understand how abortion alone can be such an extreme deal-breaker within the majority of evangelical Christianity.” I cannot speak for the “majority” of the evangelical community, but only for myself. Abortion, is not the only thing that I have a concern for. I have a concern for the raping of the environment by a narcissistic people, the destruction of the family, the rise of corruption in the market place, etc. However for me, abortion is the tip of the iceberg. It lets one know that there is something larger below the surface.

Someone who promotes abortion is also likely to support many other things that are destructive of the community because of the underlying ideology that drives such a hideous act as killing the unborn or the new born as is the case of the practice of infanticide in our country.

Because ideas have consequences, more inhumanity and tyranny will come. Just look at the USSR under Stalin and Germany under Hitler. Their Darwinian social polices were the logical extension of an Atheistic ideology. And in the case of Germany, a startling 80% of the citizens were “church going” Christians. However, the church was asleep.

One of my most troubling moments was standing in an old English fort in Cape Coast, Ghana. This fort was a transhipment point for slaves being sent from Africa to America and the Caribbean. I had just stood in the dungeons below the fort where the slaves were housed in the most inhumane conditions while they waited for the slave ships. When we came out of the dark dungeons into the bright whitewashed courtyard of the fort, the tour guided pointed out a beautiful colonial building built a few feet above the dungeons. The guide pointed out that this was where “the church” met on Sunday morning for worship. On the wall of the building there was a plaque that said “Never Again!”

J, why do I relate this story? Because, today, the global church is too often disengaged from the problems of the brokenness of their community and nation. She too often disregards the institutional evil in her community and work place.

The church is not to be a warehouse for souls going to heaven. She is to be the embassy of the kingdom of God. And this needs to be manifest in our orthodoxy and orthopraxy. We are to be the people who stand for the stewardship of the Creation and the protection of human life. We should be challenging the degrading of women and sex slavery that exists in the USA and globally.

The success of the church is not measured by the size of her buildings, the numbers of her congregants or the “personal piety” of her members. No, her success is measured by the faithfulness of her service, her obedience to “all that I have commanded,” and the impact that she is having in her community.

J, I hear your internal struggle and deeply respect you.

We need to pray for President Obama, his family, his administration and for the nation.

We are at a crossroads as a nation. But, I am firmly convinced that the future of the nations lie more with the church than it does with the President or the Congress. It is the church that God has created to be the primary instrument of the transformation of a society. However, today, the church in America remains a slumbering giant. We need to prod her to wake up and be the church or the nation will suffer.

-Darrow L. Miller

See the other posts in this series.

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About 
Darrow is co-founder of the Disciple Nations Alliance and a featured author and teacher. For over 30 years, Darrow has been a popular conference speaker on topics that include Christianity and culture, apologetics, worldview, poverty, and the dignity of women. From 1981 to 2007 Darrow served with Food for the Hungry International (now FH association), and from 1994 as Vice President. Before joining FH, Darrow spent three years on staff at L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland where he was discipled by Francis Schaeffer. He also served as a student pastor at Northern Arizona University and two years as a pastor of Sherman Street Fellowship in urban Denver, CO. In addition to earning his Master’s degree in Adult Education from Arizona State University, Darrow pursued graduate studies in philosophy, theology, Christian apologetics, biblical studies, and missions in the United States, Israel, and Switzerland. Darrow has authored numerous studies, articles, Bible studies and books, including Discipling Nations: The Power of Truth to Transform Culture (YWAM Publishing, 1998), Nurturing the Nations: Reclaiming the Dignity of Women for Building Healthy Cultures (InterVarsity Press, 2008), LifeWork: A Biblical Theology for What You Do Every Day (YWAM, 2009), Rethinking Social Justice: Restoring Biblical Compassion (YWAM, 2015), and more. These resources along with links to free e-books, podcasts, online training programs and more can be found at Disciple Nations Alliance (https://disciplenations.org).
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