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
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