This one will be long. I was looking for a past letter to the editor and ran across a couple of "blasts from the past." Actually, I found quite a few great letters - no bias here.
Since we are approaching the solemn remembrance of Holy Week, I decided to reprint a couple of my letters stressing the role that the Christian faith can have and the positive impact it can make in a culture wandering far from God and wondering how it can ever extricate itself (short answer: it can't; it takes God's mercy, forgiveness, and love to make us whole).
Here goes...
*****
January 2007
Dear Editor,
Two articles on the Kokomo Tribune Opinion page of January 2nd tell us much about our culture. In a reprint from The Herald Bulletin of Anderson, a writer asks, “Have girls gone wild?” Latching on to recent scandals with the Miss USA contestants and others, the writer expresses concern about the direction that girls and young women are heading. We read, “The lure of celebrity and fame, strong throughout history, seems to be almost the driving virtue of many young people. Constantly in touch with some kind of media, young people see themselves in others and the more traditional influences - parents, churches, schools - cannot compete with the glitter and fun of celebrities at play.” Their point is that young women and men are making poor decisions for immediate gratification and ignoring the long-term effects that these decisions can have on their lives. The article ends tepidly, “We hope young people searching for role models to emulate find some who embody values beyond themselves.”
The other article printed on the same page offers an excellent solution. Pat Fagan of the Heritage Foundation writes that “…a powerful resource is quietly and far more effectively contributing to the common good in myriad ways: religious practice.” Mr. Fagan informs us in his report that regular attendance at religious services is linked to healthy, stable family life, strong marriages, and well-behaved children. Regular worship attendance is linked to reduced incidents of domestic abuse, crime, substance abuse, addiction, and other social diseases. He delineates other advantages gained from regular worship attendance.
In the first article, one of many social problems is plainly laid out, but no useful answer is given. In the second article, evidence of the practical good of religious worship provides the necessary antidote to the problem described in the first article. Sadly, while our children and young adults are frequently taught their freedoms to choose immorality, the moral, ethical, and values-forming lessons from religion are squeezed out of the public arena. So we are left with lots of problems and no solutions. Men and women in our culture today can see that there are major problems and crises, and they can tell us that people are suffering, but when God’s everlasting love is given as the answer to cultural problems and suffering, American elitists go to work to keep the truth from being made known.
*****
*****
January 2007
Dear Editor,
In the article printed on 1/12/07 (Kokomo Tribune, p. A5), Lewis Diuguid shares comments about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., made by Clayborne Carson, director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Institute at Stanford University. Writes Diuguid, “King was an ecumenical religious leader, accepting that ‘each religion is a path to the truth,’ Carson said.” If this is true of the Rev. King, then born-again Christians must reject this particular teaching as false. While there are many solid reasons to celebrate and honor what the Rev. King accomplished for us, Christian believers cannot accept any teaching that would replace the Lordship of Jesus Christ with any other religious belief, doctrine, or principle. “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” declares Jesus in John 14:6. For the Christian believer, there is no other religion that is a “path to truth.”
This does not mean that Christians cannot work with other faith groups to accomplish shared goals for the public good. As a military Chaplain endorsed by a Christian denomination, I worked freely alongside men and women of a variety of faiths to accomplish community relations projects in overseas and domestic ports we visited. I worked with Commanding Officers to ensure that all of the men and women under their commands were free to practice their religious belief within the guidelines set forth in Department of Defense policy. It did not mean, though, that I compromised my own faith by participating in worship services that did not recognize the exclusive truth of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Nor did anyone else have to compromise their faith by participating in worship services that violated the tenets of their religious doctrines.
I also take exception to Diuguid’s and Carson’s comment that fundamentalists are using religion for power. Since there is no distinction made concerning which religious “fundamentalists” they refer to, I draw the conclusion that the authors make no distinction between so-called Christian “fundamentalism” and any other religious fundamentalism. I will not go into the obvious inaccuracies of lumping all religious practices into the religious equivalency argument. I do note, though, the hypocrisy of addressing favorably the Rev. King’s legacy of preaching a “social gospel” engaging Christianity in economic justice which can be used to shape public (and political) policy while, at the same time, denouncing “fundamentalists” for “using religions for power.” If it is commendable for the Rev. King, as a minister of the Christian faith, to specify political and economic racial prejudice as immoral and then to seek to address and redress those concerns through appropriate legislative and judicial channels of our government, then it is equally appropriate for ministers of the Christian faith to continue to define, address, and seek to redress other forms of immorality in our free public arena of politics and policy. To celebrate one form of legislated morality as commendable and then accuse another as an abuse of “religion for power” smacks of the grossest of hypocrisies. When brought to the public arena within the boundaries of our Constitution, then all expressions of concern confronting and correcting culturally ingrained immorality are commendable and worthy of celebration.
It is unfortunate that the contemporary celebrations of the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., have become attempts to belittle and diminish the Christian faith which provided the strength, courage, and motivation for Rev. King to seek justice in the face of what appeared to be overwhelming odds. It is an affront to all Christians of every race who have subsequently sacrificed to expand upon the gains made by the Rev. King and to continue to confront the sad consequences that all forms of immorality have upon the societies and cultures upon which they are practiced.
*****
May God's blessings be with you.
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