Sanctity of Life

-Sanctity of life Sunday

–Article from Themelios journal “Going Deeper” by pastor Daniel Strange

-“It’s been said that the main issue in the first millennium was, ‘Who is Jesus Christ?’ In the second millennium the question became, ‘How are we saved?’ And now as we are into the third millennium, the question is and will continue be, ‘What is a human being?’ The seismic implications of this individually, culturally and politically—even while still recognising a Christian ‘afterglow’—cannot be underestimated. We are all feeling these implications in various ways, given the presenting issues surrounding sexuality, gender, transhumanism, embodiment, and the underlying worldviews and of the focus on the self; expressive individualism; social construction; or just what we call human identity.”

-This issue is even manifested in the abortion conversation, because if an embryo isn’t a human, then it doesn’t matter how it’s treated. But, if an embryo is a human than it matters GREATLY how they are treated! 

-I also want to mention that I realize this can be an emotionally heavy issue for some of you – so if you have had an abortion, trust in God’s steadfast love, grace, and mercy toward you. You cannot out-sin the grace of God!

READ/PRAY (Gen. 1:26-31) pg. 1

1. What is a human?

-All sorts of different proposals to this question! Seems obvious, but it takes a lot thought to ensure we’re being accurate because it must include all humans. It also must entail the idea that humans are created in God’s very image. 

-Millard Erickson, Gregg Allison, Wayne Grudem 

-Created: which means we didn’t pop out of nowhere. It also means we’re a part of the creation. Doesn’t over-elevate, doesn’t under elevate. 

-Purpose: image God (represent) as well as a task: “fill the earth and subdue it”

-Relational: male and female he created them.

-What does it mean to be created in the image of God?

-Our culture is even debating this! Are we gendered beings? What about my attractions? What about my desires? Watch this video from 2015 where Bill Gates tries to get at a definition. (social -> passing of knowledge, essentially enlightened animals, assuming the passing of knowledge makes us better and better)

-And who gets to define these things? I’ve talked before about our hyper-individualistic culture today, where each person gets to define their own identity. You can trace these ideas back to the Enlightenment, which (I think) culminated in Frederick Nietzsche (philosopher) saying “God is dead, we have killed Him.” The enlightenment tried to make everything an intellectual pursuit, so the way the Western world has answered this question since then is summarized in another famous philosophical statement from Renes Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.” Since the 16^th Century, the predominant belief has been we are merely thinking beings. All issues require better thinking to tackle, leading to people starting to think they could out-think God. This leads to hyper-individualism because we just have to think. You can also see this in the Declaration of Independence “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” Is it?

-Leads to bodies being evil, leads to treating less intelligent as inferior, it cannot provide the whole answer to what a human is.

-The best way I’ve come to define this topic can be written as a math problem: human = image of God. If you are a human, you are created in the image of God because as soon as you start defining beyond that you start to leave people out. Ridiculous: 2 legs so if I get cancer and they cut off a leg I’m no longer a human. Thinking: what about someone who is intellectually handicapped, are they any less in the image of God?

-Structural is what we’ve just been looking at. We can’t help but be created in the image of God. It’s stamped on every single one of us from the moment of conception. 

-Functional. This is related to the representative nature. How do we represent God on earth?

-Prophet (authority), priest (presence), king (control) (John Frame – Systematic Theology)

-This description is often used to summarize Jesus’ ministry, and all 3 roles in the OT were vital to the flourishing of God’s people. Prophets spoke God’s Words to his people reminding them to obey Him, priests acted as mediators between God and humans to help address the relational divide, kings ruled in a way that allowed the people to more faithfully follow God on earth. We now, as Jesus’ body, have the same job/goal.

-Relational God created us to be in perfect relationship with Him and with others

-Summary: We are called into a relationship (relational) that entails a role (functional) that we are uniquely designed (structural) to do.

-Begins with God calling. All of this centers around God, we always need to be growing in understanding of who He is.

• When is a human created?

–The Developing Human 11^th ed. “Human development begins at fertilization when a sperm fuses with an oocyte to form a single cell, the zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell (capable of giving rise to any cell type) marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.”

-This is the primary question at the root of abortion. If a fetus is a human (which I’ll argue that it is), then abortion is murder. If abortion is murder, then we should outlaw it.

-What does the Bible say? You won’t find a verse that says “life begins at conception” nor will you find a verse that says “abortion is wrong.” This is using theology to form morals and ethics to then determine how we engage this issue.

-A few key texts, besides Genesis:

–Psalm 51:5. Psalms are poetic in nature, so we don’t want to stretch them beyond their context, but they still contain truthful statements. If from the point of conception David can consider himself a sinner, that means he is a human at that moment. 

–Psalm 127:3 Children are a gift and a joy. Children is the very means God chose to bring salvation into the world! God’s promises center around children.

–Exodus 21:22–25 In the midst of the laws, God commands what should be done if a child is killed even by an accident. If she gives birth and the baby is healthy there’s a small fine, if the baby dies then life is demanded.

–Luke 1:39-45 One from the NT that I talked about last month, so I won’t go much further with it, but remember this is a (in medical terms today) fetus responding to a zygote. Mary is VERY early in her pregnancy.

–Gen. 9:6 The last verse connects back to Exodus, and we looked at it during my message on politics, but I thought it was worth bringing up today as well. God says the consequence for murder is loss of life. There is something unique about murder that elevates it to a different level of seriousness, and even our world today feels that. There are some crimes that bring this overwhelming sense that the only justified consequence if capital punishment. 

-One of the arguments sometimes used against this argument is that Jesus didn’t say anything about it (which it pitting Jesus’ words against God’s words which is a mistake), because it was a settled issue. There wasn’t any debate!

-Human life begins at conception, if you boil any other argument down to it’s essence it becomes purely arbitrary. 

-Trimester was invented as part of Roe vs. Wade to allow a discussion to be made about where and when the government can legislate abortion.

-Breathing? I remember when I was younger hearing Bill Clinton talk about life beginning the moment a baby takes a breath. Did you know that before a baby is born they breathe through their umbilical cord? Or that even after a baby is born it can take a couple minutes for them to take their first breath? Does that mean that they aren’t humans even though they’re being held and living outside the womb?

-Born vs. unborn? Does a journey of 8” really make a difference in whether we would consider them a child? Why do they have to be outside of the womb in order for us to care for them?

-Desire? Have you noticed that when someone talks about wanting a baby they refer to the child as a baby, but if they baby isn’t wanted they become a fetus or clump of cells? Why does someone else’s desire get to play a role in whether or not someone is a person? 

-When they feel pain? Did you know that infants weren’t sedated for surgeries until the 1980s? It was believed that even after birth they couldn’t feel pain. And many studies today have shown that as early as 15 weeks of gestation babies can start to feel pain. But again, why does that determine whether or not they’re a human? I’ve read about people whose bodies don’t produce the right neurological pathways for them to feel pain. Think of leprosy! Does that make them less of a human? 

-Viability? Another arbitrary marker! Think of someone with diabetes. They would die without insulin meaning they’re not fully viable. Does that mean they’re less human? And even the time of viability keeps getting moved earlier and earlier depending on technological advances. There was a baby born at 21 weeks 1 day who survived. Only halfway cooked!

-We have SO much more information now than we did in 1973! Ultrasounds have been game changers. We can see literal pictures of the babies developing.

-That has to become one of our primary arguments. Follow the science! These aren’t clumps of cells, they’re humans who are worth of all the same dignity as you or I.

• How do we articulate our views?

-All sorts of arguments put forth! Do the toddler test. If the unborn are humans (they are), then we need to treat them the same as any other human (or just use a toddler)

-Always, always, always bring it back to whether or not they’re human! Anything else is just a distraction.

-A book I found helpful this week ‘The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture’ summarized our argument this way: 

-In high school I spent 2 weeks at a worldview training camp in CO that had a few sections on abortion that have stuck with me since then (obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t remember them!) But I remember being told that you can condense the differences between a child in the womb to a child outside the womb by using the acronym SLED:

Size – if someone is taller/bigger than me are they more human?

Level of Development – are any of my children any less human than me?

Environment – does a journey of 8” make a human?

Degree of dependence – I had surgery this past year, I couldn’t even drive! Was I less human during that time? 

-These are all the differences between a child outside the womb and one inside the womb. The difference is that one can be killed without consequence.

-There are all sorts of popular arguments that claim to be pro-life killers. Let’s walk through a couple of them. 

-The violinist? Judith Jarvis Thomas 1971 essay “A Defense of Abortion”

“You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist, a famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist’s circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own.

The director of the hospital now tells you, “Look, we’re sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you—we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist now is plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it’s only for nine months. By then, he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.”

Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or still longer? What if the director of the hospital says, Tough luck, I agree, but you’ve now got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because, remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person’s right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him.”

I imagine that you would regard this as outrageous”

-Spontaneous pregnancies aren’t a thing. The child was created inside you by choices you made. You can’t just wake up without participating in an activity of which pregnancy is a possibility. All actions have consequences.

-It’s one thing to withhold support, it’s another to kill someone. Abortion isn’t an unintentional death, it’s purposely killing someone. Think of it like this: if you come home and find a stranger in your home who would die if you don’t take care of him, are you thus allowed to just throw him off a cliff? No! One person argued that calling abortion withholding of support is like suffocating someone with a pillow and calling it the withdrawal of oxygen.

-Why should anyone accept that a mother has no more obligation to a stranger than her child? What if it were your 2-year-old hooked up to you?

-Lastly, the child isn’t parasitic. They’re exactly where they’re supposed to be for their age and stage of life.

-Latest twitter argument from Patrick Tomlinson (sci-fi writer)

“You’re in a fertility clinic. Why isn’t important. The fire alarm goes off. You run for the exit. As you run down this hallway, you hear a child screaming from behind a door. You throw open the door and find a 5-year-old child crying for help. They’re in one corner of the room. In the other corner, you spot a frozen container labeled, ‘1,000 Viable Human Embryos.’ The smoke is rising. You start to choke. You know you can grab one or the other but not both before you succumb to smoke inhalation and die — saving no one. Do you A) save the child, or B) save the thousand embryos? There is no C. ‘C’ means you all die.” In a decade of arguing with anti-abortion people about the definition of human life, I have never gotten a single straight A or B answer to this question. And I never will. They will never answer honestly, because we all instinctively understand the right answer is “A.” A human child is worth more than a thousand embryos. Or ten thousand. Or a million. Because they are not the same, not morally, not ethically, not biologically. This question absolutely evicerates their arguments, and their refusal to answer confirms that they know it to be true. No one, anywhere, actually believes an embryo is equivalent to a child. That person does not exist. They are lying to you. They are lying to you to try and evoke an emotional response, a paternal response, using false-equivalency. No one believes life begins at conception. No one believes embryos are babies, or children. Those who cliam to are trying to manipulate you so they can control women.

-Abortion isn’t about who we can save, it’s about whether or not we can kill someone. This is even worse than the violinist argument for correlating to the issue of abortion.

-Just because you save 1 doesn’t mean the others aren’t human. There are other moral judgments you’ll bring into this conversation. What if I’m given the choice of saving a family of strangers or my child? Guess who I’ll have a stronger pull towards. My child! In this example, 1 of the children will experience a different level of pain than the others, but that doesn’t make them any less children! In fact, some studies have worked to figure out human moral instincts, and if asked to choose between a human or a dog the answer is obvious until it’s your pet! There’s increasing levels of commitment from family out to strangers. Galatians has a great example of this: do good to all, but especially the household of faith.

-It still doesn’t answer the primary question: is the fetus a human? If the embryo is a human than we should do our best to treat them with the same dignity, honor, and respect as any other human.

-Controlling women isn’t the goal, but caring about humans is. The child inside a woman should have the same level of right as any other human who exists outside the womb. That has been the consistent belief of the church for 2,000 years, and will remain the belief of the church until Jesus returns.

-This is just 1 aspect of the sanctity of life! I understand that! But I haven’t preached a sermon on abortion yet, and I can’t cover everything in any sermon. We should also care about the lives of the immigrant, the homeless, the orphan, the widow, and any human being that we come into contact with. We do have the responsibility to treat any human we encounter with dignity, including the unborn.

-Just because you may be stumped by some of the arguments, don’t put your head in the sand and refuse to study/learn or engage this issue. Read a book! The next one I’m going to read on the sanctity of life has to do with incarceration reform.

-Pray, look for opportunities to serve, go tour Amnion sometime, and trust that God will give you the strength to engage when the time comes. You don’t need to do everything! Some of you will feel a strong pull towards helping a local crisis pregnancy center – praise God! We need people who have that burden in their lives, but don’t look down on others who don’t have that same call. I think our EFCA SOF summarizes our call well: “God commands us to love Him supremely and others sacrificially, and to live out our faith with care for one another, compassion toward the poor and justice for the oppressed.”

-MLK Day tomorrow – read his ‘I have a dream speech’

-I preached on this issue last Spring, but thought it would be worth revisiting (ethnocentrism vs racism)

-You can go back and listen to that message if you want to hear more detail about it, but one of the biggest things I learned from my study then was the idea of “othering.” 

-Othering is at the core of relational strife and conflict, and all of us are guilty of it.

-Driving: anyone who drives slower than you is an idiot, anyone who drives faster than you is a maniac. We all condemn others while excusing ourselves. I heard someone say we view others through a judgment lens and view ourselves through a grace lens.

-Think back to Gen. 3 – the Fall. Instead of identifying himself with his wife, Adam removed himself from her and from God. “It wasn’t my fault! It was the woman you gave me!” And that sin has passed down to every child since then.

-Every person is trying to make sense of the world, and the differences between people are one of the easiest things to see! Tall vs. short, athletic vs. unathletic, smart vs. dumb, rich vs. poor. 

-Wherever you’re at, the human heart’s general drive is to look with suspicion on anyone who isn’t the same as you, and some of that is even taught in our culture! Think of sports where if you don’t adhere to a specific set of skills you’re out. Or school, which tends to reward those who can read and comprehend information, but penalizes those who are good at working with their hands.

-Every culture has a standard that it judges everyone by, and none of them align perfectly with God’s commands for how people are to live. But if we want to have God’s heart towards others, we need to recognize and confess of our own temptation to alienate others (“othering”)

READ/PRAY (pg. 511)

1. The Problem of Othering (9-12)

-Notice who Jesus directs this parable to: “confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else” 

-What is righteousness? Someone who keeps the commands of God, or completely innocent, or someone who is truly accepted by God. It’s a loaded term! It means no one has anything against you. But it always comes about by a sliding scale, or grading on a curve, because if you really dig down into it all of us have areas where we’re not even living up to our own standards, but we don’t like to admit it.

-And this sense of righteousness tends to manifest itself in looking down on others. Why? Because you judge everyone based on your strengths while refusing to acknowledge any weakness or wrongdoing of your own. I think football gives a great picture of this because of the wide variety of body types required to play football. Think of last year, when “iced Kirk Cousins” went viral, I heard someone comment “He doesn’t have a football players body!” And they were right! If he were a running, receiver, or lineman! But he’s a quarterback, which requires a very different set of skills!

-How does this tie into “othering”? If Kirk decided he was tired of getting sacked and started lining up on the line how well do you think that would go? Not very! Cara and I just watched the documentary Kelce (really hoping she doesn’t become an Eagles fan) and Jason Kelce (center for the Eagles) has a VERY different body type than either his brother (TE) or Kirk. But if any of them got frustrated about it and tried playing the other’s position it would be a disaster! That’s the idea Jesus is getting at here. God has created us uniquely and differently, and we need to ensure we’re using the right standards when we engage with others. 

-Back to the text: prayers at the temple happened 2x a day, during atoning sacrifices. Believed that if you prayed during those times God would answer your prayers. So Jesus is providing the context for us to interpret this correctly. 2 men joined the crowd of people who were going up to have God answer their prayers.

-Describes the Pharisee as standing “by himself” 

-Removed from the scum, didn’t want to catch the sin from those nearby. Contrast that with Jesus! Bleeding woman, lepers, blind, deaf, even the dead! Instead of “othering” or standing far off by Himself, Jesus enters in.

-Think of the way the Pharisee prays vs. the way Jesus taught us to pray

-In the Greek, the personal pronoun “I” appears 5 times in these 2 verses. Some people even argue that this should be translated as Him praying to Himself. How many first person singular pronouns do you see in the Lord’s prayer? Zero. I see 8 first person plural pronouns! God’s design is for us to be in community! 

-This Pharisee thought he was righteous because of what he did. In the 1^st century the Pharisees were the heroes! They gave generously, they followed the law perfectly. Jesus even acknowledged that: Matt. 5:20 “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” They were the gold standard by which everyone else would be judged! Yet Jesus is telling everyone that they’re using the wrong standard.

-Jesus goes on to say: Matt. 6:1 “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.” If all we’re looking for is horizontal (explain the difference between horizontal and vertical relationship) recognition and acclaim it’s really easy to self-justify.

-The way we do it today is “authenticity.” I’m just being true to myself! You can’t speak that way about me! What if you being true to yourself leaves a mess of relationships in your wake? Is that still ok?

-On top of that culturally today we’re all becoming increasingly tribal and partisan, when Jesus can’t be easily contained by any of our cultural or sociological boxes (listen to last week’s sermon for that)

-Notice who the Pharisee compares himself to: all those who were disobedient to God’s law, which this Pharisee obviously didn’t do! Not only did he not do those evil things, he didn’t associate with the wrong people (tax collector)

-And he went above and beyond God’s commands: fasting was required 1/year, he did it twice a week. Tithing was just monetary, he would tithe on his spices! Think about that! He believed He had everything in life figured out, and that there was nothing lacking in his life.

-He was comparing purely horizontally, neglecting (what Jesus described as) the weightier matters of the law. Matt. 23:23-24 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. ²⁴ You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!” How does Jesus summarize the weightier matters of the law? Justice, mercy, and faithfulness. 

-Jesus is saying if we truly want to obey the law, we need to practice justice, mercy, and faithfulness. Justice is a loaded term today! We’ll get there in a bit, but if Jesus is ok using it, so should we! 

-Now here’s where this gets difficult: if as we worked through this you started thinking of someone else who needed to hear this message, you’ve missed the point of what Jesus is saying.

-One of the commentaries I read shared a Sunday School lesson where the teacher worked through this passage and then asked Johnny to pray at the end, and he prayed “Lord I thank you that we are not like the Pharisee.” But then our tendency is to chuckle and say “Lord I thank you that I’m not like Johnny” and on and on the “othering” goes! 

-Instead, we need a (Copernican) complete revolution in where we looking and to whom we’re comparing.

• The Solution to Othering (13-14)

-Tax collector oriented his life in a different direction. Where the Pharisee only looked at others, the tax collector couldn’t even bring himself to look up.

-He’s standing off too, but not because he’s worried about infection, but because he didn’t dare approach God in his current state. Not necessarily demeaning himself, but recognition that he is a sinner in need of grace.

-What’s your approach when you wake up in the mornings? Self-justifying or self-demeaning? See if we only look at others or inward we’re going to remain broken, either looking down on others or looking down on ourselves.

-It’s only when you orient your gaze in the right direction that you can start to have a proper understanding and ordering of everything in the world.

-Tax collector faced othering all the time. Scorn, ridicule, belittled by everyone in his community. The Pharisee faced claim and recognition, and both are dangerous.

-Pharisee pursues othering from being good, tax pursue othering from the way he collected taxes and using finances as his way of achieving some level of acceptance.

-How does he respond?

-Beating your breast was very uncommon for men. Signified profound sadness and mourning, typically reserved for women at funerals. Yet here in public he’s demonstrating how broken he is and in need of help.

-The word used for “mercy” was better translated “atoning sacrifice,” he’s asking for someone to take his place because he knows that apart from that his situation is hopeless. Unless someone become “othered” for him, he has no hope of coming near God.

-The story leaves us on a cliffhanger for the man! He doesn’t know if he’s placing his hope in the right place! But we do. And that’s where Jesus’ othering is completely different than the way we other.

-Jesus provides a model for how we’re to view “othering” that takes place today. It has no standing apart from His atoning sacrifice (mercy)

-How is this man justified? He asks. Similar to the man crucified next to Jesus. The solution to othering is to ask Jesus to change your heart, perspective, and orientation. And the reality we’ll never fully get it right! We know that to be justified means we need to stop “othering,” we recognize that’s only possible because Jesus became “othered” for us, but what do we do with that now? 

• The Othering in Our Lives

-There are a lot of buzzwords that are thrown around today when we get to this idea of “othering” that tend to create even more divides in people than were in place before. 

-Additionally, the words themselves have almost become useless, and a way of merely stopping conversation than actually having a meaningful impact. Last year when I preached on this issue, I didn’t engage any of them, but this year we’re going to look at 3 of them: social justice, woke, and CRT (critical race theory).

-Please don’t immediately jump to conclusions or get nervous. Church, we NEED to be willing to talk about these issues here because otherwise we won’t have be able to be the faithful presence God has called us to be in the world He has created. Just as the Pharisee stood far off as if other’s sin would somehow taint him, we can have a tendency to not engage for fear of being tainted. We need Christians who are educated and equipped to bring the solution to everyone’s problems into the world, including ethnocentrism!

-I’ve shared this quote before, but I want to begin with it again: “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He’s saying that in order to deal with the evil in the world, it must begin with us dealing with the evil in our heart, which means if we want to actually see justice taking place, we need the gospel.

-To deal with othering today, we need to admit and acknowledge that we’re no better than anyone else. Rom. 3:23 says ALL have sinned, they have fallen short of how God has created and commanded us to live. No one’s immune to sins effects! 

-In the midst of a lot of the noise that has been thrown around over the past few years, the EFCA this summer released a document titled “Where we stand in the EFCA: Denials and Affirmations” to provide an overview of what the EFCA believes and how we engage divisive cultural issues today. Hence why social justice, woke, and CRT is what I want to engage today! There’s more than I have time for today, so I will again be doing a Sunday School class walking through all of these issues in more detail starting in March.

-First up: social justice. Notice the quotes around that phrase (not scare quotes) and the capitalization. It’s referring to a specific ideology that runs contrary to the way Scripture tells us the world operates. By itself, that phrase is beautifully biblical! The gospel message is by definition social in that God restores a broken relationship with us, Jesus’ death allows us to be social again with God. 

-But that being said, biblical justice also has societal implications for us. Think of the story Jesus tells of his return in Matt. 25. Who does he invite into his glory? Those who gave him food when he was hungry, drink when he was thirsty, welcomed him when he was a stranger, etc. When asked when they did that, Jesus says it was whenever you did it to the least of these, the poor and the marginalized. We can’t do everything for everyone, but one thing we can do is pray for everyone, and start looking for opportunities in your life to care for those others aren’t (schools, neighborhoods, work)

-Justice video 

-Second, woke! Some big words here: critical theory, not CRT yet (humanities study that focuses on societal power dynamics looking for previously unnoticed power dynamics that marginalize people). It has become a whole way of studying humanities with all sorts of implications.

-The reality is we don’t need critical theory to tell us that people are sinners and will sin, even against each other! That’s page 2 of the Bible! This means that even the institutions and organizations that we build will be affected by sin in ways that we probably won’t even fully understand until glory. 

-We also see that part of what we’re called to as God’s people is pursuing reconciliation (2 Cor. 5) and restoration (1 Peter 5:10)

-I think it’s also important for us to remember that we don’t fight against flesh and blood. 2 Cor. 4:4 “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel.” We need to implore people to be awakened from their blindness! Think of Eph. 5:14“Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” That’s the “wokeness” we want! Spiritually awake to the realities of what God is actually doing around us.

-Finally, for today, CRT. 

-Part of the difficulty with all of these ideologies is they’re great at pointing out problems, but terrible at providing legitimate solutions. For example, if everything becomes a struggle between oppressed and oppressor, what happens if the roles actually do become reversed, where those who were once oppressed now have all the power and privilege. Aren’t we now in the exact same spot we were before, we’ve just switched groups.

-Some of this is because we as the church haven’t been good at reading the whole Bible and bringing it to bear in our world and culture today. We pick and choose the issues we want to make primary and neglect the rest. 

-I think of someone like CH Spurgeon who faced death threats for speaking against the slavery of the US. We need at admit and acknowledge where we’ve gotten in wrong in the past, and be willing to admit where we’ve gotten it wrong today so that we can have a better understanding of what God has actually said to us in His Word.

-We’re all accidental heretics 

-We’re called to unity in the midst of diversity (John 17:20-23). Revelation talks about people from every tribe and tongue gathered around the throne. (7:9) We should celebrate where our culture starts to see sin manifesting itself, and then look to jump in with the gospel message, the only true hope we have!