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"The Ship of Fools"

11/27/2018

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Detail from "The Ship of Fools," Hieronymus Bosch, ca. 1500-1510
Here’s another reason that so many of us at Care-age of Brookfield are thankful, not only at Thanksgiving but throughout the year: the preaching of Chris Carrillo, which we are able to hear, enjoy and learn from during our monthly Christian Music Hours.
 
Entitled "The Ship of Fools," this month’s message drew inspiration from Psalm 135:15-21:
 
15The idols of the nations are silver and gold,
The work of men’s hands.
16 They have mouths, but they do not speak;
Eyes they have, but they do not see;
17 They have ears, but they do not hear;
Nor is there any breath in their mouths.
18 Those who make them are like them;
So is everyone who trusts in them.
19 Bless the Lord, O house of Israel!
Bless the Lord, O house of Aaron!
20 Bless the Lord, O house of Levi!
You who fear the Lord, bless the Lord!
21 Blessed be the Lord out of Zion,
Who dwells in Jerusalem!
Praise the Lord!
 
Sound familiar? It should, as Chris points out in this important and timely message:
If you’re reading this via email, please click on the headline above to be taken to the audio. And if you’d like to hear more, be sure to visit Messages from Chris Carrillo.
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What in the world happened?

11/22/2018

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Not all that long ago, a passionately Christian young man asked me what happened to our country in the 1960s.

“This was clearly a Christian nation in the 1950s,” he said. “What went wrong?”

I’ve thought a lot about this subject in the years since the facts destroyed my own ‘60s-based atheism, and of course there are many ways of addressing this question. But perhaps this comes closest to the truth: In the 1960s, a relatively large swath of young America gleefully turned its back on God and the Ten Commandments. 

Consider:

1. You shall have no other gods before Me. We children of the ‘60s elevated many things above God, from sex to drugs to music. Want proof? Take a look at the audience at a big-name rock concert such as this one. This is nothing less than worship.

2. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth;  you shall not bow down to them nor serve them.
 
Or, as Ray Comfort puts it, don’t make a god to suit yourself. Which is precisely what many, if not most, young Americans started doing in droves in the ‘60s. 

“To me, god is ________.” Fill in the blank with whatever phrase would seem to condone your rebellion of choice. For instance, I knew one girl of that era who insisted that “My god understands love, and so he doesn’t care that my boyfriend is married.” Another said, “God doesn’t want us to be unhappy, so of course he supports divorce.” Yet another opined, “I think god wants us to find someone sexually compatible before we get married.”  

And so on. During the 1960s, too many people stopped turning to their Bibles for the truth about God, stopped going to Bible-teaching churches for instruction, and started making gods to match our own images. And most of us are still doing it today. 

3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
 
In the ‘60s, we started using His name as a casual expletive and a curse word, in large part for shock value; it made our parents crazy. The habit stuck; today His name must be one of the most commonly used words in the English language, even though the practice is quite simply blasphemy.  

To find out how His name has been devalued by our culture, confront the next person you hear taking it in vain. Chances are you’ll hear something along the lines of this: “It’s no big deal, it’s just a word – it doesn’t mean anything.” 

4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 
 
I remember when stores began opening their doors on Sundays – the Christian answer to the Jewish Sabbath. It was the mid-1960s, at least in little Green Bay, Wisconsin, and we young people rejoiced. No more sitting around the house with nothing to do! See you later, Mom and Dad – we’re going shopping! 

Today, we barely remember a time when Sunday was a special day set aside for worship and fellowship. Just think: 2000 years of Christian tradition, overturned in just a few decades by a generation committed to pursuing its own pleasures. 

5. Honor your father and your mother. 
 
This may have been the last one to fall into the west’s rejection pile. There are still parts of the world, such as eastern Asia, where the elderly are revered. Not here, though – not among those who warned each other, back in the ‘60s, not to trust anyone over 30.  

Fact is, my generation turned its collective back on the aged decades ago. Who says there’s no justice in this world? We’re about to experience the consequences for ourselves.

6. You shall not murder. 
 
Okay, most of us have not killed anyone in cold blood. Except that Jesus said, “But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, 'Raca!' shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, 'You fool!' shall be in danger of hell fire” (Matthew 5:22). 

Still feeling comfortable about this one, in a culture that’s constantly offended? My generation may not have invented all this indignation and anger, but we certainly perfected it.  

7. You shall not commit adultery. 
 
Here’s another one most people will deny. But again, Jesus’ definition of the word is more expansive than ours: “But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). It’s no secret that the children of the ‘60s turned lust into a sacrament, insisting that there was something wrong with anyone who even tried to suppress it. 

Proof? Just look at the movies we've made. On second thought, perhaps it would be better not to.  

8. You shall not steal. 
 
This is not simply an admonition against robbing a bank or liquor store. It means that we should not take something that belongs to someone else. That would include knowingly short-changing a clerk, or hiding income from Uncle Sam, or downloading a copyrighted e-book being offered free online.  And so on. 

The anti-capitalist fervor of the ‘60s convinced some of us that we were making an important and almost sacrificial political statement if we found a way to cheat “the system.” And some of us never got over it. 

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.  

In a word, “bearing false witness” means lying. And it’s not limited to making up stories about others (since “your neighbor” means literally anyone, per Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan). The most rebellious children of the ‘60s turned lying into a fine art, especially if we had concerned parents to circumvent – which most of us did back then.

10. You shall not covet. 

Coveting means yearning to possess something that you don’t currently have. At first, the most hippy-esque children of the ‘60s did a pretty fair job of avoiding this particular sin, favoring commune-style living and sharing of everything from food to drugs to boyfriend or girlfriend. But once we started earning incomes and dropped this façade of selfless sharing, Katy bar the door:  We took pride- and greed-fueled covetousness to new heights. 

Just look at our homes, our leisure pursuits, our portfolios; many of us enjoy wealth and possessions that would make our grandparents blush. 

In a nutshell, my generation discovered that we could break every last divine commandment and get away with it – at least in this life. In the meantime, our public schools had begun teaching us that everything had come into being through evolution, which meant that there didn’t even have to be a God. And if He didn’t exist, why, there was no reason to pay any attention to those silly commandments. 

So we didn’t. And as the years unfolded, we unwittingly fulfilled one of the most chilling prophecies in the entire Bible, found in 2 Timothy 3: “In the last days perilous times will come,” wrote the apostle Paul. “For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power.” 

This, in my opinion, is what has happened to our nation in the last half century. Which makes one wonder: Is there any turning back? 
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A life-changing literary journey

11/14/2018

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I’m sad to report that I’m almost done reading To the Golden Shore, the 1956 biography of Adoniram Judson, pioneering American missionary to Burma. I’m trying to nurse it, but my frequent middle-of-the-night reading excursions are taking their toll and I will soon be turning the last page.
 
It has been a life-changing journey for me.
 
I won’t even try to describe the sacrifices that Judson and his family and colleagues made to bring the gospel to the Burmese people in the first half of the 19th century.  The hardships they suffered are almost unimaginable to a pampered 21st century American. But reading this detailed account of their trials has perhaps given me a little insight into what the apostle Paul meant when he wrote “To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).
 
Jesus’ half-brother James instructed the followers of Christ to “count it all joy when you fall into various trials” (James 1:2). Judson didn’t always do so, at least not in immediate response to setbacks and sorrows; at times, he became discouraged and depressed, and he struggled mightily with doubts about his own motives for his service to the Lord.
 
But I’m certain that he agreed wholeheartedly with Paul’s reminder that “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).

Over his decades of service, many Burmese did come to Christ thanks to Judson's courage, commitment and relentless determination. And the Lord allowed him to see at least some of the fruit of his labors.  For instance, in the wake of the death of a woman named Mah Men-lay, the first Burmese woman converted to Christianity, he received this report about her last days:

“She is not inclined to converse much; but how delighted you would be to hear her, now and then, talk of entering heaven and of meeting Mrs. Judson, and other pious friends! The other day, after having dwelt for some time on the delightful subject, and [mentioning] the names of all the friends she should rejoice to meet, not omitting dear little Maria, she stopped short, and exclaimed, ‘But first of all, I shall hasten to where my Saviour sits, and fall down, and worship him, for his great love in sending the teachers to show me the way to heaven.’” (To the Golden Shore, Judson Press, 1987 edition, page 383)
 
As the great hymnist Isaac Watts wrote in “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” (1707), “Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small; love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”
 
No word on whether Adoniram Judson knew that particular hymn. But he certainly lived its teaching, and that of the biblical passages that sparked it.
 
What an inspiration it is to read about the lives of the missionaries who, over the centuries, have “died to self” daily for the sake of the gospel (see, for example, Galatians 2:20 and John 12:24, among many passages that admonish us to follow suit). I pray that the Lord would give us, His followers today, just a fraction of the fire that fueled these men and women; perhaps we really could win the world for Him!  

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A heavenly fantasy

11/7/2018

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I think every Christian must enjoy imagining what heaven will be like. But there’s one special fantasy I encountered more than a decade ago – a fantasy that makes me smile every time it crosses my mind. It appears on pages 161-162 of Heaven Without Her: 

These clear indications of the Bible’s divine origins had brought me within shouting distance of absolute faith. I can’t explain why they made such a difference, except to say that perhaps the untruths I’d been taught had been a major barrier to belief for me. (Not to mention wanting nothing to do with that God who was so determined to ruin my good time.)

But now, this barrier was crumbling, giving me a glimpse of something that might be heaven.

My mother certainly believed in a heavenly future for herself. She made it clear daily in her speech and attitudes. And she even put it in writing.

I didn’t know about the writing part of it until 2005, when I finally summoned up enough courage to read her journal. It was one of those Meade Composition books with rounded corners and pages lined in pale blue. Only about a third of the pages were filled in, but the book was stuffed with loose sheets; like any compulsive writer, she wrote whenever the spirit moved her on whatever paper was handy. No doubt for every page that had made it into this book, there were dozens that had been lost along the way to a conscientious cleaning staff.           

Her feelings about death were beginning to make sense.

“I do not understand," she’d written in a clear hand, obviously when she’d still been in fairly decent health, "why people feel that, because I do not fear death, it is a sign of despondency. To me it looks like the greatest adventure of them all."

There was that word again: adventure.

“I am tired of lugging this decaying body around. I can no longer plan a trip to Africa or China or Russia. But perhaps I may one day walk down strange and lovely streets with someone I love and stop at 10 a.m. for a glass of beer."

My heart stopped.

She’d been recalling one crisp October morning in the late ‘70s when she and I were walking the cobblestone streets of the old city in Salzburg, Austria. We were happy and healthy and ready for a day of exploring the wonders of this beautiful town, having just finished a delicious breakfast at our cheap-but-clean hotel near the train station. Although she wasn’t a great fan of drinking herself, she did appreciate a good European beer now and then. And that happy morning, as a nearby clock struck 10, she suggested we stop for a beer. It was a good memory for both of us; but it bowled me over that it had made it into her fantasies of heaven.

“Anybody, almost, can go to Europe," she wrote. "But I would like to venture into the great unknown. Is that so ridiculous? Will I see those whom I have ‘loved and lost awhile’ once more? 

“I believe so.” 

I believe so, too. And the reunion is going to be heavenly, indeed. 
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    Kitty
    Foth-Regner

    I'm a follower of Jesus Christ, a freelance copywriter, a nursing-home volunteer, and the author of books both in-process and published -- including Heaven Without Her. 

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