Cherished Thoughts Revisited

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

In the process of an annual, and mostly futile, effort to clean out file cabinets, I came across remarks I made at the Commencement of Kingswood School in 1995. Some of the illustrations show a little of the nineteen years but, if anything, also show us how pervasive moral relativism is in our culture.

“On a fine October day in 1889 the survivors of the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment gathered once again on the slopes of the rugged nob called Little Round Top, just south of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. There they dedicated two monuments to mark the place where, a quarter of a century earlier, they had withstood a savage attack, and under the command of a young college professor-turned Army Colonel, spared the Union Army a devastating defeat in the Battle of Gettysburg.

It was the same Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, hero of the Little Round Top battle, who delivered the dedication address.  He spoke of fallen comrades and days of military glory, but his most profound thoughts were metaphysical,

‘We know not of the future, and cannot plan for it much.  But we can                   hold our spirits and our bodies so pure and high, we may cherish such thoughts and such ideals, and dream such dreams of lofty purpose, that we can determine and know what manner of person we will be whenever and wherever the hour strikes, that calls us to noble action.’

Lofty purpose.  Noble action.  Cherished thoughts.  It is of these cherished thoughts I wish to call to your attention this evening. We live in an age termed postmodern.  In this age ideals are so different and corrosive that phrases like ” noble action”, and “lofty purpose” are meaningless.  As Nietzsche asserted, “There are no facts, but only interpretations.”

It seems absurd that anyone would hold that the only fact we have to work with is that there are no facts.  Unfortunately, the truth that something is absurd does not mean that it has no consequences.  As Allan Bloom noted in his classic work, “The Closing of the American Mind’

“There is one thing that each freshman brings to his college experience: an Absolute belief that there are no absolutes”

The seeping of this cumulative poison into the larger society will ultimately alter what it means to have “cherished thoughts”.

One of the results of post modern dogma is the compartmentalizing of our lives.  Without core beliefs and a common theme of character we segment our lives into “work person”, “play person”, “worship person”. All with separate sets of actions, desires, attitudes, and responses.  We behave not so much as who we are, or who we ought to be, but the role the environment dictates to us.

This is not a philosophy that forms a foundation on which to build.  It is suitable only for destruction.  It is not the norm in the broad sweep of American intellectual and cultural history.  Had moral relativism been in vogue in the eighteenth century the words, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident’, would have seemed ludicrous.  The indignity of slavery would not have been dealt with in the nineteenth century, for without a sense of justice and morality, “might makes right”. And the crucible of the twentieth century would have ended far differently if moral appeasement had won the day.  Moral relativism has not guided us in the great moments of our past, and it should not be the guide for our future.

On the banks of the Jordan River three thousand years ago, a homecoming of sorts was about to take place.  I say, “of sorts’, for the people about to possess the new land had never actually seen it.  But they knew of it.  For forty years the previous generation had lived in the arid wasteland of the Sinai because of a missed opportunity.  God simple postponed homecoming.

This homecoming generation was not allowed the possession simply because they were young and idealistic, or had high self-esteem, but because of their submission to God’s will.  They answered Joshua’s challenge, ‘All you have commanded us, that we will do.’  They had seen the deadly consequences of disobedience.

For forty years our generation has been led through the arid wasteland of Godless, unprincipled ethics.  If we are to be part of the homecoming generation, then we must not only know from whence we have come, but affirm with God’s people, ‘All that you have commanded us, that will we do.”

“Through a Glass, Darkly”- Care for the Caregivers

     My father was the first to tell me the story of the three senile sisters living in the same house.  Seems that on a particular day one was about to take a bath, but as she put one foot in the water she paused, and in a moment of befuddlement she called downstairs to the other two, “I wonder, was I getting into the tub, or was I getting out?” A second sister started up the stairs to be of some assistance but as she came to the landing she paused, and in a moment of befuddlement she called down to the third sister, “I wonder, was I going up the stairs, or was I coming down?” The third sister, listening to all of this, said to herself, “I’m glad I am not as bad as those two.” As she said it she knocked on the coffee table three times for luck.  She paused for a moment and in her befuddlement she asked, “I wonder, was that someone at the front door, or the back?”

Funny stuff when you’re twelve years old; when the darker significance of such a scene is hidden from your callow eyes.

Today there is an untiring effort by scientists to understand the causes, care, and cure of dementia. It’s an effort that should have personal interest.  The projections are that, if we live long enough, 50% of us will develop it in some form. That means, statistically speaking, by the time we are 85 it will affect either the person writing this sentence or the person reading it.

That also means there will be a multitude of caregivers who will be asked to draw upon all the strength and wisdom they can bring to bear in support of their loved ones.  It is no small task.  Someone has said that in dementia at least two people lose their lives; sometimes it is more.  So what care can we offer the caregivers?

The Apostle Paul gives us an example in what appears to be a scriptural contradiction.  In the 2nd verse of chapter 6 of Galatians he says, “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”  But three verses later he says, “For every man shall bear his own burden.”  Burdens, it would seem, come in different sizes.  The smaller ones we are to take care of ourselves.  But life sometimes gives us burdens that cannot be borne on our own and that is when we need Christian friends.  It is an incredible blessing to sense the assistance of those who have been moved by heart-felt compassion, or have followed the leading of the Holy Spirit, to fulfill the law of Christ in such a way.

I also found encouragement in another Pauline passage:

Romans 8:15  “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry , Abba, Father. 16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: 17 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God , and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.”

The mental picture we have of orphanhood usually involves untimely loss of parents.  However, even in the normal order of life, we are each destined to a time when , as the Psalmist writes,  “my father and my mother forsake me”.(Psalms 27:8).  For many that loss of familial connection is overwhelming.  Yet we need not be left alone.  We have the great privilege of being adopted into the family of God; to be His child and joint-heirs with Christ.

Lastly,there is comfort in seeing things in a bigger perspective.  The task of the caregiver is great but there is dignity in caring for those who once cared for us.  It is reciprocation, small though it may be in comparison. We can be eyes for those who once watched out for us; we can be support to feeble limbs that once bore us along the way.  Mostly, we can be a light for our loved ones as their world here dims. Caregivers, your tasks are many and your labor is sometimes long.  But take heart; you bring honor to your loved ones and to yourselves .

“What We Say Here” – Spiritual Truths from The Gettysburg Address Pt. 1

This week is noted for things “anniversarial”.
Most of the media coverage has followed the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John Kennedy.  The T.V. specials, the recently released books, and newly espoused theories, are just more in the continuing fascination our nation has had with the events in Dallas in 1963.  It occurs to me, however, that if President Kennedy had lived, he would still be dead-seeing that he was born in 1917 and would have undoubtedly gone the way of all flesh.

A much older anniversary will also be celebrated this week.  One that continues to shape the way we think about our nation.  With 272 words, in less than three minutes delivery, President Abraham Lincoln, at the dedication of the Battlefield Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, reminded the nation of its propositional roots and challenged it to live out its creed.

Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth

His phrase, “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here”, seems like false modesty to us now, but there were those at the time that agreed with it.  Within the week the opinion page of a Pennsylvania paper stated:

We pass over the silly remarks of the President.  For the credit of the nation, we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall be no more repeated or thought of.

Thankfully, the “veil of oblivion” did not drop over his remarks as these few words have come to be considered  the most hallowed of speeches.  Lincoln often had a  spiritual quality about him. The subject matter of most of his public comments dealt with high moral issues, and there is more sound theology in his Second Inaugural address than comes from many pulpits today.  So, what was he saying at Gettysburg that we have long noted, and what spiritual parallels can we draw? I would like to look at it with these three questions:

I. What was He Saying, and what do We Say?
II. What was his Authority to Say it, and what is Ours?
III. What was his Call to Dedication, and what is Ours?

Author Garry Wills, in his book, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America, notes that there was much Lincoln did not say.  He did not mention the town where the battle was fought. He did not name any individual, officer, or hero. He even refrained comment on which side was victorious.  He did not go to Gettysburg to deal with particulars.  His mission was higher than that.  Wills writes:

the discussion is driven back and back, beyond historical particulars, to great ideals that are made to grapple naked in the airy battle of the mind.¹

The great ideal of the mind that Lincoln wanted his hearers to take away that day is summed up in the propositional phrase, “all men are created equal”.  Lincoln had said many times that he did not hold that all men were created equal in all respects, but practically they should be able  ” to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns”.²

That’s what Lincoln said, what do Christians say? Christian Doctrine holds that all men are created equal and in a more complete sense.  First, Paul, in the book of Romans says that, “All have sinned and come short of the Glory of God“.  An ignominious equality to be sure;  one that brings all down, rather than lifting all up. But the completeness of this equality strips away title, wealth, and social standing.  It removes the hope in self-righteousness and ecclesiastical affiliation.  All stand level before God; all stand condemned. It would appear all without hope before the Eternal Judge.

Yet, the Apostle John states that Christ is the light “which lightieth every man”.  Christians rejoice in the saving grace of God that has been offered through Christ. But, we are often tempted to assume that grace is a blessing only for the spiritual elite; that God offers it because we are worth the saving.  The Bible says no.  It is an egalitarian grace to all of humanity.  Each person, the well-bred and the ill-bred alike, has been given the grace of a knowledge of their sin, and a ray of hope for salvation.  The Holy Spirit convicts each of their sin, and convinces each of salvation to be found in Christ.

The third aspect is an equal invitation.  In what is undoubtedly the most familiar of all Bible verses, Jesus says,

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have ever lasting life.

It was this offer of equality that so angered the religious leaders of Christ’s day.  To them acceptance by God was simply a matter of birth. No volitional action was required. But here is a double aspect of equality.  There is a universal offer to accept the grace of God, and each has an equal freedom to accept or reject that offer.

Lastly, there is an equality in Christ.  The Apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Colossians:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

Lincoln was pleading for equal conditions of culture.  The Bible far supersedes that in matters of essence. It states an equal condemnation; an equality in the knowledge of our spiritual situation; an equal gracious invitation; and an equality in Christ’s salvation.

¹ Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America (Simon and Schuster, 1992) p.37
² Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Writings, vol. 1 (The Library of America, 1989) p.512

This is an edited portion of remarks given at Bloomington, Il., 11.17.2013

“Hast Thou No Scar”

As I write this it is Good Friday, “the Ninth Hour”.  Three o’clock in the afternoon by first century Jewish reckoning.
By this hour on the day of Christ’s crucifixion, He had already been hanging on the cross for several hours.  This, after an excruciating night of psychological and physical torture.
Matthew tells us that the  land of Judea had already been enveloped in darkness for three hours.  Jesus had one last statement to make from the cross, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”.

I am always ashamed at the ease with which we glide through the remembrance of Holy Week.  A Maundy Thursday night communion, perhaps a day from work with family on Good Friday and, rightfully so, a celebration on Resurrection Sunday.  But many times we lift our voices to sing, “Jesus Paid It All”, but with our actions add presumptuously , “And Rightly So”.
To help me come around to a right appreciation of the incomprehensible pain Christ suffered on our behalf , I look to older writings. This year I read again the thoughts on discipleship penned by Amy Carmichael, missionary to India:

Hast thou no scar?
No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?
I hear thee sung as mighty in the land,
I hear them hail thy bright, ascendant star,
Hast thou no scar?

Hast thou no wound?
Yet I was wounded by the archers, spent,
Leaned Me against a tree to die; and rent
By ravening beasts that compassed Me, I swooned:
Hast thou no wound?

No wound?  No scar?
Yet, as a Master shall the servant be,
and pierced are the feet that follow Me;
But thine are whole: can he have followed far
Who has no wound nor scar .¹

¹ Quoted in “A Chance to Die” by Elisabeth Elliot, Grand Rapids, 1987 p.264

The Offense of the Cross

With the penchant some in America have in following Europe for cultural guidance, it would be prudent to note what is taking place to religious freedom in Britain.  Or perhaps it would be better to say what is not taking place.  David Barrett, Home Affairs Correspondent for Britain’s Telegraph, has recently written about the plight of two women, Nadia Eweida and Shirley Chaplin, who claim they were discriminated against when their respective employers dismissed them for wearing a cross.

Mrs Eweida, a British Air worker, first appealed the decision to an employment tribunal, then to a Court of Appeal and was finally denied permission to take it to the Supreme Court.  Mrs. Chaplin, a nurse for 31 years, was barred from working on the wards because she “refused to hide the cross she wore on a necklace chain”.  The women have been joined by others, including a former registrar who objected to conducting civil partnership ceremonies for homosexual couples, and a counselor who was dismissed for refusing to give sex therapy to a same-sex couple, in taking their grievances to the European Court of Human Rights.

What is absent in all of this is the government’s willingness to defend the rights of these people to express their faith, characterizing the appeal to the European Convention on Human Rights as “manifestly ill-founded”.  Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights deals with freedom of worship and states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in a community with others in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.¹

It seems that the British government’s refusal to support these folks in their battle is based on the premise that wearing a cross is “not a requirement of faith” for Christians, and therefore does not fall under the same protection of Article 9 as that for a Sikh turban or a Muslim hijab.  Barrett quotes the government’s position:

. . . the applicants wearing of a visible cross or crucifix was not a manifestation of their religion or belief within the meaning of Article 9, and . . the restriction on the applicants’ wearing of a visible cross or crucifix was not an ‘ interference ‘ with their rights protected by Article 9.¹

The Foreign Office further states:

In neither case is there any suggestion that the wearing of a visible cross or crucifix was a generally recognized form of practicing the Christian faith, still less one that is regarded (including by the applicants themselves) as a requirement of the faith.¹

It is obvious that a government that has no will to defend a freedom, leaves its citizens without that freedom.  But, I also wonder what  a “generally recognized form of practicing the Christian faith” would look like in a spiritual environment as diverse as America’s.  With this as a standard it might well be said that no outward demonstration of faith would be general enough to pass “a requirement of faith”.

Andrea Williams, the Director of the Christian Legal Centre of the UK sees what has transpired lately in the UK and  foresees the future:

In recent months the courts have refused to recognize the wearing of a cross, belief in marriage between a man and a woman and Sunday as a day of worship as ‘core’ expressions of the Christian faith.
What next?  Will our courts overrule the Ten Commandments?¹

Finally,  Ms. Williams, you have touched on an area where America is leading.

¹All quotes from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9136191/Christians-have-no-right-to-wear-cross-at-work-says-Government.html
Photo:PA

BETRAYAL OF THE CODE-A THIEF’S CONVERSION

A recent article in the British publication, Telegraph, caused me to look afresh at the account of the two thieves crucified with Christ.  All the Synoptic writers make reference to the two, but it is only Luke that gives the account of the conversation in the waning moments of their lives.

And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, ‘Art not thou the Christ? save thyself and us’. But the other answered, and rebuking him said, ‘Dost thou not even fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation?  And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss’.  And he said to Jesus, ‘Remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom.’  And he said unto him, ‘Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in Paradise.’ (Luke 23:39-43)

“Twas brillig” A look at The Moral Thinking of Emerging Adults

1

The Jabberwocky by John Tenniel

“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.”

So begins Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem, “Jabberwocky”, in “Through The Looking Glass”. After Alice had read the entire poem the narrative continues,

It seems very pretty,’ she said when she had finished it, ‘but it’s rather hard to understand!’ (You see she didn’t like to confess, even to herself, that she couldn’t make it out at all.) ‘Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas–only I don’t exactly know what they are!

One has a similar feeling when trying to discern the moral thinking of a group of young adults in sociologist, Christian Smith’s book, “Lost in Transition, The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood”.

MarriageTraditionalists, Heal Thy Self

“Divinely Ordained Union of Husband and Wife”
” A Traditional Institution”
“A place where a “consumptive couple do their consuming”
“The weakest contract-at-will”
“A form of divorce: a prolonged and impassioned negotiation as to how things shall be divided”
“Civil Union”

It seems impossible that these disparate statements could be made about the same institution, and yet, that is exactly the sad situation in which this culture finds itself.  After all our history it seems we have come to a place when we no longer know what constitutes marriage.

The Mark of “Mrs. Cain” and the Mystery of Justice

“And the Lord set a mark on Cain, lest any finding him should kill him”

This verse, and the account of the first fratricide in human history, came to mind this week as the media released information on all that was being done to protect Casey Anthony.  Since she was found not guilty of murdering her two-year old daughter there has been a public outcry that justice has not been served. The protestations have escalated to the point that Ms. Anthony is reported to be considering a new name, a hidden location, the use of disguises, and even possible plastic surgery to keep anyone from finding her; a self-imposed “Mark of Cain”.

It is not hard to understand the deep feeling that something terribly unfair has taken place.  After all, a two-year old child is dead and no one is being held accountable. But human justice is limited at best and the jurors were instructed to deal with provable fact, not feeling, in coming to a verdict. When the prosecution was not able to prove how the child died, when she died, where she died, and who was the last person to see her, the framework of the limits of human justice were put into place.  According to news outlets the jury’s first vote upon entering deliberations was 10-2 for acquittal.

So why the heightened outrage? Mankind has been doing horrible things with its God-given free will since the dawn of time.  It would be easy to think that the concept of justice would have been completely eradicated by now, or devolved to personal vengeance.  But that’s the first mystery of justice.  Where does the knowledge that things in life ought to be just come from? How has that feeling remained in existence? What standard are we to use in determining just ?

  Society?  Hardly.  In the year that Caylee Anthony died there were over fifteen thousand murders in the U.S.  Apart from the heart-broken loved ones and friends, these deaths went unnoticed.  And that is not counting the deaths that society all but encourages.  In the three years from Caylee’s disappearance to the day her mother walked out of jail, there were 3.6 million
abortions, the vast majority of which were for convenience sake.  As a society, it seems, we have more ability to example injustice than to establish a ground for fairness.

Science offers even less.  It can tell us the composition and electrical charges of the atom, or the internal workings of cells, but it can say nothing of what is just.  In fact, there are those who have taken this deterministic approach to it logical nihilistic end.  Quoting the opinion of atheist, Richard Dawkins, Ravi Zacharias writes:

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication some people are going to be hurt, and others are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. . .
Nothing but blind pitiless indifference.  DNA neither knows nor cares.  DNA just is.  And we dance to its music¹

 Instead of offering a ground for justice, this thinking takes away any ground for condemnation.  No one is morally guilty of anything. When a scientist uses words like, “good”,”bad”,”just”, and “unjust” they are borrowing vocabulary from a worldview that is not their own.

The protestors who feel that something unfair happened in the outcome of the trial are really pointing the way to the source of justice.  Zacharias once again from his book, “The End of Reason”.

• When you assert that there is such a thing as evil, you must assume there is such a thing as good
• When you say there is such a thing as good, you must assume there is a moral law by which to distinguish between good and evil.  There must be some standard by which to determine what is good and what is evil.
• When you assume a moral law, you must posit a moral lawgiver – the source of the moral law²

Not only does a Christian worldview offer a ground of being for just, it also shows us a second mystery of  justice – its inevitability. Our common expressions show that we believe this to be so.  We say things like,”What goes around, comes around”, and “All accounts are not settled at the end of the month”. In a flawed world where those that do good go unrecognized, and those that do evil go unpunished, it is great comfort to know all will be made right. It might not happen today or next year, but justice will take place.  The Apostle Paul gives us this truth:

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.

I think we could conclude that when that takes place, disguises will not be allowed.

¹Richard Dawkins: Quoted in Ravi Zacharias, Beyond Opinion (Thomas Nelson: Nashville,2007) p.192
² Ravi Zacharias, The End of Reason (Zondervan:Grand Rapids, 2008) p.55

Communion of the Spirit of Liberty

If anyone doubts the key role religion played in the founding of this nation they need go, not to a patriot in this country, but to a supporter of America in England.  On March 22, 1775 Edmund Burke, in a speech entitled, “On Conciliation with the Colonies”, chastised England for its austere measures toward America.