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On the upcoming stem-cell funding vote

I have attached below the text of a letter I sent to several Representatives and Senators concerning the expansion of federal funding for stem-cell research. I urge you to read the text of the two Senate bills on stem-cell research and write your Congresspeople or Senators as well:
S.5 : A bill to amend the Public Health Service Act to provide for human embryonic stem cell research.
Sponsor: Sen Reid, Harry [NV] (introduced 1/4/2007)      Cosponsors (30)
Latest Major Action: 1/4/2007 Introduced in the Senate. Read the first time. Placed on Senate Legislative Calendar under Read the First Time.

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2. [110th] S.51 : A bill to derive human pluripotent stem cell lines using techniques that do not knowingly harm embryos.
Sponsor: Sen Isakson, Johnny [GA] (introduced 1/4/2007)      Cosponsors (None)
Committees: Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Latest Major Action: 1/4/2007 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

I always welcome your comments, though it may be a while before I can respond to them (school starts in a few days!)

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I am writing to remind you of your responsibility to the people of our
nation at large. You may technically represent your state or
constituency, but together with the other members of Congress, you make
policy for all Americans. You were also elected to represent your
conscience. As a scientist and a Christian, I understand that you are
in a quite difficult place in making decisions about stem cell
research. However, I feel that you are obliged to vote AGAINST
expansions in federal funding of stem cell research.

Voting NO will not prevent advancements in the understanding of
cellular development and stem cell-mediated medicine. We all are
familiar with the existence of private funds for this research, such as
the Michael J. Fox. Foundation. As a research scientist, I can tell you
their money is as good for funding as the government’s! However, as a
citizen, I do not want my tax money being used for this purpose.

Our nation has lasted for over two hundred years on the principle that
the rights of the minority are not infringed upon by the majority in
power. To quote Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“How can the ?Dream? survive if we murder the children? Every aborted
baby is like a slave in the womb of his or her mother. The mother
decides his or her fate…. Because I am a civil rights activist I have
to fight for the rights of the unborn.”
We must protect the most voiceless minority of our society: our children.

Many of you were elected because of disagreements we, your citizens,
have with other policies of the federal government, such as the war in
Iraq. Yet do not misunderstand us on the issue of stem cells: WE DON’T
WANT THIS!

You represent the citizens of our nation, whether we voted for you or
not. Our democracy functions on that principle: we are ALL represented
by our representatives. I urge you to vote AGAINST expansions in
federal funding of stem cell research.

A Goodie from the Devo-file: God is mercy

“Because God is merciful, He forgives me of my sins when I sincerely confess them.”–Bill Bright

When I wrote about justice, I insinuated that God does NOT treat us fairly, at least at the face value of what justice means. I also must disagree with Bill Bright on his view of God’s mercy. Before I differed on the issue of definition; here I differ on mechanism.

There are 60 references to the action “forgive” and 50 references to the state “forgiven” or “forgiveness”. They are:
OT–
nasa: to lift up, cast away, (14)
sawlach: to pardon (35)
kafar: to cover (2)
NT–
aphiemi: to send forth, free (50)
apoluo: to relieve, release (2)
charzomai: to grant as a favor (7)

It strikes me as amazing that Greek words similar in meaning to the Hebrew terms for forgive are not used in the New Testament. (Now to be completely candid, Strong’s exhaustive concordance, and thus the New Testament, does not contain the Greek word for “to pardon”, but I’m sure such a word exists and yet it was not used!) The whole paradigm of forgiving changes when Christ comes on the scene! No longer is the process of forgiving sins seen as “unpleasant”, in the sense that it is overlooking faults, that God is being the bigger person about the whole thing. Now forgiveness is the opening of the cage door, the releasing us to the world beyond!

That is what mercy made complete is: not the looking past our mistakes, but looking deeper inside us and drawing out our inner nature that still reflects God’s image. Mercy, and its partner grace, are not authorities that choose not to write us some spiritual ticket, but are friends, rescuers who are trying to help to move beyond the quagmire of our flesh.

The second amazing thing I find is that Jesus emphasizes a time aspect to forgiveness. He teaches us to forgive (present tense, moving forward), but talks about being forgiven when addressing people He touches (past tense, already accomplished). Catch my point: He doesn’t say to the sinful woman or the lame man, “I now forgive your sins”; He says “Your sins are (already) forgiven”! (my addition there!) In the timelessness of the Godhead, the future act of crucifixion, death, and resurrection is already being attributed to the events of Jesus’ lifetime prior to it!

So why do we fail to see that this transcendance of time works both ways? Buckle your spiritual seatbelts for this: You don’t need to ask God to forgive you; He already has! Now I say “need to” in the sense of the mechanism (remember, my point of disagreement) of forgiveness. God is not sitting around, keeping score of our sins and waiting for us to ask for them to be erased. In the mysterious, mystical union of Christ’s moment of suffering and our moment of submission and faith, all that we have done, are doing, and will do that offends God or separates us from Him has already been atoned for and redeemed.

Having said that, we still need to ask God’s forgiveness for two other reasons: our humility and our restoration. First, to be more specific, we confess sins to God in order to humiliate ourselves before Him! (Still have those seatbelts buckled?) Remember at the Fall, Adam and Eve (and us as their children) tried to elevate ourselves to be God’s equals (Genesis 3:4-7). The action of our prayer for His mercy lowers us back down, returns the hierarchy of the universe back into proper alignment. This then restores us to communion with Him. Sin separates us from God: our attempts to work our way back only shows how far we truly are from Him.

Salvation is by faith because it is only when we stop trying that God can step in and cross the chasm. There we sit, slumped over, crying our eyes out, when He walks up. He picks us up (nasa: to lift up) and pulls off our garments of “sin that entangles us” (Hebrews 12:1), throwing them away (nasa: to cast away). He tells us that everything is all right now, that He won’t hold this against us now that we are sorry (sawlach: to pardon). He puts His coat around us (kafar: to cover) and tells us to wear it for a while as His welcome-back gift (charzomai: to grant as a favor). Then He tells us to start walking back home, that He is following us to make sure we stay on the path and are safe (aphiemi: to send forth, free; apoluo: to relieve, release).

Now I am not advocating that you stop praying “Forgive me my many sins”. Instead, start listing them out! Once you face up to how much you have screwed up your life, then you will truly understand the magnitude and mercifulness of God’s mercy! This week, bust out of the exchange mentality cliche we have about sin, that we can just walk up to the Heaven window and trade in our errors for a clean slate. Today (and every day), begin to “work out your salvation” (Phillipians 2:12) through your pleas for grace.

A Goodie from the Devo-file: God is love

“Because God is love, He is unconditionally committed to my well-being.”–Bill Bright

When we think of love and the Bible, we often remember I John 4:16, “God is love”, and I Corinthians 13, as well as many others. Scripture is filled with images of love. In fact love, in one word-form or another, occurs 516 times! We in our modern times throw around the word “love” and rarely consider the depth or the weight of it.

In the Old Testament, most references to love are that of having affection for (ahab), a mixture of romantic and friendly love. This is how we still love those around us, for several reasons. First, we have a need to love. We have to have something, a pet, a lover, a child, onto which we can shower our affections and gifts. Second we have a need for love. We are always trying to fill the void of isolation and loneliness that sin and the Fall have caused in us. Third, we have a need of love. From the squishy gushings of infatuation to the contentment of companionship, we have a inborn desire to connect and to feel emotions for others.

Then Jesus enters the picture, in the Bible and in our lives, and the whole paradigm of love changes. Suddenly all of the scriptural references (in the New Testament) are agape: pure, spiritual love. First Jesus talks about this truer love; then Paul, Peter, and John write about it in their epistles. Love suddenly has all of this depth, this height, this completeness, that our worldly love is anemically lacking!

But this is not some revolution in how love is to God. He has always loved this way. The Trinity was never weighed down by our needs (affection or isolation) because of the communion they have shared since eternity past. Love has always been complete–We were the ones to make it shallow!

Amid all of the affection love in the Old Testament, two words jump out describing God’s love for us. In Deuteronomy 7:7, Psalm 91:14, and Isaiah 38:17, we find chashaq, “clinging to, joined together by love” love. In Deuteronomy 33:3, we see chabab, “cherish in your bosom” love.

God may be Father, but He loves like a mother would! In some transcendant, spiritual way, God desires to cuddle with us, to hold and protect us. He desires safety and maturity for us. He wants the best for us.

Now, sometimes, like with our earthly parents, we misunderstand the good that He sends our way. Pain, suffering, sorrow, and death were never meant to be part of our world. But now that they are, God uses them to shape us and remake us back into His full image. Romans 8:28 tells us that all things, good, bad, ugly, and unwanted, work together for our good. In Revelation 3:19, we learn that God’s rebuke is a sign of His friendship love (phileo) for us.

When I left home to move to Georgia, I thought my mother would just die to be apart from me for the first time in 23 years. I asked her if she wanted things to go differently. Her response, one of her many lessons in wisdom, was, “I can’t want you to always be the same, to always stay with me. Life is about growing up. If you didn’t grow up and leave, then something is wrong. It hurts, but I know it is the best.”

God desires for us to return His love, to return to His love. He desires communion with us as He knows in the Trinity. He shapes our lives so that the best thing (salvation) will happen to us. He chooses to let us choose him back so that our love is truly a gift back to Him. As you go about this week, open your eyes to the depth of love God has for you: love shown simply because of who you are and love in the form of lessons to be learned.

A Goodie from the Devo-file: God is just

This is a difficult lesson for me to write and for you to read. I expect many of you to disagree with me, even to become angry with me. I invite you to send me your comments, your questions, even your unbridled anger about my devotional. My purpose is to write truth and to educate, not to divide or to infuriate.–A.H.

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“Because God is just, He will always treat me fairly.”–Bill Bright

On face value, I must disagree with this statement, but we will return to that thought when we talk about mercy in a few weeks. Instead let’s focus on the most controversial belief in religion: the idea of everlasting punishment (and reward).

First, God is just in His castigation. All human beings will face the judgment of their lives at the Great White Throne (Revelation 20:11). In verse 12, we clearly see that all of our deeds, even our thoughts, all that we are is diligently being recorded for our upcoming encounter with Holy God.

One might envision this scene as that of a trial. The soul is called before the Throne. Satan (which means Accuser) will argue for the claim of the soul for its sins. God the Father will agree that this soul is not pure enough to enter heaven on its own. Then Jesus will stand up and claim the soul for His own through His blood and the faith of the soul in Him. The records will be checked and yes, the soul is recorded in the book of life. He may enter the kingdom!

The next soul enters the courtroom. Its deeds and accomplishments are recited, but they are not enough for atonement. Does Jesus claim this soul as well? “Then he will say…’Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’” (
Matthew 25:41) The soul, despairing, is led away to torment.

Millions of trials, so few acquittals, so many convictions! This is justice in all of its uncomfortable, unpleasant reality. “All have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory.” (Romans 3:23) Thus all must pay the price, “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), through substitution (Jesus’ death and atonement) or through retribution upon their own soul forever.

But it gets “worse”: We often misundersand the partitioning of the afterlife. We see Heaven as really high up and Hell as really low down, separated by a great divide, which we take from Luke 16:26. Our cartoons depict a vast underground lair with Satan wielding his pitchfork and reigning over a domain of fire and torture.

The reality is that Satan is not in control. He had his time as master of this world (John 12:31, 14:30, 16:8-11, I John 4:4). Hell was made to be his punishment, not his realm of control. So who is sitting at the controls of the eternal fire: God! (Whoa now! You’re telling me that God is punishing people in Hell? Buckle your spiritual seatbelts, it gets bumpy from here!)

The first proof of this is that God is everywhere. Psalm 139:8 teaches that God resides both in the heights and the depths. God sits on the throne over all the new heaven and earth, the seat of benevolence and the seat of punishment. No longer does He delegate His authority.

The second proof is the vindication of His wrath. The first time we see this most clearly is in the Crucifixion. Matthew 27:46 (My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?) had always confused me. How is that Jesus as God could forsake Himself? How could the communion of the Trinity be broken? The meaning of forsake (‘azab) is “to loosen, to permit, to relinguish”. In that terrible moment, God the Father took a step back and removed the veil of mercy that surrounds every living human. Then His wrath, unfettered, fell upon Christ like waves of fire. In His infinity, Christ felt all the suffering that Hell had for us for all eternity. So great was the pain that it killed the Giver of Life! How great is His mercy that He did that for us! How great is His vengenance that awaits the unredeemed!

We next see the fire revealed in Revelation 19:15: “Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations.” A sword is a personal weapon. It requires one to get close in order to inflict damage and death. God’s wrath is not this generalized smothering blanket, but is a one-on-one thrust plunging deep into each heart. This fulfills God’s vows in Genesis 12:3 and Deuteronomy 28:15-68: He takes an active role! He alone has the right to judge, thus He alone punishes.

Do not think that God enjoys wrath! He clearly desires otherwise for us. “He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (II Peter 3:9) Hell was not even made for us. “…the eternal fire prepared for the DEVIL and his ANGELS.’” (Matthew 25:41, emphasis mine) But He is also holy and just: He must enact the Law He gave us and not contradict His commandments. He gave us the means out of it (Jesus), but some did not take it. We made our choices and now He must bring about the consequences.

The third proof is that the chasm is not that big after all. I’m not going to get into the differences between Sheol (in Luke 16:26) and the afterlife, but Revelation 22:15 tells us that the lake of fire and those in it are just beyond the walls of the Holy City. Eternal punishment is not something God puts away from Himself, out of sight like we would, but is something He presents for His angels and His people to ponder and to inspire praise for Him and His grace.

Let us now return to the second way God is just, in His remuneration. II Corinthians 5:10 teaches us that we also receive repayment for what we have done. This is distinct from reward/punishment in that it is more “settling debts” than “paying ransom”. Much of the New Testament speaks of enduring and awaiting crowns and riches given to those who are faithful through trials. Our salvation was not based on how well we were at being Christians, but on our faith in Christ. Yet our afterlives will be filled with the gifts we have been promised. Life _IS_ fair if you count the eternity beyond death, when both good and evil will receive their due.

It is one thing to have a home and clothes; it is another to have a nice home and beautiful clothes. An often-missed lesson of the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30) is that the two faithful servants were not equally compensated. Both brought back double what they were given. Both share in the master’s happiness. But the one with ten talents was given an eleventh. Why?–Because he had done more! Wait, but both doubled their money? That is true, but we aren’t told how they accomplished that or how difficult it is to do. It wasn’t by putting it into the bank (since the master does not refer to either of the two servants as having done that in verse 27). Somehow making five grow to ten was harder or more worthy than making two grow to four.

Thus it is with our daily Christian walks. We in America live in a nation that respects our right to believe in God, while our brothers and sisters in Africa and Asia are tortured and killed for such. To some, a bountiful harvest of souls is given them when they preach or evangelize, while others spend their whole lives tending barren soil for one salvation. Some of us enjoy health and prosperity, while others face days and years of suffering and want. And like the three servants in the parable, we do not all equally apply our gifts to their full measure of service.

I Corinthians 3:10-15 teaches that our works in life, built on the foundation of our salvation, will be tested before the judgment seat of II Corinthians 5:10. Whatever endures will be returned to us, crowns awarded, and promises will be kept. But there will be some who are left with nothing. They may enter Paradise, but their enjoyment will be tempered by their lack of anything to enjoy, other than the presence of God and other believers.

Our challenge is to live our lives not seeking reward, but seeking to live up to our reward. We must strive to spread truth and slavation in our daily lives, in our daily worlds, in order to increase the kingdom and lessen the population of Hell. We must endeavor to use every gift and opportunity gien to us to its full potential for the purpose of God’s will and the manifestation of His glory.

Selling out Christ to culture

In this time of Christmas spirit and commercialization of my Lord and Savior’s birth (which didn’t really happen in winter, but that is a different post…), I would just like to throw out some thoughts…

1) I do not blame the non-Christian world for taking the Christ out of Christmas…we as Christians already did! We are the ones to blame for the loss of spiritual decorum during the holidays…because we’ve lost it ourselves the rest of the year with our Christian T-shirts, bumper stickers, bracelets,…! Like the money-changers of Christ’s day, we are making money off of God’s worship and God’s people…we are interrupting the natural mode of communing and growing with God with our attempts to make a buck! We are the ones responsible for making America a X-ian nation who celebrates X-mas and Judeo-X-ian values!

2) But in the rant of rebuke, I also will bring irony. A work friend of mine mentioned to me a site that promises to deliver a letter to your left-behind loved ones. The most fitting for my sardonic and sarcastic tastes in the “I told you so” letter! Bandwidth was exceeded when I try to go there, but please take a gander at a brillant plan to make money when a (hopefully) good portion of our society suddenly disappears at the end of the world!

A Goodie from the Devo-file: God is righteous

“Because God is righteous, I will live by His standards.”–Bill Bright

“Be holy, because I am holy.” Whoa! Can I get a “Try to be…”, “Work on being…”, or maybe “It would be nice if you’d be…”? But in the words of that spiritual guru Yoda, “There is do or do not. There is no try.” Three times in Leviticus (11:44, 19:2, 20:7) God tells Moses to tell the Israelites (and us) to be holy. That’s some standard to live up to!

We need not kid ourselves. The various laws given to Moses at Sinai are enough to show us that we can never keep up the purity God commands, much less the holiness He is by nature. Then Jesus has to go and extend the scope of the rules in Matthew 5:17-48 to make it totally impossible for us to do!

Exactly! WE can’t do it–only God can. (That’s why He’s God and we’re not!) Thus we must call upon Him to overcome ourselves, to create the holiness that He requires in us. “Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.” (I Peter 1:13)

So here are the three steps to holiness:
1) “prepare your mind”–We need to realize that holiness is God’s desire for us and our gift to Him.
2) “be self-controlled”–We must exert our conscious and Spirit-given strength toward the task of living up the standards and commands of God. “As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance.” (I Peter 1:14)
3) “set your hope fully on the grace”–We need to realize that our strength, our power will never produce the holiness in us. Ultimately we must rest in God’s grace to work through us and to overcome our inability.

“Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.” (I Peter 1:22) Holiness is not Corban (see Mark 7:11), being set apart and kept away from everyone else. Holiness is about living amid the filth, but not becoming dirty yourself. Jesus lived among the sinners, but didn’t sin Himself.

Too often we try to hide behind new Temple veils; we try to cut off all outside, secular influence in our lives in our Christian cultural ghetto. But it’s time we become more Immanuel: God with us, God among us! This is what Jesus was teaching in the Great Commandments: Loving God is inseparable from loving people. Being a holy people means being a holy people among an unholy people. Being a light to the darkness means you got to get down off the lampstand and go into the darkness!

Holiness is hard. It is made harder by having to live it in a sinful and corrupted world. That was the mission of Christ, a mission that required His life, both in time and even to death. It should require nothing less of us as well.

A Goodie from the Devo-file: God is truth

Sorry it took me a little while to update: too much going on right before Thanksgiving!

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“Because God is absolute truth, I will believe what He says and live accordingly.”–Bill Bright

If you study world religions, you find a somewhat common trend to them: they have often been sanitized in their depictions of their founders and their truths. Often the great thinkers of a certain philosophy will be deified. The rituals and mysticism is retro-fitted so that it all so nicely explained. However, this is not the case with Christianity.

God represents Himself in the Scriptures in often very confusing ways. Much ballyhoo has been made about how “contradictory” and “cryptic” some passages seem. But this should make us think: If we were able to fully understand God and His ways, what would then separate us from being just like Him, from becoming equal to Him? I like my God to be a little mysterious, a little unknowable, a little too big for me.

Also many of the sacred texts of the various world religions were written many decades, even centuries, after their founding. But the Bible has not only been historically verified by ancient manuscripts, it also speaks to its own aunthenticity. I Corinthians 15:6 speaks of five hundred witnesses to the resurrection of Christ (possibly the Bible’s most extreme claim), most of whom were still alive at its writing. If that many people, who could have been interviewed and their stories verified, did not reject at that time the truths the apostles taught, then logic dictates that we must give biblical scripture its factual due.

Finally, the Bible does little to white-wash or clean up the image of its characters. In fact, it takes great effort to expose the flaws, sins, and failings of its most beloved stories! It almost dares the reader to say, “So why am I trying to emulate these people? They’re no better than me.” EXACTLY! The Bible’s power resides in its applicability even to us, in its reality and its message to everyone across time.

My challenge for you is to consider the significance of the truth that the Bible represents. There are many uncomfortable things the Bible has to say to us. There are passages that, like Thomas Jefferson, we would prefer to just cut out. Instead bump up against the rough edges, the hard places. Take God to task about them: yell, scream, hit, whatever! Just don’t deny their truth or their power from that truth.

A Goodie from the Devo-file: God is holy

“Because God is holy, I will devote myself to Him in purity, worship and service.”–Bill Bright

I will admit that I was somewhat stuck when I first looked at this attribute of God. How can I start to talk about, much less completely explain this concept? So in classic “preacher behavior”, I am going to distract you with Greek! There are three Greek words that we translate as “holy”. Each mean a slightly different kind of holiness.

Most New Testament references use the word hagios, meaning purity from defilement. This indicates that holiness in our sin-tainted world requires a “setting apart” of something. In Old Testament times, this was viewed through the lens of ritual and law. After the Crucifixion, this was viewed through the dedication of one’s desires and life to God’s Will.

Hieros, meaning formally consecrated, occurs twice in the New Testament, in I Corinthians 9:13 and II Timothy 3:15. In both places, the idea of separation is made more distinctly as both ministers and Scripture are viewed, at least from our human persepctive, as different from other callings or writings.

Finally is the word hosios, meaning right by intrinsic divine character, which is different from innocent in human terms (dikaios). This word for holiness is most important in our understanding because it is the term used for describing Christ in prophecy (in Acts 2:27 and 13:35, which are quotes of Psalm 16:10), in his role as Savior (Hebrews 7:26), and of His very nature (Revelation 15:4). Also hosios is used to describe how we should worship (I Timothy 2:8) and serve the church (Titus 1:8).

If the stories of the Old Testament teach us nothing else, they show us that our human effort is incomplete to achieve holiness. No set of laws or elaborate rituals is going to cleanse us of our sin nature other than the salvation that comes through Christ and His blood. Then when we are given the gift of the Holy Spirit as our Guide, we are transformed into this “intrinsic divine character” that hosios speaks of.

I encourage you this week to read over the passages I have listed, to fully wrap your brain around them, and to immerse yourself in their meaning. God desires purity in our worship and our service. He desires purity in our lives. He enables us to achieve this holiness through His holiness. Consider this mystery this week.