Are Christians Really So Intolerant?

There's a lot of anger out there against Christianity and Christians. I expect it'll get worse during this political season. One of the first accusations we usually hear--and one of the mildest, lately--is that we're intolerant of other religions.

The charge of intolerance comes because we believe faith in Jesus is the only way to God. We’re perceived as arrogantly stating: if you don’t believe what I believe, you’ll spend eternity in hell. When a Christian shares their faith, it shouldn't be out of the self-righteous superiority that says that I’m right and you’re wrong, but out of brotherly love. Something along the lines of:

I’ve made a friend who brings me unspeakable joy. His compassion is endless because in his time on earth, he knew physical pain and emotional brokenness. One of his best friends betrayed Him. He experienced the rejection and scorn of his own family. Many of my relationships, my emotions and my body have been healed. I despaired of living a life of meaning, but now I have hope again. I've experienced something life-changing and I want to share it with you.

In 2009 magician Penn Jillette, an avowed atheist, spoke of his conversation with a Christian businessman. "And he was truly complimentary. It didn't seem like empty flattery. He was really kind and nice and sane and looked me in the eyes and talked to me and then gave me this Bible."

Then Mr. Jillette made a surprising statement:

"How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that? If I believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that a truck was coming at you and you didn't believe it, and that truck was bearing down on you, there's a certain point where I tackle you. And this is more important than that...Now I know there's no God, and one polite person living his life right doesn't change that. But I'll tell you, he was a very, very, very good man, and that's really important. And with that kind of goodness, it's OK to have that deep of a disagreement."

The "problem" with the Christian worldview is that it deals in absolutes. But, don't most religions? Certainly Muslim faith does. Few people would say, in effect, “The law of gravity may work for you, but it puts limitations on me that I don't like. It doesn't work for me, so I'll ignore it.” Whether or not we choose to acknowledge gravity’s authority over us, we’re still subject to it. Sounds silly, right? The principle is the same.

Reality doesn't change because we cannot see Jesus sitting on His throne at the right hand of the Father. Some say that Jesus was a good teacher, but not the Son of God, the Creator of all. But Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except by Me.” If He is not the Son of God and, as He claims, the only way to the Father, then He was either insane, deluded or a liar.

Reincarnation and Christianity cannot both be true. After our physical deaths we are either reborn into another human body on earth, or we enter the spiritual realm--into the presence of God.

Society today seems believe that if we do good things, refrain from any gross sin, we'll go to heaven. God is love, after all. Scripture says so. Could a God of love send people to hell? Or so goes the argument.

Ah, but He must. God isn’t only love. He is also absolute holiness. When Adam and Eve sinned, God had to banish them from the garden. God certainly took no pleasure in it, but it was a necessary, and temporary, separation. God cannot have fellowship with anyone or thing less than holy. His heart is also one of deep abiding love, and He would not abandon mankind. That’s why Jesus came to die. To pay the legal price for our sin.

I have many friends who aren't Christians, and when the time is right I've shared the gospel with them. Because I love and respect them, the differences in our beliefs doesn't affect our friendship. While I don't compromise what I believe, I'm not their judge or their conscience. But, because I try to walk the walk that I talk, they know I'm a Christian. Hopefully, when they want to hear more, they'll feel so secure in our friendship they'll know they can come to me.

1 Cor 1:18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

Announcement: No Greater Gift

I am thrilled to announce that my newest book, No Greater Gift, will be published by Mountain Brook Ink on  May 1, 2016.

Inspirational Women's Fiction          
NO GREATER GIFT

History professor Grace Ryan returns to her hometown expecting to help her grandmother turn her journals and memories of WWII into memoirs. She arrives to find her grandmother being loaded into an ambulance. When she begs Grace to find the truth about a decades-old crime, whispers the word treason, then slips away forever, Grace is left to separate fact from fiction. Then, an unwelcome inheritance strikes at her already fragile family bond. Though God’s voice seems silent, He sends someone to stand in the gap for her.

Erik Petersson, unjustly accused of infidelity, suffered through an unwanted divorce and the loss of his children’s love to his former wife’s bitterness. A physicist on sabbatical, he agrees to help Grace dig through her late grandfather’s scientific papers. As he struggles to win back his children’s love, he and Grace are catapulted into a quagmire of truth and lies that could tear her family apart.

Preorder Here


The preorder price is an amazing $3.49.  If you're searching for it on Amazon and not using the link, make sure to remember to use my middle initial H or you might find it.

A Strong Tower

The name of the LORD is a strong tower;
The righteous runs into it and is safe.

Proverbs 18:10

A loved one receiving a cancer diagnosis can be a body blow. What is my instinctive reponse, right after the head snaps back and my vision clears? That depends. Where have I placed my trust? Fortunately, I was raised to walk with God, to trust in Him even when I don't understand. Even when there are no answers we can trust His love. Yes, even as we watch a loved one begin chemotherapy.

In Hebrew culture a peron's name illustrated his character. Throughout scripture, God met His people in desperate situations and revealed one of His names, and thus, a particular aspect of His nature.

A strong tower in Biblical times was at times large enough to give a place of refuge, for the population, sometimes an outpost on high ground for soldiers whose sentries to guard against enemy attack. But a tower could also be seen by the enemy as a sign of a line drawn in the sand that said this far and no farther, a sign that this ground is under protection.

In times of trouble, where do we run for comfort and safety? Don't get me wrong. In this time of trial, my family member sees the physicians and is enduring the therapy. We're comforted by family members and those brothers and sisters in Christ, but the first place we go is to our Strong Tower and to the scriptures, knowing that God is who He says He is.

The Peace of God

"...that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:17-19 

It’s January. Are your Christmas decorations put away, yet? Our bank accounts are noticeably lighter, the daylight hours are still pitifully few, and it seems like Spring is still a long way away.

The birth of Christ was the fulfillment of God’s promise that He would reconcile mankind to Himself. The angels sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men."

 

So where is the peace of God in the heart of January?

In the scriptures the Messiah is prophesied as a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, as the lamb of God brutally sacrificed for the sins of the people.  He’s also prophesied as an king who would deliver the nation of Israel from their oppressors and whose reign would never end.

Not understanding how Jesus could be both, the people of Israel focused on the Messiah coming as a great king who would free them from the bondage of the Roman empire. They wanted Him so desperately. The problem was, they saw the prophesies as a single range mountain peaks, grouped together in time. What they couldn’t see from their perspective was the valley of time separating the coming of Jesus as an infant and His death on the cross in 33 AD from his coming as a reigning king. They couldn’t see the 2000+ years of the church age between the time of His sacrifice and when He will come as a conquering king who will reign forever.

So where is the peace that He promised? The peace Jesus brought when He came the first time is between Man and God. He redeemed us—bought us back and paid the price—from the power of sin and death. Jesus reconciled us to God by paying the price for our sin. When we yield ourselves—mind, will and emotions—to Him, He changes our hearts and gives us peace. Not just peace with God--that's reconcilation with God--but the peace of God.

Unfortunately, as long as the hearts of men remain unsurrendered, there will be sin and death in the world, and, no lasting peace on the earth, except in the hearts of His people. 

Can nothing can be better?

Not long ago Steve Sabol, son of Ed Sabol and co-founder of NFL Films, passed away from a brain tumor. He was 70, and still way too young. At NFL films, he was a film maker, a camera man and an editor and writer and an on-screen commentator. His entire professional career was spent capturing, preserving and presenting football to the public in new and different ways. Football fans owe him a debt, and not just for Football Follies.

A specific quote that made the rounds after his death saddened me. Mr. Sabol said:

"So they talk about heaven, and I don't know what is waiting for me up there. But I can tell you this: Nothing will happen up there that can duplicate my life down here. Nothing. That life cannot be better than the one I've lived down here, the football life. It's been perfect."

Of course, I don't know his religious beliefs or the entire context of his statement. I can understand the joy of spending his life getting paid for doing what he loved. What boggles my mind is that he couldn't conceive that an eternity in heaven spent with a loving, awesome God could be any better in than the life he'd lived, here.

That's something I once found difficult to conceive. But then, I'm a baby boomer, raised in a Christian home by parents who'd sooner question the law of gravity than the existance of God.

How desperately our world needs us to live in the world, loving one another yet without compromising the Word of God.

Our perception of the world—the point of view, the glasses through which we view our world—is vitally important. Is my existance an accident of evolution? Or, was I conceived first in the heart of God? Is there anything after this life?

We all have questions, and many of them have difficult answers. A Christian's life isn't based on blind faith, but faith based on the living Word of God and on what we know is true. I've experienced His love and comfort and have seen the healing of twisted limbs with my own eyes. God loves us, and gave himself for us.

We were made for fellowship with God. Proverbs 8:17 says those who seek me diligently will find me. Him. Not a bunch of rules or even just knowledge about God. He promises us a love relationship not just on earth, but for eternity. 1 Corinthians 2:9:

For it is written:

  "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
  Nor have entered into the heart of man
  the things which God has prepared for those who love Him."

Are Chistians Intolerant?

There's a lot of anger out there against Christianity and Christians. I expect it'll get worse during this political season. One of the first accusations we usually hear--and one of the mildest, lately--is that we're intolerant of other religions.

The charge of intolerance comes because we believe faith in Jesus is the only way to God. We’re perceived as arrogantly stating: if you don’t believe what I believe, you’ll spend eternity in hell. When a Christian shares their faith, it shouldn't be out of the self-righteous superiority that says that I’m right and you’re wrong, but out of brotherly love. Something along the lines of:

I’ve made a friend who brings me unspeakable joy. His compassion is endless because in his time on earth, he knew physical pain and emotional brokenness. One of his best friends betrayed Him. He experienced the rejection and scorn of his own family. Many of my relationships, my emotions and my body have been healed. I despaired of living a life of meaning, but now I have hope again. I've experienced something life-changing and I want to share it with you.

The "problem" with the Christian worldview is that it deals in absolutes. Few people would say, in effect, “The law of gravity may work for you, but it puts limitations on me that I don't like. It doesn't work for me, so I'll ignore it.” Whether or not we choose to acknowledge gravity’s authority over us, we’re still subject to it. Sounds silly, right? The principle is the same.

Reality doesn't change because we cannot see Jesus sitting on His throne at the right hand of the Father. Some say that Jesus was a good teacher, but not the Son of God, the Creator of all. But Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except by Me.” If He is not the Son of God and, as He claims, the only way to the Father, then He was either insane or a liar.

Reincarnation and Christianity cannot both be true. After our physical deaths we are either reborn into another human body on earth, or we enter the spiritual realm--into the presence of God.

Society today seems to agree that there are many ways to God. If we do good things, refrain from any gross sin, we'll go to heaven. God is love, after all. Scripture says so. Could a God of love send people to hell? Or so goes the argument.

Ah, but He must. God isn’t only love. He is also holiness. When Adam and Eve sinned, God had to banish them from the garden. God certainly took no pleasure in it, but it was a necessary, and temporary, separation. God cannot have fellowship with anyone or thing less than holy. His heart is also one of deep abiding love, and He would not abandon mankind. That’s why Jesus came to die. To pay the legal price for our sin.

I have many friends who aren't Christians, and when the time is right I've shared the gospel with them. Because I love and respect them, the differences in our beliefs doesn't affect our friendship. While I don't compromise what I believe, I'm not their judge or their conscience. But, because I try to walk the walk that I talk, they know I'm a Christian. Hopefully, when they want to hear more, they'll feel so secure in our friendship they'll know they can come to me.

1 Cor 1:18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

National Coffee Day - September 29

 

According to the National Geographic website, the practice of starting the day out right with coffee began in Ethiopia. A goat herder (in about 800 A.D.) found his goats frolicking from plant to plant and wondered what had gotten in to them. He tried a few and soon joined the fun. I don't suppose he even bothered to roast or grind them, or stopped to consider if he wanted a single or double shot or which flavored creamer he'd like. Sometimes simple is best.

I've often stopped to thank the Lord for creating the coffee bean. Before He said, "Let there be Light" He knew that some day, I'd be sitting right where I am, now, thanking Him for my morning coffee. Perhaps I'm even more thankful for it because after drinking coffee since I was nineteen, I quit cold turkey. Now, I'm allowed a cup or two a few times a week.

For almost a decade, I drank coffee at work, and fetched it for others for the simple reason that going to refill an empty cup was the only acceptable reason for being away from the desk and telephones.

To wash to wash or not to wash the coffee pot was a continual squabble. There were no sinks deep enough to completely immerse the 30 cup urn  and wash it completely clean. As a result, what little washing that was possible only loosened the oils from the inside of the pot and made the coffee bitter. Battery acid, I believed we called it.

Like the oil that coats the inside of an unwashed coffee pot, our sin pollutes, and no amount of anything--good works, self control or sacrifice can change the human heart. Nothing except God. When we yield to Him, He changes us from the inside out.

Do you remember Gone with the Wind? Mammy told Scarlett and Rhett that they were like mules in a horse harness. You can scrub him up and put a shiny, fancy horse harness on him, but under it all, he's still a mule. You'd have to go deep inside that mule, to his DNA, and change him.

That's what God does with us when we're born again. No, we're not perfect, and as long as we're in our earthly bodies, we're at war with our sin natures. But as we yield to God, he changes us from the inside out.

The apostle John said: If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:7-10)

Spiritually-Minded Puppies

I've been told that the difference between man and animals is that though animals have a mind, will and emotions, they do not have an everlasting spirit that communes with God. The gentleman that explained this to me said that the thing that proved this to him was that he'd never returned home to find his beloved Yorki--Teddy, by name--sprawled out on the floor communing with God.

After a search of the scriptures, I had to wonder. The book of Revelation speaks of Christ returning to earth on a white horse. In the Old Testament, the Lord used a donkey to rebuke a disobedient prophet.

Not only does God use our pets in our every day life to bring us joy and comfort, to amuse and inspire us, he uses them and all His creation to demonstrate His glory and majesty.

This little cocker spaniel is Misty. Two years ago God healed her of a particularly nasty anemia. Her red blood cells had broken down, flooding her kidneys and liver with bilirubin beyond their capacity to process. Beneath her black fur, her skin turned a fluorescent crayon-box yellow. She had to have transfusions and around the clock care. She was critically ill for six days.

One morning after picking her up at the after hours emergency care vet, I headed to the church. One dear gentleman, a food ministry volunteer, got down on his knees in the parking lot in thirty degree weather to pray for my dog.

Misty is still with us, as cunning and mischievous as ever. To God be the glory. I have no doubt He touched her.

The scripture says that God knows when every sparrow falls to the ground. So, will my cockers live in heaven with me? Perhaps my friend is right. Perhaps not. Still, I couldn't resist the image his words created.

Smart Cat

I adore animals of all kinds, with the exception of rodents and bugs. This fellow belongs to a old friend of mine. Some would question his sanity. If I found myself in this position, I'd probably need a chiropractor. Linda caught him during a time of intense play, and he stayed in this position only for only the instant she snapped the picture. He scampered across the grass in just a few leaps and up the side of the fence. Something he does even while in the house. But, I can't look at this picture without smiling.

An Act of Hope

Writing is an act of hope. It means carving order from chaos.
– Jack Heffron, The Writer's Idea Book

That just about says it. All the sounds, smells, scenes, fragments of scenes, thoughts and surges of emotions must be pulled into order. As I begin a new book, the characters' faults and failures, their kindnesses and cruelties, the why's and how's of their actions, make my head spin. They're all a part of the heroine's struggle to overcome what she must, or die trying.

Sitting down at the computer is an act of hope. Communicating the essence of the characters and their stories is always a challenge. Sometimes it's as much a struggle for me to write the story as it is for the character to live it out. Still, there's a joy in the struggle.

Discovering, the struggle as well as the joy that comes with it, is something I crave. These characters won't leave me alone. This book, tentatively titled No Greater Gift, has been a stretch for me. The plotline is more intricate than any I've attempted before, and the characters face more than choices between not just stark right and wrong.

This is another book of my heart so, as Jacob wrestled with the angel, I keep wrestling with this book. One of my characters is trying to be mysterious. He probably thinks that because his mission in London during WWII is secret, that his deeper thoughts and emotions must be, too. Perhaps he's annoyed that tis isn't "his" story. He's got another think coming.

On to work! Blessings to you today

Teresa