Ball or Baal?

Many parents are beginning to experience early symptoms of an increasingly common condition that will likely reach epidemic proportions by late spring—“bleacher bottom.” The symptoms of bleacher bottom (also called “spectator syndrome”) generally include fatigue, sore throat, decreased family time, and sporadic church attendance. The origin of this infirmity is found in the overabundance of hours spent watching children participate in sporting events. The symptoms often become more and more intense until the fever breaks after the post-season tournaments. What can you do to prevent a household outbreak?

Athletic competition can be an extremely valuable activity for children and families to be involved in. Playing sports is fun, healthy, and instructive. Children learn teamwork, physical discipline, how to handle winning and losing, and many other crucial lessons for development. Beyond that, city leagues provide tremendous opportunities for Christian families to be “in” the community and interact with players and parents who are not believers.

But as many of you have discovered, getting your children involved in sports is not simply a matter of writing a check and signing little Billy and Sue up for the season. If you have more than one child playing sports, you may be committing yourself to four or five evenings out each week. Juggling schedules and arranging transportation become all-consuming tasks. And this is where my challenge comes in: Be careful lest you deify sports in your home!

How do you know if “ball” is the Baal of your home? A sport is your idol when it controls you so that you order your life around it. You find it nearly impossible to say “no” to it.

Upon being questioned about over-involvement sports, parents often respond, “The team needs all the players. We can’t let the team down. If Johnny is going to play sports, he needs to be willing to make some sacrifices (code for less church involvement).” It always seems that the first thing busy families trim out of busy lives is the church. So for the sake of the “team” they neglect the “Body” which is being deprived of a necessary member in disobedience to God’s instruction not to “forsake the assembly of the saints” (Heb. 10:25).

So how can you teach your children to be athletic competitors without leading them to be sports worshippers? (1) Communicate. Let your child and coach know before the season starts that when sports conflicts with Sunday worship or another significant church activity, the church will be the priority. (2) Set limits. For your sanity and the sanctity of the home, avoid spreading your family too thin by being involved in every sport. You may limit involvement to one sport per year for each child. (3) Seek alternatives. Certain sports demand more time than others. Intentionally select activities that fit into your family’s schedule the best.

I do not claim to write from vast personal experience in this. We are only beginning to plan how we will handle athletics and other extracurricular activities our children might become involved in. But that really is the key: planning. The Israelites did not plan on chasing after idols—they just did not obey the Lord’s instruction in setting up necessary boundaries to prevent it. To fail to plan is to plan to fail. Let us just be careful we don’t unintentionally “bench” God for the season and begin to bow our knee to “ball.”

Justin Culbertson
Berachah Bible Church

The Return of Moloch

Shelomith and Abigail were brimming with delight as they compared their pregnancies and child birth stories. They laughed over the adventures of their baby girls, who were only a few months old, and dreamed of who these darling children would grow to look like (her mother’s eyes, her father’s nose), and what roles they would play in the community of Israel. But one evening Abigail’s husband, Shema, hot and tired from another seemingly hopeless day in the sun-parched field, brought sad and chilling news. It had been decided. There was no other way. Their young daughter, Timna, must be taken and given as an offering to the god Moloch. The priest had announced that children must be sacrificed if there was to be rain which the nation so desperately needed. The parched land cried out for ground-soaking rains. Only the gods could give it. Abigail wept upon hearing what was to be done with her bright-eyed baby girl. She looked into her little girl’s face. Her mind was racing with ways to avoid this awful thing. But the decision had been made. Shema and Abigail both knew that their child like others in Israel would have to pass through the fire, if Moloch’s blessings were to be received. They wrapped Timna in the blanket especially woven for her birth. They walked silently together down the hill to the valley of Ben-hinnom. They could hear drums, bells, and chanting. With his priest attendants standing by there stood the image of Moloch before them. With one final look into the innocent and angelic face of Timna they presented her to the priests, who with prayers to the god for renewed fertility and prosperity, laid their firstborn in the fire-reddened arms of Moloch, protector and provider. The gift of this young life would help to insure blessings. Abundant harvests would replace the barren fields. They watched without visible emotion while the flames reduced their baby to ashes. Moloch had been given their most treasured possession. Now what would he give in return, hopefully peace and plenty.

This true-to-life story was probably repeated thousands of times (Jer. 32:35; Lev. 18:21; 20:2, 3, 4, 5; 2 Kgs. 23:10). Could such a horrible ritual take place in our day? I tell you it does. It takes place in the killing of millions of unborn children every year in America in the name of the god of pro-choice. How many aborted babies are offered on the altar of personal rights deemed more important than the rights of the unborn? Life is given by God. He created life (Gen. 1:26, 27; 2:7). Our every breath is a manifestation of life given by God. What makes human life sacred? It is because every man, woman, and child is made in God’s image. God is the author of human life. The high value of human life is reflected in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn. 3:16). The wonder of what God has done for sinful human beings, who deserve only death and eternal judgment, is seen in the everlasting gift of forgiveness and joy through faith in Jesus Christ. Bound up in this sublime gift is also the resurrection of our bodies. Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead we have the promise of our own resurrection body.

When does human life begin? The Bible is not ambiguous about this. The fetus is described as a person. It has developed all its human physical characteristics by about eight weeks (Jer. 1:4, 5; Lk. 1:41-44). The biblical ethicist, J. J. Davis, is certainly right when he says that the “biblical writers saw a continuity between the prenatal and postnatal states.” God’s hand is seen in the development of the fetus in the womb (Psa. 139:13-16). David saw his dignity, his value, his meaning in life as arising from God’s involvement in the development of life in the womb. This truth is the occasion for praise, gratitude, and worship.

Where do the Scriptures lead us in this matter of the fetus and the question of whether it is fully human? The benefit of any doubt regarding the fetus should go to the fetus. We should treat the unborn as human, since in the words of one theologian, “it is highly likely that God regards a fetus as a person capable of (at least potentially) that fellowship with God for which man was created.” Such a critical issue as human life being at stake demands that fetal life is treated as infant life. Would we not act on the presumption that an unconscious person is alive and not treat him as dead till proof is certain? If one is driving and sees what may be either a pile of rags or a child lying in the street, one will assume it is a human. What logic is it that treats the unborn as disposable when God counts it as life given by Him? The gods of our age have made the innocent and defenseless in the womb as potential offerings. These child sacrifices are most often for something other than saving the life of the mother. We have become all too comfortable with Moloch’s flames.

Dr. Howard E. Dial
Berachah Bible Church

Slavery, Segregation, and the Church

Hooded, sheet-wearing, Bible-quoting racists (Ku Klux Klan), cross-burnings on Stone Mountain, segregated public transportation (“Colored sit from rear to front. Whites sit from front to rear”), water fountains, restrooms, schools, and churches. This was the South where I grew up. A popular swimming lake (located near what is I-285 and the airport today) displayed a sign at its entrance prohibiting “colored people and Jews” from enjoying the cool waters in the hot southern summer. As a boy I looked at the sign, was grateful I wasn’t excluded, and went swimming. How easy it is to not have a problem with other people’s problems. I remember the janitor at the church I attended. Lij (short for Elijah) could stay in the men’s room and clean up the church building, but he and his family weren’t welcome to worship along side white folks. But things began to change with Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott. The Civil rights activism led by Martin Luther King Jr. with its boycotts, sit-ins, marches, and eventual legislation changed society’s segregationist ways. There is still a lot of well-disguised racism, but race relations are markedly improved over what they were during the days of Jim Crowe.

An embarrassing chapter in the struggle for racial equality in America has been the oftentimes feeble response of the church. The political activism of evangelical Christians since the 1980s was absent in the 1950s. Whereas many pulpits throughout the South had sought to justify slavery prior to the Civil War, their spiritual descendents did the same with segregation. I was once told by a student at a well known Christian university that God said, “Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set” (Prov. 22:28). This was an attempt to use the Bible to “prove” racial segregation.

The child of slavery, racial segregation, presented a formidable challenge to those who worked for racial reconciliation in the body of Christ. It was African-American pastors and churches that led the way to end racial discrimination. Sadly, I didn’t see many of my white brothers and sisters in Christ rise to the occasion. I heard sermons on the Tower of Babel (a favorite segregationist text) and eloquent appeals from well known Bible teachers to resist racial integration. I do not wish to villainize my spiritual fathers. In many ways they unwittingly planted the seeds of racial reconciliation. They did this by their evangelism and world missions zeal that reached across racial lines. They taught me the Scriptures that began a transforming work in my life (though they did not see the racial implications of what they were teaching). It was not until 1961 while in college that I began to awaken from my benign segregationist slumber. I read the book “Black Like Me” in which John Howard Griffin, a white man, told how in 1959 he had darkened his skin and traveled the South as a black man. My white eyes were beginning to open to what had been the invisible world of the southern black. In 1964 while in seminary I became friends with John McNeal, a married black student from middle Georgia. For the first time in my life I had a friendship with a black brother in Christ. My world and my plans for the future were being reordered.

The journey from slavery to segregation to racial integration is not over. As one generation was blind to the evil nature of racial discrimination, what is it that we do not see? We can pass judgment on those who failed to acknowledge and repent of racist attitudes. But how comfortable are we with the materialism that infests modern society? The unborn are aborted and it is gauzed over as a woman’s reproductive health issue. Appeals are made to let scientists experiment on human embryos. This is not to say that Christians have overcome racial prejudice. How many churches continue to leave “transitional” neighborhoods for the safety of another white ghetto? The vast urban areas of our cities go without a strong gospel witness because of crime problems. African-Americans, Hispanics, Caucasians, and all other racial and ethnic groups in the body of Christ must work together to pray for reformation and revival in the church. I pray that the progress we have made in racial harmony will not be wasted in the lukewarmness of compromise with a culture that is not a friend of the truth. And woos us above all else to be comfortable.

Dr. Howard E. Dial
Berachah Bible Church

Tsunamis

I cannot get that huge wave out of my mind. I have seen the footage of the tidal waves rushing over land, buildings, and people. But there is that one still picture of a solid wall of gray water about thirty feet high, poised to devour anything and everything in its path. By now we have all been drawn into the pain and suffering that has been visited upon the millions along the shorelines of South and Southeast Asia. Disasters are not respecters of persons. Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and Christians have experienced devastating losses. The problems of evil have also rolled in with the waves. There is the immediate, experiential problem of evil that wells up in the heart of a brother whose sister has been swept away into a watery grave. There is the problem of evil as an intellectual puzzle. Why is there evil in this world? There is the problem of evil people preying upon the hurting in humanitarian scams and child kidnapping. There is the problem of natural evil. What is wrong with nature? How did it get this way? As one journalist has said, “Why us? Why here? Why now?”

Interviews have been conducted to elicit explanations from those of various faiths and philosophies regarding the human tragedy of killer tsunamis. Hindus speak of the power and capricious nature of the gods. These angry gods must be placated. Buddhists talk in terms of karma and the necessity of generating “good merit that can be transferred to the deceased as a positive force in their next lifetime.” This would seem to mean that if enough good is done in this life, you won’t live in a fishing village on the Indian Ocean in the next life. The Muslim interprets the destructive tsunami as the will of Allah giving the survivors an opportunity to gain merit for the judgment day to come. Interestingly, there is a rumor passing through Muslim communities that the deadly tsunami was a judgment on Muslims and infidels for moral compromises. Some Muslims are even saying that the earthquake that triggered the tidal waves was due to a joint American and Israeli nuclear test.

Jesus Christ was interviewed by some of His contemporaries regarding two incidents of disaster and death (Luke 13:1-5). The first was the slaughter by Pilate’s soldiers of innocent Galilean worshipers. The second was that of a tower that fell killing eighteen people. The implication was that the victims deserved their death due to some sin they had committed. “Did God judge them for excessive sin?” Jesus’ answer is most illuminating. The death of anyone reveals the sinful condition of every human. A natural disaster, like a deadly tidal wave, exposes the mortality of humanity. People die every day but when thousands die at one time it is particularly poignant. Jesus does not say that those crushed by a falling tower did not deserve their fate. He widens the issue. We all deserve to die because we are all sinners. So what should we do in response to wars and natural disasters? We are to repent. It has been said that a tragedy is a loudspeaker “to call attention to our guilt and destination.” D. A. Carson has pointed out our flawed thinking. “It is a mark of our lostness that we invert these two (peace and tranquility and pain and death). We think we deserve the times of blessing and prosperity, and that the times of war and disaster are not only unfair but come perilously close to calling into question God’s goodness or his power – even perhaps, his very existence. Jesus simply does not see it that way.” This is not to say that Jesus ignored the necessity of kindness and compassion toward those who are suffering. There is the parable of the Good Samaritan which tells us to love our neighbor. But what Jesus is emphasizing in Luke 13 is the recognition of the seriousness of our condition. Without repentance for the sin of rebellion against God and His salvation in Jesus Christ there is a death that will be eternal. To die physically without having placed one’s faith in Christ is the greatest of all disasters.

There is a lesson to be learned from the animal kingdom. It is extraordinary that there has been very little loss of animal life in the tidal waves that hit the shores of Southern Asia. Elephants actually broke their chains and ran to higher ground five minutes before the tsunami hit land. Some special sense of impending danger drove them to a safe place. While we show compassion and minister to the victims of disasters, we must never forget the far greater message bound up in nature’s groaning and mankind’s mortality. Sinners must turn and run to the higher ground of God’s forgiveness (Rom. 3:20-26). Flee now from the wrath to come.

Dr. Howard E. Dial
Berachah Bible Church

O Death, Where Is Your Sting?

The death of a father and grandfather in a head-on automobile accident, the death of a local business man after a year-long bout with cancer and failing kidneys, the death of a twenty-nine year old mother after two years of battling Hodgkin’s disease, the death of a twenty-year old, only son, in an automobile accident. These have been in our family’s personal experience during the Thanksgiving and Christmas season. Beyond this circle of death are the scores killed weekly in Iraq and within the last week the tens of thousands in southern Asia swept into eternity by killer tidal waves. Still other headlines stand gloomily in the background; Baghdad blast that kills 29, fetus-snatch suspect appears before Judge. Bad news is nothing new, but sometimes it reaches deafening proportions with death always standing there with its sickening grin. The king of terrors ultimately silences every tongue, snatches children from their parents, severs marriages, and leaves incalculable grief in its wake. The poet, Shelley, grasps the reality of death, “Death is here and death is there. Death is busy everywhere, all around, within, beneath, above is death and we are death.”

If your worldview is defined by belief in human evolution, death is reduced to various forms of road-kill. Naturalism views death as the extinction of personality and individuality. If we are matter and nothing else, death is merely the exclamation point at the end of a hopeless life. The dirty little secret of humanists (those who view God as a wish-fulfillment) is the cold assertion, as stated in the Humanist Manifesto II, “…there is no credible evidence that life survives the death of the body.” To Eastern Pantheistic monism (Hinduism and Buddhism) death is framed in terms of karma (you are getting what you deserve) and reincarnation (recycled existence without any pardon for sin). The bleak summation of a monistic interpretation of reality is that “no human being in the sense of individual or person survives death.” According to an Islamic worldview, death takes one either to paradise or hell based upon good works weighed out by Allah.

When we invite the Christian worldview into the room with the Bible as its final authority, we are given the truth about death. God decreed that death would reign as the penalty of sin (Gen. 1:27, 28; 2:17; Rom. 5:12; 6:23; 7:13). Adam and Eve were created able not to sin. They were warned that death would come if they disobeyed God. Satan denied the possibility of death (Gen. 3:4). The Evil One always wants us to avoid the reality of death. Adam and Eve experienced death when they willfully disregarded God’s command and ate the fruit from the tree of good and evil (Gen. 3:7, 19; 5:5). A state of spiritual death occurred immediately. Physical death began its ugly work. The curse of sin and death enveloped the entire creation. Man, the sinner, gave himself over to rebellion against his Creator (moral evil). Nature fell under the bondage of decay (Rom. 8:19-22). The earth groans (natural evil). The animal creation became red “in tooth and claw.” Cats eat birds, weeds take over the garden, and drought and blight kill crops. Tornadoes destroy property and lives, mosquitoes bite and infect with malaria, earthquakes move the ground, and tsunamis sweep away property and lives.
Is there any hope for this curse-ridden creation and death-plagued humanity? There is. The irony is that the end of death is found in death. The death of Jesus Christ is the moral and spiritual center of the universe. The death of death has occurred in the death of Jesus Christ (Rev. 21:22, 23; Heb. 2:14; 2 Tim. 1:10). Spiritual death (the separation of man from God) is abolished through faith in Christ (Eph. 2:1-3). Physical death is defeated through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Cor. 15:20-28; Jn. 5:21-28). The second death can have no power over the believer because of his union with Christ (Rev. 20:6; Rev. 2:11). By submitting to death Jesus Christ triumphed over it. The sting of death has been removed by His atoning death. Freedom from the fear of death is found through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

When we look into the faces of those who have been brutalized by death, the love and compassion of Christ should flow from us. We will reach out in mercy to help relieve the physical pain and misery. We will give of our resources. We will show up in some way to help. We cannot remain as bystanders offering theological explanations. We will be moved to support those in the body of Christ who are near the human devastation. We will increase our efforts to take the gospel of Jesus Christ of those who have survived and who will one day themselves die. They must know that the sting of death has been removed in Jesus Christ.

Dr. Howard E. Dial
Berachah Bible Church