Bright Wings

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with Ah! Bright Wings.

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February 13, 2010

The Local Church: An Instrument for Life

Let me give you some reasons why I preach a sermon on the sanctity of human life every year, and will continue to do so as long as God allows me to serve as a pastor:

1. I am convinced wholeheartedly on biblical, theological, philosophical, medical, and legal grounds that a baby is a human person made in God’s image at all stages of development from the moment of conception and should be treated with the same respect and rights of all other persons in our free society. We live in a society that either does not regard such beings as persons, or does regard them as persons and subjugates their personhood for personal comfort, economic stability, convenience, choice, emotional stability, etc.; and in fact is killing such persons en masse. To live in such a society and remain relatively silent and relatively inactive is a sin. 

2. I can think of no greater crime against humanity and rebellion against God than the legalized and systematic extermination of an entire class of persons (and that class of persons being those in greatest need of our care and protection). To not use the stewardship of this pulpit and my calling as pastor to prophecy against such crime and rebellion would itself be a sin.

3. To not address the sin of abortion publicly in the context of the assembling of God’s people and the worship of God would be to deny and ignore our corporate and individual guilt before God, and would withhold the promise of reconciliation and restoration for sinners and the promise of hope and joy through repentance and faith. It would be to withhold the greatest promise from the people in greatest need.

4. To refuse to address sin and destructive forces in our culture, city, churches, and homes for whatever reason - because it might raise the ire of people who might disagree with our convictions, or because it may cause discomfort, be received as politically incorrect, or might diminish my own influence and reputation would be the height of tyranny. It would be placing our own fears of disdain, our collective desire for comfort and convenience, or our desire for influence and reputation over and above the very lives of other persons, namely the 1.3 million unborn Americans who are killed every year in the womb.

5. Because I have ultimate hope in God that he uses His Word, and the Word preached to change hearts through confession and restoration, to inspire His people to love and good deeds, to save those lost in darkness, and bring justice to the needy. I have great hope in the instrument of His activity in the World, namely the Local Church, to accomplish his work by the power of the Holy Spirit.

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posted by Erik Braun

February 09, 2010

The Downhill Toboggan Run

In October of 1939 a secret decree was issued to the Reich Health ministry coming straight from the desk of Adolf Hitler himself. The decree, code named ‘Aktion T 4’, signaled a continued and deeper descent into the darkness of National Socialist Germany. ‘Aktion T4’ was the Reich’s ‘mercy death’ program focusing on newborns and very young children. Midwives and doctors were required to register children up to the age of three who showed symptoms of mental retardation, physical deformity, or other symptoms, which would indicate a serious health risk or undue burden to the Reich and its war effort.

A ‘committee’ of three medical experts would then assess the special registration form of this child. A euthanasia warrant would be issued for children who failed to meet the criteria of ‘life worthy of life’ and were sent to the ‘Children’s Specialty Department’ for death by injection or gradual starvation. Very quickly Aktion T4 expanded to include older children and adults. Patients were considered useless eaters if they suffered from schizophrenia, epilepsy, senility, therapy resistant paralysis, retardation, encephalitis, and other neurological conditions. Six killing centers were established throughout Germany to expedite the ‘mercy death’ process through a variety of brutal means.

It is estimated that by the close of the war between 200-275,000 people were euthanized under the Aktion T4 decree. It is thought that perhaps half of these casualties of Nazi ‘mercy’ were young children, infants, and newborns.

On May 10, 1940 the Nazi army invaded the Netherlands, a country that had naively trusted Hitler’s promise of non-aggression remaining naively ‘neutral’ throughout Germany’s European conquest. After a brave but futile 5 day struggle the Dutch army surrendered to the Reich. It would be five years before the Canadian army would liberate Holland. During this occupation 107,000 of Holland’s 140,000 Jews were deported from the Netherlands. Only 5,000 of these would survive the holocaust, with another 30,000 surviving through escape or hiding. Of the 60,000 Dutch Jews who were sent to Auschwitz, less than 1,000 survived. Over 75% of Holland’s Jews perished at the hands of the Nazi’s. This represents the largest percentage of Jews to die from a particular country with the exception of Poland.

One of the cries of Holocaust survivors and educators is ‘Never Forget!’.  But, tragically, we do forget. We forget the depths and darkness of the human heart. There is a cold and selfish utilitarian mentality that very easily besieges us. It is a slow and often quiet captivity of our hearts and minds. It is a captivity of our conscience by the forces of comfort and affluence. And it doesn’t happen overnight.  It doesn’t happen without employing helpful rationalizations and the language of ‘moral complexity’. It happens in our courthouses, schools, churches, and homes. The slope is steep and slippery indeed, but it seems we are, as one author put it, ‘on a down-hill toboggan run- the peak is no longer visible behind us, and the bottom is still a long, long slide down the mountain.’

Today, unbelievably, in the same country where only 60 years ago 107,000 Jews and countless other ‘undesirables’ and ‘useless’ eaters were murdered for the cause of a new society, we are on the brink of a new, yet sadly ‘old’, holocaust.  There are few voices indeed crying out against this new front in the war against life. Here is a recent associated press headline that was conspicously and widely ignored by the media. The associated press release read:

“A hospital in the Netherlands- the first nation to permit euthanasia- has proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns and then made a startling revelation: It already has begun carrying out such procedures, which include administering a lethal dose of sedatives.” - Toby Sterling, Assoc. Press

This set of ‘mercy death’ guidelines comes from the Groningen Academic hospital and is known as the ‘Groningen Protocol’. The Protocol seeks to establish a just and legal framework for permitting doctors to actively end the life of newborns deemed to be in severe pain or suffer from a dramatic loss of quality of life from incurable disease or extreme deformity. This pursuit comes only three years after the Dutch Parliament’s legalization of euthanasia for adult patients. The Protocol has only been used for newborns so far, but it proposes to soon cover any child up to the age of 12.

The protocol is eerily similar to the Aktion T4 decree of some 66 years ago in the supposedly barbaric tyranny of Nazi Germany. Yet this new decree is civilized, merciful, and calculated under the new morality of a postmodern Europe.  It is pragmatic, utilitarian, rational, and, yet, no matter how you look at it, it calls us to kill our little ones - the little ones who need us most. Death by committee: contrived by medical professionals, established by a medical bureaucracy, vindicated by a utilitarian philosophy, legalized by a heartless judiciary, and justified within a self serving and godless society. And, sadly, we are not far behind.

It has always been the duty of physicians to fight for life and strive for the cure and not merely ‘ease the pain’ of a patient or his caretakers. It is the job of law makers and judges to protect citizens and strive for justice, especially for those who cannot defend themselves. It is the job of a responsible citizenry to fight for just laws, to fight for the rights of our neighbor, and to truly love them.  But this sort of ethic is not expedient. And this ethic cannot be applied in a moral vacuum.

But, it seems, the center is lost, the tether is broken, and so we spin perilously out of control. We murder babies and so preserve our freedom of choice. We destroy human embryos and put them to use, to serve the greater good. We actually debate the use of aborted babies for research. It is actually up for consideration whether or not we should clone humans in order to harvest organs. Today, we measure life not by the standard of God given personhood with intrinsic value regardless of our utility for the cause of a greater society. Our personhood, our value and our right to live now depends on a complex, yet sadly arbitrary calculus which deems one valuable according to our postmodern measure of comfort, happiness, lack of pain, and use to others.

As J. Budziszewski has said, “While the morality of pleasant feelings ends with the likes of Peter Singer (professor of ethics and philosophy at Princeton University, and advocate of infant euthanasia) who thinks little humans may be killed because their pleasures aren’t big enough, the morality of higher feelings ends with the likes of Hannibal Lecter, who thinks vulgar humans may be killed because their pleasures aren’t refined enough. It is all part of the same revolution.”

And so, it shall be the biblical resolve of faithful Christians, those who love God and all whom He has made in his image, to consider and obey His Word. We will lament the chaos of our sinful culture, yet we will hope in Christ. And we will live to offer such hope to a hopeless world. Such a task will be an increasingly bold one in our age. Our service to Christ in a dark world must begin with the ‘least of these’. We must serve everyone made by God for God’s own glory. Our babies, our elderly, our poor, our disabled. The body of Christ should be a beacon of light, it should be a haven of rest, it should be a loud voice of love and truth, it should be the feet and hands of love and truth. It begins often in little ways, though it is always centered on the magnificent and glorious revelation of God in Christ for the good of all people.

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posted by Erik Braun

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