Lamentations 2:1–5
How the Lord in his anger has set the daughter of Zion under a cloud!
He has cast down from heaven to earth the splendor of Israel;
he has not remembered his footstool in the day of his anger.
The Lord has swallowed up without mercy all the habitations of Jacob;
in his wrath he has broken down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah;
he has brought down to the ground in dishonor the kingdom and its rulers.
He has cut down in fierce anger all the might of Israel;
he has withdrawn from them his right hand in the face of the enemy;
he has burned like a flaming fire in Jacob, consuming all around.
He has bent his bow like an enemy, with his right hand set like a foe;
and he has killed all who were delightful in our eyes in the tent of the daughter of Zion;
he has poured out his fury like fire.
The Lord has become like an enemy; he has swallowed up Israel;
he has swallowed up all its palaces; he has laid in ruins its strongholds,
and he has multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation. (ESV)

Jeremiah 50:17–20
“Israel is a hunted sheep driven away by lions. First the king of Assyria devoured him, and now at last Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has gnawed his bones. Therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing punishment on the king of Babylon and his land, as I punished the king of Assyria. I will restore Israel to his pasture, and he shall feed on Carmel and in Bashan, and his desire shall be satisfied on the hills of Ephraim and in Gilead. In those days and in that time, declares the LORD, iniquity shall be sought in Israel, and there shall be none, and sin in Judah, and none shall be found, for I will pardon those whom I leave as a remnant. (ESV)

Daniel 2:20–21
Daniel answered and said:
“Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, to whom belong wisdom and might. He changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding; (ESV)

Who is responsible for the debacle in Kabul? Who is it that has made America the laughingstock of the world and made her friends doubt her willingness to stay the course when the going gets rough?
It would be easy – too easy – to point the finger at Joe Biden and change the (D) after his name to (F). He, after all is the one who, following the lead of his predecessor, pulled the plug and walked away from America’s 20-year commitment to transforming Afghanistan from a backwater conglomeration of warring tribesmen into a semblance of a 21st Century nation-state. And it’s fair, I won’t say it’s not true, to say Mr. Biden has blown it and made America look like a feeble old woman instead of a confident warrior empire.

But I want to step back and look at the world through God-eyes, through the lens of scripture to see and know the truth. And here’s the deal: Joe Biden is the man responsible for the collapse of American power and influence in Central Asia, and perhaps the rest of the world. Joe is the man, but this man is but a tool in the hand of God as he works his will and way in the flow of human history. How do I know this to be true? The bible tells me so!

If we look at the history of Abraham’s posterity as recorded by the prophets, we see that it was the rare time that they took the worship of Abraham’s God seriously. Through most of their history they were professing devotees of God while the worshipped the gods of their neighbors and lived lives indistinguishable from the lives of – well to be honest – indistinguishable from the lives lived by Americans today.
God’s prophets kept warning them that their manner of living put them beyond the reach of God’s mercy and grace. They would make jabs at doing it right, but the bright lights of Vegas kept pulling them back to the depravity of their neighbors. Like them, they killed their unwanted children as expressions of personal freedom. Like them, they neighed after their neighbors’ wives like stallions in the paddock. (The expression of their desires are a little to graphic in scripture to be repeated here.) And they did it all while claiming to love God and to worship him. They would go to their happy-clappy “worship” services, offer their sacrifices (which they ate after giving the priests their portion), and hit the hay with their neighbors’ wives and husbands.

So, God, as Sovereign over all, first sent the Assyrians and then the Babylonians to strip the land bare, to slaughter these children of Abraham – man, woman, and child – and to send those left alive into exile as war refugees and slaves.
And that brings us to the question: Who was responsible for the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BC and the Southern Kingdom of Judah in 586 BC? We can say it was Assyria for the North and Babylon for the South and we wouldn’t be wrong. Jeremiah said God would hold Assyria and Babylon responsible for the slaughter and devastation – and he did. Assyria fell to the Babylonian Empire and Babylon was consumed by the Medes and the Persians never to be seen or heard of again (except as eschatological analogy in the Revelation). But to stop there is to stop too soon. Assyria and Babylon were but tools in the hand of God to accomplish his purpose and to do his will.

Let me insert a cautionary here before I continue on. Babylon, in 586 BC was the most powerful nation in its area of influence. It had no rivals who could stand before it. Fifty years later, Babylon was no more. In 539 BC Cyrus attacked, and in 538 BC Babylon collapsed overnight. (See Daniel 5) Let us take fair warning. If and when God determines our nation as depraved and defiant as were those ancient kingdoms, we may fall into insignificance just as easily as did they.

So, back to Afghanistan and the American clown-show there. Who is responsible? First of all, I blame George Bush for not reading history before he decided it would be a good idea to overthrow the Afghan government and pour our soldiers into the Graveyard of Empires. Seriously, George? The Soviets had given up just 12 years earlier. Then his generals and military advisors, from Rumsfeld, to McChrystal, to Petraeus, to Allen, to Milley, and the thousands of other false prophets who keep saying we could win if we just tried a little harder. There’s enough blame to go around. Obama did poorly and Trump equally bad. But poor ol’ Joe gets to be the one who administers the coup de grace to American pride and American power in the region. But none of these men, regardless their competence or incompetence, bear ultimate responsibility for this disaster.
This is God’s doing! God is the one who sets up kings and takes them down. He, it is, who shapes the course of human history over years and decades and centuries and millennia. God has a purpose – we can see it in its broadest strokes in the bible – in his dealings with humanity. He is drawing us to a conclusion little different from the fall of Jerusalem and the collapse of Babylon. See Daniel 2! There is a coming kingdom that will grind to dust all earthly powers and empires. The kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord, and he will reign forever and ever, amen.

So, what should you and I be doing? Throwing bricks at Biden? Maybe, but more importantly we should be searching the scripture and looking closely at everything that is happening in the world around us as we look for the tracings of God’s hand in human events.

1 Peter 2:13–17
[13] Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, [14] or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. [15] For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. [16] Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. [17] Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. (ESV)

Romans 2:17–24
[17] But if you call yourself a [Christian] and rely on the law and boast in God [18] and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law; [19] and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, [20] an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth—[21] you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? [22] You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? [23] You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. [24] For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” (ESV)

This Romans passage is written to point out to the most committed devotees to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – the devout Jews – that they were in as much need of the grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ as were the Not-Jews they despised. I changed one word, the word “Jew” to “Christian” to illustrate that God’s modern-day devotees can be as equally blind to their need of grace as do the perverts and criminals we disdain.

I found myself under spiritual conviction this morning. The wife and I have been planning an end-of-summer shindig in our backyard for our church family on Labor Day Sunday. The grass is green, the weather is beautiful, and the burgers and dogs and baked beans and potato salad – and the church fellowship – were going to be fantastic! Then our governor, a man I consider without understanding or discernment, in other words, a secular man who puts politics above all else, imposed another masking mandate on the state.

My first instinct was to tell him to take a long walk off a short pier. How dare he MAKE free citizens bend to his diktat! Then the Peter passage appeared in my morning bible reading: be subject to (even stupid, brain-dead) governors! And these two bible passages melded in my mind.

I have been greatly disturbed by the bad governance God has given us. (Yes, I believe the bible teaches that even bad government is under the direction of heaven’s Sovereign.) Mr. Biden’s bumbling about with Afghanistan is but the latest iteration in a long list of governmental malfeasance. Whether it is the ongoing insurrection in Portland, OR, or the murder and mayhem in our major cities, or the non-scientific edicts of government bureaucrats, it is hard to support officials whose policies are unsupportable. I see the bummeries (my new word for “homeless encampments) with their consequent filth and accompanying crime rimming our streets and hear the judges and mayors telling us there is nothing we can do about them, and I find myself becoming an insurrectionist unwilling to submit to their authority.

Then the bible tells me I’m as bad as the rioters and the bums and the mayors and the judges and the governors and the president. Ouch! When these officials step outside the bounds of their authority and step into the place Christ has claimed as his and his alone, I have a duty to disobey. Tell me I cannot assemble to worship (A Zoom church is no church at all), or that I must embrace a satanic understanding of human sexuality or gender, or that I must offer incense on Caesar’s altar, and I must disobey. But when these misguided (evil and corrupt might be better adjectives but I’m trying to be kind) men and women tell me to wear the veil in a grocery, or not host a backyard party for brothers and sisters who are not related to me by blood, or pay my taxes that go to fund their ill-conceived schemes, or not run stop signs even when there are no other cars around, then, for God’s sake, I must obey. I obey, not because they are right or good or smart. I obey because God has told me to obey as long as they are within the bounds of their God-given authority.

So no garden party to mark the end of summer. I’m sad but obedient.

Jerusalem in 586-584 BC looked like Afghanistan today (20 August 2021). Then the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar had captured the capital, Jerusalem, for the third time in 20 years. This time they were just tired of Judean resistance and sent their combat engineers in to destroy the city. They tore down the walls, destroyed every defensive position, burnt the palaces and the temple and ripped them down stone by stone. The best and the brightest had been taken to Babylon in 605 BC (Daniel and his three companions were in that group) to take their place in the Babylonian bureaucracy (Nebuchadnezzar had an empire to run, and empires require bureaucrats who know the territory.) and a new king had been placed on the throne.

Several kings later and it was King Zedekiah’s turn to experience Babylonian justice. The prophet Jeremiah (A thankless job to say the least!) had been warning the people and the political leadership for 30 years that their rebellion against the God of heaven would end in catastrophe. They beat him, starved him, ignored him, and would have killed him many times over had not God prevented it.

Zedekiah received one last warning from Jeremiah: Do not resist Nebuchadnezzar. Submit to his authority and you will live and even keep your throne. Resist and you will pay an unbearable price. Z’s response was that he appreciated the counsel but he didn’t think he could go along with it. Obeying the God he had rejected his entire life just wasn’t in the cards. Well, you know the story, the city fell, Z and his entourage sneaked out the back gate and did a runner hoping to get to Egypt. He didn’t get far. He and his family and officials were captured, taken north to N’s headquarters, tried, convicted, and sentenced to the horror of watching his sons executed, and then having his eyes plucked out so that for the rest of his life the last thing he would remember seeing was the blood of his sons flowing in the courtyard.

Here’s a challenging aside if you’re interested. N’s wholehearted declaration of God’s sovereignty is recorded in Daniel. Daniel, that faithful man of God, was his Prime Minister. It was as a God-fearer that N came against Jerusalem and destroyed it! N was God’s servant executing God’s judgment against the apostasy of Judah. People will often say when you or I as Christians declare and work God’s judgments against evil men and women, “I thought you were a Christian! How can you go to war? How can you kill other people? How can you speak so forcefully against another’s lifestyle or practice? God isn’t like that!” O yes he is. God may be slow to anger, but when he says, “Enough!”, it is enough and his judgments, most often at the hands of other men – good or bad – will come. The meek and lowly Jesus of the New Testament is the LORD of the Old. God has not changed. He hated the rebellion of Judah then and he hates the rebellion of the nations today. His justice may seem delayed, but it is not. For every nation, for every person, there is a cup of iniquity that once filled must be emptied. And that wrath, for the wrath of God is what it is, must either be spent on the rebel or on the rebel’s substitute at Calvary.

Now where was I? Ah, yes, Z is blinded and taken in chains to Babylon. Jerusalem is in ruins and various factions are in contention over who will be in charge of what remains. N has put a Jewish official, Gedaliah, in charge at the temporary capital, Mizpah. The Babylonians caught and released Jeremiah. They tell him he can either go to Babylon with them where they’ll make sure he is well-cared for, maybe even move into Daniel’s palace, or he is free to go be Gedaliah’s spiritual advisor. He chose the later.

G was a good man – naïve but good. He settled into Mizpah and went to work trying to bring some sort of government to the region. And here is where the story gets interesting! As you can well imagine after the collapse of the government, the surrounding nations start looking for opportunities to extend their territories or at least their influence into the fallen land. Ammon was one such nation and Ishmael, one of the minor princes of Judah was their man to make their move. (I mean, seriously, do you think the Taliban moved back into Afghanistan without the support and assistance of Iran and Pakistan? They may not be Iranian or Pakistani puppets, but they are instruments of influence for those two nations, and they have been funded, trained, and equipped by them.) So Ishmael is commissioned to assassinate Gedaliah. You with me so far?

One of the other warlords, and there are plenty, General Johanan by name, comes to G at Mizpah to let him know that Ishmael is working for the Ammonites and is being sent to kill him. Why not, says Johanan, let me take my men and kill Ishamael before he gets to you. No way!, says G, no Jew would ally himself with Ammon and attack Babylon by killing me. You are lying on Ishmael because you’re just jealous of him.
Well, Ishmael kills Gedaliah and a bunch of other people and a little civil war among this remnant of Judah breaks out. Johanan hunts down Ishmael and his men and, although Ishmael gets away, ends the Ammonite adventure. But . . . now Johanan and some of his allies are in charge and they don’t know what to do. They’re afraid the Babylonians are going to exact reprisals for the death of G and the Babylonians who were there in Mizpah. So they do what any reasonable person would do – they ask Jeremiah to inquire of God for direction: should we stay or should we take refuge in Egypt? These must be good guys! They want to know God’s will! Right?
Jeremiah inquires of the LORD, and the LORD replies. “I know you’re scared. You’re afraid the Babylonians will come down on you for Ishmael’s rebellion. They won’t. Stay right where you are. Pick up where Gedaliah left off. Protect the people and care for the land. You are in the middle of a 70-year exile that began with the first invasion. Hang in there. I’m putting all things in order. Don’t go to Egypt. If you do, you will die there of plague, famine, and sword.”

Jeremiah delivers the message, but instead of Johanan lifting his hands in praise for God’s assurances, he says to Jeremiah, “You lie like a rug! God didn’t tell you that! You and that assistant of yours have made this up. We’re going to Egypt. And you’re coming with us just in case we need to inquire of the LORD again.”

It is amazing, although we shouldn’t be amazed, how people want to hear a word from the LORD but only so long as that word agrees with what they’ve already determined in their hearts to do. Johanan was one of those sorta godly men who can really talk the talk but only walk where their desires lead. Egypt was at war with Babylon and so Egypt was the wise man’s refuge. Little did he know, or I should say, he knew what the prophet said but didn’t believe him, that Nebuchadnezzar was soon to set his throne up in the heart of Egypt and bring that dynasty to an end.

Johanan looked like such a good and wise man when he was warning Gedaliah of Ishmael’s duplicity. But his refusal to listen to the word of God through the prophet revealed him to be a religious opportunist. He was in it for himself. He was measured in God’s scales and found wanting.

Let me summarize and get out. God sent Babylon to punish Judah for worshipping the gods of their neighbors. To the one to whom much is given, much is required. God has given revelations of himself and his will to all nations, and by the standards of those general revelations they will be judged. But to Israel and Judah, and to us, he his given us special revelation of himself and his will through the scripture and through his Son, and by those standards we will be judged. He will, not may, but will, punish America and the American church for our rejection of his word and will. I can’t say when or how, but I can say will.

In the story of Johanan we see a man who looked good but inwardly was as corrupt and wicked as those whose rule brought about the destruction of their city. The history of the Church is strewn with the wrecked lives of seemingly godly men who inwardly were just dead men’s bones. Don’t let that discourage or dismay you. God said that’s how it is and how it will be until The Return of the King.

And the story of Jeremiah is the call to be faithful in every circumstance, regardless the pressure to compromise or say what the people want to hear. Be faithful until death and the crown of life awaits!

How to Know the Truth

Jesus said, “You shall know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free.” But how can we know what it true? Is there a “gold standard” by which we can measure every other utterance or opinion and gauge its truthfulness?

Once upon a time someone said that the best antidote for error was more information. If a lie is stated then meet it with the truth – and the truth will tell. That is no longer the case. With the advent of mass media through the internet we are flooded with information, both true and false, and there is so much we can browse for hours and just go farther down the rabbit hole.
So let me suggest a way forward.

First and foremost, know the word of God – the scripture. And I mean KNOW it. Having a memory verse tucked away here and there to pull out when needed is not sufficient. We have to know the word. We must understand the history, the personalities, the geography, the timing of the word. We must understand the literary structure of the bible and grasp its genres. And we must have been born into the family of God! Without the New Birth we cannot understand the bible no matter how versed we are in all its literary components, but Christ has promised that when we are infilled with the Holy Spirit, he will lead us into all the truth. So, it’s a “Both And.” We must know everything we can about the bible, its structure, and its setting. And then we must be guided by the Holy Spirit in its interpretation.

With a correct understanding of the bible we can then measure all other claims to truth. Let me illustrate. Genesis 1 – 3 tell us how we came to be and what we are. There we find that God made us in his image, in other words, to reflect his character. He made us male and female that we might participate with him in the continuation of creation. Now you pick up the Washington Post or the New York Times and one of their journalists will tell you that a celebrity who was a woman yesterday is a man today. She had her breasts removed and has started taking testosterone to develop male features. Is she now a man? No. God made us male and female. She is now a mutilated woman just as a man who covers his body with tattoos, splits his tongue, and has plastic horns implanted on his head has not become a fantasy monster – he is just a mutilated man.

But let’s take this a little further: can we now trust that journalist and that newspaper to tell us the truth about any other topic? I must say a categorical NO. If they lie about something we know about, we cannot trust them on any subject about which we know little or nothing. That doesn’t mean they intentionally lie about everything, but because we now know they will lie or distort the truth to fit their politics, we have to have reservations about anything they might report.

Now let’s apply this principle to Covid and the governments’ response to it. It Covid a disease? Yes. Is it a disease about which we should be so concerned that we will deprive people of freedom, income, and property? Are the various media telling the Truth about this disease? I don’t think so. If they had a biblical understanding of our mortality, they would not get overly wrought about the death of people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s – regardless the cause. The 90th Psalm says we should live into our 70s and 80s if we are so blessed, but our days are like a morning vapor, here and then gone. So when the media mix and mingle the few deaths of the young and otherwise healthy with the many deaths of the elderly and otherwise ill, we can know they are distorting the facts and telling a lie to advance a political agenda. 90% of those who have died with Covid in the US were over 60. (Which means only 10% were not in the “we expect them to die sooner rather than later” category.) We can be sad about each death, but each of those deaths is an expected death. The God who had determined every day of their lives before they had ever lived a one, had decreed it was their time to die.

Then there’s climate change. We know the climate is changing. We don’t know what that means or how it will effect our lives here on earth. We’ve only had the means to record temperature data for about 140 years and we know from examining the ice sheets and tree rings, etc., the climate has changed radically without our aid multiple times through the millennia. In fact, the climate is always changing – it grows warmer and then grows colder, all without human intervention. A couple of volcanoes will pump out more sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide in a few weeks than humanity will produce in a year. When the media write their scare stories about manmade climate change, they are telling far more than they know to be true. The people who cannot tell a man from a woman cannot be experts on man’s impact on the planet. If we understand the bible, we know that God uses the climate and weather for his purposes – he controls it and not us. We should be good stewards of this planet, but we should never think it is ours to control.

We need to take this healthy skepticism into everything we read whether it comes from left, right, or center, a preacher, a president, or a journalist. Everyone has a bias. Everyone has an agenda. And most reporters lie like a rug.

2 Corinthians 5:16–17 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (ESV)

Galatians 6:14–16 But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God. (ESV)

The Church is having an identity crisis.

Someone said that 1100 Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America, and that may be true. But this is not the issue being addressed in the bible. If your native tongue is Spanish you will want to worship God in Spanish. No, the issue being called out as antichrist is the attitude of ethnic superiority.

The church was born in the synagogue and in the temple. Her Lord and Foundation was and yet is a son of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. His lineage traced back to Judah and his “son”, David. Jesus was a Jew and the early church was a largely Jewish church, ut it quickly expanded into the larger world of the gentiles. As the church met the world conflicts was almost inevitable. We saw it first right there in Jerusalem almost as soon as the Holy Spirit descended upon her at Pentecost.

Families take care of families, and the early church was a family church. But the Spirit was drawing men and women by the thousands into the fellowship and the widows with foreign roots were easily overlooked in the distribution of aid – and that’s why the church has deacons, to take care that no one is overlooked in the ministries of the church.

Jesus told his disciples to take the good news of reconciliation with God to the whole world, and take it they did. Within 40 years churches had been planted throughout the Roman Empire and was expanding into regions beyond. With growth came growth pains. A people doesn’t give up its sense of uniqueness overnight. The Jews had been the set apart and chosen people of God. It was hard to look at these gentiles, these foreigners, these babblers in strange tongues, as equals, as fellow children of God. But that is what they were!

So we have Paul writing to the churches those verses we read above. Circumcision doesn’t count! Uncircumcision doesn’t count! (Yes, some of the gentile Christians were seeing their freedom from Judaism making them “better” Christians than their tradition-bound brethren.) Look, Paul said, when you became a Christian you stopped being a Jew, or a Corinthian, or a Galatian, or a Roman, or any other ethnicity in all the world. When you were born again, when God made you new, you lost your ethnicity for a new identity all together. You identified with Christ, and with Christ alone.

And that brings us back home. The Church is made of men and women of every nation, ethnicity, language, height and weight. It is a reflection of the peoples of the world. But it is one Church, with one Father, and with one doctrine. It can never fracture along ethnic lines and still call itself the Church. There cannot be a White Church with White doctrine, and a Black Church with Black doctrine. The Church has little to say about ethnicity other than to say the color of your skin or the language you speak matters little or not at all. What matters is, do you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you believe his Word? Are you a child of God and a citizen of the kingdom of heaven? Or are you American, or African, or Indian, or Chinese, or . . .

May we truly be one people serving one God and loving one another.

I was listening to the news this morning while driving to a dental appointment. One of the news items was that Mr. Obama was buying a minority interest in NBA Africa. No, I’m not commenting on the marvel of how a poor man becomes rich when achieving high political office, but he has the $$$$$ to buy an interest in the NBA.

What sparked my interest was that he was investing in an Africa project. He’s from Africa. He has family there. He’s interested in Africa and all its varied peoples. And that’s a good thing. He can be a good American and care about Africa. And of course that got me to thinking about the Church and the diversity that exists within her. (I use the feminine pronoun rather that the neuter when referring to the Church – she is after all the Bride of Christ.) I’m not talking here about the diversity of nations, families, clans, ethnicities, and language groups that make up the Church – those are superficials. No, I’m talking about doctrinal diversity.

The Church can be both unified and diverse simultaneously. We must be unified on the fundamentals of the Christian faith: God is. He is unique in all his universe. He has always been and always will be. He is One God in Three Persons who created heaven and earth. There is a rebellion against his rule that began in heaven and is being waged here on Planet Earth. Humanity in our First Parents joined the rebellion and became subject to the death that comes to those who rebel against the Sovereign. God chose, why I don’t know, to redeem and pardon some of them by the death, burial, and resurrection of his Son. To those he has redeemed he has given the Holy Spirit to transform their minds and to make them his own. And he has given them eternal life to be realized when the Son returns to claim his own and to end the rebellion forever. On these facts the Church stands. To reject them is to reject membership in the Church.

But the Church can also be diverse. I often say I don’t even agree with myself! Once we go beyond the Fundamentals as expressed by the early church in the Apostles’ Creed and the other early statements of faith, we are diverse. The church (I capitalize when speaking of the universal body of the redeemed, and lower case when speaking of the human institution.) first divided east and west into the Roman and Orthodox churches, and ever since the Reformation has been dividing into a thousand expressions – some of which at least are still true to the Fundamentals while having different views on matters of church organization and polity, manner of baptism, the partaking of communion, and on and on. A Christian who has a sincere conviction on believer baptism by immersion can have close Christian fellowship with one who is equally sincere in his belief that the aspersion of infants best celebrates the community of faith.

Now back to Mr. Obama. America is not a mono-ethnic nation. As a nation of migrants we come from all the world’s peoples. Even the so-called “white” people come with very diverse family and cultural traditions. It is only right that Mr. Obama have a special interest in Africa. He’s rooted there. It would only be a cause of alarm if he were to start calling for the destruction of our national Declaration of Independence and Constitution and replacing them with some pan-African slogan. He can be fully American and yet be African in the same way that my Christian brother can be fully Christian and be a Baptist or Presbyterian or Assemblies of God, or Church of God in Christ.