Texas Baptist Forum_62705

Posted: 6/24/05

Texas Baptist Forum

Put down pen & pray

What in the world is wrong with today's Christians? How have we gone so far as to lose so much focus?

I have been reading this paper for several years, and as a pastor, I have to say that the most heart-wrenching part of it is Texas Baptist Forum. In a recent issue, I read letters involving everything from the Emmaus Walk to worship styles to the tsunami. After reading all that, I have a response for everyone who writes in or reads this paper:

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Letters are welcomed. Send them to marvknox@baptiststandard.com; 250 words maximum.

"Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back–in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you." Frederick Buechner Author of Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, quoted by Jim Denison, pastor of Park Cities Baptist Church, in his daily e-mail devotional, "The Word Today." "Why would we invest such efforts in Catholic countries? The answer is quite simple: It is because they are lost." Jerry Rankin President of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board (BP) "It's beyond question that the Democratic Party is 'pretty much a white, Christian party,' too. How could it be otherwise, considering the racial and religious makeup of the country?" Sign up for our weekly edition and get all our headlines in your inbox on Thursdays Email Address John Farmer Correspondent for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., responding to Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean's description of the Republican Party (RNS)

My Savior is bigger than denominational lines, Creator of the earth and universe, and is the One who saved us so that we can worship. That being said, walk over to your window and look out at all the people who are on their way to an eternal torment.

Does that stir your heart as much as a bad article in the Standard? Will you lose sleep to tears and prayer as you think of those lost souls, or maybe the lost souls in your own church and family? Will the plight of sinners stir you to action the way your Baptist heritage stirs you to write in to this paper to attack someone's opinion or logic?

God honors a broken heart and sowing in tears. Until we are brokenhearted over our sin and apathy, and until we are brokenhearted over the lost around us, I think it would do us best to put down our pens and pray until we learn to love the way the Savior loves us.

Russell Shires

Atlanta

Clean up television

I'm satisfied that most Christians–hopefully all–are bothered by the television programs and TV advertisements entering our homes. We all talk about it, but what do we do about it?

These grossly inappropriate TV programs are paid for by advertisers, large and small corporations, with which we all do business. If those corporations don't pay for these trashy programs, they can't be continued.

With our help, two great organizations cause many of these sponsors to discontinue financing such programs. The large Christian population in America can change the nature of TV programming by supporting these organizations, the American Family Association and the Parents Television Council.

Both organizations monitor TV programs and report to their supporters their opinions of such programs and also the names of the advertisers paying for them. The threat of hundreds, even thousands, of individuals no longer purchasing their products or patronizing a certain company has a strong influence on that company's willingness to continue its sponsorship.

The American Family Association can be reached at P.O. Drawer 2440, Tupelo, Miss. 38803; www.afa.net.

The Parents Television Council is located at 707 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 2075, Los Angeles, Calif. 90017; www.parentstv.org.

Hopefully, many people receiving the Baptist Standard will read this and become a part of changing what comes into our homes via television.

Floyd E. Heard

Midland

Avoid prooftexts

If you are a literalist, then you must believe that Adam was not a soul until God gave him the breath of life. If you believe what the Old Testament says about homosexuality, then you must believe what Exodus 21: 22 says about abortion. A fetus is property, and a man who causes its loss must pay the father who owns the property. The mother is a life, and if she dies as a result, it is life for life.

If you believe the Bible, then you must believe Ecclesiastes 6:3, that unless you have a good life, lots of children and a proper burial, it is better to be stillborn.

If you believe that a fertilized egg is a soul, then you must believe that God has something better for those souls than life on Earth, because half of fertilized eggs are not implanted in the womb.

Perhaps we evangelical Christians would be taken more seriously, other than by ourselves, if we didn't use prooftexts to justify our prejudices. Or if we at least read our Bibles.

Robert Flynn

San Antonio