The two books of Kings get less attention than they deserve in contemporary Christian thought. They tell the story of the long rise and fall of the nation of Israel, from the death of the faithful King David to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians.

The writer of Kings isn’t interested in history for history’s sake, though; the writer is preserving the mistakes made by the nation in hopes that future generations will avoid them.

If you’ve read through the books, you probably noticed that each king whose reign is recorded gets a “value judgment” by the author as either good, good with reservations or wicked. Of all of the kings described, only two receive a “good” mark. Six receive “good with reservations,” and the rest are judged as wicked.

One criterion prevails as the most important, separating the “good” from the “good with reservations:” whether or not they “tore down the high places.”

High places then

What were the “high places” that were so important to the writer of Kings?

The high places were the sites of false worship: they were places where idols were worshiped or where God was worshipped in a twisted way. They were sites where idolatry took place, and the righteousness of the kings of Israel and Judah were all judged according to whether they removed these stations for false worship or not.

Kings is not interested in the leaders’ political or military success — only in their faithfulness in tearing down the high places. Only two kings did this (Hezekiah and Josiah), and by the end of the book, God has punished the people for their unrighteousness with exile and loss of the Promised Land.

High places now

Idol-making is no ancient problem. Twenty-five hundred years later, we still build high places for false and irreverent worship.

One of the most prominent examples in American history is the “Religion of the Lost Cause,” a spinoff of Christianity not as open as it once was but still in full force today. Following the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War, a new sort of hybrid religion venerating the old Confederacy and incorporating Christian practices emerged in the south.

It revered the old heroes of the Confederate army as forces for good fighting against the evil forces of the Union and saw the defeat of the South as analogous to the suffering and death of Christ. This suffering, southern practitioners of this civil religion believed, would one day be righted. Just as Jesus was resurrected from the dead, “the South will rise again.”

Of course, this hybrid worship of south and Christ was less than friendly to freed blacks, unwelcomed reminders of national defeat. The famous “Jim Crow” laws were enacted to make life miserable for blacks living in the South.

Following the passage of the “Jim Crow” laws, practitioners of Lost-Cause religion erected statues of Confederate leaders to intimidate and remind blacks that they were not welcomed in that area. The Confederate monuments that dot so many southern towns today were not constructed in the aftermath of the Civil War but during segregation and the Civil Rights movement, with the explicit purpose of intimidating blacks. They were erected as “explicit symbols of white supremacy.”

Think about it. Statues are not for recording history but for admiration and admonition. We have many ways of recording and remembering history: books, museums, battlefields and so on. We aren’t in danger of forgetting that a war happened. In postwar Germany, concentration camps remain as a reminder of the evil humanity is capable of committing. Statues of Hitler have been taken down.

There’s a difference between preserving history and venerating it.

Remember Kings

The town where I went to college has a Confederate monument on its courthouse square that is currently being debated. I recently saw pictures of a group of white men holding machine guns and signs in front of the monument protesting calls for its removal. If those men walked two blocks over, they would find a county history museum with a fantastic collection regarding both the Civil War and the Jim Crow era in which this statue was built. Removing the statue isn’t erasing history; no one is calling for the museum to remove its exhibits.

God doesn’t like idol-worship. Neither does he like oppression or the intimidation of others. I can only imagine how my black brothers and sisters in Christ must have felt seeing men armed with machine guns standing in front of a statue erected to celebrate a culture in which their ancestors were beaten and lynched. These statues are literal idols.

If we take history seriously, perhaps we should remember the books of Kings. God doesn’t like high places, and no one who allows them to stand is righteous.

Jake Raabe is a student at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary in Waco, Texas. He is also a co-founder of Patristica Press, a Waco-based publishing house.

Sometimes, in the pain and suffering of this life, we wonder where God is in the midst of our trials. We can’t feel his presence and we don’t hear his voice. Many times, in the midst of these valleys, our prayers seem futile, our spiritual well seems dry. Where does our help come from?

This is the question the Psalmist asks in Psalm 121. The answer given is simple: “My help comes from the Lord.” But, where can we find this help, where can we find the Lord when it seems he is absent and we feel alone?

Paul answers this question for us in 2 Corinthians 1. God comforts us through his church. When we don’t seem to feel his presence in our life, we should turn to his church. Here in 2 Corinthians 1, Paul reveals at least three ways God comforts us through the ministry of the body of Christ.

The experience of others

In verses 3–7, we see one of the ways God comforts us in our suffering is through the presence of our brothers and sisters in Christ. God comforts his people in their affliction through the comforting presence of those who have already walked through affliction.

We need the church. We need to be in close relationship with others who are walking by faith in Jesus.

I don’t know all of the reasons why we experience pain and suffering, but I do know God wants us to use our experience to comfort others who are walking their own path through the valley of the shadow of death. When we walk through affliction, we should turn to others who have walked similar paths.

In the middle of your trial, when you wonder where God is, look to his church. He is in their hugs and pats on the back. He is in their volunteering to drive you to the doctor and sit with you in waiting rooms. He is there in their silent presence.

He is in their own experiences of pain and suffering, of loss and grief. God uses his people to be his hands and feet, to represent his love and grace.

The hope of the gospel

Another way we experience comfort in our affliction is by continuing to preach to ourselves and remind one another of the hope of the gospel. God will deliver us, Paul promises, and we can bank on this sure hope because of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

In verse 20, Paul says all of the promises of God find their yes in Jesus. Jesus is God’s ultimate yes to our deepest questions about his goodness, presence and power.

Is God there in the midst of our suffering? Jesus is God’s yes.

Is God good? Jesus is God’s yes.

Is God working even in the midst of this pain? Jesus is God’s yes.

Will God deliver me from this affliction? Jesus is God’s yes.

When we doubt God and his goodness, we must look to Jesus. The hope of the resurrection of Jesus and our own resurrection in him gives us a foundation of hope to stand on in the storms of affliction.

The power of prayer

In verse 11, Paul asks the Corinthian church to pray for him and his ministry. God works when his people pray. God brings comfort to those walking through affliction when his people pray.

We often tell other people we are praying for them in order to sound spiritual or because we don’t know what else to say, but prayer is not a throwaway activity. It is the most important thing we can do because it fuels our comforting presence and calls us back to the foundation of hope in Jesus.

God comforts us through the prayers of others. This requires us to be honest and to trust others with our affliction while trusting God to work through those prayers.

When we walk through affliction and suffering and we wonder where God is, we must turn to his church. Through the presence of others who have already walked through an affliction similar to ours, the hope we have in Jesus of all things being redeemed and restored and the powerful prayers of those all around us. God comforts us.

Instead of looking to the sky for a sure sign of God’s presence, we should turn to those all around us already who are prepared to be his hands and his feet.

God comforts us through his people.

Zac Harrel is pastor of First Baptist Church in Gustine, Texas.

When did the art of pleasant conversation and open dialogue end? Every national news item — it seems — sparks vitriol that demands an alignment in one political camp or the other, one race or the other, or one sexual orientation or the other. I am afraid we have lost the ability to exchange ideas, to communicate freely, to learn from one another. To celebrate our differences rather than condemn them. Passionate speech and polite speech are not incompatible.

But I am afraid to speak, for fear my words are misinterpreted. I am afraid to write, lest my writing not encourage the thoughtful conversation I intended, but provoke a hateful backlash. Is it no longer possible to have civil discourse?

I am afraid to laugh, for fear my laughter is misconstrued. Can’t I both laugh at Tina Fey’s ‘‘Saturday Night Live’’ sheet-caking stunt, for example, as well as at Chad Prather’s “Unapologetically Southern” YouTube videos? At political cartoons of both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times? Or is humor no longer funny, only hateful? Can’t we laugh at ourselves anymore, at our own hypocrisies? We all have them. I’m afraid we no longer recognize that; we are blinded by our self-interest.

I am afraid of social media. Facebook has unfortunately turned into a forum where, other than the annual birthday wish or mundane vacation photo, posts are filled with inflammatory opinions and commentary-as-fact with the self-righteous, ignorant replies that follow. Mob mentality sets in and people post things they would never say to your face. Hurtful — hateful — things.

Free speech is not the same thing as kind speech, uplifting speech, or frankly, intelligent speech. Nor should honest disagreement be labeled hate speech. Unfortunately, much speech today is designed to shut down the conversation by labeling one’s opponent — are they really an opponent? — a bigot, or by declaring they have no moral standing even to join the conversation. That is coercion, intimidation and bullying no matter which side is doing it. That makes me very afraid.

I am afraid when I see fellow Christians deciding that following politics is more important than following the Ten Commandments. When they opt for strict party affiliation over and above “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Mark 12:31, KJV). And when they decide it is expedient to legislate hate, discrimination and economic disparity while ignoring inconvenient moral issues like poverty and health care. What happened to being Jesus to those around us?

Rod Dreher, in his timely book “The Benedict Option,” notes that political victory does not vitiate the vice of hypocrisy. The socially liberal churches are just as guilty of blindly aligning with the Democratic Party as the fundamentalists are with the Republican Party. Could it be that Jesus understood this when he said, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21, KJV)?

I am afraid our clumsy, partisan involvement has resulted in a political environment increasingly hostile to the very real — and very Christian — charitable work of the church. We must redirect our gaze outside our church walls and into our increasingly diverse and desperate communities. Putting our faith to work on the ground speaks volumes and accomplishes so much more than legislating selective moral conformity.

It often takes a crisis — a disaster? — to bring the country together to work for the common good. Perhaps Hurricane Harvey will accomplish that. It appears to be doing so; I just hope it lasts.

Dreher wrote, “The state will not be able to care for all human needs in the future, especially if the current projections of growing economic inequality prove accurate.” Christians need to rediscover an ethic that marries personal responsibility with intentional charity and corporate love and respect. I fear we may have drifted too far to do so.

But I am afraid not to try.

Reprinted with permission of The Lufkin Daily News.

Sid Roberts is a radiation oncologist at the Arthur Temple Sr. Regional Cancer Center in Lufkin. Previous columns may be found at srob61.blogspot.com.

Last week, Texas experienced the worst disaster in its history. Nineteen trillion gallons of water fell over the southeastern portion of Texas. Houston and its surrounding areas were inundated with over 50 inches of rainfall, and 30,000 people were displaced.

Recovery costs will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and the process of rebuilding will take years, if not decades. The situation is grim, but Texans everywhere, and Texas Baptists in particular, have shown readiness to take on this task of nearly unimaginable proportions.

Relief problems

Unfortunately, a “second disaster” comes after most major events like Hurricane Harvey.

Relief workers use this phrase to describe the rush of unhelpful donations that stream into disaster-affected areas, creating more problems than they solve. Items one thinks would be helpful after a disaster become a disaster in their own right.

Literal tons of used clothing, toys, household goods and other items are given to agencies that don’t have the time or manpower to sort, organize and clean these things. All of these unusable donations subsequently either clog already limited storage spaces or are destroyed.

After Hurricane Mitch ripped through Honduras in 1998, supply planes couldn’t land because runways had become piled with boxes of used clothing donated by well-meaning Americans. I’m sure not a few of those boxes preventing supply planes from landing were donated by well-meaning churches.

‘More harm than good’

According to disaster relief experts, donating any physical goods that haven’t been specifically called for by a local relief organization almost always does more harm than good, with used clothing being the worst offender. At best, these items overwhelm relief workers who need to spend time and resources elsewhere. At worst, it actively impedes ongoing relief efforts, as was the case in Honduras.

As my fellow columnist Zac Harrel reminded us last week, we have a responsibility to help our brothers and sisters in disaster-affected areas. We must, however, do this well. When we send goods and donations that haven’t been specifically asked for, we do harm, not good.

What does Houston need from us, then?

The best gift

Our money.

In times of disaster and recovery, money is desperately needed more than almost any physical good. Money given to the right organization can become food for the hungry, clothing for the needy, shelter for the homeless, medicine for the sick and so on, and all without requiring hours of volunteer work sorting through boxes.

Money is essential to recovery efforts, especially for a disaster the size of Hurricane Harvey. Used clothing, teddy bears, and random goods may correspond to things victims have lost, but a post-hurricane city simply doesn’t have the means of matching goods to people in need.  

Myles Werntz gave some great guidelines last week for responsible and effective giving, especially in the context of your local church. Responsible and effective giving is what Houston needs right now.

We Texas Baptists have a huge task in front of us as thousands of our brothers and sisters are in dire need. Giving used clothes or spare items we don’t need any more isn’t real giving — it’s making ourselves feel that we’ve helped without actually sacrificing anything. Giving that helps others is giving that disadvantages ourselves.

Houston needs our dollars. Houston needs the time of those of us with particular skills and training (if this is you, or you would like it to be, join the Texas Baptist Men). Even if the intentions are good, Houston doesn’t need our used clothing. Our giving must match the need.

Let’s avoid the second disaster. Let’s not burden relief workers in Houston with goods they didn’t ask for or need. Let’s really help Houston rebuild. This will take the sacrificial giving of our money, time and abilities, but Texas Baptists aren’t known for backing down from a challenge.

Jake Raabe is a student at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary in Waco, Texas and a writer. Follow him on his Facebook page.

In his 1988 essay, “God and Country,” the Kentucky farmer, writer and prophet Wendell Berry takes aim at the institutional church for a variety of offenses. It’s a proper jeremiad, a polemic against his perennial enemy, “the economy,” and in service of his larger point, Berry states a truth so profound and convicting that it’s hung firmly in my mind since I first read it several years ago.

Berry writes of “the practice, again common in the churches of my experience, of using the rural ministry as a training ground for young ministers and as a means of subsidizing their education. No church official, apparently, sees any logical, much less any spiritual, problem in sending young people to minister to country churches before they have, according to their institutional superiors, become eligible to be ministers.”

Most churches within a hundred miles of an academic institution of their particular denominational stripe will be instantly familiar with Berry’s gripe. When I interviewed at one such church shortly after completing my seminary degree and commented on the legacy of that congregation in training up fresh pastors over the years, I was met with a similar degree of enthusiasm as Berry expresses in his essay.

They wanted to have good pastors, not just make them.

None called to stay

Berry goes on to describe the conventional wisdom of denominational leaders in less than kind terms: “The country people will be used to educate ministers for the benefit of city people (in wealthier churches) who, obviously, are thought more deserving of educated ministers.”

And though he doesn’t blame the individual young ministers for their participation in this system, he does note that “in the more than fifty years that I have known my own rural community, many student ministers have been ‘called’ to serve in its churches, but not one has ever been ‘called’ to stay.”

These words struck me like a sledgehammer, and I’ve often reflected on them in the course of my few years serving the people of rural Crowell, Texas, in my first pastorate.

Stepping stone?

The traditional trajectory for a young pastor like myself is to treat a community and church like Crowell as a stepping stone to ever bigger, wealthier urban or suburban churches. But I don’t believe that bigger is necessarily better, or that urban is superior to rural.

I want to be “called to stay” in my small church in my rural community. Churches like mine deserve good pastors too, and I hope to be one for them.

But conventional wisdom considers that a lack of ambition, even a waste of good talent. Conventional wisdom considers my time in Crowell a resume builder and learning period at best, and though neither of those things in themselves is bad, the simple fact that they are given foremost attention in the big picture strikes me as antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ and insulting to the fine people of Foard County and other similar communities.

Now, by challenging the notion that small communities and their churches are undervalued as places of service and worship, I don’t mean to suggest that ministry to cities through big churches is correspondingly bereft of value. Neither Wendell Berry nor I approve of that sentiment.

In the middle of his argument, he pauses to state that “not all ministers should be country ministers, just as not all people should be country people.” And yet there is a need to promote smaller communities and churches as a good in themselves, and not only as a training ground for the bigger and urban.

Consider small churches

Jesus spent his ministry traveling in and out of small communities and was himself reviled on different occasions for his rural roots. Now, certainly, he also taught at the Temple in Jerusalem, but that was not his primary place of ministry. The Sermon on the Mount was delivered in the wilderness. The ten lepers were cleansed in the borderlands of Samaria. He commissioned his disciples to go from the urban center of Jerusalem to the “ends of the earth.”

It’s in that spirit that I call on pastors to consider small and rural churches when the Lord leads you toward your next transition.

It’s in that spirit that I call my sisters and brothers in the faith to visit the small church on the corner before starting membership classes at the big McChurch downtown when they move to a new community.

It’s in that spirit that I implore denominational leadership, Bible colleges and seminaries to champion the small and rural churches in their outlying areas as places where God is especially at work.

Teach our young ministers that these are places to love and serve for more than two years at a time and that the fullness of life can be experienced and enjoyed in these communities. Continue to encourage them to serve the local church in all kinds of paid and unpaid roles while they’re training for ministry careers, but remind them that those local churches are not just ministry labs for experimentation or short-term places to work until they get a real call.

They are themselves the full manifestation of the church of Jesus Christ, and service in those places is eternal in scope.

Chris McLain is the pastor of First Baptist Church in Crowell, Texas.

In the aftermath of the devastation on the Gulf Coast, Houston and the surrounding areas will be under reconstruction for months and years to come. Events like this evoke questions such as “How can a 500-year flood happen three times in a decade?” and “How can a city of this magnitude be restored in such a way that is fair to citizens who do not have the money to rebuild?”

As we saw in the wake of Katrina, rebuilding after a natural disaster does not always happen in a way which is just. In a different time, we would have space to defer these questions, of what it means to build our infrastructure well and how to rebuild in ways which do not erase those without the money to rebuild. That time is now, and Christians of all persuasions should learn from the past that it not be repeated in south Texas.

After the rescue and cleanup, our collective hearts will be called to another longer and more arduous task: recovery. It will occur long after the news cycle has turned toward another disaster and will take place in mundane spaces—in board meetings and in midnight work details. But it is a work which Christians should commit themselves to, remembering those who will be eventually forgotten in the news cycle.

What your church can do

In this time, I’d like to specifically draw our congregational attention to the groups who make the local recovery possible: the myriad nonprofits and churches, who themselves have been devastated by hurricanes and floods. My friend, Elizabeth Grasham, has put together the following wonderful proposal, which I will simply quote here:

“This level of disaster can be an ‘extinction level event’ for small non-profits, including churches. If the constituents of a small non-profit have to divert all of their income towards rebuilding, or if they are forced to move altogether because of disaster, that hits the bottom line of the organization.

“Here’s my challenge to you:

“If possible, have your congregation choose one of the affected churches in the Houston area (or Corpus, or Port Aransas, or wherever) to become affiliated with. Maybe you send $500 a year to keep their food pantry going. Maybe you pay for their Sunday School curriculum for a year. Maybe you commit to a yearly mission trip to be of service to that church and its community. Whatever – become a long-distance supporter of their ministries to help them stay afloat during what is going to be a protracted recovery process.”

‘A wealth of generosity’

In the middle of 2 Corinthians, Paul asks the fractured, embattled Corinthian church for a huge favor, writing “We want you to know, brothers and sisters, about the grace of God that has been granted to the churches of Macedonia;  for during a severe ordeal of affliction, their abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. … Now as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you—so we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking. I do not say this as a command, but I am testing the genuineness of your love against the earnestness of others” (2 Corinthians 8:1–2, 7-8).

What Paul is asking here is nothing less than asking a frail, fractured church to give to another congregation in need, one that they have never met, and one which they may never personally have contact with. And in that, they prove their generosity, exhibiting the unity of the body of Christ. What he is asking for goes beyond a one-time gift, but partnership, commitment to another unknown body that will bind them together long after the immediate rescue is over.

Long-term partnering

The Texas Baptist Men Disaster Relief is an amazing group which gives selflessly, but I am asking that churches not let this outstanding group be their only representative. Consider partnering with a church you have never met in a tangible, long-term way, that the witness of Christ in the world would not be extinguished by the storm.

Such an action is more than charity—it is fleshing out the very prayer of Jesus that we would be one, a unity which exists in Christ but which we are ever called to embody in the world in our worship, and now, in our finances.

Myles Werntz is assistant professor of Christian ethics and practical theology and the T.B. Maston Chair of Christian Ethics at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon Seminary in Abilene. Email him at Myles.Werntz@hsutx.edu.

During my first three years of ministry, I served as youth minister at First Baptist Church in Port Aransas. Port Aransas is an amazing place filled with special people.

As I think back on my time there, I am so thankful for many who took me in like family. I am thankful for many who helped with my ministry, and I am especially thankful for my pastor, William Campbell, who showed me how to love a community well.

Hurricane Harvey has left destruction in its wake on the small town of Port Aransas. At the time I am writing this, homes are still uninhabitable. The people of Port A have to commute from surrounding areas to clean up during the day and be off the island by dark. There is no power yet.

Their water is close to being turned back on, and many are trying their best to do the initial work of assessing and cleaning what they can. Some homes are destroyed, and all have been affected in some way or another. A Google search of the town will show the destruction the storm left behind.

One thing I am sure of is that the people of Port Aransas will rebuild. They are strong, compassionate and united. They also need our help.

Houston has received a ton of national attention and rightly so. They need all the help they can get, but let us not forget the small towns along the coast that so many of us have visited and enjoyed. Let us not forget the smaller churches doing all they can to not only rebuild but also be the hands and feet of Jesus to their communities.

We as the body of Christ, and especially as Texas Baptists, must respond to our brothers and sisters in need. We must pray. We must give. We must go.

Pray

We all can pray, and we should not discount the importance and power of this action. Port Aransas needs your prayers. My prayer for them this week has been Psalm 29:11: “May the Lord give strength to his people! May the Lord bless his people with peace!”

Let’s pray for those affected by this storm. Let’s pray for them to know the power and presence of God in the midst of unspeakable grief and loss. This is our first and greatest response on behalf of those who have lost so much.

Give

This is a time for the church to live out our compassion by being generous with the gifts God has given to us. We have been blessed in order to bless those in need.

Give your money to help churches, families and communities rebuild. Give your money to organizations you know and trust. Give to Texas Baptist Men. Find a church affected in these areas and give to them. Contact First Baptist Church Port Aransas and know they will use every dollar they receive the help their community.

So many have already been so generous, but this is going to take a long relief effort. We must continue to be generous for years to come to help this area of our great state.

Go

These areas are going to need volunteers to help them clean up and rebuild. If you are able, head down there and help. Use your own hands to clean up and rebuild. They are going to need us. If you can’t go yourself, do what you can to make sure others are able to volunteer their time.

This is our time

We talk a lot about what it means to be the church, how we can be salt and light and what it looks like to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Well, the time for talking is over.

This is an opportunity for us as the church to live out the mission statements we write for our websites. This is a chance for us to truly be the physical hands and feet of Jesus to those who really need us at this moment.

We must pray, give and go in response to Hurricane Harvey.

We must be the church.

Zac Harrel is pastor of First Baptist Church in Gustine, Texas.

If you’re not satisfied with Jesus, don’t worry. You’ve got gospels galore in this pluralist, postmodern age. Take your pick.

Two of our current favorites are the privilege gospel and the supremacy gospel.

The privilege gospel

Those who teach the privilege gospel teach advantages are sure signs of God’s blessing. Because privilege is a sign of God’s approval and blessing, the privileged should be protected and maintained in their comfort and security, regardless of the cost to the less and the least privileged.

Amos, an Old Testament prophet, delivered a bracing condemnation of the privileged who use the poor for their own gain. Amos taught Israel their denial of justice and their oppression of the poor would result in their destruction. The true gospel teaches God expects God’s people to enact justice for all.

The nature of privilege—the ignorance, whether willful or naïve, of the suffering of the unprivileged—allows for the ascendancy of our second current favorite gospel.

The supremacy gospel

Those who teach the supremacy gospel teach the best life is realized when lesser people—the undesirables—are subjugated or exterminated. The supremacy gospel is preached by racial and ethnic groups all over the world and often leads to genocide, the wiping out of entire populations of people.

Given supremacy’s historic penchant for genocide, God’s people must resist any expression of human supremacy. Today, God’s white people must resist its white form.

From the first words of the Bible, we learn God created humans—all humans, regardless of color and gender—in the image of God. All humans, then, are sacred and should be treated as sacred, created in the image of God and bearers of God’s image.

Peter offers a response to the supremacy gospel. When Peter’s enemy—a Roman military officer—believed in Jesus, Peter said:

“I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right” (Acts 10:34–35 NIV).

Peter laid aside his own supremacist ideas in favor of the teachings of Jesus, the true gospel, who taught that in place of hate, in place of killing those we oppose, we must love and pray for them.

The problem of other gospels

The problem with other gospels is they distort the truth by using the language of the true gospel. Not long after Jesus returned to heaven, the good news (the gospel) Jesus came to deliver was distorted by people who thought Jesus’ way was too good, too miraculous or too wrong to be true. Much of the New Testament was written to resist these distortions, these false teachings creeping into Christ’s church carried by false teachers.

False teachers are of two kinds:

• those who claim to be inspired by God but who are not inspired by anything more than their own imaginations, and
• those who are inspired not by God but by a spirit of falsehood.

The problem with other gospels is they are perpetrated by false teachers whose teachings deceive us by sounding too much like the true gospel.

The true gospel

The truth of false gospels is that the true gospel really is too good and too miraculous. We don’t deserve what Jesus did. We can’t earn it, and we can’t do it for ourselves.

The truth of the true gospel is that it is open to all who call on the name of the Lord, regardless of skin color, ethnicity, gender or social status (Joel 2:32, Acts 2:21, Romans 10:13).

The truth of the true gospel is that none who accept it are better or worse than any other, for in Jesus, divisions of color, ethnicity, gender and status are to cease (Galatians 3:26–28).

The truth of the true gospel is just as Paul wrote:

“That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that [Christ] was buried, that [Christ] was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3–4 NIV).

The truth of the true gospel is just as John wrote:

“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. … Everyone born of God overcomes the world. … Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. …

… God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

I [, John,] write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. (1 John 5:1a, 4a, 5, 11b–13, NIV)

There are many gospels out there, but only one leads to life.

What gospel are you following? Are you chasing after comfort and security, power and dominance, or are you chasing after Jesus, the only One in whom is abundant and eternal life?

Eric Black is pastor of First Baptist Church in Covington, Texas, and a member of the Baptist Standard Publishing board of directors.

An uncomfortable but inevitable question recently appeared as a text message on my phone: “What do you think about the Confederate statues being taken down?”

How does a pastor respond to such a text with brevity and wisdom? I thought long and hard about my reply because, in our current cultural climate, a text message can be so easily misinterpreted and distributed virally that it may actually be wiser to thumb-type these important words: “I’ll get back to you.”

Nevertheless, I fully trusted the person who would read my response, and I hammered out some statements woefully void of a great deal of theologizing. After a few more minutes of pondering, my mind’s browser finally sprang to life and pulled an old file that contains a wise prayer first uttered by Reinhold Niebuhr in 1943: “God, give us the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish one from the other.”

I thought, “This prayer says exactly what I’m thinking!” Let me elaborate based almost primarily upon Niebuhr’s prayer and general line of thought.

The problem with “I’m not racist”

When it comes to recent racial tension and chaos in our nation, we simply must face the fact that we cannot change the history of American racial tension. It is useless either to tear down or to prop up statues of Confederate soldiers if doing so is simply an act of guarding a group’s power and pride. Perhaps, then, a re-engagement with our American history is needed now more than ever.

For example, I highly recommend a groundbreaking book called “Divided by Faith” by Christian Smith and Michael Emerson, sociologists at Rice University. Through extensive research, Smith and Emerson theorize that a majority of both black and white evangelical Christians in America today engage in something called “racialization.” Racialization refers to the social constructs of a given society or group which exclude others based upon economic, political, racial, lingual or physical differences.

Smith and Emerson suggest that most of our racialized activities come out of a basic ignorance of ways to appropriate love for our neighbors. For example, we could be quite mistaken when we say, “I’m not racist!” just because we do not seemingly act like our ancestors in the pre-Civil Rights era. Saying “I’m not racist” is simply like putting on a fresh suit of clothes that dolls up the hidden agenda of self-promotion. We oftentimes dress up in the right and acceptable language of our peers in order to gain acceptance with them, yet the heart can remain unchanged and soiled.

One must search deeply within the recesses of his/her heart to find that all of us need redemption and mercy when it comes to the race issue. There is a tension between good and evil in all of us. We cannot fix a problem by saying, “I’m not racist.”

The problem with education

Further, we seem somewhat powerless to change the ineffectiveness of educational and political models in the current national crisis. In other words, our efforts at educating the masses, especially children and youth, are not keeping up with the social problems of the times. It is not enough for us to say, “Education through the schools and universities can fix this.” Increasing support for our educational systems is certainly worthy of our time and effort, but we are in desperate need of new wine and new wineskins.

Take, for instance, my educational journey. It was not until well into seminary training (master’s degree courses) that my peers and I had to face down directly our racial tendencies and, as well, racialized ways of leading churches.

In fact, it was after reading Taylor Branch’s three epic historical volumes about Martin Luther King Jr. that I finally can see where statues of General Lee may be more than a bit disturbing to my black brothers and sisters! Why did it take me that long to figure it out? I dare say it was because of a few educators who dared to ask the hard questions about life rather than teaching us facts simply for us to pass a test.

What then can we change?

Fortunately, there exists some recommendations for fighting the fiery brand of racism raging across our nation today.

First, may we note some sharp and distinctive ironies at work in our culture? For instance, there seems to be a large group of citizens who desperately desire to be left alone, to isolate themselves in order to be responsible citizens. The irony, however, is that isolationism does anything but encourage a responsible citizenry.

We see this kind of thing at work on a much smaller scale in some family environments. The mantra is: “If the problem is not discussed in the home, then it must not exist.” Just because we hide behind our big doors and gated neighborhoods does not mean we have solved the problems of conflict within the community. Engagement with others beyond the scope of social media and insignificant surface interactions is desperately needed in our society today.

Consider another irony that many of us in America today equate happiness with making ourselves comfortable. If we follow this line of logic, then dealing with racism would be easily solved by throwing more resources, namely money, at the incongruities of our lives. This is apparently why our culture is so overly consumed with materialism and with blaming neighbors, politicians, educators and ultimately God for not providing the resources to make us happy.

I’m discovering, though, that the equal distribution of resources may never provide fulfillment of human life in a given society. Not that we should always keep the rich richer and make the poor poorer, but our current methods of accommodation seem particularly unrealistic at this point. Money and governmental administrations will not solve our problems, and we should cease looking to these as the primary outlets of life support. There are deeper spiritual problems afoot other than leveling the economic playing field of society through political models.

The solution: Seek wisdom

Second, we should consider changing our methods of arbitrating conflicts where those who have more money, political prowess or shrewder negotiating tactics seize power and dictate the majority’s opinion. Dr. Niebuhr again: “The question which confronts society is how it can eliminate social injustice by methods which offer some fair opportunity of abolishing what is evil in our present society, without destroying what is worth preserving in it, and without running the risk of substituting new abuses and injustices in the place of those abolished.”

In other words, those who seek to deal with our current problems run the risk of using tactics that look eerily similar to those they decry as abhorrent. Isn’t it something that we oftentimes look more like our enemies than we care to admit?

May the Lord give us great wisdom at this point to love him above all and love our neighbor as ourselves.

So, let us pray for God’s grace to accept what we cannot change, to change for the betterment of our neighbors what we can while we still have time, and may we obtain wisdom to know the difference between the two.

James Hassell is senior pastor of First Baptist Church in San Angelo, Texas.

I am a two-time alumna, former staff member and current faculty member at Hardin-Simmons University.

One of HSU’s traditions has included the Six White Horses program, which performs at a wide variety of events including rodeos and parades. In their performances, each of the six riders bears one of the six flags that have flown over Texas in modern history.

Recently, HSU decided that the Six White Horses will no longer carry any flag representing the Confederate States of America.

President Eric Brutmyer wrote to faculty and staff, “Each flag carries with it a context. In ideal circumstances, flags are unifying symbols, serving as common representations of purpose and pride. In other cases however, flags can be divisive symbols which create conflict and disunity.”

Pointing to the life’s mission of HSU founder and abolitionist Baptist pastor, James B. Simmons, President Bruntmyer stated that the decision continues HSU’s “commitment to unity in the purpose of Christ’s love.”

Willing to confront our complicity

I was present in a faculty and staff breakfast when the discussion of discontinuing to carry a Confederate flag was first announced. Upon hearing this news, I felt two distinct emotions.

First, I felt an immense sense of pride to be a part of an institution that is willing to confront its own complicity in racism.

On social media, I have seen dissent with President Bruntmyer’s decision among my fellow alumni. People say that carrying a flag represents an emphasis on history that should not be silenced. And I would agree with them. We should always seek to know our history.

Our history has formed us into who we are, but hopefully our history also informs us on how to be better followers of Christ in our current story.

Learning and engaging our history is different from honoring its mistakes by flying a representation of an entity created to sustain slavery and which has contributed to the institutional and systemic racism that still permeates our society today.

No country is perfect. Flags of other countries, as well as our own, also represent oppression and marginalization. But, in the case of the United States, a flag of the Confederacy is a symbol of the devaluing of human life in our society, and thus it is not something worthy of paraded celebration.

Personally, I am proud of HSU’s president for being brave enough to challenge tradition in the name of love and respect for all humanity.

But why not sooner?

The second emotion that I felt upon hearing the news was one of embarrassment and contrition. As proud as I am of the fact that this decision has been made, I am equally as sorry that the decision has not been made sooner.

I grew up in a neighborhood in which my white face was the minority. I had friends who were brown and black. We would stay out till dark playing in the streets together. But at some point, around middle school, we all began to mostly gravitate toward friends whose skin tones were more like our own.

I thought I was the opposite of a racist because I had grown up in this way. But I didn’t realize how much that gradual separation between me and my childhood friends meant.

I went off to join a group of friends that were mostly white and who had a lot of opportunities, just as I did. I didn’t realize how much white privilege was shaping the formation of our adolescent selves and the lives that we got to live.

My white friends and I were never stopped or approached by the police … except for that one time on prom night. (Sorry if I never told you that, mom.) People never moved to the other side of the street when we walked by. They never wondered if we were coming into a store to steal something.

We lived in a world in which we had privilege simply because of the color of our skin, and we had no idea that was the way it was.

Admitting my white privilege

It’s difficult to confront white privilege and to be willing to admit that I have benefited from the fact that institutional slavery existed in this country just a few hundred years ago. It’s difficult to admit that my ancestors were probably people who perpetuated the devaluing of human life.

So I am embarrassed that I have attended and worked at an institution that flew a flag representing systemic racism and I didn’t think to say something sooner. And I beg the forgiveness of anyone offended or hurt by HSU’s association with that flag.

White Christians, we have to do better. We have to admit when we are wrong and when we have been wrong in the past. We have to be willing to challenge tradition for the sake of love. We have to sacrifice so that reconciliation can begin — that is the example of the Christ we follow.

Meredith Stone is director of ministry guidance and instructor of Christian ministry and Scripture at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon School of Theology. She is a member of the Baptist Standard Publishing board of directors.

Ah, back-to-school time. Sometimes, children in my church ask me what grade I’m in. I tell them I’m in the 18th grade and watch their eyes widen.

Jake Raabe I am in my second year of graduate school, working toward my master of divinity degree at Truett Theological Seminary. I have my bachelor of arts degree from the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor with a double-major in English and Christian studies.

Looking back fondly

This time of year always makes me nostalgic about starting college six years ago. Lots of excitement accompanies this time: moving away from home for the first time, starting a new life in a new city, being considered an “adult” for the first time and so on. For students pursuing a religion degree, a unique kind of excitement exists.

Going to college as a church member studying for some type of ministry is a great experience: one leaves with a sense of support and encouragement by their church community that I can’t imagine any other type of student feels. (Well, at least if you’re a man. If you’re a woman, I imagine you get less encouragement and more bad exegesis of 1 Timothy 2 and second-guessing of your life ambition).

At the same time new religion, theology, and ministry students feel encouraged by their congregations, a suspicion of higher education pervades American Evangelical churches. In the weeks before I left for college, I often heard, “Don’t let education ruin you.” When I graduated college and was preparing for seminary, I heard a similar sentiment: “Don’t let seminary ruin your faith.” Seminary/cemetery jokes ensued as well. As excited as churches are to see their young men (and, in some fortunate cases, women) begin training for ministry, a real fear exists that education will somehow “corrupt” them.

Blessed is the theology student

I understand this impulse, and, frankly, I think it’s at least partially our fault as students. As a young theology student, I forgot how lucky I was. I forgot that, given the chance, almost any member of my church would have switched places with me. What follower of Christ wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to spend four years of their life devoted to the study of God, God’s word and the Christian community throughout history?

You—the person going to study Christianity for the sake of ministry—have no idea how lucky you are.

You’ll get to spend hours, days, weeks, months and years in contemplation of difficult subjects. You’ll do this with resources—books, professors, assignments and so on—that those in your congregation don’t have. You will change your mind on important issues as a result of your studies, and your congregation won’t understand why because they don’t have the same time and resources as you.

You’ll find new ways of reading biblical texts and thinking about God, and you’ll forget just how long and painful getting to that point was. And, for that reason, you may resent your congregation for not thinking the same way as you or immediately adopting the new insights that you spent months and years developing. You’ll get frustrated, thinking of them as “close-minded fundamentalists” for believing something you may have believed three months ago. They’ll become equally frustrated, thinking you’re “another student turned liberal by <insert college>.”

Evangelicals have a reputation for being “anti-intellectual,” and it’s probably earned. But religion students certainly don’t help the case by forgetting our privilege, in being able to study in the first place, and by expecting those around us to immediately change their minds on ideas we wrestled with for months before becoming comfortable with those ideas.

Be slow to anger and quick to listen

How do we in the study of religion combat this idea that education is a bad thing? I believe we do so by remembering that whatever we do or study, and whatever our career aims are—pastoral ministry, nonprofit work, religious academics—we do what we do in service to the church.

The point where we find ourselves frustrated with the church or feeling like it’s holding us back is the point where we have forgotten why we do what we do.

I’d like to close with a quote from Helmut Thielicke’s “A Little Exercise for Young Theologians,” a transcript of the first lecture he would always give to his introductory theology classes at the University of Hamburg:

If the theologian, however, does not take seriously the objections of the ordinary washerwoman and the simple hourly-wage earner … surely something is not right with theology. … The church has the prior right to question us, even if it does not and cannot understand the details of our work; for we are pursuing our theological study in its very midst as surely as we are members of that church.

Young religion students, enjoy the road ahead! But never forget that you do what you do in service of the church. That’s what I wish I would have known six years ago, so learn from my regrets.

Jake Raabe is a student at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary in Waco, Texas and a writer. Follow him on his Facebook page.

The scene in Acts 4 of the early church gathered together and praying for one another is powerful.

Peter and John have just been released from the council with the command not to speak in the name of Jesus anymore or face dire consequences. The reprimanded disciples run back to their brothers and sisters in Christ and report what has happened to them and the sure future of the church if she continues to proclaim Jesus. In verses 23–31, we see the response of these early believers.

Zac Harrel They stop everything and they pray together.

The church today needs to follow this example. While we are not being persecuted like these believers in Acts 4, we are in a moment in our country where the church needs this prayer. The church needs the filling power of the Holy Spirit.

In this prayer we see a powerful request built on the foundation of trusting faith.

The foundation of faith

First, we see the faith of these believers in their sovereign God. They confess that all they have seen, heard and experienced in the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus are according to the plan and purposes of God. God is working even in the midst of their persecution to redeem and restore his world. They trust God.

We need to trust God. This moment of chaos and evil seeming so prevalent needs a church standing on the foundation of a hopeful, trusting faith. To be who we are called to be and to do what we are called to do, we must be men and women of prayer who stand on the foundation of deep trust and faith in God and his good plan.

A request for boldness

Out of this faith, the church together makes one request of God. They ask God to help them “continue to speak your word with all boldness” (Acts 4:29). In the face of opposition and in the midst of chaos and evil, they ask for boldness.

They don’t ask for safety or comfort; they ask to have the boldness to speak the word of God.

The church today needs boldness to stand for the truth of God’s Word. This is not a call to be politically incorrect. This is not a call for the church to be loudmouthed and full of hate.

True boldness in our day is to stand for the value and worth of all who are made in the image of God. True boldness is not to let the gospel be co-opted by right or left but to be willing to offend both with the truth of God’s word. True boldness is not just our words, but our actions as well.

Will we be bold enough to open our homes and our lives to those who disagree with us and who look different from us?

The church must stand with radical love and kindness proclaiming the truth of the word of God, calling all to repentance and faith in Christ. The disciples asked for boldness to proclaim the gospel, not the talking points of their political party.

We must ask God to give us this same boldness to speak his word with love.

God’s answer

Verse 31 tells us what happens next. God answers their prayer. The followers of Jesus are filled with the Holy Spirit, and they continue to “speak the word of God with boldness.”

God answers the prayers of his people when they pray to fulfill his will and redemptive plan of salvation. God will answer our prayer if we pray on the foundation of a deep faith for God to give us boldness to truly be the church.

This world needs the church to be bold with God’s word, to be filled with the Holy Spirit and to walk by faith in the plan and purposes of our good God.

Will you pray with me for God to make us bold with love and kindness? Will you pray with me for God to help us let go of safety and comfort for the sake of the gospel? Will you pray with me for God to give us a deep faith as the people of God?

Pray with me and let us be amazed together how God will be faithful to answer the prayers of his people.

Zac Harrel is pastor of First Baptist Church in Gustine, Texas.