Category Archives: Religion

John McCrae stood staring at the simple wooden coffin.

It contained the remains of his dear friend Alexis Helmer.

McCrae was many things: a physician, author, artist and a poet. And now he was also a soldier. When England declared war on Germany, McCrae’s native Canada, a dominion of the British Empire, entered the war too.

From a hastily dug 8 foot by 8 foot bunker, McCrae treated wounded soldiers. It was during the Second Battle of Ypres in Belgium. The fighting had been fierce. There were many casualties.

On this day, May 2, 1915, during the second year of World War I, Alexis Helmer joined the dead.

Alex and John had been close friends from the time they signed up in the Canadian Expeditionary Force at the outbreak of the war. Together, the men had traveled far from home and family to fight for freedom and for the empire. In a letter written to his mother, John described the battle at Ypres as a “nightmare.”

“In all that time while I was awake, gunfire and rifle fire never ceased for sixty seconds … And behind it all was the constant background of the sights of the dead, the wounded, the maimed, and a terrible anxiety lest the line should give way.”

John McCrae could have enlisted in the medical corps, given his training, background and his age – he was 41. Instead, he volunteered for a fighting unit as a gunner and medical officer. His father had been a military leader and had taught young John the importance of duty and of defending his country.

Now Alex was dead.

Lieutenant Colonel McCrae, filling in for the chaplain who had been called away, conducted the funeral of his friend. He remembered Alex, just so recently pulsating with life, courage and determination. A good and loyal friend he was. Now, suddenly, he was gone.

John was crushed with grief, even as he was filled with pride.

Later that evening, May 3, John sat in the back of an ambulance and wondered about what Alex and all the others who had fallen might say to those who would live after them. He composed a poem but was so disappointed in his effort that he discarded it.

Soldiers retrieved McCrae’s poem and persuaded him to submit it. It made its way into publication – and immortality. One hundred years later, it remains a hauntingly beautiful tribute to the fallen dead of every battlefield – and a poignant reminder to us all.

Flanders fields stretched east and west across the far-flung battle line. For many years, it had been noted that red poppies would often grow over soldiers’ graves. Because of the torn and heavily-limed soil, the poppy was one of the few plants that could grow on a battlefield. In 1855, British historian Lord Macaulay wrote about a battle near Ypres in Belgium in 1693:

“The next summer the soil, fertilized by twenty thousand corpses, broke forth into millions of poppies. The traveler who … saw that vast sheet of rich scarlet … could hardly help fancying that the figurative prediction of the Hebrew prophet was literally accomplished, that the earth was disclosing her blood – and refusing to cover the slain.” (Isaiah 26: 21).

McCrae made mention of this phenomenon in the memorable first line of his war poem:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.

 It may be, as some witnessed, that McCrae looked at the grave of his friend before he wrote the second stanza about the loved and the lost: We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields. McCrae writes of the legacy of the fallen dead and the duty of every succeeding generation to keep faith:

 Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.

 Presidential candidates – even the brother of the president who waged it – have recently been scrambling to say that, “knowing what we know now”, the war in Iraq was “a mistake.”

That may or may not be true. History will judge.

For the 4,491 young Americans who fought and died in Iraq – those who once “lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow” and who “loved and were loved” – laying down their lives for their country was not “a mistake”. It was their “last full measure of devotion.”

Jesus said there is no greater proof of love than the sacrifice of one’s life for others.

The men and women who died in Iraq – and the more than 2,200 who have died in Afghanistan – are no less heroes worthy of our remembrance than are John McCrae and Alexis Helmer.

To you and me, from “failing hands”, the torch of freedom has been passed. May we always “hold it high.” May we never forget those who carried it bravely into battle – for us and for our children.

The fields where “poppies grow” remind us.

John McCrae died in 1918, just as World War I ended. He was 45.

May God bless you and your family.

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

A cool, gentle breeze ruffled the tree branches overhead.

Beth and I were at our daughter’s home. We had just finished lunch and were enjoying sitting in the spacious backyard watching our grandchildren play.

I thought about family and how blessed we are. Beth’s parents had joined us for lunch. They’re in great health at 83. I considered the beauty and joy of four generations together in a backyard on a perfect Sunday.

These gatherings are always special.

Family’s great. And family’s important.

In recent times the American family has changed – a lot.

The redefinition of “family” has been moving forward with breakneck speed.

This spring, as Americans traditionally celebrate Motherhood and Fatherhood, five men and three women, sitting on an unelected United States Supreme Court, are on the verge of morally re-aligning civilization. These justices will decide if the covenant institution of marriage will be expanded to include gay men and women. They have been asked to sanction homosexual union as a constitutional right.

Much of the argument before the Court, on both sides, has invoked children and the role of procreation in advancing society. This pending decision has as much to do about family as it does about marriage.

They are inextricably linked.

Marriage cannot be redefined without changing the meaning of being a mother. And what it means to be a father.

Our founders could appeal to “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” in making their eloquent case for fundamental human dignity and freedom. In a western culture now steeped in moral relativism and spiritual rebellion, the case for gay marriage appeals to neither. Instead, it defies both.

The advocates of this unnatural alteration have public opinion squarely on their side. Never in American history has the tide turned so swiftly and dramatically. With a politically shrewd strategy and a sympathetic media, proponents have outmaneuvered, out-talked and out-hustled their adversaries. They have intimidated the voices of traditional morality into incoherence and ultimately silence.

They have won. And we’ve all seen this coming for some time.

Our churches often seem at a loss to address the central moral and spiritual issues at stake. They too have been intimidated – cowered by the harangues against “intolerance” and “bigotry” – and too anxious to sell their spiritual birthright for a hot bowl of popular cultural stew.

Who wants to be a religious Neanderthal?

The present famine of God’s Word has made us drink the sand of a moral desert.

Still, might doesn’t always make right.

In fact, history shows us the frequent fallacy of shifting opinion and political totalitarianism – and the undeniable consequences of moral decline.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is, after all, supposed to be a judicious arbiter and not a strident ideologue, pondered the serious implications of the court’s decision during oral arguments.

Not least of all because he may cast the deciding vote.

“This definition (of traditional marriage) has been with us for millennia,” Kennedy observed. “And it’s very difficult for the court to say, “Oh well, we know better.’”

That reluctance was previously echoed by a lower court judge:

“A dose of humility makes us hesitant to condemn as unconstitutionally irrational a view of marriage shared not long ago by every society in the world.”

Yet without a vision of God, “the people cast off restraint”(Proverbs 29:18, NIV).

I’m not sure what Justice Kennedy had in mind when he spoke of “millennia”, but the first book of the Bible describes the arrangement that he and his black-robed colleagues may soon overturn:

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27, KJV, emphasis added). Later, when the Book of Beginnings describes the creation of woman, it says:

“This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one” (Genesis 2:24, NLT, emphasis added).

Jesus quotes this directly as God’s plan “from the beginning” (Matthew 19:4-5) and the apostle Paul also endorses it explicitly in his letter to the Ephesians (5:31).

Gay marriage or the Bible: they can’t both be right.

And while some insist God got this wrong, I’ll take my chances.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, in an article titled Saving Civilization, writes:

“When a man and woman make a lifetime commitment to one another they each benefit from the resulting stability, sensuality, and happiness. When a wife revels in her femininity and her husband submits his masculinity to the silken bonds of matrimony, the couple and children they create form a cocoon of security and joy.”

That’s why today, on our National Day of Prayer, I will pray for mothers and fathers and children and families. And it’s also why this Sunday I will rejoice in the celebration of womanhood and motherhood. I’ll thank God for my beautiful wife and three lovely daughters, two of whom are also mothers. I’ll offer praise for the women and mothers who guided history and have helped to change the world.

And, along with millions of my fellow Americans who will never surrender, I’ll thank God for the greatest institution, next to the Church, in the history of the earth:

The God-ordained family. Then, now and forever.

There was plenty of celebrating.

That’s the way it is when you win.

It’s human nature to whoop and holler and congratulate yourself.

Winning is for winners. Losing is for losers.

The tall, gaunt man dressed in black moved slowly to the open window and wearily smiled at the exuberant crowd of 3,000 gathered below.

The band had been playing for some time and now waited for his request.

Abraham Lincoln paused and smiled again at the joyous crowd. He had never been particularly musical and always graciously declined to join in public singing. Yet he also enjoyed music, describing it, according to one friend, as a “simple unalloyed pleasure.” Self-deprecatingly unpretentious by nature, Lincoln once professed, “I only know two tunes, one is ‘Old Hundred,’ and the other isn’t.”

“I have always thought ‘Dixie’ one of the best tunes I have ever heard,” the president told the expectant crowd. “Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it…I now request the band to favor me with its performance.”

The crowd cheered and the band struck up Dixie.

It was Monday, April 10^th. Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant the day before, ending the most devastating and tragic war in American history. This was a first symbolic step toward Lincoln’s noble vision of a re-United States of America.

That Friday, 150 years ago this week, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth. Without regaining consciousness, the president died at 7:22 the next morning. It had been an act of vengeance committed in the name of the defeated South by a deranged narcissist.

Lincoln’s vision of national reconciliation after four long and costly years of bitter and blood-drenched conflict would perish with him. In a sad irony, the South had lost its most powerful ally – and its best friend – in the long and painful effort to heal the deep wounds of civil war.

The nation would eventually once again become the United States. But the path to reunion would be more difficult and filled with recriminations. Lincoln wanted the South restored. Now it would be punished.

As a presidential historian, I am often asked if I believe Lincoln was a Christian.

He kept his faith a private and personal matter, as most presidents have. It’s therefore impossible to say for sure, regardless of what some historians insist. While he often attended, he never joined a church. As a young and intemperate politician, he published a pamphlet advocating against religion. He later retracted it. Some suggest that after the death of his 11-year old son Willie in the White House, Lincoln gave his life fully to Christ.

It’s easier to make the claim that among all our chief executives, Abraham Lincoln – ambitious, scheming and shrewd politician that he surely was – was also among our most Christ-like presidents. He need not be deified as some American messiah, sacrificed on the altar of freedom on Good Friday. But in his temperament and his character, Lincoln consistently displayed those qualities that Christians seek and God desires.

Lincoln carefully read the Bible and knew it better than most ministers.

In his humility and patience, Lincoln was Christ-like. His favorite poem was Oh! Why Should the Spirit of Mortal Man Be Proud? Often slighted and mocked by the press and other politicians, he took it all in good humor.

So too in his mercy, his forgiveness and his extraordinary and tender-hearted compassion, Lincoln displayed an impressive Christian outlook that might be the envy of many believers.

There is not a single instance of Lincoln ever seeking mean-spirited revenge against his enemies or ever fretting of what any of them thought of him. His magnanimity was most fully and eloquently displayed toward the South as the war drew to a close.

It was his humble appreciation for the inscrutable purposes of a sovereign God that led Lincoln to refuse to blame the South for the war but to lay the blame upon the country as a whole. He recognized that “both sides” had responsibility. And he perceived God’s divine judgment in it all.

That is Christ-like wisdom.

He pleaded at his second inaugural for “malice toward none and charity for all.” He urged the nation to go forward “with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right,” and to “bind up the nation’s wounds” – to heal the deep divisions. He said the country must “care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan” – both North and South.

This was Lincoln’s vision for a stronger – and in the end – a happier republic. It was not steeped in angry and arrogant retribution but guided instead by “the better angels of our nature” – by kindness and goodness.

Even in the midst of violence and hate.

In his letter to the Galatians, the apostle Paul called them the “fruits of the Spirit.” He said the followers of Jesus Christ should display these spiritual attributes in our daily lives. It’s remarkable that Lincoln’s towering place in history is cemented, in large part, by these Christian virtues.

And 150 years later, it’s an inspiring example for us all.

May God bless you and your family.

“Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man.

Bake me a cake as fast as you can.”

Well, not so fast, actually.

What is that distant thunder we hear in the heartland of America?

It is the collective voice of conscience. It is the cry of faith.

It is the bugle blast of courage.

The State of Indiana set off a firestorm of controversy in recent weeks when its legislature passed – and its governor signed – the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Christians who supported it drew a line in the cultural sand of our new morality and said, “No further.” It would now be illegal to force any person to deny his or her religious beliefs.

That declaration was met by other cries:

“Bigotry!” “Discrimination!” “Jim Crow!” “Intolerance!”

People were getting hoarse.

The new law was over-broad, flawed in its wording, awkwardly explained and often sheepishly defended. Corporate interests, fearing the vindictive wrath of an articulate and wealthy constituency, lined up to threaten Indiana’s political leadership (ironically Republican) with economic sanctions were the law not immediately repealed or, in the nomenclature de jure, “fixed.”

We’ve seen all this before.

Homosexual activists and their liberal allies invoke the weary shibboleth of racist comparisons. Business cowers and politicians either grandstand or temporize, depending. And the envelope is once again pushed forward, a victory for the forces of correctness.

But this time may have signaled a difference.

Despite its legal weaknesses, Indiana’s new law was as morally sound as a dollar. In seeking to protect the sincerely-held religious convictions of all its citizens, the law sought to balance the need to prohibit discrimination with the need to guard an inviolate constitutional right.

One wouldn’t have concluded much thoughtful nuance from the hyperventilated debate, but the reality is that this issue is about competing and yet equally valid rights and protections.

Discrimination is wrong.

Religious freedom is sacred.

Most Americans agree with both these propositions.

The government’s job is to balance these interests when they come into conflict.

The Christian’s duty is to place obedience to God above allegiance to the state.

While refusal to serve gay people at a place of public accommodation – a restaurant for example – was the unsavory and unrealistic illustration invariably cited by the law’s opponents, the protections sought were of a quite different nature.

If a baker who is a Christian is asked to bake a cake for a gay wedding and he is religiously opposed to homosexuality, as most Christians are and will remain, is he being asked to deny his faith by participating in the wedding? Would he be disobeying his conscience before God if he joined in an activity which he believes is sin? The same may be asked of a Christian florist.

Should civil authority force him to do this? Should the law have the right to punish him if he refuses? With anti – religion and especially anti-Christian sentiment growing, these questions will become increasing relevant and paramount.

This concern is the result of the legal triumph of gay marriage. It prompted the Indiana law.

The state will need to decide. And so will the church.

So too will the individual believer.

Where will the line be drawn? Where should it be drawn?

And in a sea change of morality, what will come next?

Will the law and the courts now be used to force people to forsake their moral convictions – to coerce under threat an approval of behavior against conscience itself? Could churches eventually be targeted? In Houston, led by a lesbian mayor, they already have been.

This is not “live and let live.” This is becoming, “renounce your beliefs or else.”

Followers of Christ must continue to display respect and charity toward all people.

No thoughtful Christian believes we should return to the days when homosexuality was illegal. Nor do most believe a gay citizen should lose his or her job because of sexual orientation or be refused public accommodations or service. In this sense, we have, as a society, advanced along the course of a reasonable justice. Christians in this country have accepted gay people as fellow citizens entitled to the equal protections of the law.

In the Old Testament book that bears his name, Daniel, living in captive exile in a land that rejected his Jewish faith, offered the king an accommodation on the rule about the food he and the other captives could legally eat. Let them eat as they wished and then see who was more physically fit at the end of ten days (Daniel1). Daniel prevailed and he and the other young men passed the test.

In making this offer, Daniel displayed both discernment and decisiveness; diplomacy but also determination. He showed respect to the authorities without compromising his righteousness.

But later, when the law insisted that the king alone be worshiped over God, Daniel refused to bow to anyone except the Lord who reigned supreme over all civil authority. He knew the price for his unwavering loyalty. He was willing to pay it.

Christians must remain conscientious objectors to all sin, whether in the guise of “rights” or not.

“So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (I Corinthians  10:31, NLT).

Even if it’s baking a cake – or not.

May God bless you and your family.