“As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” (Proverbs 2:7:17). The following items, collected from various periodicals and news sources both secular and religious, “sharpened” me when I first read them. Perhaps they will also “sharpen” you.
From Hollywood star Eddie Murphy (if you don’t know who be is, ask your children or grandchildren!): “I feel a void. There’s not a total emptiness, but I feel something’s missing. No matter how much you accomplish, how much money you make, or how many cars or houses you have, or how many people you make happy, life isn’t perfect for anybody” (quoted in a recent issue of People magazine).
From Christian author and speaker Elisabeth Elliott: “My father’s strong counsel to my four brothers: Never tell a woman you love her until you are ready to follow that immediately with, ‘Will you marry me?’ In other words, a man’s love for a woman, if deep and abiding, leads to a lifetime commitment to her. Heartaches would be avoided if he held back any expressions of love until he is ready to make that commitment” (in World, the bimonthly publication of the Presbyterian Church in America, August 1, 1988, p. 3).
From the July 8, 1988, issue of National Review, under the editorship of conservative William Buckley: “If you think the American Catholic Church has gone ape, check out those Episcopalians. They have their first transsexual nun (a father, though we don’t known if his son still calls him ‘dad’), although they stopped short of giving him permission to found a new order. And they have an unmarried lady priest ·in Washington, D.C., who has given birth by artificial insemination, two of her three sperm donors being priests (still male as we go to press).”
Concerning the appalling conditions of the public education system in Chicago, Newsweek magazine cites the following statistics: Average teacher salary = $33,000. Drop-out rate = 45%. High school students failing at least two courses a year = 40%. Money (mostly tax dollars) spent per pupil = $4,373. Students absent on the average school day = 11%. Teachers absent on the average school day = 5%. Number of teacher strikes = 9 in 19 years. Obviously, in Chicago public education is not working (July 4, 1988, pp. 60, 61).
“New Age” philosophies are not just found among actors like Shirley MacLaine. Insight, a new national news magazine, reports that employers are forcing their employees to enroll in “training programs” containing explicit New Age beliefs. The article quotes one Christian employee who objected to mandatory attendance at such classes. “The course taught that you can create your own destiny through the powers of your own mind . . . . The course also smacked of Eastern mysticism and the occult. And he resented what he perceived as attempts to reprogram the subconscious and to change a person’s view of reality and religious beliefs.” According to some authors, New Age religion approves of decisions to withhold food and fluids from chronically ill patients and legitimizes suicide as an option (July 11, 1988, pp. 53–55).
On the more local scene, although no less disturbing, are recent promotional materials sent out by the Grand Rapids Area Center for Ecumenism (G.R.A.C.E.). This local ecumenical organization, headed by a pastor in the Reformed Church of America, includes representatives of most denominations in the greater Grand Rapids area. Many area churches, some CRC, contribute membership fees and/or collect an offering for GRACE. Recently, GRACE has welcomed the local Metropolitan Community Church to join its activities. The M.C.C., if you don’t know, is a church dedicated to practicing homosexual men and women. The MCC considers both the condition and the practice of homosexuality to be an acceptable one for the Christian. Through their financial contributions, it seems that some Christian Reformed congregations in our area see nothing wrong with joining themselves to a false church. And we sometimes think that those Dutch churches in the Netherlands have gone so far downhill so fast! Maybe we should be looking more closely at the congregations within our own denomination instead of those across the seas.
Since we began with Hollywood, let’s end with Hollywood. A perceptive analysis of modem films was recently published by the Rockford Institute in their monthly journal, Chronicles. The author, Richard Hobby, notes that the movies of the 1930’s through the 1950’s show the relationship of men and women to be one founded in “a world of moral rules, of right and wrong, good and evil, thou-shalt-nots . . . . Actions have weight.” Though not always acting morally upright, nevertheless, the characters in the older films are “adult men and women.” But, comments the author, in recent times such movie characters “have all but disappeared from the screen. What we find instead are children or half-formed adults . . . . they inevitably act like insecure children.” In the films of the past 50 years, he concludes, we “have witnessed an increase in male/female confrontation and the fading of the adult world. There would seem to be symptoms of a deep spiritual malaise” (July, 1988, pp. 42–45). To all this, the Christian can surely say “Amen.”
Randal S. Lankheet is the pastor of the Jamestown C.R. Church of Hudsonville, Michigan.