The other day I read an article by a woman who had some painful experiences as an adoptive mother and wife from a failed marriage. She explained that she and her husband had been unable to have children, and had consequently set out to adopt a child to fill the void in their family.

That was her first mistake, since that is a selfish reason, and therefore altogether the wrong reason to adopt, in my opinion. Nevertheless, I read on.

Their marriage was apparently no match for this strong-willed girl who had been previously hurt in many different ways. The child was eventually blamed for ruining her marriage, her biological child’s life, and her own life.

Her conclusion? Re-think your desire to adopt, because love, in fact, does not conquer all. Wow, I thought. What a stunning conclusion.

This was hard to take for many reasons, not the least of which was my passion for adoption as a way for Christians to serve “the least of these” in a hurting world. It also seemed like a full assault on God, who is the unwavering definition of love.

Like trying to solve an algebra equation by tweaking a known constant, this woman was making a common mistake—letting her fallible interpretation of life experiences change her conclusion about what should be a rock-solid presupposition: That love conquers all.

Since God is the very definition of love, I can rest assured that if I set out to express love, but things go awry, it’s not love’s fault. Love was not inadequate, ineffective, or inconsequential, because that would be to say that God is inadequate, ineffective, or inconsequential.

The pain she experienced was not a result of adopting a problem child. Many parents raise problem children just fine without adopting them. I believe her pain was the result of her own sixties-style, self-centered understanding of love.

When love appears to fail, it has to be our imperfect understanding or expression of it that failed, not love itself. We know this because Paul assures us in 1 Cor. 13:8 that love never fails, and “never” is an awfully big word.

In the grand equation of life, underestimating the power of love is just like fudging the numbers in an equation to get the answer that “seems” right. Instead, let’s make the love of God an immovable constant. When all of life’s variables are adjusted around this constant, the rest of the equation should fall into place.

Love is the solution to the problem of living in a fallen world. Our human attempts to express it may not fix all the consequences of sin—in fact, I guarantee they won’t—but we can rest assured that God’s eternal expression of it sure will. At least that gives us something to aspire to.

I read an article in the Idaho Statesman noting that Cuba may be angling to get rid of its ration books–the little booklets passed out by the government allocating equal shares of rice, beans, and other staples to all of its citizens. What was more shocking was reading that there are Cuban citizens upset by even the thought of doing away with this paternalistic remnant of Castro’s communist Revolution.

They’ve apparently revolutionized New Hampshire’s famously defiant state motto of “Live free or die.” In Cuba, it’s simply “Be dependent” – or what, get shot? I guess there really is no other option. But it goes to show how the old fashioned notion of personal liberty is traded in for perceived security by enslaved people.

In Cuba, the eradication of liberty was as central to their Revolution as the establishment of it was to ours. The newspaper article quoted one resident who was born and raised during the Revolution. “I have no idea what would be available to buy on the free market,” Silvia Alvarez says. Her uncertainty produces neither hope nor excitement about the possibility that eliminating ration books could lead to more choices being available. Instead, it produces fear. That’s what enslavement does to the soul.

She goes on, “It seems to me … we ought to keep it at least for awhile longer.” I wonder if that was the sentiment felt by the Jewish Christians in the first century who had to change their mindset from one where everything was spelled out and spoon fed to them in the Law, to one where the perfect Law of liberty ruled supreme. If we could just hold onto the law a little longer, maybe we’ll feel more comfortable with this whole “Christian liberty” concept.

There is perceived safety in the nanny state. Likewise, there is perceived safety in legalism. Under law, we don’t need to think too hard about things–it’s all spelled out fairly clearly how we are supposed to behave.

While the Pharisees spent their spare time intellectualizing the law and perforating it with all the available loopholes, the common man had a very safe existence: Listen to the rabbi each Sabbath tell you what you ought to be doing. Do it. Not unlike Silvia Alvarez 2000 years later in Cuba, except the state stands in the place of the rabbi. While liberty, by its very nature, produces variety as a results of the free choices we make every day, there is security, familiarity, and uniformity in being told what to do. We don’t want to risk making the wrong decision, so we revert to the same decisions we’ve always been comfortable with.

The struggle between liberty and security is not a new one; Ben Franklin was simply a wise man to put it into words when he wrote that “He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.” Of course, none of us deserve the freedom we have in Christ. Nevertheless, his point is worth remembering, that freedom and security stand in opposition to one another. They are not partners–they never have been.

It’s tempting for Christians who have been freed from the Law to look back longingly at the familiar confines of legalism, like Lot’s wife, but we can’t be drawn in by the apparent security it offers. It’s a false security. It’s a little scary to give up the ration book of the nanny state, and the resulting dependency it creates, I know. But remember: God wants to stock our spiritual shelves with so much more than what is allowed under the Law.

Galatians 5:13-15 – You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

For several years I’ve been wanting to write more on the subject of men’s leadership. I will continue to write about Christian unity here, of course, but I’ve just launched a new blog specifically focused on men’s leadership topics.

It can be found at:

• http://mensleadership.org
• http://mensleadership.org/subscribe.html
• http://twitter.com/mensleadership

I plan to discuss books, conferences, scripture studies, and more. I will also post small group men’s leadership discussion starters, and plenty of encouragement to spur us men to action in our families, workplaces, and churches. I believe there is a crisis of leadership in America right now, so please…take a few minutes to subscribe, comment on existing posts, and invite your friends to join.

Let’s throw our hats into the ring to make it a community of men who are equipped to change the direction of our society one leader at a time.

While I’ve often said that I don’t believe unity can be manufactured by unity meetings, organizations, and resolutions (because unity is a point of view, i.e., something that exists in the hearts of believers), there is something to be said for the ability of unity meetings to assist in changing hearts and minds. Diane and I attended our first “unity meeting” last night in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Thomas Campbell’s “Declaration and Address,” an event long forgotten in many churches in the Stone/Campbell movement.

At least three congregations from three different parts of what is commonly called the Restoration Movement met in Boise, Idaho for a joint celebration of the Lord’s Supper and to worship together in song as one body. At least one church of Christ, Christian Church, and Disciples of Christ congregation were represented, and each participated in the song leading – some with instruments, some without. It was a beautiful thing! As one who can appreciate heartfelt worship, praise, and hymn music in any form, it was awesome to hear brothers and sisters in Christ lifting up their voices together.

Not sure what Thomas Campbell’s Declaration and Address was all about? You can read the full text, but it might get a little tedious. It was an important document and speech, but in keeping with the tradition of the era, not particularly brief. Following is an abridged version of the Declaration, originally drafted by Alexander Campbell’s father in 1809.

A Restating of Thomas Campbell’s 13 Propositions

1. That the church of Christ on earth is essentially, intentionally and constitutionally one; consisting of all those in every place that profess their faith in Christ and obedience to him in all things according to the scriptures …
2. That although the church of Christ upon earth must necessarily exist in particular and distinct societies, locally separate from one another; yet there ought to be no schisms, no uncharitable divisions among them …
3. That in order to this, nothing ought to be inculcated upon Christians as articles of faith; nor required of them as terms of communion; but what is expressly taught, and enjoined upon them, in the Word of God …
4. That although the scriptures of the Old and the New Testament are inseparably connected … the New Testament is as perfect a constitution for the worship, discipline and government of the New Testament church … as the Old Testament was for … the Old Testament church, and the particular duties of its members.
5. That with respect to the commands and ordinances of our Lord Jesus Christ, where the scriptures are silent … no human authority has power to interfere … by making laws for the church … but only that they do so observe those commands and ordinances …
6. That although inferences and deductions from scripture premises … may be truly called the doctrine of God’s holy word; yet they are not formally binding upon the consciences of Christians … for their faith must not stand in the wisdom of men; but in the power and veracity of God …
7. That although doctrinal exhibitions of the great system of divine truths …  be highly expedient … yet … they ought not  be made terms of Christian communion … the church from the beginning did, and ever will, consist of little children and young men, as well as fathers.
8. That as it is not necessary that persons should have a particular knowledge … of all divinely revealed truths in order to entitle them a place in the church … but that their having a due measure of scriptural self-knowledge respecting their … condition … and of the way of salvation thro’ Jesus Christ, accompanied with a profession of their faith in, and obedience to Him … is all that is necessary to qualify them for admission to His church.
9. That all that are enabled, thro’ grace, to make such a profession … should consider each other as the precious saints of God …
10. That division among Christians is a horrid evil, fraught with many evils. It is anti-Christian … it is anti-scriptural … it is anti-natural …
11. That a partial neglect of the expressly revealed will of God; and an assumed authority for … human traditions … are, and have been the … causes of all the corruptions and divisions that have ever taken place in the church of God.
12. That all that is necessary to the highest state of perfection and purity in the church is, first, that none be received as members, but … do profess their faith in Christ … nor 2ndly, that any be retained in her communion longer than they continue to manifest the reality of their profession … 3dly, that their ministers … inculcate none other things than those very articles of faith … expressly revealed and enjoined in the Word of God … Lastly … that they keep close (as) exhibited in the New Testament without any additions whatsoever of human opinions or inventions of men.
13. Lastly … (if scripture does not specifically dictate details for church work and worship, they) should be adopted under the title of human expedients, without any pretense to a more sacred origin … so that any alteration or difference in the observance of these things might produce no contention nor division in the church.

I should add that these aren’t perfect propositions. The drafting of them in itself can be seen an attempt to formalize human opinions about what is important and what is not in the scripture. Nevertheless, they are historically important, given the context of the divisive era in which Thomas Campbell lived, and I think point us in the right direction.

The Bible is inspired and authoritative, but many Christians misunderstand what that means. Does it mean that every statement found in Sacred Scripture is true? Absolutely not.

I can hear the gasps right now as that statement sinks in, but it’s true. Not every statement in the Bible is accurate, much less authoritative. In fact, some statements that were accurate at the time they were written are no longer accurate at all, or were only accurate when they were spoken (or written) to the particular audience they were meant for. Furthermore, not every piece of advice found in Scripture is sound advice.

Take, for example, Job’s wife. “Curse God and die,” she told her tormented husband. This is a gem of inspired wisdom for readers of the Bible, right? Not so much. She was not one to give the most godly advice in the world, apparently.

This leads to the inevitable conclusion that if the Bible is inspired and accurate–and I believe it is–then its inspiration and accuracy have to do with providing a faithful recording of what the various writers and speakers actually said. In some cases, those writers and speakers were themselves inspired, but not always. The real question is not whether a statement can be found in the Bible, but what the context of that statement is, and how it is meant to be applied.

A common quote from the Bible is that God doesn’t hear the prayers of unsaved sinners:

John 9:31 -  We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does his will.

But maybe we should examine the context of what the Bible actually records to determine if it is a true and authoritative statement before quoting John to support that claim.

The full story is that a man was healed on the Sabbath by Jesus, and the Pharisees were convinced this man had been a sinner as evidenced by his blindness. They eventually confronted the man, and he tells them that “We all know that God doesn’t listen to sinners.” Was this man infallibly inspired by God to say this? There is no indication of that. He was simply a guy who was healed of blindness, defending the guy who healed him.

Is it always true that God doesn’t hear the prayers of unsaved sinners? I don’t think so. What about Cornelius, the Roman centurion who prayed regularly to God?

Well, he was seeking, you say. The Bible says that those who seek, find.

Hmmm…if an unsaved sinner is praying to God in the first place, isn’t he probably…I don’t know…seeking? Granted, some seekers are a little farther down the road from finding than others, but I would still call them seekers, nonetheless.

My point is not really about which prayers are heard and which are not. My point is that we need to exercise a little common sense when quoting from the Bible. It could be a little embarrassing to quote Jeremiah jubilantly: “I now proclaim freedom for you,” then go home to find out that the full monologue is actually of God pronouncing a curse on Israel (thanks to Stan McCullars for the example):

Jeremiah 34:17-20 – “Therefore, this is what the LORD says: You have not obeyed me; you have not proclaimed freedom for your fellow countrymen. So I now proclaim ‘freedom’ for you, declares the LORD -’freedom’ to fall by the sword, plague and famine. I will make you abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth. The men who have violated my covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces. The leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the court officials, the priests and all the people of the land who walked between the pieces of the calf, I will hand over to their enemies who seek their lives. Their dead bodies will become food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth.

Who would have thought God could be so sarcastic?

When I first heard this truth about unity, it was immediately self-evident. It was corroborated by everything I had ever read in Scripture, and resonated vividly with my understanding of the teachings of Jesus and the New Testament writers. Yet this truth is sadly not often taught in the church, and for obvious reasons – it messes with our nice and neat notions of “who’s in and who’s out.”

The truth is this: upon the same basis that I was accepted into Christ, I must accept others as brothers and sisters in Christ. Duh. Anyone could have thought of that, right? Why didn’t I? Why isn’t this profound truth a little more well-considered in Christian circles?

We’ve long said that God adds to the church, not men. Whom God has added, let not man subtract.

It is self-evident, because it is expressed in personal terms that every believer who has ever felt the weight of sin lifted from their shoulders should be able to understand and relate to. If I was accepted into Christ based upon my repentence and confession of my faith in Christ, and subsequent immersion into Him, who am I to place some greater (or lesser) standard upon another believer to consider him a brother? Wouldn’t that be a lot like the servant who was forgiven of his debt by his master, but who ungraciously refused to forgive his fellow servant of his debt?

Whenever I place a requirement on another believer that God didn’t place on me when I was added to the Kingdom, it should sting my conscience. If God didn’t require me to have this opinion on the timing of the return of Jesus, or that opinion on the use of instruments in worship, then who in the world do I think I am to burden my brother with that precondition? We’ve long said that God adds to the church, not men. Whom God has added, let not man subtract.

Fortunately, we don’t have to just rely on good sense to reason this through. Paul did a great job of pointing this truth out to us, if we’ll only take note of it and recognize what he’s really saying:

May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. (Romans 15:5-7 – NIV)

First, Paul writes to the Romans his prayer for them, that they be given a spirit of unity, and that they may with one heart and mouth glorify God. The result of that spirit of unity, then, is that they were to accept one another…just as Christ had already accepted them.

Accept one another, just as Christ accepted you. Wow. What a powerful, self-evident truth this is, when you really think about it.

It is ironic that musical instruments get the blame for a major division in Christ’s body when music is supposed to be (and is in fact) such a unifying part of Christian worship. There is nothing more unifying than standing and praising God in song together with other believers, whether there are instruments in the background or not.

Blaming the instrument for a major division between brothers is a lot like blaming guns for violent crime. As the clichéd truism goes, guns don’t kill people, people do. Likewise, instruments don’t divide Christians, Christians do.

It is only because we choose to divide from one another over the use of musical instruments that these divisions persist. We can’t blame it on tradition, or our creed (remember, we don’t have creeds…right?), or some unknown brother who we think might be offended. Should we avoid stating the truth for fear of offending someone? Since when has that been our motto? I believe we are supposed to speak truth in love, and if that is our guiding principle, God will bless our efforts at unity.

The scriptural truth is that using or not using musical instruments neither makes one part of the Kingdom nor excludes one from it. If you have believed otherwise, I challenge you to search the scriptures high and low for instruction to the contrary. I challenge you to see the Christians down the street using musical instruments as just as much a part of the Kingdom as the Christians who don’t. Period. It’s time to set aside for the moment all of the arguments about which we think is better, or which we prefer. The answers to those questions may be useful in determining how each congregation chooses to worship; but they are not useful for determining who is or who isn’t in the body of Christ.

I fear that we’ve tolerated too long the undertones (and sometimes blaring overtones) of intolerance on this subject, allowing too many hearts to be hardened by years of mistaken ideology and hermeneutics. I pray the time has come for us to be the instruments of peace we sing about in a tangible way. Perhaps (and maybe this is still a long shot) it’s possible to reconcile some far-flung factions among brothers who have a lot in common – namely, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. If so, let’s work hard to bring about a peaceful and gentle overthrow of incorrect ideas. And please…no new factions. There is only one Body of Christ, and it’s time to act like it!

Ever notice that when your kids really don’t want to do something, they will find anything and everything else to do before getting to the undesirable job? Forget the kids, I do this myself. Sometimes the hard task gets postponed for something else that truly is a good thing to do. Nevertheless, the good becomes an escape to avoid the better, and easier wins out over harder. When this happens in our Christian walk, the ivory tower ends up trumping real life.

So it can be if we become preoccupied with doctrinal issues (by that I mean What is the correct opinion on XYZ issue?) to the exclusion of the hard job of Christian living. Don’t misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that correct opinions on who Jesus is, what he came for, and how to follow him are unimportant. But I will go out on a limb here and say that once a person is a believer, the most important struggle is not to understand systematic theology or eschatology but to understand our own heart and turn it to do the Lord’s work.

“What’s so hard about Christian living?” you say. How about being Christlike to the waiter who was really bad at customer service? How about choosing entertainment for ourselves and our families that isn’t in conflict with Christian morality and living? How about stepping up to lead our families, rather than letting them meander aimlessly through the spiritual minefields of the pop culture? How about resisting the urge to pass on that very interesting tidbit of gossip about a brother or sister in Christ (or anyone else, for that matter), and choosing to take James’ advice seriously:

James 4:11 – Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it.

If we’re truly honest about ourselves, these types of Christian living issues are where the rubber meets the road in Christianity, not the dry theories expounded and debated in seminaries around the world. Those debates tend to divide, and ultimately conquer those who use them to escape the hard work of living a life that is sold out for Jesus Christ.

Just as the theologians of Jesus’ day were escaping the front lines of the battle that takes place in the heart by retreating to the desk job of interpreting the law for everyone else, we too can escape the heart and soul of Christianity if we become overly preoccupied with matters of opinon that matter little to God at all. (Does God really care what organizational means we use to help the fatherless and widows, or does he just care that we help the fatherless and widows?)

My kids can put off their hard chores for awhile by doing easier ones. Eventually, though, they’ll have to answer to me for why they didn’t do what I really wanted them to do.

Isaiah 29:13 – The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.

Was the Genesis record authored by Moses, or mashed up from unknown sources by unknown editors, as proponents of the Documentary Hypothesis (DH) would like us to believe? Maybe neither, as it turns out. There is an alternative hypothesis that makes a lot of sense and preserves the notion of divine caretaking of the ancient history of mankind.

Could God have miraculously imbued Moses with knowledge of events and personal conversations that he himself was not privy to? Absolutely. But is that the most likely explanation? Probably not, in my opinion.

The Wiseman Hypothesis, sometimes called the Tablet Theory, provides an amazingly simple explanation of how Moses could have come into such detailed knowledge of events that happened long before his time. The basis for this persuasive theory is that in ancient Mesopotamia, it was a common practice for the patriarch of a family to record his family history on a tablet and sign it with his name at the end.

When you go through the Genesis record, there are actually many such "signatures" (called colophons) that could very well represent the end of one clay tablet source and the beginning of another. If you’re like me, you’ve read them numerous times without noticing them:

• These are the generations of the heavens and the earth (Genesis 2:4)
• This is the book of the generations of Adam (Genesis 5:1)
• These are the generations of Noah (Genesis 6:9)
• Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth (Genesis 10:1)
• These are the generations of Shem (Genesis 11:10)
• Now these are the generations of Terah (Genesis 11:27)
• Now these are the generations of Ishmael (Genesis 25:12)
• And these are the generations of Isaac, Abraham’s son (Genesis 25:19)
• Now these are the generations of Esau, who is Edom (Genesis 36:1)
• And these are the generations of Esau the father of the Edomites in Mount Seir (Genesis 36:9)
• These are the generations of Jacob (Genesis 37:2)

If this is true, then Moses was really doing with Genesis exactly what the compiler of the Chronicles and the Kings did; taking existing source documents and compiling them, with divine guidance, no doubt, into a single set of documents that could be passed down from scribe to scribe, generation to generation.

There is some disagreement about whether these signatures, or statements of ownership, take place at the beginning or end of each source tablet, but the ancient Babylonian practice was to place them at the end. After the death of a patriarch, the next generation would close the tablet out in his father’s name, and start a new one of his own.

Note that this theory is not an attempt to take God out of the process of Biblical authorship. After all, where did the first tablet come from, and who made sure these tablets were passed from one patriarch to the next?

For more reading on this subject:

• Who Wrote Genesis? (Excerpted from Henry Morris’s book, The Genesis Record)
• Wiseman Hypothesis

A frequent subject of my prayers is to thank God for the love of my amazing wife. Because I have her love, I feel blessed and honored beyond measure. I could argue that most everything good in my life flows from the fact that I know without a doubt that I am loved by her. That’s because love is inherently inspiring, motivating, and empowering. If you know me well enough, you can probably guess where I’m going with this.

The reason she knows how to love as well as she does is that God is love, and whoever loves is born of God. Someone famous once said that. So in the middle of expressing my gratitude to God one night, my thoughts wandered down a neat little road. If she learned how to love from God, who is the definition of love, then as the recipient of her love, what if I could learn something about how God wants to be loved? What if I could also learn something about how God does not want to be loved?

Does that sound like a stretch? It’s not, once we realize that we were made by God in his own image, and that our relationship with him is frequently compared to a marriage in scripture. Israel is often depicted metaphorically as God’s bride, as are the called out of Jesus Christ.

So as my mind meandered along this path, I started thinking about love versus legalism in the context of marriage. What if my wife was a legalist when it came to our marriage? What if her goal in life was to try to “follow my commands,” and she nervously wondered if she had succeeded or angered me? What if she refused to do anything for me that I didn’t specifically ask for? Besides feeling like a tyrant, I wouldn’t feel nearly as loved as I do right now. I would also feel like her actions were a little empty and lifeless.

I can’t imagine a marriage like that, where neither partner will do anything for the other unless it has been clearly asked. One may even have good intentions and simply not want to anger the other by doing something he or she might not like. This may even be couched in terms of “playing it safe,” because after all, if we’re not one hundred percent sure that our spouse told us to do something, it may be “safer” not to try to express our love in that way. But in spite of what may be defended as good intentions, this describes an essentially lifeless, if not a loveless, marriage. We wouldn’t want our marriages to be like that, so what makes us think God wants our relationship with him to be like that?

Similarly, I can’t imagine a relationship like that with my kids, who are constantly making me things and doing things of their own accord to express their love for me. Just the other day, my kids all conspired to name the day “Dad Appreciation Day” (D.A.D.). I came home from an early men’s breakfast to see posters hung all over the house with artwork and notes of appreciation from them. As Cecil Hook illustrated so well in the Chapter 15 of Freedom in Christ, just think how I could have crushed my kids if I had been angry at them for doing something to honor me that I didn’t specifically ask for! Instead, I was thrilled that they desired to show me their love in that way, and I believe God is too when our actions are overflowing with love toward him.

In fact, by limiting ourselves to merely obeying the commands of God, and no more, we’re really turning love on its head. What really makes expressions of love most gratifying is when they come without being demanded or even specified, out of the pure desire to make another person happy. How many times have husbands heard their wives say “It doesn’t mean as much if I had to ask you to do it?”

I’m certain that if this is true with us humans, it’s true of God’s nature as well. He wants loving service from the heart, without having to specify every individual act of service in advance. Service like this is difficult for us humans to quantify in terms of “obedience.” Every attempt to do so will result in a stifled relationship with our Creator.

Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount makes this point abundantly clear. His primary message to the Pharisees was that God wants service from the heart, not simply outward performance of rituals or “commands.” He would rather have no service at all than the kind of lukewarm service that is driven by command-keeping.

For some reason, we have an easier time grasping what true love is in a marriage and between parents and children, but have difficulty applying what we know to our relationship with God. We don’t want a legalistic, lifeless relationship with our spouse or children. Why do we so often insist on one with God?