Pro-Life Podcast

So here's a cool thing. My first time on a podcast, featured as a pro-life pastor, hosted by my daughter, Grace, from Right to Life, Michigan!

She hit me with some hard questions on the spot, so I don't know that it's my best, but the issues are worth thinking through...

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/faith-in-life-pastor-steve-hemmeke/id1134666878?i=1000606346404

Responding to the Nashville shooting

This is long, but worth reading to the end.

The last section is especially good.

My main concern is that most Christians will stop after the first section, and just be disgusted with trans people. That's lazy. There is much more we need to do.

https://notthebee.com/article/trans-activists-are-calling-for-more-blood-after-the-nashville-shooting-heres-how-christians-should-respond

DIE's version of free speech: "Juice Isn't Worth the Squeeze"

 Wall Street Journal - March 28

Wall Street Journal - March 28, 2023

Budziszewski!

Andrew Peterson Concert

 What a week! Not only the Jesus Revolution in the theater, but then a music concert by a Nashville artist with hundreds of cheering fans!

Andrew Peterson is a name you should know. He has produced several music albums, a series of Young Adult Fantasy books, and some books reflecting on culture and creativity.

One problem we have as Christians is being extremely discriminating (read, “too picky”) in the graphics and cinematography of the entertainment we take in, while giving much less thought to the message that is coming along with it. We are overreacting against the cheesy Christian media of a few years ago. Christian artists are now pursuing a different and better path, but they are too often dismissed outright.

Andrew Peterson pursues excellence in musical craft and seeks to convey rich and true theology in his lyrics. He doesn’t have the budget of a Hollywood film, which sadly may turn off many, who demand only the best and most awesome thing out there right now. But he is deliberate to convey the Gospel in a lyrically rich and appealing way, shaping the music to that message, while keeping it original and not run-of-the-mill mediocre.

Ending the concert he started us singing the doxology, and then walked his whole crew off stage, leading the audience to praise God, not himself.


Check him out here.
https://www.andrew-peterson.com/
https://www.facebook.com/andrewpetersonmusic

This is a sample of one of his better lyrics – a Good Friday song that delves into what happened to the Sabbath, at the cross…

So they took His body down

The man who said He was the resurrection and the life

Was lifeless on the ground now

The sky was red as blood along the blade of night

As the Sabbath fell they shrouded Him in linen

They dressed Him like a wound

The rich man and the women

They laid Him in the tomb

Six days shall you labor, the seventh is the Lord's

In six, He made the earth and all the heavens

But He rested on the seventh

God rested

He said that it was finished

And the seventh day, He blessed it

God rested

So they laid their hopes away

They buried all their dreams

About the Kingdom He proclaimed

And they sealed them in the grave

As a holy silence fell on all Jerusalem

But the Pharisees were restless

Pilate had no peace

And Peter's heart was reckless

Mary couldn't sleep

But God rested

Six days shall you labor, the seventh is the Lord's

In six, He made the earth and all the heavens

But He rested on the seventh

God rested

He worked 'till it was finished

And the seventh day, He blessed it

He said that it was good

And the seventh day, He blessed it

God rested

The Jesus Revolution Movie: a Review

 

So I saw the movie “Jesus Revolution” last night.

 

4 stars out of 5.

 

As far as I understand, the movie is historically accurate to the times.  The “Jesus people” movement of the 70s was not just a copy-cat of the hippie movement, but was a real spiritual awakening.  The movie contrasts Timothy O’Leary’s message of “turn on, tune in, drop out,” with the Gospel message of forgiveness in Jesus Christ for your sins.  Both messages are clearly shown, and the fruit of them shown, too.  Drugs lead to car crashes and near- or actual-death.  The Gospel leads to new birth.

 

The doubts of all sides are shown well.  Greg Laurie wondered if this religion was just another new high that will pass.  Chuck Smith wondered if he would lose control in his church if he let the hippies in.  Lonnie thought God had abandoned him when everything didn’t go how he wanted.

 

The message is very relevant today, as drugs continue to be an escape for many – yet this path remains a dead end.  When the stoner comes to the end of his rope, the Gospel is still there for him.  The movie conveys the second chance everyone gets to receive grace, though they have made a wreck of their lives.

 

Jesus Revolution shows the polarity between the younger, immature, but vibrant, Spirit-filled faith, and the older, mature, but calcified faith that needs shaking up.  This is a real thing.  But as Hollywood will do, it leans heavily in the direction that the former is absolutely better and life-giving.  This is not entirely wrong, but the young need the old to mature as well.  The movie doesn’t portray that at all.  So no 5 stars.  The megachurch has been stuck ever since in immature mode.  The church needs to welcome in the immature, but insist that they grow in the faith, and not stay the spiritual infants they often are.

 

I’d recommend Jesus Revolution for a few reasons:

1. A history lesson of the church in the last 50 years.

2. Evaluating how churches should present the Gospel to various generations and ages.

3. Understanding the faults that all sides are prone to: traditionalists, new believers, and unbelievers pursuing the truth in bad ways.

Reparations // Public Theology // Defense of American Revolution

1. Kevin DeYoung has a good critique of reparations here.

2. Peter Lillback, president of Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, has an excellent piece on the importance of public theology here. The seminary is seeing the need to train future pastors to have a developed theology of politics, and to tackle the rise (and I'd say current triumph) of cultural Marxism as the threat to Christianity that it is.

3. Just read this clear article defending the American Revolution. The four take-aways at the end are very good.

But I still have questions.

1. If colonial charters with the king were revoked in 1689, as the article says, how can the whole argument here hinge on those very charters establishing the colonies' relationship with the king, and not with parliament?

2. Didn't the king have the right to use parliament to administer his relationship with the colonies? Seems reasonable to me.

Where the rubber hits the road for me is this:
- Was there a principled problem that we were not being represented in Parliament, or that the king wouldn't hear us reasonably, while our rights were trampled upon? Did George violate Magna Carta-like common law in his treatment of the American colonies?
- Or was it that the colonists had to pay their fair share for the benefits of the empire, and just didn't like it - e.g., taxes to fund a war (French-Indian) that had benefitted them?

I lean toward the first.

Yet I'm suspicious of the strength of the argument that the colonies didn't have to listen to Parliament, only the king.
The better argument seems to be:
- taxation without representation
- rights trampled (harboring troops in homes, etc.)
- Magna Carta obligations the king has to his subjects' rights

https://crosspolitic.com/rebellion-to-tyrants-the-principles-behind-the-just-war-for-independence/