Guarding Our Spines

By Robert W. Bastian

At ninety-seven, our mother, Kathleen Grace Bastian, is compiling her memoir, Grace Upon Grace: My Journey in Faith from Saskatchewan to a Wider World, with the help of us, her children. The original intent was a brief summary of her life as the first chapter of a book of recipes for family.  

This project has grown into something bigger, due to the abundance of interesting information — some a slice of history; some an inspiring life lesson, and the following, an “allegory for life.” She says: 

My father’s father, Grandpa Manford Swallow, was a tailor, who sat cross-legged while he worked. Back then, kerosene lamplight was all that was available indoors, so tailors normally sat this way on a tabletop near a window to gain better light for such close work. This custom also kept clothing or drapes being worked on from dragging on the floor.  

I wonder if tailors were trained to guard their spines, because Grandfather would stop every ten or fifteen minutes, put his work down, straighten his spine, and then pick up his work and begin again. It must have been effective, because he had very erect posture even when he was what I considered to be an old man.

What a good analogy: In whatever we do, we stop at intervals to revisit and straighten the core, the framework, the “spine” of life.

Businesses can “put their work down” to review their vision, mission, and value statements. They can reiterate and discuss the spine of their business in employee meetings. They can review policies and procedures with their business spine in full view.

Nations can do the same thing: On Memorial Day (last Monday in May in the US) or Remembrance Day (November 11) they remember those who gave their lives to preserve our freedoms. They review the history that establishes a shared identity. They take care that young people understand the big ideas on which their nation was founded: freedom of speech, innocence until guilt is proven, tripartite or parliamentary governance, and so much more.

And so it should be for the church. We take care to know and support the institutions that help a body of believers to function: boards, constitutions, and other documents, mechanisms of oversight. In worship, we continually express the Gospel publicly: our status as created beings, the Fall, the Law, the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Resurrection, Pentecost.

And above all, on a personal basis, Christians visit Holy Scripture and listen and pray to God our Father daily; we follow the Old Testament injunctions to “remember, remember, remember” his work in our lives. We worship with God’s people each Sunday. In these ways, we continually straighten our spine as believers, so we never forget who — and Whose — we are.

Photo credit: S Pakhrin (via flickr.com)

My new memoir, FROM KITCHEN CHAIR TO PULPIT: A Memoir of Family, Faith, and Ministry, has just been published. I hope you will click on one of the links that follow to be taken to the page on these sites that enable you to view and potentially purchase the paperback or ebook. My book shows just how extraordinary the pastoral life can be, describing how I prepared for ministry and ministered to three congregations and then, as a bishop, to pastors as a bishop, with the help of my wife, Kathleen, and the support of our children as they grew up from children to adults.

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A Wesleyan Voice in Canadian Protestantism – Part I

By Robert W. Bastian

Tyndale Seminary, the largest interdenominational seminary in Canada, has a strong Wesleyan presence, established in perpetuity in 1993 through the establishment of the fully-endowed Donald N. and Kathleen G. Bastian Chair of Wesley Studies.  

Beginning in 2009, the seminary began to host an annual Wesley Studies Symposium. This year’s iteration is to take place April 25, 2023 in Alumni Hall with a Zoom option. 

Just as is the case for prior years’ presentations, some of the addresses from this year will be available in real time by a Zoom connection or later in recorded format on Tyndale Seminary’s website. Notably, the reader may enjoy the keynote address of the Rev. Victor Shepherd, ThD, inaugural occupant (1993-2004).  

His title is “The Chair of Wesley Studies: Its Birth-Pangs at Tyndale, Its Unapologetic Contribution of Theological Riches, Its Full Flowering in a World God Refuses to Forsake.”

The other keynote address is by Howard Synder, PhD, who occupied the chair from 2007 to 2012. His address is “Unlikely Twins: Francis of Assisi and John Wesley—Implications for Pastoral Ministry Today.”

More information about the full program and video links for these presentations and those from prior years’ symposia can be found in the following link: 

https://www.tyndale.ca/seminary/wesley-studies/annual-symposium.

More, next week, about this event!

My new memoir, FROM KITCHEN CHAIR TO PULPIT: A Memoir of Family, Faith, and Ministry, has just been published. I hope you will click on one of the links that follow to be taken to the page on these sites that enable you to view and potentially purchase the paperback or ebook. My book shows just how extraordinary the pastoral life can be, describing how I prepared for ministry and ministered to three congregations and then, as a bishop, to pastors as a bishop, with the help of my wife, Kathleen, and the support of our children as they grew up from children to adults.

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On the Dangers of Minimizing Wrongdoing

The country is deeply saddened this weekend to hear about the murder of three young people in Florida. Though the story is  incomplete, apparently these young people were part of a criminal enterprise and died at the hands of three other young former accomplices. 

The sheriff in the area, Billy Woods, seemed to be at pains to lay the responsibility on the general minimization of wrongdoing in society and the absence of accountability. 

It didn’t seem that he wanted to blame anyone in particular. I suppose the precise sources of the moral formation of these six is not yet known. And we all know parents who did the best they could, yet their children went astray. After all, there is a young will involved, and many adverse influences from outside the home. Good parents can have wayward children.  

Still, it seems fair to observe that a lot of wrongdoing seems never to be addressed. In diverse institutions, including the church, it seems we no longer hold people truly accountable for their actions.

This reminds us of a story Dad told us that happened decades earlier, when he was a young pastor. He said that there were two young men in the church who were good friends in high school. They egged each other on in a prank that resulted in some property damage. The way the parents handled it was starkly different. One set of parents took it very seriously and required apology and restitution. The other focused on the humor in the prank and mostly chuckled at behavior that had crossed the line.

Apparently both young men grew up to be productive members of society, but the one whose parents were more scrupulous was a “straight arrow.” And he entered full-time ministry.

We would like to think that a crucial element in parenting and society must be to hold young people accountable in a serious way for their choices and behavior, beginning in very early childhood till they leave home as young adults.  

Expecting children to be accountable for everything, from white lies to inadvertent damage to other people’s property, surely makes a difference in their moral formation. 

And today, parents might be well advised to point out, using events at school and in the news, the many ways in which society as a whole has adopted a minimizing stance toward wrongdoing. 

They can discuss these things from the perspective of a Christian standard of morality. Or they can help their children “spot the lie” in what seems to be happening in our school systems, places of business, and, if old enough to be in touch with current events, even in our courts and other legal justice venues.

Would that the six young people in Florida not only had parents but also teachers, guidance, counselors, policemen and women, and judges to hold them accountable with a wise combination of scrupulosity and mercy, whether the infractions are small or large.

And, would that the church will forever be involved in teaching stories of right and wrong from our Holy Scriptures and in modeling accountability and appropriate discipline in church operations that uphold a high standard of morality, with mercy.  

Guest blog by Robert W. Bastian

Photo credit: Tony Hisgett (via flickr.com)

My new memoir, FROM KITCHEN CHAIR TO PULPIT: A Memoir of Family, Faith, and Ministry, has just been published. I hope you will click on one of the links that follow to be taken to the page on these sites that enable you to view and potentially purchase the paperback or ebook. My book shows just how extraordinary the pastoral life can be, describing how I prepared for ministry and ministered to three congregations and then, as a bishop, to pastors as a bishop, with the help of my wife, Kathleen, and the support of our children as they grew up from children to adults.

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On Earthquakes, Both Geological and Personal

About six weeks ago, a major earthquake hit Syria and Turkey with the loss of more than 40,000 lives. Apparently, among many other places, the ancient city of Antioch (now Antakya) was devastated. In 1999 nearly 20,000 were killed by a prior earthquake, also in Turkey.

The tragedy, grief, and loss are unimaginable.  

In 2011 I wrote about a much lesser earthquake near Washington, DC. Centered in Virginia, the 5.8 magnitude quake shook the earth as far south as Georgia and as far north as Canada. It was said to be the most widely felt quake in US history. 

At that time, people streamed onto the streets from office buildings, schools, and businesses. There was no loss of life, but historic sites like the Washington Monument and the National Cathedral had to be closed to the public because of damage that made them dangerous. Property damage was estimated at between $200 million and $300 million.

Earthquakes are, at the very least, frightening. I have experienced three of them in my lifetime.

The first was on a Saturday morning in 1967, in Greenville, Illinois. The boys and I were downstairs in the basement when the dishes upstairs began to rattle and the hanging lights in the kitchen and dining room swayed. My wife ran to the head of the stairs and called down, “What are you boys doing down there?”

As we realized the true cause of the disturbance, we quickly got our wits about us and moved to the street where our neighbors had already gathered.

Years later when Kathleen and I were at a conference in eastern New York, an earthquake with the epicenter twenty-five miles away in the Adirondacks struck in the middle of the night. This time, the quake made the sound of a freight train roaring through our room. We were rudely awakened and, I confess, a little shaken.

On a third occasion I was in the southern Philippines, six degrees from the equator, when my bed began to shake. The cot in this modest hotel had six legs and the middle two were slightly longer than the two at each end. It was as though I was being rocked in a cradle, and all the while the room around me was moving eerily. The rumblings did not last long but in the moment they made Mother Earth seem quite like a monstrous bowl of jello.

Earthquakes are an excellent metaphor for personal troubles that shake the very ground of our existence. They are sudden, unexpected, and leave us bewildered and devastated.

A spouse announces a divorce in the offing; a tragic death robs us of our dearest and there are children to raise; our home is seized in foreclosure; an incurable illness is diagnosed; a best friend betrays us. These events shake us like an earthquake. Our souls feel homeless and we are living in a kind of emotional rubble.  

There is a psalmist who understands. Psalm 11:3 asks: “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” It sounds like a helpless cry from someone tested by an earthquake and whose faith is about to crumble.

But a closer reading reveals that this is not the cry of failed faith. It is the taunting of a skeptic, counseling the faithful to flee when a metaphorical earthquake rumbles. 

In reply, it is a true believer who answers: “In the Lord I take refuge. How then can you say to me: flee like a bird to your mountain?” And later: “The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord is on his heavenly throne.”

When people of strong faith experience life’s “earthquakes,” of course they tremble, shake, and experience a variety of emotions and thoughts. But eventually, along with the Psalmist, they reaffirm, with the mind if not always with the emotions, that God himself, loving and merciful, is their sure foundation and can never be shaken.

First published August 29, 2011; revised March 13, 2023

Image credit: INGV / BBC

My new memoir, FROM KITCHEN CHAIR TO PULPIT: A Memoir of Family, Faith, and Ministry, has just been published. I hope you will click on one of the links that follow to be taken to the page on these sites that enable you to view and potentially purchase the paperback or ebook. My book shows just how extraordinary the pastoral life can be, describing how I prepared for ministry and ministered to three congregations and then, as a bishop, to pastors as a bishop, with the help of my wife, Kathleen, and the support of our children as they grew up from children to adults.

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Your Best Counselor

Something remarkable is happening at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky. Difficult as it is now for me to use my computer, I heard of it by word of mouth first and shared the good news with Kathleen and our children, who are also monitoring what is going on. 

What is going on? It appears to be a spiritual awakening! Students are worshiping, praying, confessing for hours on end. This has been going on continuously for many days, and now has spread to several other universities, including Samford, Lee, Belmont, and Cedarville.  

How should we think of this? I would say that the third person of the Trinity — the Holy Spirit — is moving in hearts and minds on these campuses.  

Who is the Holy Spirit? Jesus answered that question. After the resurrection, his followers were distraught when He told them He would be leaving them. To reassure them, he said, “And I will pray the Father and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you forever” (John 14:16 RSV).

His word as it appears in the Greek New Testament is paraclete, and he used that word for the Holy Spirit at least elsewhere, including John 14:26; 15:26; and 16:).

The King James Version translates paraclete as “comforter,” meaning at the time of that translation, hundreds of years ago, “strengthener.” Today, “comforter” means something more like “consoler,” which is only one aspect of what the Holy Spirit does.

Building on its root meaning, a paraclete is like a coach who stands at our side cheering us on as we begin a challenging foot race; or like a lawyer we might summon to help us face injustice. Both experts know what is needed and give encouragement and direction.

But what did Jesus mean by referring to him as “another” paraclete?

In English, that one word has two meanings. It can mean “different,” as in, “Let’s go another way.” It can also mean “additional,” as in, “I have another dollar at the bottom of my purse.” Unlike in English, there are two distinct words for these meanings in Greek, and the one used by Jesus means that the Holy Spirit is an “additional, duplicate” paraclete besides himself.  

Jesus had been a paraclete (counselor, coach, advocate, encourager) to his disciples, and he promised that the Holy Spirit would be not a different but a duplicate paraclete to what he had been. Some say that the Holy Spirit is “the Spirit of Christ.” That fits Our Lord’s promise that the Spirit would to remembrance all things that Jesus himself had said to them. And so when we today turn to Holy Scriptures with heart and mind, the paraclete — Holy Spirit — illuminates our meaning.

Our Lord’s ministry to his followers two thousand years ago was direct and in person. And what he did for them, the Holy Spirit continues to do in the hearts and minds of Christians wherever they are found — whether in Canada, the Philippines, Brazil, Tanzania — or on university campuses in the United States. 

Note that the New Testament teaches that we are not merely to believe the Holy Spirit but also to receive him.  

That is, God’s Holy Spirit is more than a doctrine to be understood. He is a person to be experienced. He is the paraclete sent to be with us forever.

In the fury of our times, the Holy Spirit continues to make Jesus and his teachings, his salvation, and his Lordship real to disciples new and old.

It appears that this is what is happening in a special way at Asbury and other universities. And if you want to get in on this movement, expose yourself daily for two weeks to our Lord’s words about the paraclete. Open every recess of your life to him. Answer the Holy Spirit’s call to complete obedience and, in faith, expect him to counsel you — to make his presence and leadership in your life real and life-changing.

My new memoir, FROM KITCHEN CHAIR TO PULPIT: A Memoir of Family, Faith, and Ministry, has just been published. I hope you will click on one of the links that follow to be taken to the page on these sites that enable you to view and potentially purchase the paperback or ebook. My book shows just how extraordinary the pastoral life can be, describing how I prepared for ministry and ministered to three congregations and then, as a bishop, to pastors as a bishop, with the help of my wife, Kathleen, and the support of our children as they grew up from children to adults.

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Do You Have Dual Citizenship?

On this celebratory weekend  – July 1, Canada Day for Canada (commemorating its confederation as a country) and July 4, Independence Day for the USA – the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship are on many minds in North America.

Many benefits of our citizenship, such as freedom of movement, thought, and speech, contrast sharply with an experience Kathleen and I had in Estonia before its independence from the then USSR.    

Readers may remember that the former Soviet Union was composed of 15 “republics” that had come under Russian dominance after the Communist Revolution of 1917. The USSR dissolved officially in late 1991, heralded by the fall of the Berlin Wall two years earlier, in November 1989.  

Several years earlier than that, still at the height of the Cold War, Kathleen and I traveled by ship from Finland to Estonia, then one of the Soviet socialist republics, where I had been invited to preach. Landing there, we immediately felt the fear-generating policies of a repressive Communist government.

It was their law that we would be taken from the dock to our hotel by a government-run taxi and would stay in an Soviet Intel-run hotel. We were given no other option and expected this loss of personal freedom.

Similarly, we learned we had to surrender our passports at the front desk of this hotel for the duration of our stay. That news quickened the pulse a bit. Our little dark blue document said we were Canadians and were guaranteed Canadian government protection. We felt deprived of something that provided identity and safety.  

The Apostle Paul uses this civic blessing – citizenship – as an analogy. To the young church in Philippi he wrote:

But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. –Philippians 3:20, 21

That is, if we have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of our souls and trusted his atoning sacrifice to wash away our sins, we have a citizenship in heaven. We have one foot there now, and certainly that’s where we belong in the ultimate sense.

You will see that this wonderful passage includes allusions to the widely promised second coming of Christ and the resurrection of our bodies, plus the positive results here and now of those coming events. Citizenship in heaven! Incorruptible bodies! The passage is one of the gems of the New Testament.

At the same time, during a weekend of celebration of our earthly citizenships, we are now in a world that is fallen. So in one sense our heavenly citizenship is not yet to be claimed. That is, we must continue for now to live where every aspect of human existence is potentially stained with evil that regularly shows its ugly face. It invades our businesses, corrupts our institutions, and shatters family relationships.

The words of Jesus and writers of the epistles of the New Testament exhort us, as citizens of heaven, to avoid these evils.  For example, Paul wrote to the Ephesian Christians: “So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking” (Ephesians 4:17).

Freedom from permanent evil and futility of thought are some of the present benefits of our  citizenship in heaven. We listen when the Apostle Paul exhorts: “Reject every kind of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:22). We stand for Christ at each opportunity. We take our citizenship in this life seriously. But all the while we remember that what we really have is a dual citizenship – and our everlasting citizenship is in heaven.

Image info: Ritu Ashrafi (via flickr.com)

My new memoir, FROM KITCHEN CHAIR TO PULPIT: A Memoir of Family, Faith, and Ministry, has just been published. I hope you will click on one of the links that follow to be taken to the page on these sites that enable you to view and potentially purchase the paperback or ebook. My book shows just how extraordinary the pastoral life can be, describing how I prepared for ministry and ministered to three congregations and then, as a bishop, to pastors as a bishop, with the help of my wife, Kathleen, and the support of our children as they grew up from children to adults.

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The Future of Abortion

In 1973, Roe v. Wade became the law of the United States. The Supreme Court of that country ruled that abortion was a new “right” purportedly guaranteed by the Constitution to women federally.

There was a mighty stir after this, with many saying the Supreme Court had produced much deserved liberation for women, and others saying that the ruling had created “a license to kill the unborn.” This topic is uppermost in the news today because, forty-nine years later, the Supreme Court has finally admitted that abortion laws were not theirs to create or adjudicate; accordingly, the court has indicated that such matters are for the state legislatures and “the people.”  

Immediately following the 1973 decision, our congregation in Southern Illinois was ready to hear the subject addressed from the pulpit.

My sermon was titled The Sanctity of Life, based on the words of Psalm 139, “For you (God) created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb” (v. 13).

This psalm was written centuries before the age of science. It is therefore written in poetic, not scientific, language.

Psalm 139 eloquently reflects the Judeo-Christian view of humankind – that we are creatures from God’s hand, that we bear his image, so human life is to be regarded as sacred before as well as after birth.

The day after I preached that sermon a high school student from the congregation came to my study. She had recently encouraged a fellow student to solve the problem of an unwanted pregnancy by getting an abortion. The word of God had spoken to her heart and mind, and she was troubled about what she had done. 

It is shocking to think that since that Supreme Court decision in January 1973, more than 64 million unborn children have been dismembered or poisoned. That is to say nothing of the number of women who have been damaged whether emotionally, physically, or both by the procedure.

The issue of the sanctity of life is deeply rooted in the moral nature of things. When the people’s voices through the political process were taken away via judicial legislation, it was commendable that churches would rise up. The Roman Catholic Church has worked unceasingly to protect unborn babies. Individuals who narrowly missed being aborted or even survived it have spoken out. And pro-life organizations sprang up: Live Action, the Life Legal Defense Fund, National Right to Life, the March for Life, the Susan B. Anthony List, Let Them Live, and many others.

And now, after nearly fifty years, the court has again spoken, this time to nullify Roe v Wade and to return the matter of abortion to the states, giving the people back their voices and restoring the democratic process.  

Still, many have pointed out that abortion remains legal according to individual state decisions. And we have heard comments to the effect that this is just the end of the beginning of the nation’s abortion controversy. Many states will enact laws making abortion legal up to full term, and even while the process of natural birth has begun. Others will permit it through fifteen weeks; others will ban it outright.

And so Christians everywhere still have a moral question to answer, setting the mothers’ freedom and in some cases threat to her life against a baby’s life, seen in the light of Psalm 139. 

Who can estimate the impact should a sermon opposing unrestricted abortion be preached for each baby currently aborted? That would be one million such sermons per year in the United States alone.  

Originally posted February 1, 2010; revised June 27, 2022.

Image info: Glenn Beltz (via flickr.com)

My new memoir, FROM KITCHEN CHAIR TO PULPIT: A Memoir of Family, Faith, and Ministry, has just been published. I hope you will click on one of the links that follow to be taken to the page on these sites that enable you to view and potentially purchase the paperback or ebook. My book shows just how extraordinary the pastoral life can be, describing how I prepared for ministry and ministered to three congregations and then, as a bishop, to pastors as a bishop, with the help of my wife, Kathleen, and the support of our children as they grew up from children to adults.

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Scriptural Clarity for a Soft-Minded Age

As the telephone repairman connected new wires to the black box in our basement, he asked about my work. I told him I was a minister.

He pondered this briefly, then asked the location of my parish. I had most recently been a church overseer of many churches for a Protestant denomination, I told him. I hadn’t had responsibility for a particular congregation during that time.

He offered that he was Catholic. I asked gently if he was active in his church. Immediately I detected inner conflict in his responses.

The Catholic Church is just out of date these days, he complained. It’s back in the dark ages. The contraception matter was one issue. Women should have a right to choose. He thought that abortion should be avoided, but what about a list of extenuating circumstances? All of this tumbled out of him in obvious frustration.

He was also angry because the priest of his parish had refused to confirm his 12-year-old son. The reason the priest gave was that he didn’t ever see the boy’s parents in church.

But, I inquired, you still want to be a Catholic?

Yes, he answered without hesitation.

That was the reason for his conflict. He wanted to be a Catholic — but felt he should be able to participate on his terms.

He was reflecting what some call the modern mind. For people with that mindset, God may exist but his fundamental nature and requirements should be of each individual’s design. And he could be kept mostly out of sight except for emergencies. Thus it was acceptable for standards of morality to become fluid and vague.

When such persons encounter firm moral demands of an institution such as the Catholic Church, they tend to be both angry and conflicted. For this repairman, it seemed to me, there were no external standards of morality. It seemed he wanted to determine personally and with finality what was right. He could therefore remain marginally connected to his church while being angry at it because it wasn’t more modern.

My anecdote is but one example of this phenomenon. Consider another: the case of a daughter of prominent members of an Evangelical church who cohabited openly with a man for nine years and then decided she should have a big church wedding.

She approached her parents’ pastor. She wanted a full-scale event in the church sanctuary with all the usual embellishments, and a guest list of 200. The pastor put forward an alternative way to help this couple out. She refused his offer of a private wedding.

She could not understand why her request would create moral tension for pastor and church board. She thought she had a right to this celebration. It was to be a “rite of passage.”

But as the church saw it, she and her mate had made that passage on their own in a very public way nine years earlier. There was no “new beginning” to be celebrated. Moreover, the words of the wedding ritual would ring false to the listening congregation. For them it would be an issue of truth and honesty in the presence of God.

I rush to add that in this kind of circumstance, today’s Evangelical church is mandated by Scripture to love as Jesus did, sometimes with compassion, sometimes with firmness. But the church is called to love truthfully.

The Apostle John writes to his “true friend Gaius” thus: “It gave me great joy when some believers came and testified about your faithfulness to the truth and how you continue to walk in it” (3 John 3).

The truth John had in mind was the truth of the gospel of Christ as elaborated in the Christian scriptures. Should not established doctrines and truthful procedures grow out of revealed truth in timeless and trustworthy Scripture, making today’s churches clear-minded in this age of moral softness?

Scriptural Clarity for a Soft-Minded Age

As the telephone repairman connected new wires to the black box in our basement, he asked about my work. I told him I was a minister.

He pondered this briefly, then asked the location of my parish. I had most recently been a church overseer of many churches for a Protestant denomination, I told him. I hadn’t had responsibility for a particular congregation during that time.

He offered that he was Catholic. I asked gently if he was active in his church. Immediately I detected inner conflict in his responses.

The Catholic Church is just out of date these days, he complained. It’s back in the dark ages. The contraception matter was one issue. Women should have a right to choose. He thought that abortion should be avoided, but what about a list of extenuating circumstances? All of this tumbled out of him in obvious frustration.

He was also angry because the priest of his parish had refused to confirm his 12-year-old son. The reason the priest gave was that he didn’t ever see the boy’s parents in church.

But, I inquired, you still want to be a Catholic?

Yes, he answered without hesitation.

That was the reason for his conflict. He wanted to be a Catholic — but felt he should be able to participate on his terms.

He was reflecting what some call the modern mind. For people with that mindset, God may exist but his fundamental nature and requirements should be of each individual’s design. And he could be kept mostly out of sight except for emergencies. Thus it was acceptable for standards of morality to become fluid and vague.

When such persons encounter firm moral demands of an institution such as the Catholic Church, they tend to be both angry and conflicted. For this repairman, it seemed to me, there were no external standards of morality. It seemed he wanted to determine personally and with finality what was right. He could therefore remain marginally connected to his church while being angry at it because it wasn’t more modern.

My anecdote is but one example of this phenomenon. Consider another: the case of a daughter of prominent members of an Evangelical church who cohabited openly with a man for nine years and then decided she should have a big church wedding.

She approached her parents’ pastor. She wanted a full-scale event in the church sanctuary with all the usual embellishments, and a guest list of 200. The pastor put forward an alternative way to help this couple out. She refused his offer of a private wedding.

She could not understand why her request would create moral tension for pastor and church board. She thought she had a right to this celebration. It was to be a “rite of passage.”

But as the church saw it, she and her mate had made that passage on their own in a very public way nine years earlier. There was no “new beginning” to be celebrated. Moreover, the words of the wedding ritual would ring false to the listening congregation. For them it would be an issue of truth and honesty in the presence of God.

I rush to add that in this kind of circumstance, today’s Evangelical church is mandated by Scripture to love as Jesus did, sometimes with compassion, sometimes with firmness. But the church is called to love truthfully.

The Apostle John writes to his “true friend Gaius” thus: “It gave me great joy when some believers came and testified about your faithfulness to the truth and how you continue to walk in it” (3 John 3).

The truth John had in mind was the truth of the gospel of Christ as elaborated in the Christian scriptures. Should not established doctrines and truthful procedures grow out of revealed truth in timeless and trustworthy Scripture, making today’s churches clear-minded in this age of moral softness?

Some Counsel Regarding Covid-19

Our doctor son, Robert, has written an email to us about the novel Corona virus (Covid-19). It contains some good counsel, and, with his permission, I pass it along to you. I send it with prayers for all who suffer from this crisis, whether from anxiety, actual illness, or the stress of taking care of those who are ill.

Dear Mom and Dad (and family),

First of all, please don’t think me panicked or “crazy.” We are in the Lord’s hands, and the hope is that, in a few weeks, the rate of new cases will have slowed. Still, the future is unknowable, and so discretion is the better part of valor… With this in mind, permit me a comment or two encouraging a bit of wisdom and hypervigilance. After all, many of us are “older,” and we have some health conditions to boot.

As you know, the first thing for a people group to try when a threatening virus is identified is containment. In other words, identify those infected and all of their contacts and quarantine them, hoping to keep the disease from becoming widespread.

Containment is no longer possible here. This is because there are so many unexplained cases without recent travel or exposure to someone who is ill that the virus must be considered to have “escaped” into the general population. And there is no “herd immunity” to this virus since it is “new.”  

The next strategy therefore is mitigation. That is, trying to avoid a dramatic spike of cases that overwhelms the medical system, causing shortages, for example, of ventilators for the gravely ill. Mitigation not only aims to reduce the height of the spike but also to spread the cases of infection across a longer time span so that needed resources can be cycled into use across time rather than all at once.

Possibly the most powerful means of mitigation is exaggerated hand hygiene. Another is self-imposed social distancing. That means actually staying six feet or more away from others when appropriate, but also avoiding crowds. The incidence curve in a population is really flattened and broadened if the population practices these things. And it is important for young people to practice this even if they feel no personal threat because the disease is routinely so mild for them. Young people who feel fine can spread the virus to their community, parents, and grandparents.

I’m not thinking the situation is all that urgent (at least for the moment) for us who don’t live near a cluster of cases. Don’t let me make you crazy… But it is projected that the number of clusters will increase quickly in the next few weeks. Consider that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s wife now has the virus. So do Tom Hanks and his wife in Australia. Apparently, there were exchange students who “jumped” / disobeyed quarantine restrictions and spread the virus into the Australian population. And President Trump and Vice-President Pence had dinner a few days ago with a man who has fallen ill. He was sitting right next to President Trump. (The president did get tested, and does not have the virus.)

My point only is that the fewer people we come into contact with, the less likely we are to contract this illness. Obvious measures (which we are already taking, particularly meticulous hand-washing and avoiding touching your face) include:

1. No handshaking. Elbow bumps at most.
2. Stay six feet or more away from people when possible when out in public.
3. Stay away from anyone you see blowing their nose (even though this is not a major symptom of Covid-19) or especially if they are coughing.
4. Sanitize carts at stores (if you must go there) and be extremely aware of your hands and where they have been. Sanitize hands very frequently especially when out and about. Probably six times during/after any necessary shopping visit.
5. Consider having on hand a week’s worth of canned or frozen food. And, yes, you can easily live on buttered pasta or oatmeal and canned peaches for a few days so no need to empty out the supermarket.
6. Consider just staying away from any group activities. That actually includes church! And hospitals and primary care doctor’s offices. How about we ALL move to the basement!
7. Humor has a role, even if the gallows variety.
   

Again, we of all people should not panic, because, to paraphrase the song slightly, “We know who holds the future, and we know who holds our hand.”