Through a Glass Darkly

Two separate but possibly connected shootings took place yesterday (Sunday) against Christians in Colorado resulting in at least 5 dead, including the gunman in one of the attacks. Another 5 were wounded according to MSNBC reports.

Details on the attack at Faith Bible Chapel can be found here, and details about the attack at New Life Church are here.

The article about Faith Bible Chapel opens and presents the facts in such a way that the shooting can be interpreted as resulting from being denied shelter for the night. I suspect that’s not the case.

The article reports that some present felt the shooter came with intent to shoot. I wonder if he wasn’t trying to gain access to a larger group of people in the living quarters under the guise of needing a place to stay. His being prevented by the rules that were apparently in place probably saved lives.

According to the article, the gunman ended up shooting through a hallway into the living quarters. Possibly a last ditch effort to pull off what may have been a broader attack. Thank the Lord more weren’t injured or killed.

Let’s pray for those involved, especially the families that lost loved ones.

Let’s also not miss a lesson from it.

Moses prayed:

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. (Psalms 90:12 KJV)

Tragic incidents like these remind us that our days are numbered. God, in His infinite wisdom, doesn’t tell us that number. Therefore, each day, from our perspective, has the potential to be our last. In light of that fact, let’s live each day well by doing the important things and setting aside the unimportant.

Today is the day we should do those things we have been called to do for the Kingdom. Today is the day we should serve others in Christ’s name. Today is the day that we should demonstrate, and be an instrument of, Christ’s love and mercy in a broken and dying world.

We must do these things today because tomorrow we may find that, like the victims in the news today, it is our number that has come up.

There was sure to be a backlash to the 100+ years of Sunday School, as well as to all the Bible camps and vacation Bible schools Christians have conducted. And here it is.

Jeninne Lee-St. John reports in Sunday School for Atheists that there is a growing movement of institutions for kids in atheist families modeled after Christian Sunday Schools and Bible camps.

Seems to me their parents are attempting to “innoculate” their kids against that dreaded contact they will inevitably have with Christians in United States society.

According to the article,

The lives of these young people would be much easier, adult nonbelievers say, if they learned at an early age how to respond to the God-fearing majority in the US.

Besides responding, negatively one would assume, to the “God-fearing majority,” there are other reasons to catch the kids early before any real damage is done:

Others say the weekly instruction supports their position that it’s O.K. to not believe in God and gives them a place to reinforce the morals and values they want their children to have.

Apparently this movement has been inspired by awful experiences like the one this mother had to endure when her son fell into the clutches of a Bible-toting neighbor:

Kneisley, 26, a graduate student at the University of Missouri, says she realized Damian needed to learn about secularism after a neighbor showed him the Bible. “Damian was quite certain this guy was right and was telling him this amazing truth that I had never shared,” says Kneisley. In most ways a traditional sleep-away camp–her son loved canoeing–Camp Quest also taught Damian critical thinking, world religions and tales of famous freethinkers (an umbrella term for atheists, agnostics and other rationalists) like the black abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

The mother of little Damian (Ironic, no?) is making sure he gets one hell of an education. Hell as in “without God,” of course.

And this sounds like a real uplifter:

One Sunday this fall found a dozen children up to age 6 and several parents playing percussion instruments and singing empowering anthems like I’m Unique and Unrepeatable, set to the tune of Ten Little Indians, instead of traditional Sunday-school songs like Jesus Loves Me. Rather than listen to a Bible story, the class read Stone Soup, a secular parable of a traveler who feeds a village by making a stew using one ingredient from each home.

How original. I guess it’s appropriate that the anti-Sunday-school would be a rehash, albeit in antithesis, of the original. But it does get more sophisticated for the older kids. They get “Socratic conversation:”

Down the hall in the kitchen, older kids engaged in a Socratic conversation with class leader Bishop about the role persuasion plays in decision-making. He tried to get them to see that people who are coerced into renouncing their beliefs might not actually change their minds but could be acting out of self-preservation–an important lesson for young atheists who may feel pressure to say they believe in God.

Now that is sophisticated. Actually, it’s probably more sophisticated than Socratic if the discussion holds to my own experiences with atheists. Notice that the class leader’s name is “Bishop.” Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor?

Food pantries are experiencing greater struggles as times get economically tougher. More people are relying on them at the same time fewer people and businesses are able to donate money and food. Higher demands paired with smaller resources result in less help for less people. Here’s an informative news article about the problem.

In my area many “poor” people rely on food pantries on an ongoing basis. They view the pantries as permanent help supplementing other welfare they receive. Unfortunately, this “help” is often really a subsidization of cable television, cell phones with the latest ring-tones, cigarettes, junk food, and other luxuries that are mistakenly interpreted as needs.

Even more unfortunately, during times of increased demands on the pantries, those going to find help in their legitimate crisis situation are at risk of finding little-to-no help because there is already an established clientele vying for dwindling resources.

This is yet another wake-up call for the church to either rethink or refine its strategy for helping the poor. Too often ministries to the poor stop at providing “crisis solutions” for all situations whether crisis or long term. At best, this practice patches up the pain while never really healing the problem. At worst, and all too often, this practice results in wasting valuable resources for crisis needs on the long term selfish wants of those who have made a livelihood of working the system set up to help the poor.

Crisis solutions are temporary and quick fixes to immediate and desperate need. They are exactly what are required in crisis situations. We make a mistake, though, when we apply them long term. This mistake is highlighted during periods of greater need. If we are really going to help the poor we need to develop strategies for providing solutions, not patches, to those who are really seeking a solution.

Providing solutions to long term problems means giving the poor a hand-up out of poverty eventually while giving them a hand-out for a brief time to cover their immediate needs. This requires setting up a ministry framework that will aid in getting to the bottom of each individual’s unique need, determining their unique resources and then applying persistence, creativity and love to help them get the individual solution to their individual problem.

The end result will be better and more ministry as we leave more adequate resources for those in real crisis. It will also reveal who doesn’t really want to find a solution to the poverty by which they earn a living so that we can stop wasting our time. That is where we must aim in order to hit on a relevant and truly helpful ministry to the poor.

(Note: See working principle No. 1.)