ARE YOU STRESSED OUT?

April 30, 2014 

According to the CDC, eleven percent of people aged twelve and over in this country are being prescribed psychotropic medications (those which treat, among other ailments, depression and anxiety).  That number is up 400 percent over the past twenty years.  Many more people are self-medicating with alcohol (an estimated fifteen million are “alcohol dependent”).  These numbers do not reflect those who choose to use various illegal drugs to help cope with the stress in their lives.  Add to these numbers the fact that according to an article in the May 2, 2013 NY Times, the suicide rate among middle-aged Americans rose thirty percent between 1999 and 2010.  What is going on?  The obvious answer is, we are stressing out.

I do believe life in the United States is incredibly stressful.  In fact, I would argue life today is more stressful than it has ever been.  Period.  In all of  history. Here’s why…

We are the beneficiaries/victims of a technological revolution.  We have more information at our fingertips than our ancestors could have ever imagined.  When I prepare a sermon, the amount of research I can do online and via apps is unbelievable compared to forty years ago when I started preaching.  Millions of articles, pictures, maps, word studies, commentaries, sermons, etc. are at my command. And this cornucopia of information holds true in every field of work and study.  It is mind boggling.

We are now aware instantly of what’s happening on the other side of the globe.  Malaysian flight 370 disappears and every facet of that disappearance is covered to the point of exhaustion by our news outlets.  The turmoil in the Ukraine is as familiar to those watching the nightly news as their local weather.  We are overwhelmed with a global tsunami of information that folks living a hundred years ago could never have imagined.

Facebook, Twitter, and all the “social media” now available tell us way more than most of us care or need to know about the lives of hundreds or thousands of “friends” and “followers.”  Many Americans live with their face buried in the screen of their smart phone, thumbs moving rhythmically as they text away.  Automobiles have become weapons of mass destruction as people attempt, unsuccessfully, to text and drive, unable or unwilling to lay their phone down.

Our smart phones and tablets and other wonders of communication have become portable prisons.  They go with us on dates.  They go with us to bed.  They go with us on our so-called vacations (a recent survey found sixty percent of Americans now continue to work while on vacation courtesy of technology).  They are tethers which from which we find ourselves having an increasingly difficult time being free (do you feel guilty or anxious if you leave your cell phone at home or in the car?).

In other words, we now have opportunity to worry about situations and crises our ancestors would have had no way of knowing about.  We can, voluntarily, place ourselves under stress 24/7 in the name of being caring friends, employees, denizens of the planet, etc.  Add this to the very real stresses of high unemployment, high taxes, inflationary prices, increasingly crowded roadways, intrusive government regulations, school and workplace violence, and, well, is it any wonder people are stressing out at record rates?  

When Jesus walked this earth things were very different.  I’m not saying there was no stress.  Jesus wouldn’t have had to preach about worry (see Matthew 6) if there was no stress.  But we have artificially added multitudinous pressures upon ourselves that first century people never faced.

When Jesus went from town to town, he wasn’t plagued by paparazzi trying to take his picture.  He didn’t have reporters at every stop wanting interviews.  There were no cameras or hidden microphones picking up conversations around the fire at night.  He wasn’t required to carry a cell phone and maintain a twitter account.  He didn’t need an associate to spend hours answering e-mails and texts.  When he preached there was no concern about mike checks and portable sound systems.  He was never critiqued over His use of Powerpoint or videos.   

When He and the apostles travelled from Galilee to Jerusalem, I would assume they walked.  It probably took them several days.  There was plenty of down time to visit and ponder and pray.  I’m sure there were crowds at times.  We know from the gospels Jesus was at times so exhausted He could sleep in a storm, so hassled He would escape at night into the hills to pray.  But there also existed down times, built in by the way they travelled and communicated that we have managed to all but eliminate.  I do not believe we are the better for it.

A friend of mine recently returned from a few days stay at a remote cabin in the hills of southeastern Oklahoma.  With a smile on his face and wonder in his voice, he shared how blissful it was to have no access to television, internet, or phone.  “It was wonderful,” he said.

I believe too many of us are allowing a crazy, driven, culture to rob us of peace, to fill our lives with self-inflicted, unnecessary stresses that rob of us joy and ruin our digestion.  It is past time to cut the cords that bind us.

May I make some practical suggestions for extracting ourselves from some of the stresses we face?

Check the Drudge Report once or twice a day.  All the blatherers on talk radio and the evening newscasts clearly pull the majority of their stories from Drudge.  He’s become the de facto news editor for the U.S.  It will save you a ton of time and angst by not having to listen or watch stuff that just drives you crazy anyway.

Do you really have to Facebook and Twitter?  I don’t do either one, and I remain a functional human being with additional quiet time on my hands.  Honestly weigh the benefits and negatives of most social media.  You’ll dump it or cut way back.  Do you really need to know where Susie buys her wine or what Donald’s kids made on their latest report cards?  Do you really want to witness verbal catfights between ignoramuses on subjects you could care less about?  Really???

Leave the cell phone in the bedroom when you sit down for supper.  Don’t take it with you when you go for a walk.  Take a cell phone free vacation (they’re wonderful!).  You will find the world does not come to an end.  If someone really needs you, they’ll leave a message or send a text.

Many of the stresses thrown at us in this life are inescapable.  But many are not.  We just the need the strength of will to say “no” to some of the technological “blessings” that have evolved into “curses.”

May God grant you a quiet and peaceful life with Him (1 Timothy 2:2).

Dan Rouse

    

IS IT "THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT?"

April 15, 2014

R.E.M. had a song out years ago called “The End of the World as We Know It.”  The most memorable part of the lyrics of the song (much of which are incoherent garbage) is the line at the end of the chorus which goes:  “It is the End of the World as We Know It... and I Feel Fine.”

Many really don’t feel fine right now.  I’ve been asked repeatedly if all the recent disasters are portents of the end.  We have indeed had a plethora of natural and man-made disasters as well as interminable “wars and rumors of wars” in the past year.  Is God setting things up to end it all?

And now along comes John Hagee, a television preacher with a big church down in San Antonio, pushing the latest fear button with a book out on “blood moons.”  If you’re familiar with Hagee, he has made something of a career in pushing “end of the world” type histrionics.  Now he’s found another reason, if not to panic, at least to call on all of us to be a little nervous.  It seems that over the next year and half or so, there will be several total lunar eclipses visible from here in the United States.   These total eclipses of the moon cause it to appear red in color.  Since speaking of a “red moon” isn’t nearly as dramatic as speaking of a “blood moon”, that is the designation given to the appearance of the moon during a total eclipse.  The fact is, it is a natural, and far from unknown, phenomena.  Spaceweather.com describes it in this way:

During the early hours of April 15th, the Moon spent more than three hours gliding through the shadow of Earth. The Moon turned red during the transit because the core of our planet's shadow is red.

Why red? A quick trip to the Moon provides the answer: Imagine yourself standing on a dusty lunar plain looking up at the sky. Overhead hangs Earth, nightside down, completely hiding the sun behind it. The eclipse is underway.

You might expect Earth seen in this way to be utterly dark, but it's not. The rim of the planet is on fire! As you scan your eye around Earth's circumference, you're seeing every sunrise and every sunset in the world, all of them, all at once. This incredible light beams into the heart of Earth's shadow, filling it with a coppery glow and transforming the Moon into a great red orb.

Anyway, Hagee and others have found a correlation between these “blood moons”, four of which will occur between this past April 15^th and September 28^th of next year, and the beginning of the Jewish feasts of Passover and Tabernacles.  This “tetrad” of blood moons, according to Hagee, possibly portends coming Middle East conflicts.  He cites the fact that tetrads occurred in 1949-1950 (during the time the nation of Israel was founded), and again in 1967-1968 (it was in 1967 the the famous Six Day War occurred in the Middle East).  Therefore, he argues these new “blood moons” could be signs from God of coming conflicts in the Middle East.  While he offers no Scriptural proof for this possibility, citing only Jewish tradition, he has, nevertheless, apparently managed to make a lot of people really nervous.

Allow me to make a couple of quick observations.  First of all, when people start talking about “end times,” I would encourage you to read Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 17 and 21.  Unless I’m misreading what Jesus has to say there, He is making it quite clear wars, famines, earthquakes, and pestilences are not signs “of the end.”  In fact, He emphasizes the very opposite – “…the end is still to come” (Mt 24:6); “…but the end will not come right away (Lk 21:9).

As far as “blood moons,” Revelation 6:12 speaks of the moon turning blood red, it also refers to the sun turning black like sackcloth and all the stars falling to the earth.  I have neither seen nor read of any such thing having to do with the sun or the stars occurring recently (thankfully), but they are clearly linked together in the Revelation. Therefore, it seems a little dishonest to cite one phenomena without the other two, since this is the only place in the New Testament that makes mention of a “blood moon.”    

Second, there is no doubt God has used wars and natural disasters at times to get people’s attention (consider what God does to Egypt and Pharaoh in Exodus; the Covenant of Blessing and Cursing in Deuteronomy 28).  A world which has chosen to reject and rebel against Him cannot hope to ultimately escape the consequences of His wrath.  Is that what’s happening now?  That is a question only the Almighty can answer.

Ironically, I have to agree with the last line of that R.E.M. song.  I do feel fine.  Oh, I’m not fine about the suffering going on because of earthquakes and typhoons.  I’m not fine that mankind seems to have turned warfare into almost a form of recreation.  I’m not fine with the repression and persecution of Christians in so much of the world.  There’s a lot I’m not fine about.  But there’s one truth that overrides all the heartbreak and nonsense we see in this world; one truth that makes everything fine:

For the LORD is the great God, the great King above all gods…he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care (Psalm 95:3,7).

                                                                        Dan Rouse

WHEN MARIJUANA’S LEGAL AT YOUR HOUSE…THE NEXT MORAL CHALLENGE

April 3, 2014

 

The following quote is taken from the NORML website.  This organization has lobbied tirelessly to legalize marijuana use for years:

Marijuana is the third most popular recreational drug in America (behind only alcohol and tobacco), and has been used by nearly 100 million Americans. According to government surveys, some 25 million Americans have smoked marijuana in the past year, and more than 14 million do so regularly despite harsh laws against its use. Our public policies should reflect this reality, not deny it.

Marijuana is far less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. Around 50,000 people die each year from alcohol poisoning. Similarly, more than 400,000 deaths each year are attributed to tobacco smoking. By comparison, marijuana is nontoxic and cannot cause death by overdose.

Both Washington state and Colorado have now made legal the possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use.  In Colorado it is being sold over the counter by licensed businesses and taxed just like any other commodity.  There are strong pushes in a number of other states to proceed with legalization of the drug.  In fact, even in a state as conservative as Oklahoma, it was recently reported that a state legislator was proposing Oklahoma consider legalization of small amounts for personal use.

There is no reason to believe that legalization of marijuana for personal consumption is not going to continue to spread across the country.  For years those who support legalization have argued, as NORML does in the above quote, that the drug is less harmful than the legal drugs of alcohol and tobacco.  They ask why should marijuana continue to be criminalized when the other two drugs are legal?  It has also been argued that enforcement of laws against marijuana usage have been expensive and ineffective.  If twenty five million Americans smoked marijuana in the past year, that is clearly true.  Our Department of Justice is already compromising on the enforcement issue.  But the strongest demand for legalization is, I believe, going to come from the promise of tax revenue.  CNN reported Colorado projects tax revenues of $180,000,000 over the next eighteen months on sales of what it termed “recreational” marijuana.  In revenue starved states, the lure of tens of millions of dollars in additional taxes is going to be hard to resist.

This being the case, another legal wall of prohibition is rapidly being torn to the ground.  Just as “dry” counties are rapidly disappearing when it comes to the sale of alcohol (although there are over five hundred municipalities that still prohibit its sale), and some form of gambling is now legal in forty six states, the laws which once prohibited marijuana usage are experiencing the same fate.  What this means is legal boundaries designed to protect citizens from exposure to certain substances and practices are being removed.  With those boundaries gone, individuals must now make moral choices that were previously not necessary.  How are Christians going to react to that?

I have observed with great interest, and some chagrin, how attitudes among Christians toward tobacco, alcohol, and gambling have changed over the past forty years.  When I began preaching, many, if not a majority of, men smoked.   I remember watching the men in the first congregation I preached for in the hill country of Texas flocking to the porch between Bible class and worship time to light up.  In contrast, only a very few consumed alcohol.  In fact, back in the seventies most towns in west Texas and eastern New Mexico were dry.  I knew many Christians who felt so strongly on the issue they would not shop at a Safeway or eat at a Pizza Hut because they sold or served beer.  Since gambling was illegal most everywhere, it rarely cropped up as a moral issue.  However, I knew folks who would not play card games or shoot pool because both those activities could be seen as involving gambling.

Fast forward to forty years later, and the contrast is remarkable.  Relatively few Christians I know now smoke.  But a far larger number of them consume alcohol “socially.”  Gambling, while not a common practice, is far from unknown.  What has changed?  As the social values of the country changed, the morals of many Christians also changed.  Tobacco usage is no longer socially acceptable, so folks quit.  Alcohol consumption is legal and readily available so many more now drink.  Since gambling has become legal, and access easy, many Christians see no harm in punching the buttons on a slot machine, buying a lotto ticket, or placing a wager on a horse race.  Bottom line, for many moral standards are dictated, not by an internal moral compass set by Scripture, but rather by whatever society sees as permissible.

This raises the question of how Christians are going to react to the legalization of marijuana.  When there is no longer a legal restriction on its usage, will they choose to toke (take a puff on a marijuana cigarette)?  While I suspect the immediate reaction of most would be “of course not,” will that hold true over time?  As I’ve observed a sea change take place in many of my brethren’s attitude toward alcohol and gambling over the past forty years, I have no reason to believe the same thing won’t happen over time with marijuana.  If one’s morality is tied to the social norms of the day, rather than to Scriptural principles, I would argue it is all but inevitable that we will see Christians “toking up.”

Specifically, how are those Christians who would never light up a cigarette, but choose to consume alcohol either privately or socially, going to react when given opportunity to have a “toke”.  On what logical and Scriptural basis are they going to make their decision?

The primary justifications I have heard through the years for “social drinking” are essentially two-fold.  One, Jesus, at the wedding feast of Cana, turned water into high quality wine (John 2:1-11).  Along with this, He was also accused by His enemies of being a glutton and a drunkard (Mt 11:19; Lk 7:34).  It is argued such an accusation would not have been levelled if Jesus were a teetotaller.  So, the first argument goes, if Jesus made wine and drank wine why can’t we?  Two, nowhere in the Bible is the consumption of alcoholic beverages prohibited.  What is prohibited is drunkenness; the abuse of alcohol (e.g. 1 Cor 6:10; Gal 5:21; Eph 5:18).  Thus, as long as one consumes alcohol in moderation, they remain within the parameters of Biblical teaching on the subject.

While I would agree Jesus made and consumed wine (I don’t see how else one can understand the passages mentioned in the first argument), I would have to also observe that this argument overlooks two very important facts.  One, the wine of New Testament times had a low alcoholic content which was even further reduced by watering it down several times before it was consumed.  Thus, gluttony is usually associated with being a drunkard because drunkenness required the consumption of an inordinate amount of wine.  Two, “fortified” wines (of higher alcoholic content) and what we term today “hard” liquors were unknown at that time.  They would not be developed until centuries later.  Therefore, to seek to equate the consumption of Biblical wine with that of the alcoholic products of today ignores some fundamental, and important, differences in the two.

Two, both arguments for consumption of alcohol today must be read in light of another very important biblical principle.  Paul will vehemently argue that while I may have a right to do something, my freedom to do that is limited by that action’s impact on my brother/sister.  Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God.  Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats. It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble (Rom 14:20,21).  While this quote falls within the context of spiritual stumbling (in this case causing one to see as legitimate the worship of false gods), the underlying principle must be given the weight it deserves.  Alcoholism is a huge problem.  The ability of alcohol to addict and destroy is undeniable.  There is no way I have a right to consume something if, by that consumption, I encourage another down a path that could destroy them.  Again, Scripture makes it clear while I may have the “right” to do something, it becomes wrong if in so doing I cause a vulnerable person to stumble.

I would argue the same principle is also applicable to gambling.  While many have the self-discipline to spend a limited amount of money on “recreational” gambling, there are also a significant number of people who do not.  I have personally seen lives destroyed by gambling addiction.  How can I, as a Christian, participate in something that would encourage a brother or sister on a road to destruction?  Should not my concern for the welfare of their soul supersede any “fun” I might derive from betting on the horses or playing the slots?

It seems to me it is going to be very difficult for those who have discovered the Biblical freedom to consume alcohol and gamble, in the context of a more permissive society, to argue against the recreational use of marijuana.  If one is free to indulge in one or both of those, why not marijuana as well?

Allow me to close with some observations:

1)  It is absolutely true that I have no right to judge a brother or sister when it comes to matters of opinion. Paul argues this adamantly in Romans 14,15.  If the consumption of alcohol and gambling fall within this realm then each must answer for their own actions and decisions.  However, I do have the freedom, and the responsibility, to share and discuss the consequences associated with their actions.

2)  A Christian’s body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19).  You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So, glorify God in your body (1 Cor 6:20).  We do not have the right to pollute the temple that is our body either by our consumption or actions.  If the sole purpose of recreational marijuana consumption is to get “high”, thus inhibiting one’s ability to make proper moral and spiritual decisions, this Scriptural principle would preclude any usage, reflective of the commands against drunkenness.

3)  We must take very seriously our responsibility to the “weaker” brother/sister among us when it comes to our “right” to consume alcohol or gamble.  Perhaps I’ve been made hyper-sensitive to this by my interaction with men who are involved in the Faith Based Therapeutic Community Corporation (FBTCC).  This is a ministry founded and run by one of our church members which involves working with about thirty men who have on-going substance abuse issues.  Their only hope for recovery and freedom rests in total abstinence from alcohol and other drugs.  The very last thing they need, in any way, is to be encouraged by teaching or example to use a substance which has basically destroyed their lives.  How can I, as a Christian brother, model anything for them other than abstinence?  Remember Paul’s strongly worded warning in 1 Cor 8:10-13.

4)  I realize abstinence is perceived as narrow-minded, and even bigoted, by some.  I would argue that it also sets an inarguably safe boundary.  You cannot become addicted to that which you do not imbibe or practice.  You cannot weaken the resolve of another by your example if you never partake or participate in these areas.

We’re kidding ourselves if we think marijuana usage isn’t going to become an increasing issue within, as well as without, the church.  May each of us humbly, prayerfully, and Biblically, consider our example and responsibility in this very vital, and painfully relevant, issue.

Dan Rouse