The Sun is Really Bright Today!

“There was the true light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.” John 1:9

Here the Gospel writer John calls Jesus Christ “the true light.” That would be the real deal. The true light. The light that makes the other lights seem minor or insignificant.

On a sidewalk in Annville, PA recently,  I thought the sun is the true light of this physical world. It is the one light we absolutely could not do without. The Earth needs to bathe in its light 24/7.

Many lights, - tail lights, a flashlight, a neon sign, help us in various ways. They offer us warnings, convey information, guide us, and make life convenient. We can and often do live without some of these. They are relatively minor lights that are made possible by the true light of the sun. It is the source.

So John calls Jesus “the true light.” The true light came into the world. The Light of God. The moral light. The example. The pattern. The true Illuminator.

 That light “enlightens every man.” He makes it possible for us to see. Just as the sun enables vision, so His inner light enables us to see reality. By it we can discern what is right. Every man and woman has received this light, to some degree. That’s what John says.

Every culture has some norms of what is acceptable and what is not. There are some norms of decency acceptable in every nation or tribe. They don’t all agree, but they do exist. C.S. Lewis wrote, “The moralities accepted among men may differ, though not, at bottom, so widely as is often claimed…”[1] There is not an inhabited place on earth that does not have some acceptable standard or some concept of what is good and what is not good. This can be referred to as moral “light.” This is the light that Jesus, “the true light” has enlightened us with.

Just as the sun has enlightened all of us, so the true light, Jesus, has shined in our hearts and we have some vision. He is the one moral light we cannot do without.

John goes on to say, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name…” (John 1:12) Receive the full light of Jesus today. Believe in Him! The Sun is really bright today!

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[1] C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain,(New York: MacMillan Publishing Co, 1962)  21-22

You Don't See Many Jewish Boys in Prison

Someone once made the comment, “You don’t see many Jewish boys in prison.” This simple statement made me stop and think.

It appears to be true. Consider the following: 

“Maximum-security prisons in the United States have relatively few Jewish inmates, according to the Aleph Institute, a Chabad-affiliated organization that reaches out to Jews behind bars. Most Jews in the prison system usually end up at lower-security facilities for crimes such as fraud or tax evasion.”[1] (With exceptions like Bernie Madoff (left) , David Berkowitz, and some mafia types!!)

Another website says, “Jews in prison in the United States are a small group in absolute or relative numbers. In 1998, there were approximately 1,700 Jewish prisoners out of 1.5 million, according to Congressional testimony--a little more than one in 1,000.”[2] That is .00113% of those in prison. At one point only 10 Jews waited on death row.

Relative to Black, White, and Hispanic inmates, it seems to be true. "Not many Jewish boys go to prison."

Why? Are they better people? No. They’re just like everyone else. Is it because many of them are rich? That might be a factor but not the whole picture.

Jewish culture is largely based on belief in God and a moral code. Hard work, family, and faith are important concepts. The moral code applies to each member of the community. This is the root reason as to why few turn to a life of crime. They traditionally live by a moral code that includes God. That is my point. When people live this way, things go better for them.

You might think, “But many of the prisoners are Christians and Muslims, they have a moral code too.” True. But the vast majority of them come to those religious convictions after they are imprisoned. Crises like divorce, a near death experience, a hurricane, or going to jail - fuel religious conversion!

One study by a Department of Justice researcher noted, “A disproportionately high number of prisoners were not in any way practicing religionists prior to incarceration. That is, they exhibited none of the standard sociological measures of religiosity, such as regular prayer, scripture study, and attendance at worship services.”[3]

A lot of men and women come out of prison as Christians, but few start out that way. Desperation leads to change.

It is not people committed to a belief system and moral values who primarily end up in prison.

Which belief system? Which moral values are superior? The Christian Bible and ethic is unique and produces amazing results. That’s for another discussion.

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[1] http://freethoughtnation.com/component/content/article/63-acharya-s/49-jews-in-prison.html

[2] http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Judaism/2000/08/Jews-In-Jail.aspx#ixzz1z7y0l0q0

[3] http://www.adherents.com/misc/adh_prison.html

Rules or Freedom?

I lived overseas for nearly 30 years. After returning to the United States, people often asked me,  “What is it like coming back after so long?” A number of times I’ve answered, “It’s a different country than the one I left.”

“Duh,” you might say, “that’s profound.”

Let me explain.

In a word, it seems rules are replacing our freedoms.

When I was a boy my neighbor’s black Labrador, “Midnight,” roamed the block. He always knew where home was. He kind of had a relationship with everyone on the block. I remember the day he and “Joey,” the big collie at the end of the street, got in a fight. In a way, “Midi” was our dog.

Last week my brother-in-law told me about local leash laws. If a dog is running free, that person is liable for a hefty fine. What’s the problem? Isn’t it good to protect people from belligerent dogs? Yes, - but a little bit of our personal freedom has been chipped away.

Rules replace relationships and self-responsibility to do right. They force desired behavior.

By the way, I’m not against rules.

There are building codes, fire codes, motor vehicle inspections, garbage recycling rules, background checks for employment, … commissions, agencies, councils, forms, waivers, ad nauseum.

You must yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk. There is no satisfaction of doing it out of kindness because it’s the right thing to do. It’s only possible to break the rule, be glared at, or worse.

Is there virtue in doing what is required?

Today many people want smaller government, because more departments means more spending. But more departments also mean less freedom.

Before my decades overseas, Americans were more governed by inner moral absolutes than now.  Admittedly it had been waning for a long time even then, but society held a broad (if imperfect) consensus about right and wrong. It was the Judaeo-Christian ethic. We didn’t need as many laws because people broadly agreed about what was right.

Today we make laws.

If we can’t agree about what is right or wrong, then we have to make rules to protect individual rights. More rules reduce freedom. I’ll never know the “Midnights” of my block unless I go to the pet park. The focus is on protecting my rights by legislating behavior, not on freedom and responsibility to choose to be loving.

What’s the spiritual lesson in this?

In the Bible, Paul wrote, “For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law.” Rules do not “impart life.”[1] The more rules we make, the further from real life we get.

If we’re guided by an inner ethic based on the common good, of which the biblical Christian ethic stands out unique in the world, then just a few rules will suffice.

That is one difference I see in the United States now. We are exchanging our freedom for rules.

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[1] Galatians 3:21

Argument from the Violence of Nature

We hold people to a different standard than we do animals. That’s a no-brainer, right? If a shark attacks a person, we say it is only doing what comes naturally. No personal guilt is attributed to the animal, though it may be destroyed to prevent future attacks. A tiger may be labeled a “man-eater,” and considered dangerous, but it is not considered anything other than being true to its nature. It is not seen as worse than any other tiger. This is the natural food chain.

But if a person attacks and kills his fellow man, we have an elaborate, expensive, and often fallible system to mete out “justice” to the offender. We say that person is wrong. This sense of what man ought to do is one of the human beings unique qualities. It illuminates something invisible that exists, - as CS Lewis would say, an “ought to.”

Manhattan Pastor Timothy Keller speaks of the argument for God from the violence of nature, in his excellent book, The Reason for God. Is nature violent? Isn’t that the core of survival of the fittest? Reality is a contest for survival according to Darwin.

Keller tells of writer Annie Dillard who spent years living by a creek in Virginia to “be inspired and refreshed” by the purity of nature. Evidently, Dillard came to the conclusion that nature is ruled by one overriding principle, “violence of the strong against the weak.”1 Dillard wrote, “There is not a person in the world that behaves as badly as praying mantises. But wait you say, there is no right or wrong in nature; right and wrong is a human concept! Precisely! We are moral creatures in an amoral world…”2

Man is judged by a different yardstick than animals. He is held to an invisible code of morality. A “homicidal” praying mantis is just being natural, but a Muammar Kaddafi is considered by right-thinking people to be a monster for his role in the Lockerbie mass murder.

So there is an unseen something, a code of conduct, of what ought to be, that permeates human existence. Something exists, something that we all recognize, beyond what is seen. It’s recognition is unique to man.

In the Bible, Paul says it this way of those who did not accept the Jewish law. “… the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.”3

Yesterday I saw a video that talked of the trillions of stars in the known galaxy. Many are not visible, but no credible scientist would deny their existence. We accept this as fact on the word of scientists. Something invisible, but real.

The violence in nature also tips us to something that is invisible, and yet real.




1- Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, (New York, Riverhead Books, 2008) 161
2- From Chapter Ten, “Fecundity,” in Annie Dillard, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek (Harper-Collins, 1974)
3- Romans 2:15 (New International Version)