“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:32

Paul and Silas were missionaries of the Lord telling the Gospel story to anyone that would listen.  Their journey had taken them outside Israel to Asia.  Chapter 16 of Acts tells us of several failed attempts to witness in towns in Asia until Paul and Silas felt led to Philippi, Macedonia, Greece.

Paul’s normal approach when entering a new city was to go to the synagogue where learned men would speak of spiritual things. Paul would be permitted to speak and would witness to his knowledge of the Messiah.

When Paul and Silas arrived in Philippi, they found no synagogue. With no synagogue, they believed that people might gather on the Sabbath at the river’s edge, so they headed for the river and sure enough, they found a small group of women.

Philippi was a Roman city made up of retired Roman soldiers. For a synagogue to be built, there had to be ten married Jewish men and that quorum did not exist in Philippi, so the Jewish women gathered at the river for worship.  

Lydia, was a cloth merchant specializing in purple cloth, the most expensive color. That meant she was likely a successful business person and a widow or divorcee.  Paul spoke with the women and witnessed to his knowledge of the Messiah.  Lydia accepted Christ and invited Paul and Silas to her house to witness to everyone in her household. At the conclusion, Lydia invited Paul and Silas to stay in her home.

Lydia began by offering herself.  Then, she offered a gift – a talent – that is often in abundance but under appreciated in our churches today and that is hospitality. She simply offered hospitality to Paul and Silas.  From there, a house church sprang up – the first church in Europe. We know it grew because later chapter 16 of Acts says Paul and Silas returned to greet the “brothers and sisters”, so now men were part of the group.

Philippi is the town where Paul and Silas were imprisoned for casting the evil spirit out of the slave girl. Through the evil spirit, she was able to foresee the future and she earned a lot of money for her owners. Once freed of this spirit, the owners lost their money producer and they had Paul and Silas arrested. An earth quake hit and the jailer was terrified for his life (he would be killed if his prisoners escaped).  Though Paul and Silas were free, they had not fled.  The jailer accepted Christ as did his entire household. Ultimately, Paul and Silas were thrown out of the city and had to move on.

So what happened to the “first house church in Europe”?  It flourished under Lydia’s leadership and was a stepping stone for churches to rise up in the whole of Europe and eventually on all continents.

The day that Lydia met Paul, did she awake that morning expecting to be called personally by the Lord?  Did she expect to be called into service? Did she expect to be offering her home to strangers?  Did she dream of one day starting a house church that would be the precursor to the Christian faith going to the entire world?  I doubt it.  She simply responded to His invitation, offered the gifts that she had been given for His service and walked through the doors that He opened.

One woman – one offer of hospitality – one home – one church – was an integral part of bringing Christ to the world!

I recently read what I thought was a profound quote: “Truth should not be sacrificed because some are offended by it”. I believe we invite conflict because we do not speak the truth and invite discussion in order to understand the truth. Our PC culture says, “Thou shalt offend no one” – even if you must avoid the truth.

An example might be the debate around refugee immigration. First, do you know that the constitution does NOT directly ban discrimination based upon race, color, sex or creed?  I know, I did not know that either.  We get our thinking on that from language and court rulings related to the 14^th, 15^th and 19^th Amendments to the Constitution.  Having said that, the Constitutional Amendments protect the rights of CITIZENS of the U.S., so waving the constitution saying we are violating it by keeping some citizens of foreign countries out, simple is not a solid legal argument. The words of the Constitution cover citizens ONLY. While some might find that offensive, it is the truth!

Maybe it would be helpful to speak clearly and truthfully about what America is.  It is a unique country in its design and its culture. That is not to say that it is the perfect model or the “right” model.  It is “a” model.  There undoubtedly are other ways for moral people – even God-fearing people – to structure a country.  But, this is the way our forefathers structured ours. So, when we say “this is America and how we do things”, we are not saying this is the best or the only way.  We are saying this is how we do it and this method and process was selected with great thought and we want to keep things this way.  Some of those processes are the structure, power and limitations of government while other things are more cultural and accepted practice. Things like driving on the right, walking on the right when we encounter opposing walkers, queuing for passing through choke points like turn styles rather than charging en mass as is done outside western Europe and North America, respecting private property, owning personal weapons, recognizing that “ALL men” in the Constitution means ALL regardless of sex or color (it took us a while to get clear on that point), forbidding our government from establishing a religion while permitting the free expression of religion, the right to a speedy trial, the right to counsel, the right to a jury trial and on and on and on.  That IS America!

My point is – this is what makes America unique.  We don’t expect others to model us, we don’t desire praise, we don’t want to be revered for our wisdom.  We simply want to say that our Founding Fathers that came to this land and settled it, came here for one primary thing and that is personal freedom. In the early days, most came from western Europe where they felt oppressed.  My own ancestors on my mother’s side came to this country from Metz, France due to religious persecution. Others felt the crown was taxing too heavily. The underpinning – the backbone – when we think of America is personal freedom – the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Very reluctantly, we entered WWII and sacrificed the blood of our sons and daughters to free Europe from Nazi rule. We are a benevolent country.  We have given the most lives and the most money by any measure of any country in history. We are an immigrant nation.  Nearly everyone that traces their roots finds the foreign connection from one to ten generations back. The immigrants came, contributed and became part of the fabric of the American culture.

Today, we seem to be apologetic about who we are.  We seem to be apologetic about the uniqueness that makes up the American culture. We have said repeatedly that America is unique, so people coming here can expect some things to be different. They should expect to contribute and adapt, yet they can expect to experience the personal freedom to pursue life, liberty and happiness.

Immigrants adapting to the American culture has implications.  #1 – they have to become part of our society. We have seen large numbers of Mid-Eastern immigrants come into France, Germany and Sweden and form isolated communities where little or no integration or adaptation takes place.  In parts of Paris, things are so bad that law enforcement does not even enter some suburbs occupied by the new immigrants for fear. #2 – the pace of immigration has to be at a rate that permits the host society to take in the immigrants. Plainly stated – we do not want to become northern Mexico culturally. The rapid influx of Hispanics from Mexico and Central America has been too rapid for integration into our culture. For the first time, it feels like our culture may be getting overrun.  Some estimates say that as many as 12 million Hispanics have some to this country illegally.  A recent estimate is that Hispanics made up 30% of all immigrants coming to the U.S last year. America has long been known as the “melting pot”.  That implies a blend of peoples coming together in the name of personal freedom and adapting to the culture.   Of all the countries and cultures in the world, to have 30% from essentially one culture seems like would “flavor” or impact the pot too much.  #3 – immigrants have to contribute to our society. Too many stories have been told of immigrants coming to America to tap into our welfare system.  I don’t know the magnitude of this.  I do know that is why we need secure borders and a vetting process.  We need a balance of people with an eye to people that bring special skills and talents – technology, artistic skills, craftsmen, caregivers, agricultural workers and on and on. This influx should not be random.  It should be managed.

Finally, I have been challenged by folks that I certainly respect to consider if this “managed” approach to thinking about immigration is consistent with Jesus’s teachings about caring for “the least of these” as found in Matthew 25. What I propose as a national strategy or thought process regarding immigration and maintaining our culture in no way precludes any of us from hearing this Gospel message and acting upon it as we feel led every day of our life. Secondly, in my way of thinking there are not more important souls and less important souls.  If by bringing in more immigrants today puts our country at risk of being able to continue as the benevolent country we have been and be in a position to take in more souls tomorrow, I don’t think the Lord would look kindly on that.  So, for me, there is no conflict with what I have written here and being faithful to the Gospel.

Let’s begin to speak truthfully and humbly about America, what it is and the requirements to see it long endure.

In a recent Facebook post, I wrote —-

“The refugee issue is not a Syrian war issue or an Iraqi issue. The refugee issue will be with us for the long foreseeable future due to fundamental Islamic issues. That is why I would argue that it can’t be solved by our opening our borders but must be solved in the homeland where the issues exist and will continue to exist. That does not mean that we should not be benevolent and driven by our faith or desire for human decency that we should not act. We should act and extreme vetting is a critical part.
The birth rate among Muslims is multiples of most western nations. They are outgrowing their resources and ability to care for themselves. They have relied upon oil, but technology that lets us recover oil from shale deposits that are plentiful in North America makes their oil relatively lower in value and declining. Historically, Muslim nations do not develop or deploy technology – as opposed to the tiny country of Israel that could physically fit within the borders of Lake Michigan – who is a rich generator of new technology and food production practices.
The Muslim nations have a problem of over population and limited resources that drive some of their people to other nations, that is a constant threat to developed nations who they see having prosperity while their people are down trodden and who have constant internal strife as resources grow even tighter.
We need to take an honest and realistic view rather than going to a political knee-jerk response when anything regarding the refugee situation comes up.”

The above should explain why our accepting masses of refugees does not fix the problem, but one could make the argument that adopting a child does not make things right for all orphans but it certainly does greatly improve things for the one child that was adopted.  It is hard to argue with that.

I will argue that bringing in masses is a major issue in my mind. Let’s step back. Only one Muslim country has any version of a democracy and that is Turkey who has a parliamentary democracy. While their president is elected by a vote of the people, it is to a great extent a ceremonial position.

So what’s my point?  There are many, many differences that people raised in an Islamic culture face when coming to the U.S. Let’s define a few. There are people that would argue that the nuances of a democracy can only be learned by living in a democracy for a long period of time.  Let’s start first with the concept that legally, ALL are created equal. That EVERYONE has the same legal rights as me is a foreign concept to folks raised in Islamic countries.  Certainly, women are NOT equal there.  While culturally/socially, some may not feel equal here in the U.S., under the law, ALL are equal.  That is a fundamental underpinning of our nation and its laws.

With freedom comes responsibility. In Western Europe and North America, masses queue – get in line – to funnel through choke points like boarding a plane, going through security, getting your license renewed at the DMV.  In the Mideast and SE Asia, they mass around the choke point – they don’t queue.

We walk and drive on the right.  We make four-way stops work by a system of rotation. We “generally” honor traffic signals as opposed to what we see as craziness on the streets of cities in Asia and SE Asia.

We honor private property.  We don’t routinely walk across our neighbors yard or hunt on farmland without permission.  In a free country, where law enforcement basically exists to reign in the tiny percentage of outliers in our society, the masses have to assume personal responsibility to make freedom work in a democracy.  This is a foreign concept for cultures different than ours, where strong cultural and religious influences are as much law makers and law keepers as the totalitarian leaders that run the country.

Can people learn and adapt?  Absolutely. They must be taught and surrounded by reminders daily until they get it.  If women for your entire life were a lower status than you, that can be a hard idea to change in your mind.

In summary, we can’t have what happened in France and Sweden where there are Islamic enclaves that have formed where refugees have concentrated where law enforcement can’t even safely go. They only have contact with the culture and laws of the country when they choose to come out of the enclaves. Some parts of Paris have such suburbs. That does not promote integration.  That does not promote learning and constant reminders of how democratic, free people live.  That does not promote personal responsibility. So we are not only vetting to try and keep out the dangerous extremist, we are also managing numbers and vetting for people that can integrate and adapt to democracy and American freedom. We can’t afford to fail at this.  How would we ever recover if we did?

Seven years ago, Karen and I along with our two married children traveled with a group of 44 from our church on a ten-day Holy Land tour. Unfortunately, the spouses of our children could not join us, but what an opportunity for the four of us to make such a memorable trip together. Of the 44 in our group, 14 were children of others on the trip and they ranged in age from 14 – 30.  That brought an energy and a fresh generational perspective that added greatly to our trip.

During a lunch stop in northern Israel, I finished the meal quickly and went outside for some pictures.  As I was snapping pictures, I heard a voice that said, “Take a picture of me”. It was the large man in the picture above.  Without moving my eye from the camera, I swung the camera lens toward the voice I had heard and snapped the shutter.

We struck up a conversation.  The little man never spoke and the larger man had a strong accent.  He wanted to know where we were from.  I explained that we were on a tour with friends from our church and he probed.  He asked about what kind of jobs we had. You might think this a strange question, but in essence he was asking how we could afford to make such a trip. That gave me a dose of reality and for an instance I found myself stumbling to explain that.  He said that he raised chickens. I asked how many chickens he had (layers) to which I got a stern answer with a finger waved in front of my face for emphasis.   “I not tell my wife. I not tell you”, he said.

I asked what kind of chickens he had and he said that he had Hyline. I told him that I was familiar with Hyline and he found that curious.  He wanted to know how I would know that and I explained that I used to work for Purina as a Sales Manager in an area that raised a lot of layers. He found that interesting.

He said, “I have been to San Francisco and New York”.  I mockingly laughed and said that he had not really experienced the US and he should come to the middle of the country where real people live. He smiled and said, “To the Midwest?  Where the people are happy.”

“The Midwest – where the people are happy”.  Isn’t that an interesting perspective of an Israeli chicken farmer standing just a few miles from the boarder with Lebanon?

He told me that I was a good salesman and if he talked to me five more minutes, I might sell him something, so he excused himself and he and his little friend  headed toward his Mercedes.  As he opened the door to enter the Mercedes, he shouted across the parking lot, “I have enough chickens that I can take vacation”. Interpretation: I have a large enough operation that I must hire the labor done.  I am not responsible for caring for the chickens myself, so I can get away. I was not surprised.  🙂

Christmas 2016 is the 200th anniversary of the words of Silent Night being written by a young priest, Father Joseph Mohr, in the Salzburg region of present day Austria. It was first performed at St. Nicholas parish church in Austria on Christmas Eve of 1818 with guitar accompaniment.

For many, it just isn’t Christmas without the traditional Christmas Eve service benediction of singing Silent Night while dimming the church lights and lighting candles held by each worshiper.

This carol is so popular that much like the song Amazing Grace, it has even made its way into secular society. In 2011, it was declared an intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO.

How many times and in how many venues has Silent Night been sung?

During WWI in 1914, Pope Benedict XV called for a Christmas truce which was officially rejected, but along the war lines, a spontaneous truce broke out.  Reports vary, so no one knows exactly what happened and undoubtedly, it was different depending on where you were along the line.  Accounts recorded in diaries and letters home are pieced together to show that German troops on one side and British, Belgian and French troops on the other, laid down their guns and came up out of their trenches, some as close as 100 feet apart.  They exchanged cigarettes, food and trinkets.  One side would offer a carol in their native tongue then the other side would sing one.  At times, they joined in singing familiar carols together – each in their own tongue.  There were even reports of quickly fashioned soccer balls being kicked around.  Today, there is an annual soccer match to remember that Silent Night when the gunfire ceased for a short while.

Some call it a Christmas miracle.

Silent night, Holy night, All is calm, All is bright!

As we approach Christmas Eve, can we even for a moment try to put ourselves in the minds of the people of ancient Israel? The Prophets, who proclaimed the news of a king one day coming to unite and lead God’s people again, had been silent for over 400 years. ‘Was God dead’, they may have asked. Was all hope gone? Had God forgotten about Israel? We get impatient and frustrated when God seems to grow distant for a few days. Now, God had been silent for generation upon generation. This once proud nation, was now dominated by the Romans. They had been defeated and exiled. Ten of the twelve Tribes of Israel had been lost. Where was there any hope?

Then, to this insignificant peasant girl came a supernatural experience, but who gave this woman – a very young woman at that – any credibility? Yet, in a distant land, there is a stirring. A few wealthy and wise men that mysteriously watch the stars for signs, begin a long and uncertain journey to see what they believe is a newborn king.
Suddenly, in the countryside, it happens – it is unexplainable, but no less certain. An angel appears and the heavens light up scaring the shepherds tending their flocks nearly out of their wits. Other heavenly beings join in and sing. The angel says, “Today, in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. “
The long 400 year silence had been broken. The announcement is NOT just that a child was born, but the MESSIAH – the long awaited Messiah, the Savior of the World, has come to earth. Emmanuel – God with Us lives among us.

Though beginning with Adam and Eve, man drifted from God. Now, all generations are invited to return and be reconciled with the Creator. Words alone cannot express this opportunity – this reconciliation. And God is not only calling His people – the Hebrew children back, we soon learn that he is calling ALL Children to come to Him. He is not only the God of Israel. He is your God and my God. He not only cares about groups of people – He cares about each individual.

That same excitement can be ours today. Have we drifted? Has God been silent? Are we dominated by life’s pressure – money, health, relationships, fear, doubt, disappointment?
Listen – “We hear the Christmas angels, the great glad tidings tell. Oh come to us, abide with us, Our Lord, Emmanuel. “

(This is a paraphrased version of a story told recently by our pastor.  I wish that I could recall the original author so that I could give proper recognition.)

It was Christmas Eve and the family was headed to church.  As she always did, the wife expressed a deep desire that her husband join the family.  He always declined.  He told his wife, “I just can’t get my head around God – if there is a God – coming down to be a man. That makes no sense and I would feel like such a hypocrite going to church to celebrate something that I know couldn’t be.” The wife and kids left for church with the snow falling lightly.

The father sat down in his easy chair before a roaring fire with a book. Not long, his attention was drawn to the window where he could see that the snow fall had become much heavier and the wind was kicking up. Suddenly, he was startled by a thump, then another thump, then another on their large living room window.  “Who was pelting his house with snowballs”, he thought.  He opened the front door to what was not a raging snowstorm and there was no one in the yard. He walked out just a bit to see birds crashing into the living room window. Apparently, the storm had caught them by surprise and they were trapped by the ferocity of the wind and snow.  They were seeking refuge from the storm and were drawn to the light coming from the living room.

The man thought quickly, he had to act or hundreds of birds would kill themselves by crashing into the window, falling to the ground and freezing.  He rushed to the barn, turned on the light and threw open the big doors, thinking that would attract the birds.  But they did not come to the barn.  So, he got bread and grain and threw it in the snow making a path to the safety of the barn.  He wanted more than anything for the birds to find the safety of the barn where he would care for them and feed them, yet they would not come to safety because they had learned to fear the man.

The man thought, “If only I could become one of them, I could lead them to safety because they are afraid of me as I am.” Just then, through the wind, the man heard the church bells ringing —– and he got it.  God became a man to save us!  And suddenly, it all made sense.

If we went onto the street and asked people at random to tell us their beliefs about what happens upon death, we would get a wide variety of answers. Surprisingly, if we did the same survey outside Christian churches as people exit on Sunday morning, we’d also get a wide range of responses.

Pastor Michael McIntyre, the Senior Pastor at Living Word United Methodist Church in Wildwood, MO., believes there is only one right answer and he believes it matters that we know what we believe.

This blog is about TRUTH.  I can think of nothing more important than knowing the truth about this.