Gay "Marriage" and the Christian

Gay marriage is a tough position for a Christian to have to address without appearing hateful, narrow minded and judgemental. Why, after all, can't we vote in favor of "gay marriage" and why in the world would we be upset to see two people who "love each other" from the same sex be happily made into a binding religious and legal union? What is it about "gay marriage" that has Christians, in particular, so upset? Why cannot we celebrate with our "gay" friends when they find the same sex "love of their lives" and promise themselves to each other?

Is it because Christians are so judgmental that they cannot stand to see anyone happy who does not have the same morality that they have? Is it because Christians feel threatened by the idea of a marriage between two same sex individuals because they don't agree with it and it violates their sacred texts? Perhaps for some this is true. I submit that the true obstacle for Christians is really far from that. Christians (thinking ones at least) object to "gay marriage" because we are being asked, directly or indirectly to celebrate and commemorate what we sincerely believe is sexual brokenness. Now, a true Christian understands that we are all broken, that is, all of mankind is "broken" in some way or another and some more obviously than others. The world is made up of broken people...none of us is perfect. But we recognize our brokenness for what it is and we don't deny it and we certainly don't celebrate it. You see, Christians understand that because of our brokenness we need a Savior to redeem us and "save us" from ourselves. We need a remedy from our broken condition. We believe that we are hopelessly morally fallen creatures who are utterly depraved and that every aspect of our being, including our sexuality, is marred by sin (rebellion against our Creator). In some way or another, every aspect of our beings is corrupted. That is a fact for Christians. That is classic Christian doctrine. We are all ruined masterpieces of the Creator, created "good" with some good still evident in us but morally decayed in so many ways. We each struggle daily with our own temptations and the corruption within our own souls.

Homosexual unions are, therefore, upsetting for the Christian because, while we are all broken, we understand marriage to be a the ideal relationship between two people. It is so special it is used to describe the union between Christ and His Church which is called the "Bride of Christ" throughout Scripture. It is a celebration of something pure, good and right: a spiritual and physical union between two people of the opposite sex which combines the separate persons involved into ONE FLESH. That is, a true marriage is the complementary union of two people with completely different perspectives (male and female) coming together to form a new integral whole. It is a lofty ideal of pure love, designed by God, in a world of moral decay.

To ask a Christian to sanction "gay marriage" is, in effect, asking him to violate his religious convictions by celebrating the very brokenness that we believe Christ came to deliver us from.  This is why we cannot recognize "gay marriage" or even wish some one congratulations on becoming married to a same sex partner. It would be akin to us congratulating them on a disaster. For a Christian that truly follows Christ and believes the Scripture it is like celebrating spiritual death. It is, in fact, our love for mankind that prevents us from wanting to see anyone, let alone celebrating it, engage in conduct that we believe will lead to a spiritual and moral disaster of gigantic proportions. How could we believe otherwise? We are not being mean or intolerant in not wanting to see people violate God's sacred command. We are actually being loving, not wanting people to bring ruin upon themselves for that is what we believe happens in such an instance. For us, celebrating gay marriage would be like celebrating divorce or adultery. Although such unfortunate things occur and we still deeply love the people involved, we cannot in good conscience celebrate the happening of these events, no matter how the culture "spins" it. . 

Until we have proof positive that "gay" people were created or "born that way" and that it is not a defective, broken sexuality dysfunction, we cannot believe otherwise. Alas, such will never be proven because "gay" is behavior and not a natural state. In this way being "gay" is far different than the race issue. One cannot help what he is born or the color of his skin. But one can definitely change his/her sexuality...it happens all the time. It is choice that, over time, reinforces itself in a positive or negative direction. As Christians we want to encourage people to overcome their brokenness, not deny it or worse, celebrate it.


He answered, Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?
~Matthew 19: 4-5

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~Posted by permission of Pastor Jeffrey N. Daly

Pastor Jeffrey N. Daly is the author of Repentance—God’s Strategy to Bless a Nation and Zeal to Repent!—A Key to Personal and National Restoration 

–Both are available for FREE at The National Day of Repentance website: www.dayofrepentance.org

or by emailing him at

jdalylaw@aol.com

Grace vs. Works

I continue to constantly hear more vacuous teaching on the subject of God's grace. It seems the likes of Joel Osteen and Joseph Prince have infiltrated even country preachers with the idea that WHAT WE DO, THE THOUGHTS WE THINK AND THE IDEAS THAT DRIVE US have no bearing on how and what we receive from the Lord's hand. This is utter nonsense. This is not only bad theology, it is actually quite dangerous because it removes from the equation our own responsibility for how we act and what results we receive in life. You would never, for example, train your kids this way and be considered a good parent. This is completely irresponsible teaching. It sounds attractive, though, because we can blame everyone but ourselves (even God) for our failures. It is very much in line with modern thinking which seeks to blame any problems we may have, including our addictions on others. In this case, in the case of blessings, it is all up to God.

Recently I heard a preacher say that everything, every blessing and every gift we receive from God is wholly the product of God's desire to bless us unconditionally and he strongly implied that nothing we do or can do will change that fact. We just need to believe this and we receive it. God is, it seems, bent on giving us our every desire and meeting our every need regardless of our response to Him, our level of obedience or our level of understanding of His Word or the ideas which drive our behavior. Again, this is wrong. Clearly, if nothing we did or thought mattered, why bother to think correctly, use wisdom or even behave well? Furthermore TRUE faith or belief in God manifests itself in HOW WE ACT: "Faith without works is dead," the Bible says. In fact, this is the point of the entire Book of James. Works matter! Works by faith are evidence of that faith. True faith produces good works which, in turn, produce blessings. This has always been the traditional and correct teaching. Faith is what drove Christians to build hospitals, orphanages and great ministries. Those who worked towards that end will reap the rewards for that. Though God's grace is needed for any undertaking, good results are not automatic. We are partners with God's grace. We work with God. What these modern day heretical preachers of grace fail to grasp is that God fills in the blanks by doing what we cannot do for ourselves. That is where grace (and prayer) comes in! What we CAN do for ourselves, God rightly expects us to do. It is bit like the old saw, not a direct biblical quote but accurate nonetheless, "God helps those who help themselves." How true.

Think about it. If grace was automatic and blessings flowed to us in the form of job offers, money, good health and sound relationships, regardless of whether we used the gifts, talents and brains God gave us to obtain these things then would not everyone be similarly blessed? Does God randomly bless some more than others? Is God arbitrary or is God purposeful and perfect in his dealings with us? Does not our faith in God require that we act upon it, use it, trusting him enough to take his word by relying on it? Do we just sit back and wait for grace to happen? Imagine if David had felt that way about challenging Goliath. Did not David's faith in God's deliverance force him into the battle arena with just a slingshot and a few stones. That action, motivated by his faith in God, won the day! THAT is how faith often works.

The way grace works is typified by The Parable of the Talents, taught by Christ himself in Matthew Chapter 25. Three different "servants" of the Master were each given a different measure of grace as measured by the number of "talents" doled out at the beginning. First, we should note that all were servants of the Master who here clearly represents God. Grace is NOT equal even at the first because each were given a different number of talents. All, however, were required to put those talents to work to achieve the Master's aims and serve his interests.  The first two faithful servants were commended in proportion to what they accomplished based on the amount with which they started. That is, the one with ten talents earned ten more and the one with five earned five more. Both were commended by the Master as having done well. The one with only one talent, however, was scolded, punished and called "worthless" for not using what he was given. He failed to act. This is how grace works. We work with what we are given BY GRACE and we produce results (even the economy is a form of grace which allows increase). But the faith of the two faithful servants is aptly demonstrated by the works which they did with the grace they were given. Obedience follows faith. They multiplied what they had, they took the raw material and turned it into something useful for the Master. Modern "grace teaching" heresy would hold that they need not have put forth any effort at all; "just believe" or just "claim it." Note that the works here does not detract from the grace of God but it puts it into proper context. It is no less grace because they used wisdom (wisdom is grace from God) to make their investments, nor is it less grace because they worked at their various projects (the energy and diligence they used was also grace from God). Thus is grace present the entire time. It is also God's grace that gave them the talents in the first place. It is God's grace that instructed them (implied) to make use of those talents and it is God's grace that supplies the market forces and the economy to render an increase. All of that is screaming grace. But grace is not found in the servants sitting back and not trying. That is considered wicked slothfulness and is a serious sin. 

I understand the desire driving people to accept the false notion that we can each have it all but it is simply not true and is not born out by the evidence. In the parable just mentioned, the end result was unequal, as was the starting point. In fact, in the end, the lazy servant was stripped of his talent and it was given to the one with the ten talents. We have other biblical examples. David was exceptional in his courage and in his trust in God. That was God given grace. Not many people would venture out to face that giant in a fight to the death; indeed the entire Israelite army had refused to do so, including King Saul. David acted upon his convictions and David got the rewards for it. We teach our children to behave well and expect rewards. Is God less intelligent or less wise than us? Does God scatter his rewards aimlessly, without regard to merit or justice? It may seem that way at times but that is because we don't know all the facts. Some things are not readily apparent and only God knows all but it would surely be absurd to believe that our choices, our actions and our beliefs don't matter. In one way or another, David was preparing his entire life for that conflict; he was skilled with a sling shot from long hours of practice in the desert. He had faced up to the lion and the bear and prevailed. THAT was grace of which David took advantage by GROWING in skill, courage and faith. That is how grace works.  Like the talents, grace grows when you apply it by using it.

Isn't it a better theology to teach that APART FROM SALVATION grace not only falls as God gives it (it is still unmerited and never stops being grace) but attaches to obedience, courage and wisdom where the wise and the diligent, according to God's ways, position themselves and seek to tap into the never ending flow of God's grace? Is that not what the Christian life is all about? Isn't that what we ought to exhort others to do? Pastors should encourage their flock to excellence, good deeds, courage, wisdom and right living! Should not we strive, paradoxically, to experience more of God's grace by diligently SEEKING His favor by doing good and acting wisely? Of course! Pastors do their congregations a huge disservice by pitching grace's results as automatic and our response as irrelevant...for that is what our response would be if indeed we (our actions) did not factor into the equation. Throughout the Bible and often in the New Testament we are told to urgently seek greater blessings from God. The gift of prophecy (1 Cor 14:1), healing (Isaiah 58:8), long life (Eph 6:2), eternal rewards beyond salvation (1 Cor 3), treasures in heaven (Matt 6:20), finances (Malachi 3:10) and strong healthy relationships (Eph 5) are all, in part, the product of following God grace and doing his will. The very teaching and discipline of God FOR HIS CHILDREN is calculated to move us in exactly that direction, away from sin, poor choices, laziness and thoughtless living. In fact, the major part of the New Testament is instruction to believers on how BEST TO LIVE! Grace is in the instruction. We apply it by doing it. Grace for blessings in this life should not be equated with grace for salvation..they are two completely different things. Failing to distinguish between the two is foolish.

Grace is markedly different only when it comes to salvation. Only then is is all God and not us. Only with salvation can it be said that God reaches down to us who were dead in trespasses and sins and gives us a heart of faith necessary to receive the grace of the cross and Christ's atonement and redemption of our poor and hopelessly lost souls. Only by pure grace (with no conscious action on our part!) could we have ever been saved since the natural man is at war with God, an enemy of God, unable to respond due to our dead condition. Dead means lifeless. One cannot be partly dead. That is our natural state, spiritually: DEAD, an enemy of God! Without the saving grace of God, extended sovereignly to us, by his divine election, not ours, could we ever respond to the Gospel. We do nothing to get saved because we COULD DO NOTHING. He saved us solely by his grace. He also blesses us after salvation, by his grace, but in a different ways. Grace is differently apprehended once we are God's children, born again, regenerated spiritually and with Christ in us. Modern grace preachers fail to make this important distinction, proclaiming that grace is always automatic because it is effectuated that way one time in the salvation process. It is not. Once we are alive in Christ, the Holy Spirit, living inside us leads is into more grace but we have to follow, we have to obey, we have to put forth an effort in cooperation with God. That's how grace works once we are his children. It is similar to how grace works with a natural parent. We know that spiritual things often have a parallel in the natural world. We never stop being God's children after are regenerated but whether we experience blessing or discipline depends in large measure UPON US!

So, let us forget once and for all the false message of automatic grace unless by that we mean that God will also grant us His grace and punish us with discipline, often severe, if we fail to invest out talent, perform his will or keep his word. That is true faith: following Christ and obeying his word and then there are more blessings and yes, GRACE, that attaches to that. May you find it.

My child, don't reject the LORD's discipline, and don't be upset when he corrects you.

~Proverbs 3:11

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~Posted by permission of Pastor Jeffrey N. Daly

Pastor Jeffrey N. Daly is the author of Repentance—God’s Strategy to Bless a Nation and Zeal to Repent!—A Key to Personal and National Restoration 

–Both are available for FREE at The National Day of Repentance website: www.dayofrepentance.org

or by emailing him at

jdalylaw@aol.com

REDSKINS? REALLY?

By James Wilson

             Amid all the problems that currently split our republic and our people down the middle, the US Patent Office has unerringly struck at the biggest of them all – the persistence of the Washington Redskins Football Team in retaining the name by which they have been known for more than eighty years -- NOT.  The Patent Office bowed to politically correct pressure from lobbying groups, the US Senate Majority Leader, and the President himself and declared that the team name is racially disparaging and therefore illegal.  They revoked the trademark status of the name, and in so doing they have joined the long line of government entities intent on re-making our nation into one governed by the whims of men and not laws.

            The patent office justified its decision with reference to an obscure section of its mandate that permits denial of trademark status from the get-go if it can be demonstrated the mark is offensive or disparaging to a definable group within our culture – but only from the get-go.  In other words, if the Redskins name was deemed offensive to Native Americans in 1933, when the trademark was first sought and granted, the Patent Office would have had grounds for denying the petition.  But the present controversy over the name began in the early 1990s, and no one has offered evidence of any objection to the trademark at the time it was granted.  So far as I can tell, there is nothing in the law governing the patenting and trademarking process that permits a do-over sixty to eighty years after the fact.  But then there is nothing new in this administration going lawless.

            When a similar action was brought before the feds in the nineties they revoked the trademark at that time also.  It was overturned on appeal because the petitioners offered no documentation on the impact of the alleged “discrimination” on the injured parties.  The same deficiencies are blatantly evident in the present action, but that does not exhaust the issues left unaddressed by a longshot.

               There was no outcry at the time over the disparaging impact of the name; there has been no substantial wave of protest even at this time.  The action in question was brought by five members of the Oneida Nation.  If an entire class of people were injured it would make sense to bring a class action; the petitioners evidently could not find enough offended Native Americans to make even a pass at establishing a class.  The most recent polling to my knowledge was done in 2004 and ninety per cent of Native Americans polled said they had suffered no harm.  (I get my information from the Washington Post – hardly a right wing newspaper – and an editorial in that paper written in June by Jonathan Turley.)  The only people who seem to have their knickers in a knot are the white liberals – inside and outside government – who are grimly determined to make their life business minding that of others.

            Don’t get me wrong.  If I believed for one moment that a substantial number of Native Americans were actually upset about the Redskins I would be backing their play with all the strength and gifting I have.  But I would be advocating for private citizens to pressure – through boycotts and such – the team to do the right thing.  I would not ask government to trample the team’s free speech right.  Agencies acting outside the laws that justify their being only make a bad situation worse.  And God knows we have bigger fish to fry – whether in terms of Native American issues or education or health care or the destruction of American credibility worldwide – than a trumped up spat over a name. 

There is no excuse for the damage – genocide is the appropriate word – done to Native peoples through massacre, removal from their lands, infliction of infectious diseases, and the destruction of their food supply and habitat – and much of it is still denied throughout our culture.  But if we want to address the serious issues facing this portion of our ppopulace we might start with the forty-nine per cent of Native young people who do not graduate high school.  We might even ask the Obama Administration why it prevents nations like the Crows of Montana from developing their energy and mineral resources – both rich and available – on their sovereign and guaranteed-by-treaty reservation lands.    

             Jesus – the only unblemished bringer of justice in history – calls Lazarus to emerge from his tomb in John 11.  He does not stand around assessing blame for Lazarus’ death; he calls the man – and all mankind – to accept abundant life going forward.

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at

praynorthstate@charter.net

Zero Gravitas

~Reprinted and Updated from My Shibboleth Blog (June 2012)

I don’t believe in gravity.  Yeah, yeah…I know there is evidence of it all around us.  For instance, all my stuff somehow stays anchored to the floor and doesn’t float around the house like a NASA space mission.  Leaves fall from the tree and everything that goes up eventually comes down.  Nevertheless, I simply don’t believe in it.  It’s too “confining”.  Besides, I’ve always believed I can fly.  In fact, after I finish writing this blog I’m going to climb up on the roof of my house and jump off.  How many want to wager a bet that I won’t splat on the ground?  Ok…just kidding or JK as my kids would text.  The gravity analogy was just a mental exercise.  My point?  Just because you don’t believe in something does not mean the consequences will be any different for you.

Here’s a couple of other things to consider.  We need gravity.  We wouldn’t be able to exist without gravity.  Gravity is the glue the holds the entire world together.  Without it, everything would go flying into outer space as the Earth rotates.  We all would be able to literally “fly”.  However, let me assure you, we would not enjoy the trip. 

I think God gets a bad rap sometimes.  We read the prophetic judgments of the Old Testament and equate it with someone throwing a massive celestial “hissy fit”.  Sometimes I’d really rather skip those sections and go straight to the love and forgiveness part.  However, they are there for a reason. 

Before I had kids, I don’t think I understood the concept of “God the Father” very well.  Soon after becoming a parent this became very real to me.  Sometimes you have to be harsh to get your point across.  My son is a master of persuasion. I sincerely pray he uses this skill to advance good causes later on in life.  For now, he wields it on his parents when he wants to do something we would normally not allow.  It’s gotten to the point where I over-exaggerate my answers so we don’t have to go the entire nine rounds of verbal jousting anymore.  The conversation looks something like this:

Mommmmmm….Why can’t I go (fill in the blank with any number of dangerous, unwise choices).  

My answer:  “Because you will get hit by a truck”. 

Of course, I don’t WANT this to happen.  It would be a parent’s worst nightmare.  God, our Father, is basically saying the same thing.  When He says “Repent—or else”, it is not a vicious threat.  It is an allegorical shorthand that we must sit up and take notice of.  His unchangeable moral laws are a necessary component of living in an earthly realm where there MUST be definite principles.  If we eschew these laws our society will eventually implode.  This is a historical fact.  We need to give these moral laws more gravitas…more weight.

As a nation we need to wake up and renew a commitment to our Judeo-Christian foundation…Or else the United States is about to get hit by the proverbial truck.

No, seriously.

_________________________________________________

~Posted by permission of Pastor Jeffrey N. Daly

Pastor Jeffrey N. Daly is the author of Repentance—God’s Strategy to Bless a Nation and Zeal to Repent!—A Key to Personal and National Restoration 

–Both are available for FREE at The National Day of Repentance website: www.dayofrepentance.org

or by emailing him at

jdalylaw@aol.com

LIVING IN THE TENSION OF NOW AND NOT NOW

By James Wilson

             The Bible is clear: every tear will be dried and joy will permeate His creation and all who turn to Him.  It is equally clear every knee will bow and every tongue confess Christ is Lord of all.  That time is not yet, but it is a promise of God – if we understand His Word at all – and so it is a done deal.  We can even say – in this light – there are no un-believers; there are only believers and pre-believers.  We can know a taste of the joy is already on-line for present believers.

            The tension of what must come because it is promised by the Living God and knowing we are not there yet is the same tension we find in calling an acorn an oak tree because it can be no other thing, and calling a fetus a child because its DNA is irrevocably human.  The tension is real because we await what is not yet but still is.

            The Bible also describes God’s adversary as a roaring and rampaging beast.  This adversary manifests its spirit in human form often enough, as the severed heads in the streets of Mosul and Tikrit testify.  They testify to the consummate evil of the Jihadists running wild in Iraq. 

The same spirit is manifested in the brutality of Nigeria’s Boko Haram, in the beasts who eat the hearts of their victims in Syria, and those who massacred so many in Libya while murdering the equally bestial dictator, Quaddafi. They butchered the American ambassador to Libya and the men defending him.  It manifests in Palestinians who machine gun shoppers in Jerusalem, pirates who kidnap and murder in the Indian Ocean, and terrorists who do the same in the mountains of the Philippines and the jungles of Liberia.  It speaks in the mobs who burn churches and Christians from Egypt to India to Nepal, and in the mullahs who build nuclear weapons in Iran.  These people have one common thread running through them – the represent militant Islam and their spiritual roots are as much in Nazi Germany as they are in Muhammad.

The evil is never more intimate than when it addresses individuals who displease it.  As I write Meriam Ibrahim awaits her death by stoning in a Sudanese prison.  She was forced to give birth while shackled.  Her sentence is delayed two years so her baby can be weaned before being placed in the care of those who ordered her death.  She will be lashed one hundred times before the stoning begins.  Her crime?  She married a Christian man and herself professes Christ – apostasy according to the Sharia Law under which her people must bow and suffer.

Leaders in her government appeared to acknowledge the worldwide outcry for some days, but soon went back on their promise to release her.  The urge to destroy what displeases is too strong in them.

In Pakistan it has been a specially bloody Spring for honor killings.  Twenty-five-year-old Farzana Iqbal was buried up to her waist and stoned to death with bricks by family members in front of the Lahore Courthouse and hundreds of onlookers May 27.  Her crime was marrying against her family’s wishes; she did not even have to profess Jesus to bring the wrath of a false god down on herself.  There were three more attacks – two of them fatal – in the first days of June and for the same reasons.  Nadia was burnt alive by her father and brothers.  Allah Mafi was strangled by her two eldest brothers.  Saba Maqsood was shot twice, her body stuffed in a sack, and thrown into a canal.  (She survived.)  All three were invited home by their families on the pretext their sins were forgiven; all were victims of treachery as much as brutality; there are more than eighty such killings each year in Pakistan alone.  Sharia Law provides all penalties for the killings waived if the victim’s family forgives the killers.  Since the killers were acting on behalf of the women’s families one can perhaps say the infernal fix is in.

It is a lie to say all Muslims are militant Islamists.  It is truth to say Jesus Christ died His sacrificial death on the Cross for each and every Muslim – militant or no – and rose in sacramental resurrection for them on the third day as much as He did for anyone else.  And so there is the tension of living between what we know He intends for all mankind and the evil we see manifested in so many.  Truth is Muslims are children of God while Islam is a religion of hatred for all life.  The best and only way to address both realities in the Spirit of the Living God is to live and share the God’s peace which passes all understanding – not just talk about it.  To live there we must become people of repentance – constantly re-focusing our attention on the One who has come and is to come.  He understands our tendency to hate better than we do; He counters it with love that defies our understanding.  That is living in the tension, and nothing else really matters. 

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at

praynorthstate@charter.net

THE PASSION OF MEL GIBSON

By James Wilson

           

           

2014 marks the tenth anniversary of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, and of Mel Gibson’s own passion.  Although a sober Christian for more than a decade before The Passion, Gibson’s rep was as a hard living action figure until he made a film about Christ.  The industry to which he brought billions of dollars has never forgiven him for breaking the stereotype.  His own outrageous behavior – fueled by alcohol when he broke his own recovery justified the condemnation in the minds of those who condemned him. This top box office draw before Passion has not found employment with a major Hollywood studio since its release.

            There was his 2006 arrest for drunk driving when he shelled the arresting officer with a torrent of anti-Semitic invective, and the tapes of abusive phone calls to the girlfriend for whom he left his wife and other children.  That he was reacting – as an alcoholic and not as a rational man – to the relentless attacks he received from the Jewish community over what they perceived as anti-Semitism in the Passion is no excuse.  (The film accurately depicts the Roman occupiers as the executioners of Christ.)  That the tapes of the calls – in their entirety – show an ongoing shakedown of a wealthy movie mogul by someone skilled at pushing the buttons of an alcoholic way off the wagon does not lessen the fact Gibson has a violent temper – when he is drinking.  But it has been ten years.  He has held countless meetings with Jewish leaders and groups attempting to reconcile; he has donated millions to Jewish causes and concerns.  He has been sober again these past seven years.  Is forgiveness and a second chance on the horizon, or is his the unforgivable sin?

            According to Allison Hope Weiner, a print journalist who wrote some of the most vitriolic material against him before she got to know him, it is past time to forgive.

            I met Gibson a few weeks prior to the Passion’s release.  I was part of a focus group of about seventy people – one of many groups invited to a screening of a rough cut of the film in multiple cities – and Gibson showed up, took questions, and gave us a couple hours of his time over and above the screening time for the film.  I saw a visibly shy man who had already absorbed massive amounts of criticism for a film no one had yet seen.  Although we were all Christian leaders and expected to be at least sympathetic to his efforts, he seemed fearful that we too would open fire.  I saw also a man who believed – despite his clearly expressed faith in the Lord who had rescued him from alcohol and self-destruction twelve years earlier – that he could prevail over his personal crises on personal strength alone.  That is a recipe for disaster, and especially in a recovering addict.   

           

            But I keep remembering that screening and picture a man so humble on the one hand and so committed to making a film that glorified his Lord on the other that he sought – and accepted – recommendations from the audience for improving it.  One strategic scene in particular was seriously modified for the theatrical release as a result of our input; there may have been others.  At the same time his grim determination to tough things out makes him more a slave to pride than he is to alcohol.  But which one of us is free from that addictive demon?  His fall should serve as a lesson.

            Mel Gibson is an amazingly talented and committed man.  I love films like Braveheart and Signs and The Patriot – where he portrays strong but conflicted characters battling their personal demons and seeking the face of God as the only and ultimate solution.  I loved Gallipoli and I hate films like the Mad Max and Lethal Weapon franchises – because the latter are – to me – all action and no struggle for truth and abundant life.  If Mel Gibson is anti-Semitic in his heart and not just a man who struck out blindly and stupidly in an alcoholic rage one night I am Santa Claus.  And if he is anything but a flawed human being who wants to be better than he is and often blows it, I am Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.  He is certainly not the Pharisee in Luke 18 who thanks God he is not like other men and goes away self-satisfied and self-congratulated.  He is more like the tax collector who cries out for the mercy of the Lord and finds it in Jesus.  And it has been ten years. 

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at

praynorthstate@charter.net