Test Results

I walked into the church office one morning and checked the voicemail on the prayer line. Someone had left the following message: “Please pray for my friend. She’s having an autopsy tomorrow.”

I will neither confirm nor deny that I laughed out loud.

I will confess to thinking, “I think it’s a little late for prayer.”

She meant to say “biopsy,” which is different. An autopsy is performed to determine a cause of death. A biopsy is performed to try to prevent a disease from causing death.

Sometimes we don’t want to have a biopsy because we fear what we’ll find out. But if we don’t let them do the biopsy, they may end up performing an autopsy. That’s not a win.

I think we need an ethical biopsy (by which I mean a biopsy on our ethics, not a biopsy performed ethically). I fear that if we don’t conduct one, we’ll need an ethical autopsy. An ethical biopsy will ask, “What is making our ethics sick?” An autopsy would ask, “What killed our ethics?” I hope we won’t wait until it’s too late.

How should we test our ethics? As a Christian, I would say we evaluate them by Jesus’ ethics. What were his perspectives, attitudes, and motives? How did he act on them? Jesus focused on doing what God wanted him to do, and what God wanted him to do was to give himself away for people’s sake. He came to serve rather than to be served. He came to empty himself rather than to build himself up. And he told us that following him means giving ourselves up and not seeking personal greatness or power.

Sadly, some of the most visible leaders associated with Christianity seem to have sold their spiritual birthright for a bowl of political pottage. Happily, the vast majority of Christian leaders do their best to serve as Jesus called them to do and showed them how to do.

All of us Christians should ask ourselves a few questions: (1) Do I love the Lord will my entire being? (2) Do I love my neighbors as I love myself? (3) Do I put others’ needs ahead of my own? (4) Do I care about and try to help the marginalized and oppressed? (5) Do I practice radical love that shows itself in radical forgiveness? (6) Does my experience of God’s grace and mercy cause me to treat others with grace and mercy?

If we apply those tests to our attitudes and behaviors, what will the results be?

Lots of people aren’t Christians, though. And lots of people who profess to be Christians don’t do much about it. So it’s not sound procedure to wait around for the United States to become a Christian nation on the assumption that it would make everything all right.

So how can we test the ethics of our nation as a whole? It comes down to how we think about, talk about, and treat other people. Here are some questions we should all ask about our country, our leaders, and ourselves: (1) Do we think of all people as being as fully human as we are? (2) Do we understand and remember that every individual is different and that differences are good? (3) Do we try to use our words to build up and help rather than to tear down and hurt? (4) Are we compassionate toward the marginalized and oppressed? (5) Do we practice both love for our country and respect for other countries? (6) Do we try to see the bad as well as the good in our culture and to see the good as well as the bad in other cultures?

We should ask many other questions, but those will get us started. We need to undertake an ethical biopsy so we can get rid of harmful motives, attitudes, and actions and so we can develop helpful ones. It can be a painful process, but it beats the alternative.

A Free Press

May 3 was World Press Freedom Day, which is promoted annually by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization). According to its website, it

is a date which celebrates the fundamental principles of press freedom, to evaluate press freedom around the world, to defend the media from attacks on their independence and to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the exercise of their profession.…

It serves as an occasion to inform citizens of violations of press freedom - a reminder that in dozens of countries around the world, publications are censored, fined, suspended and closed down, while journalists, editors and publishers are harassed, attacked, detained and even murdered.

It is a date to encourage and develop initiatives in favour of press freedom, and to assess the state of press freedom worldwide.

3 May acts as a reminder to governments of the need to respect their commitment to press freedom and is also a day of reflection among media professionals about issues of press freedom and professional ethics. Just as importantly, World Press Freedom Day is a day of support for media which are targets for the restraint, or abolition, of press freedom. It is also a day of remembrance for those journalists who lost their lives in the pursuit of a story.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 1303 journalists have been killed worldwide since 1992. Nine died on April 30 of this year in an attack in Kabul, Afghanistan. They were covering the aftermath of a suicide bombing when a second bomb was set off, killing the journalists and several relief workers. Also according to the CPJ, 262 journalists were imprisoned in 2017.

We assume that journalists here in the United States aren’t in danger, but we have some cause to be concerned. People in very high places say very negative things about journalists who report unfavorable things about them. Sometimes, they even point to the journalists who are covering a large gathering and criticize them in extreme terms. Politicians should be careful with such words. It’s bad enough to intentionally inspire disdain toward the press, but they could unintentionally inspire violence.

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” According to the Legal Information Institute of the Cornell University School of Law, the Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment’s prohibition of Congress from making any law against freedom of the press applies to the entire federal government and to state governments.

We should support a free press around the world. We should also support a free press here at home. I know we hear a lot about “fake news,” but it seems to me that what some people call “fake news” is actually negative coverage they don’t like, rather than something that is factually incorrect. Journalists aren’t perfect. Reporters have their perspectives and worldviews as anyone else does.

But we need a free press because it is necessary to our democracy. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to investigate everything that our elected and appointed officials are doing. That’s the job of journalists, and we need them to keep doing it.

Sheep and Shepherds

I spent six years of my life preaching in a sanctuary that had a large stained glass picture hanging over its baptistery. (For you good folks who worship in churches that use less water than Baptists and some others do to baptize, that’s where they dunk new believers and the occasional backslider who wants a do-over.) The picture portrays Jesus holding a lamb. It’s one of the most beloved Christian images: Jesus as the Good Shepherd.

We get the image from Jesus’ own words: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). When we think about a good shepherd, our minds also go back to the 23^rd Psalm, which begins, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” The psalm celebrates the ways that God takes care of us as we journey through life. The Gospel celebrates the fact that Jesus is such a good shepherd that he died for our sake.

We don’t see a lot of sheep in our part of the world, so most of us don’t know much about them. I sure don’t.

One day I was telling a friend how weary I was of having to tell church folks the same things over and over—you know, things like how we Christians really should follow Jesus and try to treat other folks with love and respect. “Well,” he replied, “the Bible says we’re sheep, and sheep aren’t the brightest creatures in the world.” (You should know that my friend was a layperson, not a pastor, so he was talking about his own kind. You should also know that I’d never say such a thing about church members.) The truth about sheep, as I understand it from books and other such tools of enlightenment, is that they need a lot of help to survive; they really depend on a shepherd. It’s in that sense that people are like sheep: we need God to meet our ultimate need for life.

We also need other people. This leads me to mention one way that human sheep aren’t like literal sheep: they can’t become shepherds, but we can. We can become shepherds to each other.

Pastors are shepherds to their congregations; in fact, the word “pastor” literally means “shepherd.” This means at least two things. First, it means that pastors walk ahead of the sheep, showing the way with our lives, and not driving them from behind. Second, it means that, since we pastors are shepherds who serve the Good Shepherd, we are willing to lay down our lives for people. The odd thing about a pastor’s experience is that sometimes, when she or he tries really hard to lead the sheep in the way the Good Shepherd would have them go—the ways of grace, mercy, love, justice, empathy, compassion, and service—it’s the sheep in the church who attack them while the supposed predators outside the church appreciate their efforts.

But pastors aren’t the only sheep that can become shepherds. Any and all of us can as well. It’s in the Bible: “We know love by this, that [Jesus] laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” (1 John 3:16-17)

We might have a chance to help in a big way. So in Antioch, Tennessee, a few days ago, a young man wrestled the weapon away from a shooter who had already killed four people. And in Detroit, Michigan, thirteen semitruck drivers lined their trucks up under an overpass to shorten the possible fall of a man who was threatening to jump.

We may not be called on to do something quite as dramatic, but we can all lay down our lives for others. It may mean giving up something as precious as our comfort, our convenience, our customs, or even—get ready, now—our preconceived notions.

But we can do it. The Good Shepherd, and some other good shepherds, show us how.