Moore to the Point
By Russell D. Moore. Russell D. Moore serves as the teaching pastor at Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky. In addition, Dr. Moore is the Dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice President for Academic Administration at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Find sermons and other resources to help Christians engage the culture from a biblical worldview at www.russellmoore.com.

The Ecumenism of the Abortion Clinic

— Thursday, December 27th, 2007 —

Touchstone magazine has archived electronically now my editorial from last year’s sanctity of human life issue. The editorial is below. I find the whole thing even sadder this year than last.

We are accustomed to seeing Evangelicals and Roman Catholics praying together outside abortion clinics and working together for pro-life legislation. But we don’t think about a less pleasant ecumenism: Catholics and Evangelicals waiting together in the lobby of an abortion facility.

A front-page article in the New York Times last September featured an inside look at the daily workings of an abortion clinic in Little Rock. The piece communicated the calloused yet tortured consciences of the women involved. They don’t wish to be seen, or to make contact with others in the waiting room. Even more striking, though, are their religious commitments.

One Baptist college student, having her third abortion, is quoted in the article saying: “My religion is against it. In a way I feel I’m doing wrong, but you can be forgiven. I blame myself. I feel I shouldn’t have sex at all.”

“I’ve done this once and swore I wouldn’t do it again,” said a woman named Regina. “Every woman has second thoughts, especially because I’m Catholic.” Regina noted that she went to confession. “The priest didn’t hound me,” she reported. “He said, ‘People make mistakes.’”

The facility’s operating room supervisor, Ebony, whom the article chillingly describes as rinsing “the blood off aborted tissues,” could understand Regina’s story. Ebony, too, has had an abortion. “As a Baptist, she still considered abortion a sin, but so are a lot of things we all do, she said.” The article closes with the Baptist’s words to the Catholic undergoing the abortion: “No problem sweetie. We’ve all been there.”

As we talk through the “ecumenism of the trenches” between Catholics and Evangelicals, we should remember the sad truth that there is also an “ecumenism of the waiting room.” The women ushered into the death clinics are not usually secularist feminists, proudly wearing their NOW Tshirts. More often, they are girls from St. Joseph’s parish or First Baptist’s youth group.

Grateful for Galilean Light

— Saturday, December 22nd, 2007 —

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. And nations shall come to your light and kings to the brightness of your rising.

Lift up your eyes all around, and see; they all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come from afar, and your daughters shall be carried on the hip. Then you shall see and be radiant; and your heart shall thrill and exult, because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you.

A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Epha; all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall bring good news, the praises of the Lord.

Isaiah 60:1-6 (ESV)

Joseph of Nazareth vs. Planned Parenthood

— Thursday, December 20th, 2007 —

It just might be the most chilling Christmas card ever sent through the U.S. mail. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the nation’s leading provider of abortions, unveiled a couple of years ago a holiday greeting card — complete with sentimental snowflakes and stars — with the caption “Choice on Earth.”

Evangelicals and Roman Catholics were rightly outraged by this atrocity. In terms of in-your-face religious hostility, it can only be compared to a Hanukah card featuring a Menorah twisted into a swastika. Even so, this “card,” and the sentiments behind it, should motivate Christians to pay closer attention to a neglected figure in the incarnation narratives — an obscure carpenter named Joseph. Could it be that Joseph of Nazareth can show 21st-century Christians how to celebrate Christmas in a culture of death?

For too long, evangelicals have concentrated on what we do not believe about Joseph. We rightly insist that he was not the birth-father of Jesus. Mary, a virgin, conceived the Messiah through the power of the Holy Spirit, with no biological contribution from a man (Luke 1:34-35). And yet, there is so much more that Scripture has to say about Joseph.

Robotic Church Membership? Christian Ethics in the Year 2088

— Thursday, December 20th, 2007 —

Would you ever baptize a robot? How about a human clone? How about some other form of bio-engineered human life-form?

Last week I taught the first-ever “D-term” December class here in Southern Seminary’s School of Theology. The course, Introduction to Christian Ethics, ended with a reflective analysis examination required of all of the students. They are working on them now, but I thought I would post the question here.

For the exam, I chose a deliberately outrageous example, an ethical and theological dilemma none of them would have ever faced. The reason for this is that I wanted them to think through issues that are not standard boilerplate ethical questions in the evangelical repertoire. The students are graded not on the final conclusion to which they come, but on how they get there. How they process the question through the prism of biblical revelation and a theology of the Christic mystery at the center of the universe, the coming Kingdom of Christ, the uniqueness and dignity of human beings in the image of Christ, the creational order, the conscience, and prudential wisdom in making hard decisions.

Question:

It is the distant future. You are 106 years-old, and in good health with a sound mind. Your great-grandson, Joshua, is a young pastor in the Southern Baptist Convention (now called the Galactic Immersionist Federation). He is seeking your counsel because, as he puts it, “I’ve got a question and there's nothing about this in the Bible.”

Chestnuts Roasting on a Rapid Fire

— Thursday, December 20th, 2007 —

In the right corner of the website, you’ll notice a new feature here. The “Rapid Fire” column will serve as a continually updated series of thought bullets. The items that appear there will be, as we would say back home in Cajun country, Lagniappe: a little something extra.

If something is a “Let’s Think about This Together” kind of item, it will appear here in “Moore to the Point.” If something is a “Hey, Notice This…Hmmm” kind of item, it will appear up in “Rapid Fire.” It’s less than a commentary, or even a blog, but Moore than a links list.

Sometimes things that appear first on Rapid Fire will be fleshed out a little more in a “Moore to the Point” commentary; sometimes not. “Rapid Fire” has an RSS feed, and can be subscribed to via Bloglines or Google Reader or whatever technology you might use.

“Rapid Fire” will also be a more dialogical aspect of the site, with contributions between several of us, sometimes responding to one another. So far you will notice that Robert Sagers (RES) and I (RDM) have been posting back and forth, just getting our sense of how to do this so we can have it up and running for the new year.

Peace, Justice, and Jesus?

— Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 —

We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee, a man I hear from a lot once put it. Sandals aren’t in style for manly footwear. We don’t burn our draft-cards down at the courthouse, and so forth. I agree. I am a small government, pro-national defense, localist traditionalist who trusts Merle Haggard (and the people who listen to him) to understand the common good much more than the faculty at Harvard or the creative management team at the Whole Foods organic store chain.

But does that mean that the issues our neighbor in Birkenstocks raises are not worth our attention? Could it be that questions we tend to relegate to “them,” the counter-cultural Left, questions about poverty, the environment, global peace, animal protection, and so forth actually have monumental implications for us as conservative Christians? Maybe they are, in fact, our issues.

In the early 1970s, some Protestant Christians were reluctant to speak out on abortion because the issue seemed “too Catholic” to them. They were wrong.

In our era, some of us seem to assume that Christian conservatism means a libertarian corporatism or, in the words of one conservative, a “global Hong Kong.” And yet, a thoughtless Mammoncentric existence is precisely at odds with a biblical understanding of reality.

Does that mean we then empower a national or multinational government to address all the ills around us? Does that mean that we minimize central issues such as the sanctity of human life? Maybe there is another way.

Environmental Protection and Animal Stewardship

— Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 —

So Which Ones Are Adopted?

— Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 —

The other day I was standing in line at a bookstore with my two oldest sons, Benjamin and Timothy, with me. The kind cashier asked, “How old are they?” I replied, “Six years old.” Before I could say another word, Benjamin blurted out, “And please don’t ask if we’re twins. It drives him crazy!”

Well, it doesn’t really drive me crazy. But the questions: “Are they brothers?” and “So which ones are adopted?” and “So you have two adopted and two of your own?” have really prompted me to ponder the way we view what’s really important. And they’ve prompted me to ponder how we often construct a way of organizing the world that makes the Gospel even more alien to us than it already is.

Hebrews 6:13-20

— Sunday, December 2nd, 2007 —

Warning

— Saturday, December 1st, 2007 —

My intern Phillip Bethancourt reflected recently on the nature of warnings. Phillip writes: “In our overly-insured, safety-conscious culture, we come across warning labels all the time. On the right side mirror of your 2003 Toyota Camry, it warns ‘objects may be closer than they appear.’ On the side of your non-fat Vanilla Latte with skim milk, the cup warns ‘Caution: hot beverage.’ On a pack of Virginia Slims, the surgeon general warns, ‘Smoking may cause cancer.’

“But the directness of the American surgeon general pails in comparison to his British counterpart. On every pack of cigarettes sold in England, the warning label is more to the point: ‘Smoking Kills!’

“Yet, every place I passed that sold cigarettes during the four months I lived in London would always have a line 5-10 people deep waiting for their turn to purchase more smokes. Why is that? Because the warning was not impacting the way they lived. Though they were warned of the dangers of their actions, it did not change their activity.”

Phillip relates these ineffectual warnings with the ‘warning passages’ of Scripture. How should these often very scary verses affect how we follow Jesus?