Yep. After only two weeks notice, Donn and Susan are parents of a little girl. Well, not that little: 7 pounds 9 ounces, 19 1/4 inches long, born at 4:42 pm Kansas City (Central) time. They went in for a routine sonogram. The doctor decided induce time was at hand. But as the contractions began, the baby’s heart rate dropped a bunch. So the made the decision to go C-section. 30 minutes later she was out and off to special care to assist her breathing. She’s doing well but will be in the hospital for a few days. Susan was bummed that she didn’t get to have time with her baby. That will happen soon, of course.

Donn called me just after he got the word that the C-Section was going to happen. They were prepping Susan and asked him to step out for a bit. The phone call was one of the outstanding times for a father and a son. Those sorts of moments are literally once in a lifetime things. Our emotions were intense and then when I prayed in response to his request, they really went over the top. There may be other times as intense and vulnerable, but sharing the moment of a firstborn in real time can only happen once. It’s something to share only with the closest friend, of course.

David (brother) and Cyndee (sister) and Joy (our 5 year old granddaughter) will join Sherry and me going to Kansas City on Friday, Nov. 30, returning Sunday evening. That will be a very special family time as we share time with our as yet unnamed granddaughter. David will join Donn at the football game, a first for them.

I’m pressing really hard, even for me. I just got the penultimate draft of Death by Love, the second the books with Mark Driscoll, for my review. I need to read the 200 pages or so, do any revisions and get it back to Crystal tomorrow. I have 46 theology exams and doctrinal statements plus meditations to do since my grad fellow had to go get a real job. I have three encyclopedia articles to write, the normal daily stuff and then class from 6 to 9. Sherry will head off to the coast, spend the night before she brings Nicole and Joy back Saturday. I’m in class from 8 to 1:30 and then down to the Rose Garden with them for Disney’s Princess on Ice. We’ll spend the evening with the girls. Then I preach twice on Sunday before we take the girls back to the beach.

And there’s picture of a new grandgirl to enjoy and post here!

What is the deal with anger? It’s one of those questions ruminating in the back of my head that’s come to the front lately. So I’ll put some reflections here and see what responses come up.

Anger is a secondary emotion rather than a basic emotion in people. It is a natural and mostly automatic response to pain of one form or another. Personal attack, physical, emotional or spiritual, whether current or anticipated, actual or perceived, creates pain and the anger response. We get angry when we think we have been injured, or mistreated, when our expectations are not met, when we are opposed in our deep values, or when we are faced with obstacles that keep us from attaining personal goals.

This is also true in God. For example God is basically compassionate, gracious, loving, holy, and so on as we see in such passages as Exodus 34:6-7, the most quoted verse in the Bible by the Bible. According to that passage, He is “slow to anger.” Wrath is not a base characteristic of His, but a response of His justice and love to the pain of sin, as we see in Exodus 32 for example.

Thoughts that can trigger anger include personal assessments, assumptions, evaluations, or interpretations of situations that makes people think that someone else is attempting (consciously or not) to hurt them. In this sense, anger is a social emotion; You always have a target that your anger is directed against (even if that target is yourself). Feelings of pain, combined with anger-triggering thoughts motivate you to take action, face threats and defend yourself by striking out against the target you think is causing you pain.

Our perceptions may assess the situation more or less threatening than it really is. People miss the very real danger of enticements to indulge sin and don’t get angry at the threat to life and godliness. Other times fear or past experience lead to mis-interpretations of danger in situations. Anger can become a normal state as people are real or perceived pain.

There are many levels of anger: We can be raging, angry, upset, irritated, peeved, annoyed, bothered. I find that men in particular reject the assessment that they are angry. Wise wives don’t charge their husbands with being angry. That makes them bad and the assessment actually leads to anger! So softer words like “upset” work better.

One must be angry sometimes. I have often said that I can’t trust people who don’t get angry at sin and evil, since that make God angry. Anger is a signal that something is wrong. It captures your attention and motivates you to take action to correct that wrong thing.

Aristotle got it right: “Anyone can become angry. That is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose and in the right way – that is not easy.”

Let’s me put some thoughts into a parable (Jesus did it, so I’ll give it a try). There are three friends, Andy, Bill and Colin (I pick the names simply because of the ABC). Andy perceives that the friends are colluding against him. The pain of the collusion is exacerbated by Andy’s sense of betrayal. But Bill is Andy’s brother and it’s not safe to be angry at him. Andy can turn the anger back on himself, adopting the interpretation that it’s his garbage that’s the problem. That inward directed anger will lead to depression, sometimes severe. Unfortunately, the anger still leaks out on Bill, his children or his other friends. He may become an angry person under a veneer of nice, who can’t do intimacy with anyone. That’s really bad.

A better route is for his anger to by pass Bill and go toward Colin who is more removed. This gives it outlet which relieves Andy’s depression and chronic anger. If Bill and Colin stop being friends, the perceived collusion may diminish in Andy’s mind. The pain reduction can allow Andy’s anger to ease, especially if Bill is aware of what’s happening in Andy and works to build the relationship with Andy. If Colin also understands, he can express repentance, accept the anger, keep his distance, knowing the anger is partially deserved. Though he’s helpless to do anything to restore relationship with Andy or between Andy and Bill, he can pray and work on his own stuff. Hopefully as pain reduces, the three can come to a place where in a context of confession and repentance for sin forgiveness and restoration can happen. But it takes time and intentionality. In the meantime, the loss of friendship is extremely painful. The energy of the pain can energize all three to be more redemptive in their ministry. Prayer and underlying love of friendship can keep the admittedly faint hope of restoration alive.

The articles at mental help were quite helpful to me.

 Sherry and I are at Seaside where I’m speaking at the North American Baptist Convention and visiting with Nicole and Joy . . . yes, David, Sam and Cyndee too. Cyndee, David, and Joy will join Sherry and me in the Nov. 30 trip to Kansas City to see Michael/Elizabeth. Susan is doing will with her lately discovered pregnancy (see “huge surprise” below). Delivery will happen by November 3. I preach again at Grace next week on the Babylon and the first beast. Suggestions?

Isaiah 40:31 is one of everyone’s favorite verses:

“But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

I’ve heard so many explanations and applications of it. Mostly they are along this line: if you serve the LORD well, then you’ll have unlimited spiritual energy. So pray hard, spend time in meditation on God’s Word, “abide,” or whatever and then the Spirit will make you victorious. You’ll not be weary in well doing, not fainting when the pressure is crushing, not depressed when relationships fail, not alone when friends break off their support.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. Part of this is my new favorite musician: Jeff Johnson an outstanding Celtic style song writer/performer. There’s a mix of sadness, and hopeful determination in his music that touches deeply in me. His “Wait on the LORD” on the album Vespers: light unto LIGHT is a hauntingly simple rendition of the song.

 As I reflect on the verse, I realize that the original context is the nation of Israel headed off into captivity because of their sin. The chapter begins with “comfort ye my people” promising the coming of Messiah as well as restoration. It ends with “wait on the LORD.” The point is that while you are in the place of hardness, like Bablylon, the thing to do is wait for the day of the LORD’s coming. Wait with feeling and proclamation of the greatness of the LORD. Wait hopefully, knowing that He is still LORD. Wait actively doing the worshipful activities in the congregation and in the world. Wait sadly, feeling the loss, often tearfully, with sadness bring life to a stop at times. Wait until He moves, for in that day renewal will happen. Wait trustingly but waitingly for all my activism, there is nothing I can do for renewing the lost. Wait, doing good where ever I can, mediating His grace in other seemingly hopeless situations. In fact I’ve seen three absolutely miraculous renewal of relations in the recent past. I know it can happen, so I wait. Persistenting in hope, prayer, faith an love.

Perhaps the most thrilling example of waiting is the news that Susan is pregnant (see previous post). We didn’t even know we were waiting. Sherry and I are still reeling with super happiness. Of course our plans have changed and we’ll head back for a quick visit to Kansas City on November 30, to hold a little tyke.

This past week, I preached “dragon wars” on Revelation 12 (today), turned in the final stuff on the second book, Death by Love,  found out I’m part of the presidential search team for Western, worked through many paper drafts for my students, and enjoyed being married a lot. Next week, it will be grading exams, and heading to Seaside to speak at the North American Baptist annual meetings. I’ll get to enjoy time with Dee Duke as the first speaker and get down to Cannon Beach to play with Nicole and Joy (I know that surprises everyone!)

Late addition:  Jeff will be at Village on December 9 for a Celtic Christmas Vespers concert. Mark your calendar!

I spent the weekend in Kansas City, with Donn and Susan. The “reason” is the father-son football excursion. It’s become an annual event we both enjoy. Susan and I have a great time too. This time the event was colored a bit by the death of her great aunt and their trip to Iowa for her funeral. I took the time to visit my cousin, Steven, and his wife Betty and my uncle, Truman, and his wife Bernice. Steven and I were almost like brothers, growing up on adjoining farms in Missouri. Susan was having some physical difficulties, exhaustion, swelling, some pain and such. She was set for a series of medical exams on Monday and Tuesday.

So when I saw Donn’s name when my cell phone rang this afternoon, I interrupted my appointment to take the call. I heard him say, “We’re pregnant.”

 Since they’d been told pregnancy was virtually impossible, and they’d given up hope of children several years ago, this was amazing news. “Great,” I responded brilliantly as my mind tried to grasp this news.

Donn went on: “She’s 37 weeks pregnant. We need your prayers.”

My head refused to process the proposition. But it’s turned out to be so. She simply was unaware of her condition. I’ve heard of such things, but now it was my own daughter in law, whom I’d just seen. Thousands of questions gave way to shocked surprise gave way to happy astonishment.

Tonight we had family processing with Sherry, David and Cyndee and me. Susan is in the maternity ward. Donn went home, having seen the couch in the room. It’s possible we’ll have a new grandchild in the next couple of days or in the next couple of weeks.

Huge surprise doesn’t begin to express our emotions. God’s new gift to us has left us breathless.

It finally happened. Though I’ve been surfing the net since it began, gotten endless solicitations, and some pretty clever trick messages, I’ve never gone into a porn site.

Until now.

Of course I have no desire to go to such places. My work with sexual addicts only enhances my strong repulsion for everything about them. I’m careful about ads and emails. I keep the search engines set on family levels. But it was almost inevitable.

In Sunday morning’s Oregonian great section on Gresham, there was a page on the diversity of churches. It talked about the Sulamite church, a Slavic evangelical church on Sandy Blvd., where the 2300 seats are typically filled with Russian speaking followers of Jesus. So I googled it, to find out more.

I quickly found the building highlighted in construction companies’ proud accomplishments. But nothing about the church itself. One link looked promising and I clicked on it. Suddenly my screen was filled with awful stuff. Almost as quickly, my Norton went nuts, screaming about virus attacks, naming them in red with high danger status. Almost immediately, I authorized Norton to stop the attack and clean my desecrated system. I was grateful for the safety of the automatic virus protection. I unplugged the network cable and wondered if the other machines on the network had been attacked already.

Then Norton asked me to authorize an Active X installation. I’d never seen it do that before. I noticed that the “do you trust” section of the notice didn’t say Symantec. Suddenly I stopped and pressed cancel. “Your system won’t be cleaned” it warned. I closed the warning, but it didn’t stop. Now I was suspicious. I couldn’t get the Norton to close. Finally I turned off the machine and restarted it, telling Norton Systemworks to run a quick scan.

Nothing. No infection at all. Extensive checking revealed no virus on any of my machines.

The porn site had deceived me by pretending to be my protector. And doing it quite well. Only my awareness of how Norton usually works kept me from allowing the Active X installation that certainly would have brought the deadly infection into my machine.

The parallel to what the devil does (2 Cor. 11:14) is evident.

As I reflected on the deception, I realize that there are all sorts of things that are not as they appear. Good people turn out to be evil doers. Pastors, like Ted Haggard, preach Jesus and righteousness only to turn up doing the very thing they preach against and then lying when they are discovered. On the other hand, godly people who live in integrity are accused of evil. Fearful people often see wrongness where it’s not. It seems the thing to do is to stop, reset, let the light shine in the darkness, test deeply, be patient with the time it takes, knowing that in the long run, truth will come out. Rushing the process may allow Active X to install devastation.

And pray a lot while the process goes on.

The Jesus prayer. Ancient. Biblical. Catholic both in the sense of universal and in the sense of authorized. Simply profound.

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” You can read about it in Wikipedia.

I am at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit today. Not in South Barrington, but at Sunset Presbyterian in Beaverton via satellite.

The worship leader just did his thing at the beginning of session 6, before Mr. Stearns talked about HIV/AIDS and Colin Powell spoke so powerfully on leadership. The leader told us we could pray or not pray, sing or not sing, whatever felt right to us. The individualism grated on me.

Then he went to the Jesus prayer. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” But he had to individualize it. Be merciful to my stress, my tiredness, my . . .

So where did the sin go? Where did the unity and catholicity go? The song he lead us in was quiet in a way I like. But no sin. Only mercy. You know me, you love me, it went on.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

I’m feeling the reality of my sin a lot right now. Not that I’m choosing it. I hate it. My “want to” is Jesus stuff. I love helping, ministering grace even when it requires huge investment. But there are those who won’t talk to me, people for whom the very mention of my name brings a surge of anger, because of the pain I’ve caused despite my best efforts to help, to be gracious. Oh, there are those I have gone after intentionally, people who are hurting others. There are those I just don’t like. I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about good people whom I love, but whom I have hurt despite every attempt to help. Others who resonate deeply with me, who are so alone, wrestling to hope when it seems so stupid. And I can do nothing to change these situations. Or can I?

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

And to the extent of possibility, I’ll do good wherever I go (Acts 10:38). I’ll officiate Peter and Julia’s wedding on Sunday. I continue to do committee work on the Western Multnomah Consolidation. I’ll meet with several people in whom God is doing miraculous work and I get a piece of the action. I’ll enjoy loving Sherry. Joel & Renata Burnell, Daniel, Erik and Amelia will fill our house next week before David and Sam come up for a Monday date night, leaving the grandgirls for us to watch. Tough . . .

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

I am here in Alaska, looking at bright glaciers, sharp mountains, including Mt. McKinley towering to the north, remembering how much God can in and do though one young person working and speaking in a chapel in Glacier National Park.

The age old question has become more real lately:

“How can a loving, omnipotent and omniscient God allow all the pain and suffering (evil) in this world.”

So why is there evil? In the simplest terms, it’s because people worship and serve other gods. Romans 1:18-2:16 says it in very straight forward terms: God made Himself known to humans and He was and is clearly seen, but they did not honor Him, rejected His love, exchanged the glory of the immortal God for other gods and followed their own lusts. The outcome is ugly! But God didn’t stop. He kept showing “the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience.” Paul’s point is that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance” (Romans 2:4). Verses 5-6 and 8-9 make it clear that those who reject it will find wrath and judgment. But verses 7 and 10 make it clear that those who do the good work of responding to the kindness of God that leads to repentance by repenting will get eternal life. Verse 10-11 concludes: there is “glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For God does not show favoritism.”

God continues to live among us with nail pierced hands, showing the depth of His care and the power of His freely available transformation. But the common response continues to be “forget You. I want my own gods, my own lusts.”

And the result is evil.

One day He will come, establish His kingdom, destroy evil. Like the disciples, on hearing the truth that the Spirit was being poured out in New Covenant ways, asked, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” His response basically is, “It will happen some day. In the meantime do the work of extending My grace to the world.”

So the common question “why does God allow evil” is really a blame shifting question. The real question is “Why, in the face of the freely available goodness of the LORD, do we persist in worshiping other gods, wallowing in our lusts, and provoking God’s anger rather than His blessing?” Those of us who are Jesus followers continue to make every effort to add make every effort to add to your faith to goodness to knowledge to self-control, to perseverance, to godliness, to brotherly kindness, to love.(2 Peter 1:5-7) doing His good in the world.

So the real and present question is how much good can we do in this broken world, a world we break and keep on breaking?

So we keep boundaries even when it’s frightfully difficult. We pursue gentleness even when competitiveness presses. We feel the overwhelming loneliness, knowing that it is shared. We remain quiet even when the urge to take action is intense.

And we pray for His healing power, hoping we can be a part of the grace process until He comes. But for the big picture, our prayer is just like His: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.” We resonate with the disciples, “Maranatha.” And like Him we hurt to see the evil and evil doers continue.

Note: This model of providence is the “ship” theory of A. W. Tozer and the “train” theory of Francis Schaeffer. Another model is the “script” theory of meticulous providence. It seems to me it is not only unbiblical (if God controls every detail to His glory, then why does He get so angry at evil?), but also without any answer for the goodness of God and the evilness of evil. The “answer” of the free will model of C. S. Lewis, Philip Yancey, etc., fails in that God sometimes does interfere in free will.

One of the biggest questions I run into is the question of hell. 20/20 did an hour show on it recently. They featured Carlton Pearson, a mega-church pastor who had made the switch from a very orthodox, if fundamentalistic, view of hell to a much more “compassionate” view where hell was what humans create in the killing fields of Rwanda and Thailand. He spoke against the burning hell where God tortures nice people who don’t say the right words before they die, preaching the “gospel of inclusion,” which states that everyone, including the most evil persons, are going to heaven.

What do we make of hell? Is it a lake of fire where gentle Buddhists suffer endless, terrible torment alongside Hitler or Robert Mugabe?

I have a traditional — which is to say biblical — view of hell. It is separation from God and punishment as summarized well in 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9: “He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power.”

The first element in this passage is punishment. No one is in hell because God wants them there. Bible is quite clear that He desires the salvation of all (e.g., 1 Tim. 2:3-6). They refuse to know God, refuse to obey His gospel. This is people who reject the universally present kindness of God that leads everyone to repentance (Rom. 2:4-11), defying His calling that goes to every creature (John 12:32), refusing relationship with Him whom they know because He made Himself known to them (Rom. 1:19-20). They worship and serve other gods, powerful spiritual beings who set themselves up against the Most High, gracious God like drug dealers in the neighborhood. These are not innocent, ignorant people, but ones who prefer other gods to the LORD. They are punished with destruction.

The destruction there is not annihilation but ruin. It is the word used of the lost sheep, coin in Luke 15 and translated “lost.” The word never means cessation of existence as a quick word study will show.

They are punished. But remember, there are levels of punishment in hell. Jesus said so in Matthew 11:20-24.

The other second element in this passage is final and complete separation from the presence of God. It’s a horror to imagine being left totally on our own resources, without any gracious support from God, given over completely to ourselves.

So is there hell on earth? There is. Unfortunately, we do create hellish things, knowingly and unknowingly. The hell of suicide bombers in schools is along side the emptiness of ruptured relationships. Children forced into the savagery of warfare coexists with anger that destroys children’s play time. The terror of attack lives with the persistent depression from missing deep friends.

Hope is in the forgiving and renewing work of the LORD. May His power is real if hidden in this broken, hellish world.