Lessons from a Deer

Then the lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute will shout for joy. (Isaiah 35:6)


My relatively short drive into work each morning is rarely boring, and today was no different. Just as I was turning the corner on a back street that I take, a doe suddenly jumped from behind a bush and out into the road. I slammed on the brakes while quickly thinking, I’ll bet there’s another one nearby.

Sure enough and right on cue another beautiful doe appeared from behind the bush, briefly shocked by her close proximity to my car. She hesitated about whether or not to follow her sister, but decided to run back towards the field from where they came, making what had to be a 10 foot leap into the air over an embankment and a barbed wire fence. While that deer’s initial hesitation was hilariously goofy, her graceful jump which followed reminded me of the agility and power of this skittish creature.

In Acts 3, Peter and John went to the temple in Jerusalem to pray; that’s what they did everyday. Outside the temple there was a lame beggar, ironically and strategically located at a gate into the complex called “Beautiful”. He was doing what beggars do; that’s what he did everyday.

But this particular day wasn’t like any other day which had come before it, because Acts 2 had happened. As the beggar turned to Peter and John for a charitable contribution, Peter said to him (and I paraphrase), “Give us a minute of your time. We just started and haven’t been able to establish a church benevolence fund yet. No food pantry or clothes closet or job training facilities exist just yet. Here’s all we can offer you today: in the name of the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, get up and walk!”

Not only did the lame beggar walk, but Acts 3:8 tells us that he was walking and leaping and praising God! Luke, the author of Acts, is making a point here: the promises of Isaiah 35:6 were being fulfilled in the presence of those Apostles. Not only had the Messiah come, but he had given a precious gift to the church – the body of Christ – the Holy Spirit. Now the blind might see, the deaf might hear, the mute might talk, and the lame might leap like a deer…graciously, powerfully, and magnificently.

My, how dreams have changed!

On Saturday the president issued a statement reaffirming his personal commitment to ensuring abortion rights. The last line reads as follows:

I hope that we will recommit ourselves more broadly to ensuring that our daughters have the same rights, the same freedoms, and the same opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.

What an antiquated notion! That a fetus stands in the way of a woman being able to fulfill her dreams is the same tired, selfish claptrap which was the battle cry of the liberal feminist of the Baby Boom era. That a sitting president would echo that battle cry reveals an awful lot about the man and his principles.

Sadly, both sides of the debate have largely packaged this issue so cleverly for so long that now far too many see abortion as nothing more than a political issue among so many others. Case in point: last week was the Martin Luther King holiday. What did we hear from the traditional black leaders on this day? Most significantly, anger over students making up missed classes on the holiday due to weather postponements. The week prior, a NYC Public Health report was released which found that 60% of pregnant African American women in New York City had undergone an abortion in 2009. That is eye-popping stuff; that if you're a black fetus in NYC, you only have a 2 in 5 chance of making it to your birthday. Nationally, black women, who make up about 7% of the population, account for nearly 40% of legalized abortions. (The total national average for aborted pregnancies in still over 20% for all races.)

What we're seeing in NYC and throughout the nation is Racial Genocide 101, and what do we hear from black leaders on the subject on the day when we ironically honor a man who most famously conveyed the dreams he had for his children? Nothing. Not a peep. Other than "Jane Roe" herself, Jesse Jackson is probably the most famous flip-flopper on abortion in our nation's history. Roe became convinced of her error in desiring to abort her unborn child; Jackson, meanwhile went from an eloquent defender of the right to life to an ultra politically-motivated man on the wrong side of the aisle to be both pro-life and politically successful. He chose to enmesh himself in the latter, and now he has no moral foundation to even stand upon when speaking about a subject such as the out-of-control abortion rates among minorities in this nation. So instead he talks about kids making up snow days (which, incidentally, he is right about).

It is a shame of the highest proportions. Even conservative statistics concerning legalized abortions in the nation since 1973 show that this national right has now claimed more lives than some of the most liberal estimates of the lives senselessly claimed under the leaderships of people like Mao and Stalin. And where's our president on this? Unequivocally connecting the termination of an unborn child to a woman's "dreams". What a sad departure this type of dream is from the famous dream of the man honored last Monday.

What's Up, Doc?

Undoubtedly most of us are now familiar with the firestorm created by the freshly minted governor, Doctor Robert Bentley, when - on his inauguration day - he gave what is tantamount to an altar call at a famous black church in Montgomery. The fact that I first came upon this news on the front page of Yahoo.com rather than the local newscast is evidence that the national media ate this thing up in a hurry, causing many residents of our state to bemoan the specter of being represented by yet another prominent state politician who not only suffers from foot-in-mouth disease, but who also wants to take advantage of valuable opportunities to cram his brand of fundamentalist mumbo-jumbo down our collective throat hole.

Could it be that Doctor is a dreaded, fundamentalist, evangelical Christian who has actually been listening to and internalizing the messages he's heard throughout his life as a churchgoer? Could he actually believe that Jesus meant it when he claimed that the only way to the Father was through the Son? In other words, that all of humanity can in fact be separated along familial lines based on faith in Jesus Christ? I dunno, maybe the Doc has read through Ephesians and actually believes that true unity comes only through Christ, not through ethnicity or culture or even bloodlines...that blood is, in fact, not thicker than the water of our unique baptism.

So the Huntsville Times had an article the other day which sought to settle the issue by asking local "faith leaders" of their opinion on the uproar. Outside of a strikingly honest assessment by the token Jewish leader, it was the familiar quotes one expects in articles such as these. You can come to your own conclusions, particularly those who might explain to me the reason Weatherly Heights Baptist Church still has anything to do with the Southern Baptist Convention.

And now, just as predictably as the reactions, here came the retraction from GDRB the other day. This is a much bigger slip-up than what he said on Monday, because now it all reeks of politics. I mean, does such an apology (which, to be fair, is one of those non-apology apologies) show that Doctor Governor is placating the media or politicizing his faith? How are we supposed to interpret all this?

I'm afraid that Bentley has learned a valuable lesson of politics which he carefully avoided throughout his peculiarly anonymous state legislative career: namely that when a person in power speaks or takes a stand of consequence, folks tend to listen. When you speak about faith, amplify that tenfold. As a man of faith I hope he'll eventually also come to this conclusion: don't apologize - never, ever! - for presenting the hope of salvation to a captive audience. There are Christians around the world who would be willing to literally give their lives for such an opportunity.