Dangerous Times

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Dangerous Times

March 31, 1998 • Ronald L. Dart

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Several years ago, I was driving through an area the weekend after a tragic mass shooting had occurred there. I listened on the radio to the people who lived nearby as they responded to being put in a goldfish bowl for the whole country to watch. I couldn’t help but reflect along with them about how unfair the whole thing was.

Every special interest group had their spokesman on television telling us all why this tragedy had taken place. It was guns, of course. Someone noted that crime in the cities was going down while crime in rural areas was going up. He blamed the availability of guns for the problem. The poor fellow obviously has never lived in the rural south. I grew up in northern Arkansas, and I can tell you that guns are not a new arrival there. As a boy, I don’t think I knew a family—especially a rural family—that didn’t have guns and that didn’t teach their kids to hunt. We grew up playing war around the barns, pretending to shoot one another, and faking a fall out of the loft into a stack of hay below. None of us ever killed anyone. As far as I can tell, none of us even thought about it. Some other TV talking head blamed drugs. Another blamed the schools, another blamed the movies, and yet another blamed television violence.

It’s true enough that everything that happens is the world is *caused* by something. But the causes are often so complex that specific prediction is impossible. However, *general* prediction is not at all impossible. There was no way to predict that those two boys would do what they did. But you can be certain that some boys (or girls) will kill again. It may be Elmira, New York. It may be Fairfax, Virginia. It may be *your* hometown. I can’t predict *where* it will happen, but I can predict that it *will* happen. And so can you. What we can’t be quite so sure is *why* it will happen. That’s what I want to talk about.

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Water Baptism #2

Ronald L. Dart

Leadership in Crisis

February 10, 1998 • Ronald L. Dart

By now, everyone realizes that we have a leadership crisis, not only in our country, but in the world at large. I wonder how we got to this place? Where does leadership come from and, maybe more importantly, where does it go? I believe that leadership is a gift from God, and if you’ll spare me a little time, I’ll explain to you why I think that. First, two statements about gifts from God, one from James and one from the Psalms: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17 KJ2000). “You have ascended on high, you have led captivity captive: you have received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the LORD God might dwell among them. Blessed be the Lord, who daily loads us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. Selah” (Psalm 68:18–19 KJ2000). For some reason, we would tend to assume that God only gives his gifts to people who deserve them. I used to think so. I would have told you that God gave his gifts to Christian people, and to good Christian people at that. But the Psalmist says that he gives his gifts to the rebellious also. What are we to make of that? Well, we know that God causes it to rain on the just and the unjust. He doesn’t make the rain run down the property line, with one man’s field getting a good wetting down and the other man’s getting dry and dusty, right? That would probably be an effective technique for promoting righteousness, but God does not work that way. There is a curious incident in the gospel accounts that I think may give us a hint on this very complicated subject. We can find it in John, chapter 5.

No God Tomorrow

March 23, 1999 • Ronald L. Dart

Not long ago, a man stood having pleaded guilty to raping an eight-year-old ten times. The judge had the unpleasant duty of sentencing this man. She wanted to say something appropriate when she sentenced him, so she came up with the words of Jesus: “But whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and they were drowned in the depth of the sea.” She proceeded to sentence the man to 51 years in prison saying, “I hope God has mercy on you and the hell you have created.” Sounds good to me. But a year later the sentence was overturned by the district court of appeals because the judge had allowed her religious beliefs to influence her in giving the man a harsher sentence. Now, I don't know about you, but I would not have needed to open the Bible to give the man 51 years in prison; that doesn't seem like a terribly excessive sentence for someone who would rape an eight-year-old ten times. But I don't think the the appellate court judges really understood their Bible, because if that trial judge had used the Bible, the man should have had the death sentence. That's what would have happened to a man who raped an eight-year-old girl once in biblical times. What's puzzling me about this is that we got along just fine as a nation for 200 years with judges who, every once in a while, would quote scripture in court; and no one would have batted an eye. All those 200 years, if a judge had the Ten Commandments behind the bench, or a Bible in plain sight alongside of his gavel, that was the way things were. It was that way generation after generation, throughout the history of this country. Now what's changed? Why is this going on this way? Well, I think it's *we* who have changed. We are sitting at the end of a long trail where those who want God out of public life and private life have worked quietly (and not so quietly) toward their goal, while everyone else just drifted and took our freedoms and our values all for granted. They have enlisted religious people in the cause under the banner of separation of Church and State. Now, don't get me wrong. There should be no established religion in this country; but to separate Church and State is one thing, to separate *God* and State is another thing altogether. The true, died-in-the-wool atheist is a very rare breed. Nearly everyone in this country believes in God in one way or another. So why do we want to separate God and State? And maybe more important, what are the consequences of the separation of God and State?