The Viral Gospel

 The power and potential of anything “going viral” is mind boggling. “Going viral” was once limited to communicable diseases, the kinds that are so easily transmitted that they can rapidly escalate into an epidemic, or, as with Covid, a pandemic.  In our day the term means something quite different.  With the aid of the Internet, email, X, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, text messaging and You Tube, what was obscure can “go viral” and become suddenly famous.

 Facebook went viral in 2004 when Mark Zuckerberg and a few friends launched it from their dorm rooms at Harvard.  Today, more than one billion people use Facebook.  It boasted a market cap in 2019 of over $500 billion and has become one of the most powerful tools on the Internet to catapult others into the “viral” stratosphere.

The Swedish teenage climate activist, Greta Thornberg, was catapulted to fame after she posted her first protest as a 15-year-old on Instagram and twitter. Within a week she gained international attention.  Her actions went viral on Facebook and other media and in December 2019 Time named her the youngest ever “Person of the Year.”

 “Going viral” appears to be a twenty-first century phenomenon. But is it? 

 History documents that the Gospel went viral following the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.  There was no media campaign.  There were no reporters, no cameras, no photo ops, no internet, no Facebook.  But somehow, Jesus impacted and changed the world.  Growing up in the obscure and infamous village of Nazareth, Jesus’ public ministry lasted only three years.  He walked wherever he went and never traveled more than one hundred miles from his birthplace. When He was crucified, there were no papers to report it, no news teams to film it. But the news spread around the world and is continuing to spread today.  It did so by “going viral.” 

Paul spoke of.”the gospel which has come to you, just as in all the world also it is constantly bearing fruit and increasing, even as it has been doing in you also since the day you heard of it and understood the grace of God in truth.”  (Colossians1:6). And again, “For all things are for your sakes, so that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God.” 2 Cor 4:15, “I thank my God through Jesus Christ ^… because your faith is being proclaimed throughout the whole world” (Romans 1:8).

When the Gospel goes viral, it requires more than posting a few sentences or a video clip on the internet, more than “clicking” and forwarding information.  The Kingdom of God goes viral when lives are transformed by faith in Jesus Christ so that society is saturated with honesty, integrity, justice and generosity.  Changed lives change the lives of those around them. The Gospel has gone viral in previous generations.  It could “go viral” in ours.

A "Christian" Nation

 Throughout my lifetime I have always been grateful and proud of our American reputation as a “Christian” nation that cares for the disadvantaged, the poor and the oppressed.  In 2005 I visited Indonesia following the tsunami that decimated the islands in that region of the world.  I stood on the beach at Banda Aceh and listened to the gentle waves on the shore while the Indonesian people strolled along the jetties. It was a beautiful and peaceful afternoon. Behind me stood a lighthouse that had been erected as a beacon to passing ships. It now stood as a monument to the tragedy that struck on December 26, 2004. The top of the lighthouse towering above me had been blown apart by the powerful surge of water.

Aceh is perhaps the most rigid Muslim state in the world, governed by strict Sharia law. It is ruled by the Koran and the Muslim Imams. It prides itself as the “gateway to Mecca.” Prior to the tsunami Christians were not allowed entrance into the region. But the day the tsunami struck, everything changed. The city of Aceh was virtually wiped out by the massive wall of water.

I was visiting with a group of Americans attempting to assist the Non-Governmental-Organizations that had been allowed into the country to help the people rebuild. Separated from the rest of the world and taught that Christianity is evil, many of the people were asking why Christians were the ones who responded the most to their disaster. President Bush immediately pledged $350 million to help with the recovery. Like many Muslim countries, the people of Aceh equate America with Christianity.

I noticed a woman watching us. She was sitting on her motorcycle. Almost all Indonesians rode motorcycles. The streets were filled with them. For days I had watched them leaving for work in the early morning, weaving their way along the streets, whole families balanced on two wheels, the father driving, one or two children in his lap, the mother behind him with another child. I watched young women, their blue and green hijabs flying in the wind. Through an interpreter I struck up a conversation with the woman.

She asked if we were Americans. We said yes. She told us that she was at this very spot when the tsunami hit. She said it carried her and her two children more than two miles inland. One child was separated and drowned. Her husband and the rest of her family were killed. Only she and her son survived, but he was badly injured. His wounds were infected and he was dying. She said an American doctor came and treated her son and he lived. In spite of her deep sorrow and loss, she smiled, not just her face, but with her eyes, and said, “I want to thank you for coming.”

 Years later, in 2012, I served as pastor of an English-speaking church in Nuremburg, Germany, the site of Hitler’s Nazi rallies and the “Nuremburg laws” that launched the holocaust.  I found a people who were grateful for the American GIs and agencies who helped them rebuild their country after WW II. The recent Executive Order to shut down all U.S. financial aid to the world is disturbing  to me.

 Isaiah clearly described faith that is pleasing to God. “Is this not the fast that I choose:

…  Is it not to break your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into the house; when you see the naked, to cover him; and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?  Then your light will break out like the dawn, and your recovery will spring up quickly; and your righteousness will go before you; the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard,” (Isaiah 58:6-8).

A Healthy Heart

 According to the American Heart Association, “The epidemic increase in heart disease mortality ended in the 1960s or 1970s.” Deaths from heart disease have fallen dramatically over the last 50 years. Heart-healthy alternatives are produced in almost every food category. Restaurants include heart-healthy menus. Smoking has been banned in most public places. Cheerios and oatmeal both claim to help with a healthy heart. Physicians and non-profits promote diet-and-exercise. Nevertheless, both of my wife’s brothers died of heart attacks.  One brother collapsed in his garden. The other made it to a hospital.

I first read Dr. Kenneth Cooper’s book, Aerobics, in 1982. It was a groundbreaking book that opened the eyes of millions to the benefits of aerobic exercise and a healthy diet for a healthy heart. When I visited Brazil, I was fascinated to find hundreds of Brazilians walking and jogging every morning to get in their “Cooper.” The doctor’s name had found its way into Portuguese as a synonym for heart-healthy aerobic exercise.

When I followed Cooper’s regimen, I experienced the benefits: lost weight, increased strength and stamina. Unfortunately, I have not always followed those disciplines, and it shows. Developing a healthy heart requires more than knowledge.

As important as it is to maintain a healthy heart physically, it is even more important for us to develop a healthy heart spiritually. The Bible clearly sets forth the disciplines and characteristics of a healthy spiritual heart. They include gratitude, hope, forgiveness and love. If we discipline ourselves to be grateful every day for what God has done, if we hope when things look hopeless, if we forgive those who injure us, if we love those of other nationalities, ethnicities and languages, like the Good Samaritan, we will have a healthy heart.

But, like our physical heart, having a spiritually healthy heart requires more than knowledge. We may know that we need to be grateful, hopeful, forgiving and loving. But how do you create heartfelt gratitude, hope, forgiveness and love?

In the spiritual realm, this requires a spiritual heart transplant. God must create a new heart within us, something that He is more than willing to do. We are all born with spiritual heart disease. Jeremiah says, “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). But later he writes, “I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am the Lord; and they will be My people, and I will be their God.” (Jer. 24:7). And in Ezekiel He says, “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh.” (Ez. 36:26).

God sent His son Jesus so that He might create in us a healthy heart. He changes the heart that has grown callous, bitter and resentful into one that overflows in gratitude. Someday our physical heart will beat its last beat and our bodies will die. But the spiritually healthy heart that God creates will live forever.

What Can A Snowman Say?

 Seven and one-half years ago, when we moved into our house, our neighbor across the street was a young man in his twenties.  Three other young men lived with him.  He met a girl.  We had them over for dinner. They fell in love and became engaged.  The other three young men moved out.  The only public gathering we attended during Covid in 2020 was the wedding of our young neighbor and his bride.

 A year later, she gave birth to their first child, Charlie.  Yesterday we watched from our window as two-year-old Charlie and his father built a snowman in their yard.  As we expected, knowing our neighbors, it was a huge snowman, over 5 feet tall, with a wide grin, a carrot nose, button eyes,  and stick arms extended as if waiting for a hug!

 It reminded me of a poem I wrote about snowmen when we lived in Minnesota. 

He stands outside

smiling through the night

smiling though the day

with a wide-eyed gaze from coal black eyes

punctuated by the point of a carrot nose.

 

A blue-stocking cap warms his frozen head

while a red and white scarf flutters in the breeze,

tickling his tummy

softly patted into place by small hands

scooping great scoops of snow

and fashioning his form,

till he stood where he stands,

stick arms spread in a welcome greeting

to family and friend and passerby

signifying by his constant cheer

that a child lives here.

 Last week, when a rare winter storm swept the South, snowmen made their appearances in New Orleans, Houston and Galveston.  They are a universal breed, transcending generations, the product of creative imaginations, uniting generations from ages past, a non-digital race that binds our human hearts to one another.  They reach across language, ethnicity, culture and time, created amid giggles, squeals and laughter.  In Minnesota, a snowman can last for months.  In the South, a few days at best. Some of them have already returned to puddles in the yard.  But while they last, they cheer us up and give us hope. 

 It took the birth of a child named Charlie to create our snowman across the street.  Like other snowmen in our neighborhood, he reminds me of one of Jesus’ profound object lessons to his disciples, “Jesus called a little child over to him. He had the child stand among them. ³ Jesus said, “What I’m about to tell you is true. You need to change and become like little children. If you don’t, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven,” (Matthew 18:2-3).

Remembering Buddy

 About the time I started writing this column in 2009, my wife and I adopted a tri-color Pembroke Corgi that we named Buddy.  We had pets over the years when raising our children, but I wanted my own dog and my wife finally gave in.  We found him at Corgi rescue.  He was picked up by animal control on the streets of Fort Worth, skinny and sick.  How a dog like Buddy could be lost for that long was a mystery to me until he told me his story.  I wrote it down just the way he told it to me and published it as a children’s book, Buddy the Floppy Ear Corgi.  

 I wrote my first column about Buddy on October 29, 2009.  Each year I wrote at least one column about Buddy and what he was teaching me.  We traveled to many places together: Texas, Montana, Wyoming, Minnesota, Colorado and places in between.  We walked hundreds of miles. 

 Once we left him with our daughter who lived 2 miles from our house.  He escaped their backyard and tied up traffic on a busy intersection trying to make his way home.  I was on the road in Nebraska when I got the call from a stranger who rescued him from the frantic drivers who were trying to avoid hitting him.

 When we went fishing Buddy sat in the front of my fishing boat, sniffing the wind, trying to locate the fish.  He fell in once.  We discovered Corgi’s can’t swim.  Fortunately, I was able to pull him b. ack in the boat.

 Several times he went with me to sit by the graveside of my college roommate who was buried in Farmersville, Texas in 1999.  Afterward we would go for long walks in the open fields where he could run free, leaping through the long grass (as much as Corgi’s can leap). We explored the beaches in Galveston.

  Buddy didn’t do any work.   He couldn’t open doors, couldn’t carry anything or hold anything with his paws (beyond a bone or a chew toy).  He wasn’t Buck like Call of the Wild. He couldn’t pull a sled.  But he worked his way into our hearts just by being there, jumping in my lap when I was sad, jumping between us on the couch to make us glad, following me from room to room, introducing me to strangers who wanted to pet him, playing with my grandchildren.

 But Buddy grew old.  His muzzle turned gray.  He couldn’t take long walks anymore. After 14 years, Buddy developed spinal myelopathy.  He lost the use of his legs, and we lost Buddy in January 2022.   We grieved his death as much as we grieved a friend or family member.  We still miss him.

 We loved Buddy, not for what he could do for us, but just because he “was.” 

 Maybe that was his final lesson about God. Maybe that is the way God looks at me.  I can’t do anything for God.  He doesn’t really need me, but He loves me just the same, just because He made me; just because He is and I am.  “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us” (1 John 1:10).  God has declared His love for me, “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3).  God loves you.

Mortality and Eternity

 Much of last week was spent eulogizing and laying to rest President Jimmy Carter.  Some of us remember when he was elected during the bi-centennial celebration of our nation, a crucial moment when we were trying to find our way past Watergate.  Our nation was searching for someone who could restore our confidence in the honesty and character of our highest office. Jimmy Carter stepped forward to give us hope.

 He lived to see his 100^th birthday, the oldest surviving President in our nation’s history. He had embraced his own mortality long ago, submitting to hospice care almost two years before his death, facing the inevitable with confident faith and peace.

 We are all mortal.  We will all die.  The Bible says, “For the Lord God himself knows our estate, that we are but dust.  For man is like the grass of the field that flourishes as a flower.  After the wind passes, it is no more, and its place remembers it no longer, but the lovingkindness of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him.” (Psalm 103).  We all want to be remembered.  I suppose that is part of the reason we engage in funerals and obituaries.  But obituaries soon fade and funerals are soon forgotten.  For some, like former Presidents, we engage in lengthy ceremonies.  For a few decades, maybe even a few centuries, historical records and books will bear testimony to their lives.  But eventually.  They will all be forgotten.

 There is something better than being remembered.  According to the Bible we can actually live after our mortal bodies cease. The eulogies for Jimmy Carter were filled with references to his faith.  His grandson read extensively from the Scripture regarding God’s promises.  There is a place where we are never forgotten, a place where we can live, another dimension that Jesus reference repeatedly as “life into the age,”   (eis aionos).   

 The Bible’s promises are clear.  “He will swallow up death for all time. And the Lord will wipe tears away from all faces. And He will remove the disgrace of His people from all the earth.  For the Lord has spoken.  And it will be said on that day, ‘Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us.  This is the Lord for whom we have waited.  Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation,” (Isaiah 25:8-9). 

 Daniel wrote, “Now at that time Michael, the great prince who stands guard over the sons of your people, will arise. And there will be a time of distress such as never occurred since there was a nation until that time; and at that time your people, everyone who is found written in the book, will be rescued. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt. Those who have insight will shine brightly like the brightness of the expanse of heaven, and those who lead the many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever,” (Daniel 12:1-3).

Raising Children Celebrating Family

 We just returned from a 4-day Bahama cruise with all our children and grandchildren, seventeen of us, a gift from our children on my wife’s 75^th birthday. The joy of multiple generations who treasure and value one another is inexpressible. In all generations and cultures, it is the family that forms the foundation for fulfillment. My wife and I were overwhelmed, not just that our children wanted to express their love for us, but that they love each other and want to be together.

 Over the years we learned that nothing is as challenging as being a parent.  Children have no off button.  They cannot be put in the closet like clothes, turned off and parked like cars or placed in a kennel like pets.  They are on a constant quest: poking, prodding, pushing, pulling and climbing. 

 When our children were little, we didn’t know you could strap them down in the back seat. No one told us about car seats. As soon as they got in the car, they looked for buttons to push and knobs to twist.  When I turned on the key the blinkers blinked, windshield wipers wiped, and the radio blared.

 They grew up to be responsible adults.  But the path wasn’t easy.  Every passage brought new challenges: the first day of school, a move from familiar neighborhoods to a new city, puberty, a driver’s license, dating, computer games, technology, college and a career.  Parenting requires a constant learning curve that never stops, even after children are grown and on their own.  Relationships constantly change and adjust. As a parent, you are always entering new and unfamiliar territory.

 I found across the years that there is no “fix it” book for parenting, no “cure-all,” “read this,” or “do this” simple solution.  Every child is different, and every parenting situation has its unique challenges.  But there are some essential tools that make the difference: patience, consistency, authenticity, trust, love, faith, and a listening ear.  Most of us don’t come naturally equipped with these essential tools.  Most of us must learn them and acquire them while we are on the job. And all of us have room for improvement.

 The Bible says that John the Baptist introduced Jesus to the world by “turning the hearts of the fathers to their children,” (Luke 1:17).  Every generation must struggle against the natural desires of the flesh: envy, jealousy, resentment, anger and self indulgence. These attitudes destroy the family. The fruits of the spirit, on the other hand, establish the family: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control,” (Galatians 5:22-23).

 When our hearts are right with God so that we are producing these fruits, we will be good parents.  Then we will be able to fulfill the Scripture’s instruction, “Do not exasperate your children, instead, bring them up in the teaching and instruction of the Lord.” (Ephesians 6:4).