April 28, 1999

Texas Baptist Forum
Reconciliation
___Today I attended the reconciliation meeting at First Baptist Church in Boerne. The reconciliation efforts in our state convention are some of the most hopeful things that have happened in a long while and are needed. It is encouraging to see that some have started the healing process of reconciliation. Many believe that how we treat the "other side" is just as important as anything else we do for God.
___Reconciliation is biblical, godly, Christ-like and worth a try. We have said,

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done and tried everything else to forgive, heal and love each other; why not try that for a change! It has begun and will take time. Forgiveness is immediate; reconciliation is a process. It is what God is doing in us by the Holy Spirit and wants us to do with each other by the Holy Spirit. Christ is seen and glorified when we do. The opposite also is true.
___Much healing is taking place. It may now be time for laymen to get involved to teach us preachers how to do this. After all of the sermons they have heard us preach over the years, one thing is for sure-- they are experts on forgiveness and overlooking faults! They have much to share, and we have much to learn. I am committed to the reconciliation efforts and to resisting the spirit of fear and retaliation. God has not given us a spirit of fear, and he has given us the ministry of reconciliation.
___ Bubba Stahl
___ Boerne

Ethnic cleansing
___I disagree with Mildred Schroeder (April 21). The Serbs are not invading and murdering Muslims to gain their own religious freedom. They have religious freedom where they are.
___They are led by a power-hungry dictator who wants to rule the entire region and maybe more if he can get it.
___Christians do not commit genocide and "ethnic cleansing" by murder and territory-grabbing. Our role as Christians is to win others by lovingly presenting the gospel, not by threatening and killing.
___By far, the majority religion in the United States is Christianity. We need to use it by winning those who come to be our neighbors, in the biblical sense, not by killing them or driving them out by force.
___ Frankie R. Latham
___ Pointblank

Fence sitter
___In your editorial on hate crimes (April 14), you sound like a "fence straddler" to me. The issue is not all that complex.
___You mentioned the sign, "God hates fags" as a direct expression of religious beliefs and must therefore be protected. Another sign read, "AIDS cures fags." I suppose this is another religious belief?
___Inflammatory messages of hate should never be protected under the guise of religious expression. The KKK asserted the supremacy of white Protestantism while it spewed its venom. An unfettered First Amendment is never an excuse to protect hate-mongers, whether they be dressed in the cloak of religious belief or sheets.
___You can't talk of Christian love and protection of minorities and then resist legislation to do that just because of the remote possibility it might limit pastors or "conversionists."
___Get off that fence.
___ Blair Lee
___ Forney

No love
___As a Christian counselor, I often hear women say, "I had a date, and we made love." This is a misnomer.
___There is no such thing. They are talking about committing adultery or premarital sex.
___The pill has permitted women to have sex without fear of becoming pregnant. Some-times women who are married have sex with a co-worker. They're committing adultery. This has broken many homes.
___Then mothers often offer the pill to their teenage daughters, encouraging premarital sex. Our country is becoming a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah.
___Some women are very gullible, and some men are vicious. They really do not love the women. They only want sex and pretend to love, and the poor woman is used.
___Wake up, America. Let's live a Christian life.
___ Milton Wilkinson
___ Center

Worship needs
___You speak of the need to be sensitive to the needs of senior adults (March 31), and one of the most important needs is in the area of worship.
___The current trends to "contemporary worship" have completely left out the seniors.
___One only has to look around while "praise" music is being sung and see that most of the non-youth congregation is not singing or feebly so. The lack of hymnal use is completely foreign to much of their experience, and seemingly endless repetition of phrases of a few words has little meaning.
___ Carl Johansson
___ Houston

No friend
___I was astonished and dismayed by your article on Rep. Chet Edwards (March 31). A closer examination of his voting record will show he is no friend of family values.
___He voted five times against banning the brutal and sadistic form of infanticide known as partial-birth abortion.
___He claims his vote "was to preserve the life of the mother." That is not true. This procedure would never be used in an emergent situation in which a mother's life was in danger. That would be malpractice. The sole purpose of this procedure is to kill a viable baby.
___He was asked how killing a baby during delivery protected the mother and how completing delivery without killing the baby endangered the mother. He had no answer. Even the American Medical Association has denounced this procedure as having no medical indication.
___In an astonishing rejection of parental authority, he voted against parental notification before a minor could obtain an abortion.
___He has consistently voted to fund the National Endowment for the Arts. This is the agency that has habitually used our tax dollars to fund graphic pornography and blasphemy.
___ Donald Baker
___ Lampasas

The Elect One
___In response to Frank Page (March 24), more than one writer has cited Ephesians 1:4: God "chose us in him before the foundation of the world." The key phrase in that verse, however, is "in him." Notice its frequency in Ephesians 1:3-14: "in him," "in Christ," "through Jesus Christ" or "in the Beloved" occur in nearly every verse.
___The point is this: Jesus is the Elect One. Only as we respond to God's "whosoever will" invitation to take of the water of life freely (Revelation 22:17) and believe in Christ (John 3:16) do we share in God's plan of election. We must be "in Christ" in order to participate in election, and God has extended to us the free will to choose for ourselves whom we will serve, as it were.
___Still, the mechanics of how all this works is a mystery. The old illustration is still good: The sign over the entrance to heaven reads "whosoever will" from the outside. But looking back on it from the inside, it says, "chosen from the foundation of the world."
___Anyone who purports to have definitive answers to the complex theological questions of election and predestination has much to learn and should spend some time meditating on Isaiah 55:8-9.
___ Tommy Hood
___ Weatherford

Don't fret
___I see no occasion for any Christian to fret over another Christian's beliefs regarding predestination.
___None of us knows who are predestined, if they are or who will respond to the gospel's call now or tomorrow. The gospel must, in any event, be presented to "whosoever will."
___The ever-presence of God makes human timing distinctions of any event insignificant. Our response to the grace of God is gratitude and joy.
___ Morris L. Britton
___ Sherman

Hot button
___Letters to the editor on Calvinism have made it clear that this is indeed a hot button among our churches today.
___Passion is appropriate, for this debate draws a clear line between two fundamentally different views of the gospel. Perhaps less appropriate is the attempt to use a forum such as this, where the statements are necessarily brief, to air points and counterpoints of the debate.
___I encourage all readers who have not already done so to study both sides of this crucial debate until they can satisfy someone on the other side that they fully understand their view. To attempt anything less breeds more misunderstanding than understanding.
___My own study in this area has been the most rewarding of my life, and I am confident that many others will be blessed by a similar effort.
___ John O'Brien
___ Amarillo

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