Blog - Page 259 of 318 - John H Armstrong

The Passing of Another Christian Right Leader

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:22:56-05:00September 7th, 2007|Categories: Current Affairs|

D. James Kennedy, the famous pastor of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, passed away earlier this week. Dr. Kennedy was well known to multitudes through his Evangelism Explosion ministry and his worldwide radio and television outreach. He was much better known to the culture-at-large for his efforts in founding the Moral Majority and the Christian right.

Much of Dr. Kennedy’s actual involvement with the Christian right was from behind the scenes (so to speak), leaving to Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell the major head line roles. John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum for Religion and Public Life, noted this point by saying that Dr. Kennedy "was active at every stage of the Christian right." He was a founding board member of the Moral Majority and in 1996 created the Center for Reclaiming America for Christ. His goal was to mobilize conservative Christians against gay marriage, pornography and what he called "judicial tyranny." Kennedy also founded the Center for Christain Statesmanship, a ministry I know even more about first-hand, which organized Capitol Hill Bible Studies and other […]

A Miraculous Comeback or a Meltdown?

By John Armstrong|2007-09-06T10:05:44-05:00September 6th, 2007|Categories: Baseball|

My baseball predictions at mid-season are proving to be only partly right. I am no prophet regarding the future, that much is for sure. But now we have entered the most interesting part of the long, long season—the last four weeks. Who will come on, who will fade? Today I go to Wrigley Field to see the Dodgers play the Cubs. My long time Dodger friend, David Moorhead, is taking a train from Michigan to meet me and enjoy the old ballpark and the outdoors. It will be a fun day to root, root, root for the visiting team.

Yesterday something very unusual happened in the Major Leagues. (Yes, Alex Rodriguez hit two home runs in the same inning, a rare feat for sure.) But I refer to the way the Atlanta Braves, who are all but out of the race now, beat the Philadelphia Phillies, who are not quite out of the race. The real surprise here was how the Braves won in such an amazing fashion. In 517 previous baseball games this year, when one team entered the eight inning […]

Resurrecting the Champ: A Movie with Real Ethical Value

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:22:56-05:00September 5th, 2007|Categories: Film|

Resurrecting the Champ is a superb movie. Some reviewers agree, some do not. It features two great actors. First, Samuel L. Jackson plays a role that should receive an Academy Award nomination, but likely will not. The co-star is Josh Harnett, who seems to get better in every role that he takes these days. He is a superb actor, period.
This is not simply a boxing movie. It is not even the story of fathers and sons, though that plays a very important part in the drama. It is finally a movie about ethics, the ethics of telling the truth and how you should do it. Some critics think the film is "speechy" and dull but I beg to differ. I often disagree with the professional movie critics so much so that one Chicago reviewer, who pans a lot of very good movies, makes me want to see the movies he most often hates. Like all such art form there is a subjective side to all of this but I assure you this movie is a good story and it is very well […]

More Thoughts on Mother Theresa's Darkness

By John Armstrong|2007-09-04T19:12:12-05:00September 4th, 2007|Categories: Spirituality|

I continue to ponder the report, and my own comments as well as those comments of many who responded, to the recent information about the late Mother Theresa going many decades with little or no felt awareness of the presence of God in her heart. In thinking about this question I have gone back to the desert, to the desert fathers of the third and fourth centuries of early Christianity. I believe these desert fathers and mothers have something to say to us about this matter that is almost completely lost on us modern affluent Christians.

Within us all is a voice that says, "I want, I want, I want . . . " This voice is the enemy of our real peace. If we sit still and truly listen then the fact of our death will come to us with clarity and spiritual reality. Attention to this inner voice, or the sense of God or of his absence, will lead us to experience our own fragility and futility. We will then know that we really are creatures, not the Creator. When this […]

Labor Day 2007

By John Armstrong|2007-09-03T20:05:42-05:00September 3rd, 2007|Categories: Culture|

Labor Day is one of those special American holidays that we all enjoy. We mark the end of summer by it, though fall doesn’t begin for several more weeks. This is the time we get back into our non-summer routines and school is now in session for most students and teachers. It is also a time for one final long weekend.

In the liturgy of my own church the benediction from yesterday’s worship said it well:

In the name of Jesus Christ, the carpenter’s son, let your labors be for the glory of God and for the common good.

In the name of Jesus Christ, Mary’s son, let all of your living be for love.

In the name of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, let our labor not be for a paycheck but for a world changed by God’s love and justice.

May God, Creator of the universe, maker and shaper of all things, bless you labor as well as your rest. May the Son of God, the son of a carpenter, bless all of the work that […]

The Methods May Change But the Problem Remains

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:22:56-05:00September 2nd, 2007|Categories: Evangelism|

A commitment to sharing the gospel with others is at the very core of what it means to be an evangelical Christian. I have tried to share the good news with others since I was seven years old. I also teach evangelism formally at the Wheaton College Graduate School, as an adjunct professor of evangelism. I believe we are commanded to declare the gospel to all creation, to every nation, and to seek for culturally appropriate ways to do this work with effectiveness.

In my lifetime I have seen lots of techniques used in evangelism. Some bother me. Very often they just don’t feel quite right, especially given the nature of the gospel message itself and the God that we represent. Some are just outright wrong, so it seems to me, shamefully so and often even unethical. Such seems to be the case, at least to me, with the way some Southern Baptists are doing evangelism in North and South Dakota this summer.

For the second year in a row Baptists are giving away a new Harley-Davidson at the Sturgis, S.D., […]

Nick Saban and the New Season for Crimson Tide Fans

By John Armstrong|2007-09-01T10:05:16-05:00September 1st, 2007|Categories: College Football|

College football is back today. This is a great day for the fans of schools all across America. My friends know that I am a college football fan. Just the other day I saw that 70% of football fans prefer the NFL and 30% prefer college. And only a few are fans of both games, oddly enough. My daughter has a simple explanation. People like me, who went to a major football university, stand by their team and school spirit with deep feeling. People who did not go to a major football school, or at least grow up around such a college or in an area where this spirit is real, have little interest in the college game. I also tend to think that Sunday is a bigger day for television sports in the U.S. than Saturday.

Whatever the reason, I am a college football fan. I will watch a few minutes of the Chicago Bears, now and then, but Saturday is “Game Day” in my household. My ritual includes wearing crimson shirts, getting the right food prepared, telling the dog to […]

The Martin Luther King Memorial

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:22:56-05:00August 31st, 2007|Categories: Race and Racism|

A 28-foot-tall granite statue of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is planned for the National Mall in Washington D.C. Of late, the project has run into a major problem—the charge of racism, or at least of serious racial misunderstanding. The reason is the choice of the sculptor himself, Lei Yixin of China.

Interestingly, the design team, which made the choice Lei Yixin, is made up of a majority of African-Americans. But Atlanta painter Gilbert Young recently launched a Web site to argue that an American artist should have been picked instead, preferably an African-American. And CNN’s famous critic, Lou Dobbs, who thinks all things produced overseas that might take away American jobs are inherently bad, has joined this protest. Dobbs, referring to the committee’s choice and directing his question at sculptor Edward Hamilton who served on the committee, asked: "What in the world were you folks thinking?"

What are these critics thinking? Apparently the question of talent, as today’s Wall Street Journal noted, was not supposed to be the real issue. Make no mistake about this fact; Lei Yixin […]

A Break in Alabama

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:22:57-05:00August 28th, 2007|Categories: Personal|

I am not writing new blogs until later this week. I am visiting my mother in North Alabama over these days. I covet your prayers as I deal with a number of her personal needs and some financial challenges. She is nearly 92 and her mental acuity is now that of a 5 or 6 year old child. She still knows me and has a great sense of humor mixed with real godliness and all without a word of complaint. She is without a great deal of physical pain and lives quite well, with much more meaning to her life than I think most moderns could understand. This means that it is really harder to process this for me than it is for her. Some of you understand this well, from your own experience with elderly loved ones.

Mom was once a great Bible teacher and influenced hundreds of people who are now literally scattered all over the world. Monday I read her letters and notes from six people who thanked her for her role in their lives over a lifetime […]

Mother Teresa's Darkness Revealed

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:22:57-05:00August 24th, 2007|Categories: Spirituality|

We have known for some years now that Mother Teresa experienced the pain of deep spiritual darkness and turmoil in her heart for some years. We did not know just how deep, painful and long this darkness really was. Now we have been provided a glimpse into the soul of this remarkable woman in a new book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Doubleday), a collection of her private correspondence over the course of sixty-six years of her life.

In a letter of September 1979 she wrote to Rev. Michael Van Der Peet, "Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear." She added, "The tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak . . . I want you to pray for me—that I let Him have [a] free hand." When you contrast this with her public statements about seeing Christ in every person and circumstance, and then you see the film on her life that I reviewed here just […]