Tony Cervantes / Jan 1, 1988 - Nov 19, 2008

On Thursday, like most of us, I celebrated Thanksgiving with family and friends. In addition to great food and company, we had ample time to reflect on all the good God has placed in our lives. On Friday I attended the funeral of Tony Cervantes, my brother's 20 year old nephew. Tony was a gracious, generous, smiling young man with his whole life in front of him, or so we thought. A few days before his death, Tony suffered an asthma attack which prevented oxygen from reaching his brain for 6 minutes. Though the medical reports were initially positive, things turned for the worse and Tony died on November 19th.

On Thanksgiving night, I called my Dad and with Tony's funeral planned for the next morning, our conversation naturally turned there. My Dad wanted to know why Tony died at the beginning of a promising life. That just wasn't the way things were supposed to be. How can we make sense of senseless tragedy?

Fair questions - questions that bumper sticker slogans like "everything happens for a purpose" or "God is in control" fail to answer. It's not that God cannot act within the seeming chaos of our world to achieve His purposes, but simple statements fail to answer why the chaos exists and why it is allowed to force itself upon the people we love.

In every instance, when God created He paused and said "it is good," and when it came to man, He said "it is very good." If creation is so good, why do we daily see the effects of natural evil in disasters, disease, and death? Why do we witness constant moral evil inflicted upon innocents? Why did Tony die?

Creation was good – God created man with an intellect, emotions, and a will. In other words, God created us as persons in His own image capable of and craving relationship with each other and God Himself. Man’s will is necessary to his capacity for relationship, for choosing to live in union with others. For a time, man chose to live in face-to-face relationship with God, but then something happened.

By rebelling against God’s simple law, the first man and woman broke their relationship with God and plunged themselves, the whole human race, and all of creation into a state of separation from God. The effects of this rebellion distorted the good God had made. That’s what evil is, a distortion of good. It’s not a thing, but a condition. Not all the good is gone. We still live, love, laugh, and play. But it’s not with the same complete goodness it once had. Our lives are interrupted by disease, accidents, injury, and death, even death of those we deem good, those which had a promising life ahead of them.

Why did Tony die? Because things are not the way they’re supposed to be. Tony was ravaged by the effects of sin, of a world distorted by evil, of a body that retains only a part of the goodness God originally made. If that was the end of the story, our lives would be ground into the dust of despair. But, it’s not the end. God tells us that evil will be destroyed and goodness will be restored. Those who have embraced the Way that He has made for us will rise to an eternal new life when not only they, but all of creation will be put back to the way it is supposed to be.

21st Century Stories

• $26 billion is spent world-wide on movies
• 24,000 movie rental stores operate in America
• Less than 46% of Americans read a book last year
• 95% of all Americans saw a movie
• Average American sees 46 movies a year
• Pollster George Barna in his book Revolution says that 20% of all adults use culture, media, and the arts as their primary spiritual resource. Than number is projected to increase to 35% by the year 2025 and will then equal the number who will look to the Church as their primary spiritual resource.

Film has become the storytelling medium of the 21st century. Gone are the days of widespread familiarity with literature. Consider for a moment how many of the following movies you and everyone reading this piece have seen: Schindler's List, Finding Nemo, Titanic, Beauty and the Beast, and Toy Story. Now, try to imagine five books that each of us would have commonly read. You see my point.

The church has dealt with film primarily through avoidance (the whole thing is corrupt and will corrupt us if we touch it) or caution (only films that directly promote biblical values or the gospel message are worth of our attention). If we limit ourselves to only those two, we miss the opportunity for potent third option: dialogue. Film provides a cultural touch-point with virtually every person we meet and it does Christians well to familiarize themselves with warp and woof of the film in our cultural tapestry. I'm not saying that every film is good or that there are not those we should avoid. There are bad films just as there is bad music, or art, or literature and there are some stories and images that have no redeeming value whatsoever. But, film is so pervasive that if we hope to engage the current culture and participate in forging a new one that can accommodate renewal and revival, we must learn to dialogue with film.

Every story, including film, presents a worldview - or at minimum, a critique of a worldview. Remember that a worldview consists of our view of what is really real and determines our beliefs about life, our values, and ultimately, how we live our lives. It might be explicit in the story, or it might be expressed by one or more characters. There may be multiple or even competing worldviews in a single film.

Francis Schaeffer referred to discussion on the worldview level as pre-evangelism - a true prerequisite to discussions about the gospel. He believed that if my biblical worldview - what I hold to be really real - is different than my neighbor's, until we come to terms on each other's position, the gospel will be unintelligible to to my neighbor. Film provides readily available and fertile ground for worldview dialogue and scattering of the gospel seed.

A cup of coffee or bite to eat after a film with friend provides a great opportunity for worldview dialogue that can start in few other ways. Think about it - over the fence with your neighbor are you more likely to strike up a profitable conversation about why he needs Jesus, or why the main character in the movie The Shawshank Redemption would display such hope (if all that exists is the material world)? Film presents us with door to the 21st century mind and heart. We ought to open it.

How Big?

I remember a family trip to Disneyland on a day the park had over-booked the number of groups attending. Along with then normal crowd, we were continually surrounded by Girl Scouts and knee-high soccer players. At one point, while walking through the New Orleans Square area on our way to the Pirates of Caribbean, we entered a normally crowded but quick moving very wide and very long plaza. On this over-booked day, there were enough people to bring foot traffic to a full stop. A sea of heads stretched for hundreds of feet in front, back, and both sides of us and we were going nowhere. It took 15 minutes to get the crowd moving again. Great fun on a hot Southern California day.

The other I slowed down and marveled at the non-stop activity of my thoughts. One must actually work hard to stop the flow of thoughts - sometimes several at time - from rushing through the mind (don't worry, this will connect up and make sense when I'm done). We dream, analyze, plan, and talk to ourselves every waking moment. If I have ten different thoughts in the course of a minute, I have around 10,000 thoughts a day - makes me kind of tired thinking about it.

Now, remember the last really crowded place you were in - crowded like my day at Disneyland. Imagine for a moment how many thoughts went through your head while a part of that crowd. At the same time you had one thought, everyone else in the crowd had one thought. In fact, any one time, the two-thirds of the awake people in the world are simultaneously having thoughts at every moment.

Have you ever wondered what that sounds like to God? Happy thoughts, sad thoughts, hopeful thoughts, despair, evil, ingenuity and genius all at the same time. Despite our inability to imagine that experience, God hears them all, knows what prompted each, and for those who love Him can intervene in those thoughts to accomplish His desires in our lives - simultaneously.

How would your life change if your belief about what is real included a God of this magnitude? I don't mean relegating this fact about God to the category of spiritual or religious beliefs. I mean holding onto it as the truth about the way things really are - in the same way you believe 2 + 2 = 4. Can I include a God this big in my concept of reality and continue really feel bored, or helpless, or alone in the presence of that God?

How in the World did We Get Here?

You might have seen the A-B-C reasons for supporting Proposition 8 which restores natural marriage. "A" stands for activist judges. Even though over 61% of the voters supported natural marriage by passing Proposition 22 eight years ago, four California Supreme Court Justices decided the voters were wrong. How did we get to a place where four judges can turn the decision of over four million voters on its head?

Coming at the end of a historical period referred to as the Enlightenment - where human reason was considered the source of truth - Darwin published his book Origin of the Species in 1859. Primed by the current reliance on reason, many thinkers of the day latched onto Darwin's theory of evolution as the final step away from God as the transcendent source of truth. No longer did they need to rely on God to explain the existence of mankind. The doors were now open to the primacy of man - not as the pinnacle of creation - but as the species fortunate enough to evolve beyond the others.

This break did not stop with biology, but bled over into other disciplines, including law. Prior to this time, William Blackstone's commentaries on the law served as one of the primaries sources for educating lawyers. In his introduction to the nature of law, Blackstone writes "[u]pon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these." This was the common view of the time, that human laws must submit themselves the laws of nature and nature's God.

However the introduction of an explanation for our existence apart from God spawed an explanation for the nature of law apart from God. The newly devised case study method for training lawyers that came in the wake of Darwin's theory - where the study of law focused on the decisions of judges - promoted the idea that the law must also evolve over time. The purpose of the courts was not to determine what was in the Constitution and other laws, but what those laws should mean. And, that meaning was determined by what these judges detemined fit the needs current society. The law had lost it moorings and was now afloat in the haphazard currents of personal preference.

Fast forward to today and we find ourselves experiencing the results of 150 years of this new way of looking at the law. What we find should not surprise us. This process has led to judges acting as the final arbitors of our law. They alone decied what laws are good for us and what laws are not. They alone decide right and wrong.

While we can turn the tide and begin to retake lost ground, it will take time. That makes this coming presidential election critical. When the next president takes office, six of the current United States Supreme Court Justices will be over 70 years of age. The next prsident will likely appoint two Justices, maybe more. As important, the President nominates appellate court justices. Most appeals stop at the appellate courts and most of our law is "made" there. The next president has the power to affect the condition of our country for decades and maybe longer, appointing justices that will continue to take the law into their own hands, or appointing justices who will respect the power of the legislature and executive and who will look to what our Constitution and laws say, not what they'd like them to say.

Separation of Church and State

A lot of folks can't even say the phrase "separation of church and state" without looking like the chocolate candy they just chewed was actually a clump of dirt. It's not without good reason we often observe that response. The phrase has been torn from its original meaning and a has become the anthem of all who wish to ban religious expression from any public and many private places.

Many of us know the phrase originated as description of where government should not tread rather than where religious beliefs should not be expressed. True separation of church and state is a good thing. The government is not the church and the church is not the government. Each has its place and purpose, ordained by our Creator to provide benefits to His image bearers. And, neither should encroach upon the boundaries of the other.

Does this mean the Christian conscience should not operate in political activity? Certainly not. Just as in other arenas of life, the Christian must carry his conscience informed by the Word of God into his political activity. This is true for the voter and the elected official. Chuck Colson, in his book God & Government states three good reasons for Christians to engage political activity. "First, as citizens of the nation-state, Christians have the same civic duties all citizens have . . . Second, as citizens of the Kingdom of God Christians are to bring God's standards of righteousness and justice to bear on the kingdom of this world. . . . Third, Christians have an obligation to bring transcendent moral values into public debate." We've seen examples of these principles throughout history - William Wilberforce and his successful fight to end slavery and rebuild the moral fabric of British society comes to mind.

Does this mean that political office becomes a pulpit for the elected? No. The church often finds itself marginalized in public debate, suffering prior decades of hiding from political activity. To swing to the other extreme and use government to accomplish the goals of the church would miss the mark by an equal margin. The elected official's duty is to facilitate government's delegated duty of preserving order and justice. According to Colson, "there is an alternative to the imposition of religious values or the passive acceptance of majority opinion, a principle that pays both pluralism and conscience their due. Christian politicians must do all in their power to make clear, public arguments on issue of moral and political importance, to persuade rather than coerce.

Separation of church and state - each operating in its own sovereign sphere without encroaching on the other - can restore much needed biblical balance to life in the public square.

How to Measure a Proposition

California has a dozen propositions on the November 2008 ballot. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that a biblical worldview soundly supports the preservation of natural marriage and notifying parents before their minor daughter has an abortion. But, what about all those other measures? Take Proposition 7 for example. It has to define ESP, IOU, PUC, and RPS before the 3,864 word (I counted) analysis even begins. I thought I knew what ESP and IOU meant, but apparently, I need more schoolin' to get it. How in the world does one use a biblical worldview to arrive and thumbs up or down for gibberish like that? Let me try to make some sense of it.

Let's take the example of the three propositions, 5, 6, and 9, which address issues in our criminal justice system. First, let's take a look at what we've got now:

• 1 out of every 142 Americans is behind bars
• 1 out of every 44 is on probation or parole
• Government at all levels spends $147 billion on crime related expenses
• Each prison cell costs $100,000 to build
• Each prisoner costs $20,000 per year to house
• Prisoners are exposed to years of separation from family, violence, homosexual rape
• For the last 30 years the rate of rearrest has stayed at 67% - that’s through Democrat and Republican administrations and legislative control

Conservatives tout a tough on crime agenda and liberals hope to rehabilitate offenders through the system. Both have failed - but why? Because they fail to acknowledge the truth of the matter - what the real problems are and what will really solve them.

God is the beginning and end of true justice and because God is a personal being, justice itself is personal. From God's point of view, it's more about restoring relationships that it is about getting what you deserve. In the cross, justice and love are united. It is there that God demonstrates his overwhelming love for us, those who were dead in our trespasses and sin and united in rebellion against him. And, it is there that justice is perfectly satisfied. The result is the restoration of our relationship with God.

When offenders commit crimes, they are not against the State of California as the District Attorney's complain reads. They are against victims and communities and they breach shalom (wholeness - the way things are supposed to be). Looking through the lenses of a biblical worldview, our response to this disruption ought to include an opportunity for the victims and communities to participate in restoring shalom. Our efforts should focus on restitution which recognizes the victim and the harm done and creates an opportunity to mend the breach in the relationship between the offender and victim and community. If we move in that direction, we can hope that the offender can engage in confession, repentance, making amends, and later transformation. The victim gains an opportunity to forgive and let go of a hurt will only grow into hate if left untouched.

This gives us a yardstick to measure these three propositions. Let's use Proposition 9 as an example. According to the official summary, Prop. 9 "requires notification to victim and opportunity for input during phases of criminal justice process, including bail, pleas, sentencing and parole." Based on our discussion above, this sounds pretty good. The current system relegates victims to prosecutor props with very few rights. Even though I like it, this proposition possesses a tone that misses the mark by focusing on individual rights. Rather than pointing us towards true justice - the restoration of relationships - victims need to be involved in the system because they have rights that the system ignores.

Does that cause Proposition 9 to fail the biblical worldview measuring test? I don't think so. The proposition promotes a sound policy even if a bit off base. It does not reflect perfect justice, but it moves us that much closer to it.

Measuring propositions takes some work, but if we want expand the borders of the Kingdom of God among us - the place where what God prefers actually happens - we need to keep at it.

We the People...

In California, representative government extends a step further - citizens directly access lawmaking through ballot initiatives or propositions. This makes the application of Romans chapter 13 a little more personal: "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God . . .For he is God's servant to do you good." Romans 13:1, 4 In the Romans 13 sense, God delegates to each of us the authority to do good in the political process. If we fail to faithfully participate, we fail as stewards of our delegated authority - we fall short or miss the mark of God's intentions for us - we sin.

To hit the God's mark, we must first participate - go to the polls and vote. Second we must apply faithfulness to our participation. This means spending a little time figuring out how we can vote to do good by God standards. Voting alone will not cut it.

To keep pounding a point, that's worldview in action. Each of us possesses a worldview - a core set a beliefs about God, man, and the world which determine how we live our lives. As Christians, God's revelation of Himself in Scripture ought to significantly form our worldview. If my worldview is Theo-centric or biblical or Christian, when I vote for propositions, I will determine my yeses and nos by the standards God reveals in Scripture.

Sounds simple enough, but the application can get a bit messy. Stay tuned for more info on how to put a biblical worldview into action at the voting booth.