In the News

The Church and the Employment Dispossessed

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Ageism & employmentIf 2013 was marked by any one trend, it was a sobering one: Many of my peers lost jobs.

For me, peer is anyone in that 46-56 age group. Somehow, we have been redefined as the new elderly—at least by some in the corporate world.

I don’t know if health care fears have driven some of this, but it is startling to see people who are supposedly in their peak earning years instead walking the unemployment line. Worse, the likelihood of such folks returning to the income level they enjoyed prior to being let go runs just about to zero.

This is not good. It’s not good for those people, nor is it good for America.

And it may be worst of all for the Church, since these are the folks who had the incomes that funded their local congregations.

I talk about a lot of Church issues on Cerulean Sanctum, but I think no other “daily living” issue is more ignored by the American Church than our work lives. The advice most churches dispense on being a Christian who works is to start a workplace Bible study and to practice ethical work habits. That’s as far as it goes.

But when churches start discovering they have many people in their late 40s and early 50s trying to find work and not succeeding, SOMETHING must give. This trend is not one we can continue to ignore. Technology is putting more people out of work, and tech job availability is not compensating for the losses. Worse, one recruiter told me that anyone with gray hair who walks into a tech company looking for work is just wasting his or her time. Even worse? The same recruiter told me it’s not just tech companies anymore—it’s every company.

Again, this is an enormous issue. Which Christian with a national presence is talking about it? In fact, which Christian with a national stage is saying anything about issues of health care costs, stagnant wages, the increasing ranks of the un- and under-employed, and this creeping down of when someone must consider himself or herself “done” with a career, even when he or she doesn’t want to be done?

I continue to get the sense that while the Church in America has no qualms talking about spiritual issues, issues of everyday living (such as work) are going unaddressed, and those issues cause the most worry and grief in people. They are looking for answers, and the Church is not providing them.

Problem is, Jesus didn’t leave behind an answerless Church. It may be true that in this world we will have trouble, but Christ has overcome the world. For Christians to throw up our hands and do nothing is not the way of the Lord.

TBN Founder Paul Crouch Dies

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Over the weekend, the Christian broadcasting world lost one of its most powerful leaders when Paul Crouch of TBN died Nov. 30 at 79.

Anyone who has read Cerulean Sanctum knows I am not a fan of TBN, largely because it was indiscriminate in who it gave airtime to. For every Jack Hayford or Kirk Cameron featured on its programming, there was Benny Hinn or T.D. Jakes.

And then there was all the garish opulence and money, much of which was spent in ways I’m pretty sure Jesus would not have condoned.

From a TV broadcasting standpoint, though, few can argue with the success of what Paul Crouch built almost singlehandedly. Some might contend that one did not need to be a broadcasting genius to blow through millions of dollars generated through prosperity gospel teachings, but still. In it’s prime, TBN was a force to be reckoned with, and despite some fall-off from its glory days, it remains the largest religious TV network of any kind. At one point, I used to watch TBN because it was the only place one could see Christian music videos. As a popularizer of the Christian subculture through media, Crouch and TBN were both shrewd and peerless.

What will be the legacy of TBN and Paul Crouch? I find it hard to say. Certainly, TBN put Word of Faith and its teachers in a bigger spotlight. Even if Oral Roberts had been the real forerunner in that regard, Crouch perfected it. Those unfamiliar with Pentecostalism got an eyeful and earful of it through TBN, and I’m certain that some of TBN’s broadcasting had an influence on African nations and the religious trends toward Pentecostal Protestantism both there and in South America.

For me, Paul Crouch is a conflicting character, and I don’t know what else to say about him and the television ministry he built. There really is no real contender for that Christian broadcasting throne, and with Pat Robertson hitting 83,  the last formidable challenger for Crouch and TBN may also be exiting center stage shortly.

Sins of the Fathers (and Mothers)

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‘The LORD is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’
—Numbers 14:18 ESV

Despite the fact that the vast majority of scientific discoveries that undergird our modern life were made by Christians and that science in Europe outstripped science in the East and Middle East because Christian Europeans believed God is knowable and His Creation understandable, atheists continue to overlook facts and claim Christians are anti-science. They claim that believing the Bible is tantamount to disbelieving science, and they like to insist the Bible, when it talks about science, is “underinformed.”

Lately, I’ve been fascinated with the science of epigenetics, and I am because of the Bible verse that begins this post.

Epigenetics explains some of the presence of supposed “junk” in the human genome and why we can’t trace every genetic outcome to genes alone. While standard genetic theory could account for the sameness of identical twins, even down to shared behaviors, it could not account for the differences. Enter epigenetics.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

When Darwinism hit Victorian sensibilities like a sledgehammer, it also pounded the life out the widely accepted theories of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Lamarckism postulates that a generation could make choices and changes it could then pass on to progeny.  While Lamarck did not originate the idea, he nonetheless championed it and expanded on its principles so well that it gained his name.

Like many Enlightenment scientists in France, Lamarck was not a supporter of Christianity. That said, he continued to believe that chance did not run the cosmos, adhering to the ordered, planned, and meaningful universe concept likewise expressed by Christians.

Today, the field of epigenetics is so hot, it borders on incendiary. It turns out there may be more to the idea of being “born that way,” no matter what type of deviance or godliness “that way” might be.

Epigenetics demonstrates that a good or bad genetic expression may not express unless turned on. Remarkably (or should I write Lamarckably), an organism may have the genetic predilection toward a bad outcome yet that bad outcome never arises. Conversely, it may if switched on by the environment, nurture, or personal choices. The genetic disease possessed by twins may be expressed solely by the twin who decides to eat certain types of food; the gene combo for the disease literally switches on due to epigenetics. And this can also be passed to progeny.

Which is where sins of the fathers kick in. Epigenetics is showing that repeated bad choices by a parent can lead to a tendency in the offspring to manifest the same bad behavior. Lamarck rears his head yet again.

So, the visitation of the iniquities of the fathers (and mothers) to the third and fourth generation has a possible epigenetic link. Some epigeneticists are able to break down certain sinful behaviors into father-spawned or mother-spawned. Contrariwise, a godly parent may pass on a positive epigenetic tendency toward his or her offspring’s faith in God.

We are fearfully and wonderfully made, yet we are also damaged by the Fall of Man. That damage goes deep, even to our genetics, which we are now learning may bend us toward wrongful behavior because of what our moms and dads did. Or in those cases when we overcome, toward faithful living.

Looks like a case of science proving the Bible.