Our friend looked up with troubled eyes. “I’d always thought the age between 45 and 55 would be relatively carefree. After all, we’re past the baby-sitting and orthodontist periods. My husband’s job is secure, and we’re making fairly good money.

“Yet I don’t think I’ve ever faced such difficult days. Trying to help our children through late adolescence and finance them through college is tough. Now add menopause to that. But one thing is far more difficult—trying to figure out what is best for our parents, both my mother and my husband’s father. They are both widowed. They need all kinds of help. What do we do?” Then she added ruefully, “I sometimes think God’s planning for my age bracket is a bit questionable.”

Hers is a common problem. Most of us are not prepared for the changing roles advancing age thrusts upon us. Our parents often thoughtfully supported us during difficult years of young adulthood and marriage. And they were loving helpers of our children as they grew.

But now, perhaps because of the normal effects of aging, or because of some illness, they are no longer self-sufficient. Or perhaps Dad has died, and now Mom is desperately lonely; she may even seem unable to function without her husband. Perhaps she can no longer maintain the family home and must move.

What should be done? Who is responsible for deciding? Some say the aging parents; some say the adult child who lives nearest; some say all the adult children.

Should we make the decision on the basis of the aging parent’s preference? Or do we make it on that of the adult children and their families?

These questions are being asked every day by thousands of middle-aged adults and their elderly parents.

Honor And Service

The Bible says a lot about families, both by laying down principles and describing actual situations. And it also presents norms of a general sort, which we can use to measure our acts and attitudes. Let us consider what the Bible says, interlacing it with the present-day situation, and then focus on the question of living arrangements.

We start with two biblical teachings that lie beneath many others. The first is the fifth commandment, “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gave you (Exod. 20:12). The same idea with a reverse twist appears among the proverbs that deal with this relationship: “Do not despise your mother when she is old” (Prov. 23:22).

The second teaching comes from the New Testament, where a great emphasis falls on serving as exemplified by Christ: “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.… For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:44–45, NIV).

Keeping these fundamentals in mind, let us look at the Bible’s point of view specifically toward the elderly. It is stamped with realism, in contrast to some of the “Let’s pretend” ideas common today. For instance, it frankly faces the debilitating effects of old age, appropriately using the subtleties of metaphor. Ecclesiastes 12:1–7 candidly describes infirmities that sometimes come with old age. The writer pictures an aging person as a house that is decaying: “… the keepers of the house [arms and hands] tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders [the teeth] cease because they are few … one rises up at the voice of a bird [insomnia] … the grasshopper drags itself along and desire fails; because man goes to his eternal home … and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.”

At the same time, the Bible sketches a parallel line that says old age can be marked by beauty: “The glory of young men is their strength, but the beauty of old men is their gray hair” (Prov. 20:29). “A hoary head is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life” (Prov. 16:31).

To this blend of infirmity and beauty the Bible adds other ingredients, also subtly held in tension, such as wisdom and foolishness. Adult children in our day often suffer a sense of guilt if they do not visualize their parents as wise, loving counselors who will enrich their homes if the aged parents come to live with them. But the Bible is more realistic and less sentimental about old age. True, some old people are revealed as good and wise, like the elderly counselors of King Rehoboam who advised him to lower taxes and relieve the burden of the people. (Rehoboam, of course, chose to obey younger counselors, who told him to get tough. His action resulted in the divided kingdom from which Israel never recovered.)

Other older people, however, are described as foolish. “Better is a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king, who will no longer take advice” (Eccl. 4:13). And Eli, the priest at the time of Hannah, was a morally weak 98-year-old whom God chastised for his sins.

In our day, as in Bible times, most people in their old age have about the same qualities they had when younger. Old age does not by itself make people more patient, lovable, or easy to get along with. The gracious, loving 40-year-old usually becomes the gracious, loving 80-year-old. The cantankerous, selfish 40-year-old becomes the cantankerous, selfish 80-year-old. Some people, however, who were loving and kind when young may suffer brain damage from Altzheimer’s disease or other illnesses that tragically change their personalities.

Yet our elderly parents must be cared for regardless of whether they are pleasant, unpleasant, some of both, or suffering from personality changes. How we are to do this varies from situation to situation. In Bible times, older people nearly always lived close to their adult children. An extended family of children, parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles were usually within the same town or country because of the method of land inheritance. This is somewhat like the present-day situation where adult children bring their parents to live near or with them. The extended family in Scripture often formed a large, stable, social support group that could share the responsibility of caring for an elderly, sick family member.

However, that extended family system did not always work well. The prophet Micah decried the family conflict when “the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; a man’s enemies are those of his own house.”

Of course, in our society, adult children may live hundreds of miles from their elderly parents or from brothers and sisters. Although this poses special difficulties regarding care, the principle that God wants to help aging parents through their adult children still applies.

Widows

Other problems the Old Testament records concern inheritance, and focus especially on widows. In those days, the eldest son inherited double that of other sons. Wives did not inherit land; daughters inherited it only if there were no sons. The eldest son, with the double portion, was probably expected to provide for his mother and other family members who needed help. But sometimes the eldest son died in war, or of disease, or could not or did not take responsibility for his widowed mother.

And sometimes the father died when the widow still had young children. Then she was apparently left to her own limited resources and to the charity of other people. Widows were powerless and often exploited so that throughout the Bible, “widow” is almost a synonym for poverty.

Time has not changed that. In the United States today, 72 percent of the elderly poor are unmarried women. In 1977, the median income for women over 65 years of age was $3,088, while men over 65 had a median income of $5,526. Current statistics indicate that the average wife outlives her husband by at least seven years.

In biblical times, widows were dependent on charity. In our times, elderly women are also often dependent on charity, supplemental social security benefits, general welfare, Medicaid, and so on.

The Mosaic law said that part of the tithe given the Levites was to feed the widows and fatherless. When a field was harvested, owners were told not to go back and pick up the stalks of grain the reapers overlooked, but to leave them for the widows and fatherless. (It was in such gleaning that Ruth met Boaz.)

In the Gospels we see that Jesus was particularly aware of the poverty of widows. He raised from the dead the only son of the widow of Nain, thereby providing for her material as well as emotional needs. He commented on the widow in the temple who gave to the treasury “all that she had,” two pence.

The first century boasted no social security system, no Medicaid. Many widows in the early church had no one to care for them—partly because, as in our day, family members ignored their needs.

Perhaps because of this Paul wrote Timothy that widowed women of child-bearing age should remarry so that they would not become dependent on the church for material needs. However, old women who did not have relatives who would care for them were to be cared for by the young church.

In this context, Paul states that adult children are responsible to care for their elderly parents. “If a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn their religious duty to their own family and make some return to their parents; for this is acceptable in the sight of God.… If any one does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.… If any believing woman has relatives who are widows, let her assist them; let the church not be burdened, so that it may assist those who are real widows” (1 Tim. 5:4, 8, 16). Paul apparently speaks of “real widows” as those who have no family to care for them.

Some signs of family breakdowns today are battered wives, abused children, and abused elderly parents. Many of these same sins were present in Old Testament Judaism and in the time of the early church. Psalm 71:9 shows that being cast off in old age was a familiar experience. Part of the message of John the Baptist as a forerunner of Christ was that he “will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers.”

Abuse of elderly parents is not limited to non-Christians. It takes many forms, in addition to the violent ones of actual beating or slow starvation.

We can see one abuse in the effort to gain control of the elderly parent’s assets. They do not belong to the children unless the parent chooses to assign them during his life, or through his will. The Bible speaks specifically to this point: “He who robs his father or his mother and says, ‘That is no transgression,’ is companion of a man who destroys” (Prov. 28:24).

Sometimes a parent is clearly unable to manage his or her financial affairs, and an adult child (or someone else) must take over this responsibility, either as a court-appointed conservator, or in an informal arrangement. Unfortunately, the adult child occasionally moves the parent’s assets into his own account and then places the parent on welfare. The way an adult child uses the assets of an incompetent parent is a true test of his integrity. By law, such assets are to be used only for the care and support of the parent.

Neglect is another kind of abuse. This may involve leaving the care of a needy parent to neighbors or friends or to the one adult child of the family who is willing and compassionate. This kind of neglect is surely what Paul was talking about when he wrote, “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

Adult children who live a long distance from their parents (a phenomenon almost unknown in Bible times) may not be able to be with their parents in times of failing health, but they can help in other ways. They can share expenses. They can frequently phone the parent or those who are caring for him. They can write often; they can visit as often as possible. Sometimes the only real interest adult children seem to show in a parent comes after the funeral, when they are eager to make sure they got equal treatment in the will with the family member who may have spent several years physically and financially caring for him!

Treating the elderly parent like a child is also abuse. “Honoring our father and mother” surely involves helping them maintain some control over their lives as long as possible. We do not honor our parents when we make all the decisions about care without letting them participate. We can openly discuss their feelings about where they are living, their fears for the future, their possible options for the future; these matters all contribute a great deal to our parents’ dignity. Sometimes an adult child must make a hard decision about care because the aged parent is not mentally able to participate, or because the parent refuses to accept the necessity for additional medical care. This is not so likely to occur if they have all openly discussed the options over a period of time.

We can also hurt the elderly by cutting them out of family and church activities. Peter at Pentecost indicated in quoting the prophet Joel that all age groups were to participate in a Spirit-filled church: “Your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams” (Acts 2:17). Often extra effort is necessary to keep older persons active in church life when they are no longer totally self-sufficient. Someone may need to drive them to church and home. Churches have not been quick to conform to laws regarding access for the handicapped. Wheelchairs are not difficult to transport in cars, and every church should have at least one easy access route. A loving, responsible, adult child will make extra effort to get his elderly parent to church as long as the parent wants to go.

Modern medicine is now saying that satisfying social contacts are essential for good health and mental alertness. Dr. James Lynch of the University of Maryland School of Medicine says that lack of contact with other people can lead to serious illness, especially heart disease.

Living Arrangements

The question many adult Christians are facing is, “How can I meet the needs of my elderly parents and still handle my other responsibilities? How do I honor my father and mother when a change in their living arrangement has to be made?” Is the loving and honoring course always to take the aging parent into the home of the adult child?

In some families, the presence of a grandmother or grandfather within the family circle is a blessing to all, but this is not always so.

I once asked a college friend about her home life. “What home life? We didn’t have any,” she replied. She explained that her grandmother had lived with the family all during her childhood and youth. “All our activities were determined by ‘How will Grandma feel about it?’ If it would have annoyed Grandma, it couldn’t be.” All the children in the family left home at the earliest possible time, largely to get away from Grandma.

No doubt my friend’s mother would have felt guilty if she had not taken in her mother when she was widowed. Yet both grandmother and the rest of the family would probably have been better off if they had made some other arrangement. Grandma may have been as miserable as the children, but thought living with her daughter was the only “respectable” thing to do. And perhaps for financial reasons she had no other choice.

Not every older person wants and or is emotionally equipped to live in the middle of a busy family of children and teen-agers. Many would be happier in the peace and quiet of their own apartment in a building reserved for senior citizens, or in a retirement center where they can build a circle of their own friends and maintain some independence. However, almost every older person needs and wants frequent contact with his children and grandchildren.

Some elderly parents hesitate to pay the fee to enter a retirement community because they want their children to inherit as much of their resources as possible. Or they may fear that their money “won’t last as long as we do.” The children should recognize and discuss such factors with them freely.

My husband’s father lived alone until he was 86—ten years after his wife died. We were living 400 miles away and my husband was an only child. We were uncomfortable with the situation. We called him every week, went to see him a few times a year, and had him visit us once or twice a year. After he had surgery at age 86, the doctor advised us that he should not go back to his home to live alone.

In considering what to do, we knew he would find it difficult to adjust to life in our household with active teen-agers. For example, he liked to go to bed at 8 and get up at 5 A.M. (He also thought all of us ought to go to bed at 8 and get up at 5!) He loved us and our children—in small doses. But we knew he needed a lot of solitude, as he always had.

We found a place for him in a lovely retirement center only three miles from our home. There he had his own room and private bath and TV set. He went to the dining room for three nourishing meals a day and could visit with people when he wanted to. There was a chapel service on Sunday. He could sleep when he desired. I visited him almost every day and the rest of the family visited often. We took him shopping when he was willing, brought him to our home as often as he would come. He did not want to come often because he was much more secure with a definite routine—where everything happened at an exact, specified time of day. He lived there for six years, until his death at 92.

We think he was much more content there than he would have been in our home, and those six years were among the best in his life. He needed to be in control of his space—however small.

How to honor our mother and our father is an intensely personal matter, to be worked out between the parents and adult children, taking into consideration the welfare and resources of all. Love and honor for our parents often demand sacrifices of time, money, and emotional energy to find the most Christian way to meet the needs of all concerned.

But following God’s commands has its own rewards. “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work” (2 Cor. 9:8, NIV).

The Art Of Restoration

The germans bombed Warsaw, Poland, for six years during World War II. They were determined to wipe the city from the face of the earth. Of its population of 3.5 million, only about 35 people crawled out of Warsaw’s rubble to greet the victorious German army when it arrived.

Later, after the Germans themselves had been defeated, the people who had fled into the country returned. Someone produced some old photographs. And with their bare hands, the Polish people began to rebuild their city: stone by stone, lovingly, exactly. Where a former 700-year-old roof sagged, the reconstructed roof sagged. Thus today, when standing in the center of the reconstructed square, one is easily transported back 700 years in time.

But the interesting thing is this: today, when Germany wants to restore an old town or an old building, it is to the Polish artisans that they turn for help.

Has your life been devastated? God can give you the vision, the strength, and the skill to restore it. With him alongside, the reconstruction can begin. Then, who knows? Perhaps someday you, too, will be permitted to use that art of restoration to help the very ones who were responsible for the devastation.

To Savor The Struggle

“To prosper in sin,” wrote English poet John Trapp, “is the greatest tragedy that can befall a man this side of hell.”

When we pray earnestly for a beloved prodigal and calamity falls, we must be lovingly sympathetic—but thank God that he is undertaking. Trouble is just the old sheep dog nudging us back to the Shepherd.

The psalmist marvels at the wicked “spreading himself like a green bay tree.” The prayer book version puts it: “like a green native plant.” We have a schefflera plant in our living room. It makes a nice house plant where we live because it is not a native plant. But a schefflera plant in Florida grows to be a tree.

Why should we wonder then when we Christians struggle? We are not native plants. This earth is not our home, and we can expect to have rough times. Our Lord promised us that.

So John Trapp looked around him at the prosperous ungodly of his day in seventeenth-century England and wrote, in his inimitable way, “Envy not such an one his pomp any more than you would a corpse his flowers.”

Evangelicals are shocked when they come across liberals like Rudolf Bultmann who delight in eliminating from the Bible certain features to which they take exception—such as the resurrection of Jesus or the vicarious atonement through his death. However, there is also a degree of demythologizing going on in our own ranks. I have in mind the charismatic dimension of apostolic teaching.

To grasp it, let us look at Paul’s essay on spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12 to 14. There we glimpse a congregation alive in the Spirit and abounding in gifts and manifestations. Several of Paul’s points provoke no controversy among us. He speaks of simple confession of Christ as Lord and makes it the basic criterion for discerning the work of the Spirit (12:3). He goes on to say that God gives every individual believer some spiritual capacity out of an incredibly rich reservoir of diverse gifts (12:4–7). Then he insists at length on a rule of action as well: gifts are intended to channel love to the body of Christ, and if they do not, something is wrong (12:12–13:13).

The challenging feature of Paul’s remarks lies in the intensity and range of our spiritual experience in Christ. Paul refers to gifts of service that are ordinary and everyday (12:5), and to dynamic workings that are unusual and supernatural (12:6). In his later lists of gifts, he mentions commonplace abilities like administration and helping (12:28). He also speaks of miracle-working faith, which a person can use effectively to pray for healing and to claim God’s presence in a critical situation (12:9–10). He talks about a liberated prayer language and the ability to express God’s leading to the congregation (12:10). Later he discusses at greater length two of the gifts: tongues and prophecy (14:1–32).

The overall picture Paul gives us is that of a wonderfully gifted congregation, liberated in their spiritual experience, and eager to share with everyone else what God is saying and what God has done (14:26–33). He describes a condition where the Spirit is personally present and dynamically real, where it is natural and normal to experience abundance of spiritual abilities and emotions. He thus describes a condition that is all too lacking in the centuries since, and even today. He describes exactly what we all need.

On the one hand, we suffer from great lethargy, ineffectiveness, and boredom; on the other hand, we turn away from the one influence that promises to make us alive unto God and empowered in his work. My own denomination suffers as much from dead orthodoxy as it does from lifeless liberalism, yet it is deathly afraid of what might happen if the Spirit came sweeping over us. In our pews sit hundreds of discouraged saints. They are not lusting for existential benefits beyond those in Christ. They are simply thirsting for more of his fullness and for greater warmth from the spiritual fire within.

It is not a new doctrine we lack. What we need is a new dynamism that will make all of the old evangelical convictions operational. We need not so much to be educated as to be vitalized. It is not a doctrine of the Spirit that we need, but a movement of the Spirit, pervading and filling us, setting our convictions on fire.

If theological rationalizing is one obstacle to realizing the blessings God has for us, another is our fear and suspicion about the Pentecostal movement (I speak as a Baptist). There have been enough instances of church splits, fanatical prophecy, spurious claims for miracles and the like to make this an understandable fear. Even a revival based on scriptural doctrine can go wrong and bear bitter fruit. We are wise to move cautiously.

And yet, can we not see what a breakthrough in spiritual reality and power the Pentecostal movement has achieved? Are we too proud to admit that this missing dimension has been wonderfully recovered in the company of our Pentecostal brothers and sisters? Can we not rejoice that many of God’s people have experienced a fresh anointing of the dynamism of God’s Spirit?

God has a providential purpose in the existence of diverse groups—Baptists, Anglicans, Pentecostals, and more. Each has treasures to share with the whole church. May we not be too proud or too fearful to recognize the testimony of our Pentecostal brethren, and add their dynamism to our doctrine.

The biggest “infrastructure” challenge for this country in the next decade is not the billions needed for railroads, highways, and energy. It is the American school system, from kindergarten through the Ph.D. program and the postgraduate education of adults. And it requires something far scarcer than money thinking and risk taking.

The challenge is not one of expansion. On the contrary, the explosive growth in enrollment over the last 30 years has come to an end.

And the last 30 years of social upheaval are also over. The country will no longer try to use schools to bring about social reform and reconstruction. It is becoming increasingly clear to policymakers that schools cannot solve all the problems of the larger community.

Instead, the battle cry for the eighties and nineties will be the demand for performance and accountability. Now many major employers are beginning to demand more than completion of school. Students and parents, too, will demand greater accountability from schools, on all levels.

Demand for education is actually going up, not down. What is going down, and fairly fast, is demand for traditional education in traditional schools. Indeed, the fastest growing industry in America today may be the continuing professional education of highly schooled midcareer adults.

But the greatest challenge to educators is likely to come from our new opportunities for diversity. We now have the chance to apply the basic findings of psychological, developmental, and educational research over the last 100 years: namely, that no one educational method fits all children.

Some children learn best by rote, in structured environments with high certainty and strict discipline. Others thrive in the less structured “permissive” atmosphere of a “progressive” school. Some adults learn out of books, some learn by doing, some learn best by listening. Some students need prescribed daily doses of information; others need challenge, the “broad picture” and a high degree of responsibility for the design of their own work. But for too long, educators have insisted that there is one best way to teach and learn, even though they have disagreed about what that way is.

A century ago, the greatest majority of Americans lived in communities so small that only one one-room schoolhouse was within walking distance of small children. Then there had to be “one right method” for everybody to learn.

Today the great majority of school children in the U.S. (and all developed countries) live in metropolitan areas with such density that there can easily be three or four elementary schools—as well as junior highs and even high schools—within each child’s walking or bicycling distance. There will therefore be increasing demand for some kind of “voucher” system enabling students and their parents to choose between alternative routes to learning offered by competing schools.

Indeed, competition and choice are already beginning to infiltrate the school system. “Fundamentalist” and “evangelical” schools and colleges have shown an amazing ability to prosper during a period of rising costs and dropping enrollments elsewhere. All this is anathema, of course, to the public school establishment. But economics, student needs, and our new understanding of how people learn are bound to break the traditional education monopoly just as trucks and airplanes broke the monopoly of the railroads, and computers and “chips” are breaking the telephone monopoly.

In the next 10 or 15 years, we will almost certainly see strong pressures to make schools responsible for thinking through what kind of learning methods are appropriate for each child. We will almost certainly see tremendous pressure, from parents and students alike, for result-focused education and for accountability in meeting objectives set for individual students. The continuing professional education of highly educated midcareer adults will become a third tier in addition to undergraduate and professional or graduate work. Above all, attention will shift back to schools and education as the central capital investment and infrastructure of a “knowledge society.”

Reprinted from the Wall Street Journal, March 3, 1981, by permission of the author.

Knowing—As I Am Known

My, but it’s getting expensive to be a church member—at least at the church where I belong. And I don’t mean the offerings. It’s the extras that are attacking my budget.

Exhibit A is the “church directory” for which all of us had to have our pictures taken. The picture was free, I guess, but it cost me money to order extra copies for our friends and relatives. The whole project just about wrecked the church, even though the pastor said the book would help us get to know each other better. We saw people in the directory that we have never seen in church, and this raised some furor. Then the deacons took up a special offering so we could mail copies to our missionaries. Surely missionaries see enough weird-looking people without sending them our pictures.

No sooner did we recover from the directory drain than the pastor suggested that we start wearing name tags. “It will help us to know each other better,” he explained. (I think we’re getting to know him better.) The deacons displayed samples at prayer meeting and the battle started again. Mrs. Hawkins said the type was too small and she couldn’t read it. But her eyes are so weak that we would all have to wear sandwich boards for her to be able to read our names. Mrs. Lorrimer wondered if the tags were available in different colors so she could match them to her various apparel ensembles, and Mrs. Olsen said that the pins would ruin her clothes. “Why don’t we get the kind that clip on your pocket, like they wear at the hospital?”

Well, the name tag idea was tabled. Then the pastor came home from a “group dynamics” conference and decided we needed to be more dynamic. It turned out to be dynamite instead. “We will cancel the evening services,” he said, “and start meeting in house groups. This way we can get to know each other better. We will also save light and heat at the church.” When somebody asked about wasting gas driving all over town, he just said, “Well, this way we can get to know the town better, and you may lead a hitchhiker to the Lord.”

Don’t ask me how the house groups are doing. I hear that some people are complaining because it’s costing a lot to provide coffee and refreshments. “You don’t have to feed us,” the pastor explained, “but it will help you to get to know your grocer better.” Forgive me, but I’m staying home instead and reading my Bible and praying for the people in the church directory. Would you believe it? I’m getting to know myself and my Lord better.

EUTYCHUS X

A Realistic Portrayal

Bernard Rifkin’s evaluation of Ordinary People [April 24] astonished me. I could not see any sinister and ulterior motives lurking in the shadows of this movie.

Rifkin confuses biblical values (or “Calvinist values”) with “traditional culture,” a common but dangerous misconception. There are elements in our culture that do contribute to repression of feeling, to artificiality, and to mental illness. This is not the fault or the result of biblical values, nor does Ordinary People claim that it is.

The film’s crucial message to Christians is (1) hurting is human, (2) keeping hurt inside can be self-destructive, and (3) there are people out there, even unbelievers, who can help us work through our hurt.

JESSICA SHAVER

Long Beach, Calif.

Why Rifkin sees this movie as an attack on Protestant values is beyond me. This descriptive movie is harshly realistic of what happens when anger and negative feelings are denied and parents do not have a healthy relationship. Rifkin is attacking a straw man and is overspiritualizing what he sees.

We have in today’s culture a large number of evangelical families exactly where the Jarretts were in Ordinary People: good families with relationships lacking depth and true intimacy. A major factor is our emphasis on cognitive and behavioral components of human personality. Many people—like Rifkin, I suspect—are fearful of the affective component of their personality, so they repress their feelings and never allow themselves the openness and spontaneity that make true intimacy possible.

WAYLON O. WARD

Richardson, Tex.

Ordinary People is a morally poignant movie precisely because it penetrates the spiritual vacuity inherent in the value orientations and cultural consciousness of people like Rifkin himself. It shows us, in a painfully familiar (and attractive) setting, the structured strains and existential ambiguities that are emotionally pathogenic, not in spite of, but because of middle-class secularized Protestant values.

JEFFREY W. SWANSON

New Haven, Conn.

Humanism In Education

The April 10 issue was of special value to me as it provided encouragement, advice, information, correction, and a basis for discussion.

If Christian writers such as Crater [“The Unproclaimed Priests of Public Education”] listened less raptly to and quoted less frequently from the educational experts, they would give their readers a more balanced picture of public education in America. There is a great difference between what is said in the orderly, quiet expert’s office and what is done in the stuffy, busy, crowded classroom.

Ten years ago our province’s department of education established a humanistic-based “values” social studies program. Experts came from all over to laud and to borrow from this innovative program. Last year the whole social studies curriculum was changed. The values emphasis was not scrapped as a result of mass protests. Rather, an expert left the rarefied atmosphere of his office and talked to teachers. He found that they had not been teaching the new curriculum and had no intention of ever teaching it. The reasons for why they found this curriculum unteachable were as varied as the teachers themselves.

Although evangelicals fear it and college officials wish it, educational experts still are not able to mass produce teachers as Heinz does ketchup.

LUCILLE GLEDDIE

Red Deer, Alberta, Canada

Messianic Jews

I want to express my sincere appreciation for the article, “A Messianic Jew Pleads His Case,” by Pawley and Juster [April 24]. From my own perspective as a Gentile Christian, given a deep love for Jewish people by my parents, I have discovered how helpful Passover, Sabbath, and the other festivals of Leviticus 23 are to Christians seeking to discover their Old Testament roots. Our children have grown up with these festivals and look forward to them with great anticipation. Perhaps one way for evangelicals to begin to appreciate Messianic Jews will be to discover our common roots.

MARTHA ZIMMERMAN

Richland, Wash.

Because of my Jewish background, it is easy to relate to events in the Gospels and in the first-century church. Peter, Paul, James, and John are members of my family and the Rabbi of Nazareth speaks to me in my own language as I sit at his feet. What could be better? The rabbis will tell you that I am no longer a Jew because I have found the Messiah whom Isaiah and Moses foreknew. If I were agnostic or atheistic, I would still be Jewish, but since I have recognized the Messiah by the signs given by our holy prophets, I have ceased to be Jewish, but somehow have not become a Gentile. What am I, then? My heart tells me that I am as Jewish as I was on the day of my birth to a Jewish father and mother.

MURRAY GOODMAN

Tucson, Ariz.

My father-in-law was a converted Jew. He did not come out of strict Judaism, and he was not ashamed of his Jewishness, but upon his conversion, he was not in the slightest interested in “Hebrew Christian congregations.” His position simply was, “I was once a Jew, I am now a Christian. I want to be known as a Christian without any trappings or qualifications.”

As far as the apostle Paul is concerned, at the present time, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile … but all one in Christ Jesus. I am a Gentile Christian. My father-in-law was a Jewish Christian. But both of us are Christians. I do not attend a Gentile church; there was no reason for him to have attended a Jewish church. There is no such thing. The church combines those who were once Jews and once Gentiles into one new body, one new thing, the body of Jesus Christ which is the church.

Furthermore, in my own experience of talking to Jews about Jesus Christ, the vast majority know almost nothing about Judaism. They are Jewish pagans to all practical purposes. So much stress is laid in courses on Jewish evangelism on a thorough knowledge of the law and fulfilled prophecy, although as a matter of fact, the majority of Jewish people to whom we speak about the gospel have no knowledge of either one.

FRANCIS R. STEELE

Upper Darby, Pa.

One place in Juster and Pawley’s article where absolutist statements distort reality and the boundless power of God is in the pronouncement that “one has to be Jewish to relate in total compassion to the hearts of people who have been through the Holocaust.” So much for Corrie ten Boom and other Gentile Christians who suffered and died for the victims of the Holocaust.

ROBERT STROUD

Citrus Heights, Calif.

Rabbi Tannenbaum’s statement that “Jewish tradition allows that Gentiles can believe in the Trinitarian concept, termed in Hebrew as shittuf (partnership)” is not correct. The best Hebrew term, the one used by Israeli believers for whom Hebrew is their native tongue, is the word shilush, which means trinity. Tanenbaum, viewing the Trinitarian concept as a “partnership,” rejects the Christian concept on the basis that the covenant of Sinai “explicitly excludes the possibility of any belief that God shares his being in any partnership with any other being.” We are not talking about a shittuf or a mere partnership between God and a man named Jesus, but we are talking about a shilush in which the one God as a Trinity shares the same essence in a oneness.

Jewish believers represented in this issue were all representative of one branch, that of Messianic Judaism. The Hebrew Christian approach has a far more biblical and theological foundation than the former, whose representatives often represent a very confused and inconsistent theology.

ARNOLD G. FRUCHTENBAUM

Ariel Ministries

San Antonio, Tex.

Letters are welcome. Only a selection can be published. Since all are subject to condensation, those of 100 to 150 words are preferred. Address letters to Eutychus and His Kin,CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 465 Gundersen Drive, Carol Stream, Illinois 60187.

No evangelical—one is tempted to say no Christian—has influenced the theology of the Third World quite so thoroughly as British pastor-theologian John R. W. Stott. In a way that is reminiscent of John R. Mott from an earlier generation, John Stott has crisscrossed continents in both hemispheres in tireless efforts to carry the gospel to every corner of the earth. Students are his special domain. He loves them, and they worship him.

For years he preached six months in his home church, All Souls of London, and for the remainder of the year ministered at countless retreats, seminars, short courses, and missions on every inhabited continent. In recent years, he has travelled constantly, preaching and lecturing to students everywhere. His message is always the same, yet always new and fresh. He simply teaches the Bible! How, you ask, could anyone hold the minds and move the hearts of students from Anchorage to Ouagadougou, and from Belgrade to Boston by simply teaching the Bible? John Stott does it. With his razor-sharp mind, he cuts through muddy thinking, exposes kinks in logic, and encourages students to think straight. His sacrificial love for students is transparent: no hour is too late, no time inconvenient to explore a troublesome problem.

But two quite different things impress me every time I hear him. The first is integrity: he lives what he preaches. He preaches that we are to seek first the kingdom of God, and he forsakes a highly successful pastorate in a world-renowned congregation to travel in the hard places of the earth, keeping long and wearisome hours, sleeping every night in a different bed—all for the sake of the gospel. The second unique thing about John Stott is his God-given mastery of the art of unfolding Holy Scripture. When I hear him expound a text, invariably I exclaim to myself, “That’s exactly what it means! Why didn’t I see it before?” Students love it. And some of us who are a little too old to be called students in the ordinary sense are also grateful.

Readers will regret to learn that John Stott is taking a six-months’ leave from his arduous schedule, including his monthly column in CHRISTIANITY TODAY. He will welcome our prayers. And we will pray for re-creation of his weary body and soul and, God willing, for a speedy return to his regular schedule of writing for this magazine.