Walking Bewildered in the LightThe world grows terrible and white, And blinding white the breaking day; We walk bewildered in the light, For something is too large for sight, And something much too plain to say.

The Child that was ere worlds begun ( … We need but walk a little way, We need but see a latch undone … ) The Child that played with moon and sun Is playing with a little hay.

—G. K. CHESTERTON, FROM “THE WISE MEN” INA MOTLEY WISDOM (NIGEL FORDE)

God’s Great News At Christmas time God cups his hands over his mouth, as it were, and shouts at the top of his voice, so that with all the din going on around them, human beings might hear what he has to say: “Listen! I’ve got great news that will bring you glorious joy!”

—Stuart and Jill Briscoe inMeet Him at the Manger

Walking with the Shepherds Send, O God, into the darkness of this troubled world, the light of your Son: let the star of your hope touch the minds of all people with the bright beams of mercy and truth; and so direct our steps that we may always walk in the way revealed to us, as the shepherds of Bethlehem walked with joy to the manger where he dwelt who now and ever reigns in our hearts, Jesus Christ our Lord.

—John Wallace Suter in The Communion of Saints: Prayers of the Famous (ed. Horton Davies)

The Gift UnspeakableAgain they play, the children with their toys, Gay parties draw the older girls and boys; Regathered families hail the festive day, And jovial revellers their gifts display: How strange!—how almost inconceivable, So few receive Heaven’s “Gift Unspeakable”!

Yet none the less, as carol strains resound, Adoring hearts will everywhere be found; The throne-room of the soul they will prepare, To give the Saviour-King new welcome there: And He will see, and say, with gentle smile, “The nails and thorny-crown were all worthwhile.”

—J. Sidlow Baxter from “Another Christmas” inSourcebook of Poetry (comp. Al Bryant)

When I Give Birth to Christ We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself? And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of God is begotten in us.

—Meister Eckhart, quoted inGospel Medicine (Barbara Brown Taylor)

Greet the New Day And so at this Christmas time I greet you. Not quite as the world sends greetings, but with the prayer that now and forever the day breaks and the shadows flee away.

—Fra Giovanni, quoted inThink on These Things

Birthday Presents Who started the rumour that one needs a lot of money to remember, to rejoice, to celebrate the birthday of the one who chose to become poor for us?

—A worker among the poor in Mexico inProcession of Prayers (comp. John Carden)

O Holy NightThis [Christmas] night bestowed peace on the whole world; so, let no one threaten; this is the night of the Most Gentle One— let no one be cruel; this is the night of the Most Humble One— let no one be proud. Now is the day of joy— let us not revenge; now is the day of good will— let us not be mean-spirited. In this day of peace let us not be conquered by anger …

Today the Bountiful impoverished Himself for our sake; so, rich one, invite the poor to your table. Today we received a gift, for which we did not ask; so let us give alms to those who implore us and beg.

This present day cast open the heavenly door to our prayers: let us open our door to those who ask our forgiveness.

Now the Divine Being took upon Himself the seal of humanity, in order for humanity to be adorned by the seal of Divinity.

—Saint Isaac of Syria; 7th c. “Christmas Sermon”

Copyright © 1998 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Kordell Richardson’s mother, a devout Baptist, taught her children never to accept a handout. But when Richardson separated from her husband more than 20 years ago she faced a dilemma. She suffered from asthma, had two young girls at home, and a third was on the way.

A neighbor encouraged Richardson, of Battle Creek, Michigan, to apply for welfare assistance, and she began receiving a monthly stipend through Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). “They helped me all right—they helped me get in such a big mess,” Richardson recalls.

“There was nothing else I could do at that time,” she says. “I was pregnant, I couldn’t work.”

From the start, Richardson says she strived to become self-sufficient. She found a babysitter for her girls and took piecemeal jobs. “Every time I would make a little money, thinking I could safely get off welfare, I got dragged back into it.” Richardson tried numerous government-conceived strategies to wean her family from public aid. “It was a dead-end situation,” she says. “They always had some program, but it didn’t last long enough for you to really benefit, or it closed down.”

In 1995, Richardson moved to Lansing, Michigan, where she qualified to rent an apartment at a government-subsidized rate of $8 a month. Her Section 8 caseworker, Mary Ann Harkema, directed the local affiliate of Love in the Name of Christ (Love INC), a community clearinghouse of area churches that links laypeople with neighbors in need.

Harkema encouraged Richardson to obtain work experience through volunteer opportunities. Eventually Richardson landed a paying job, but she told Harkema, “I’ll go crazy ’cause I’m going to have some money now, and I’m going to spend, spend, spend.” Harkema introduced Richardson to Quality Living, a Love INC 36-week, biblically based life skills class conducted by South Church of the Nazarene in Lansing. She went from welfare to being a homeowner in two years. Richardson, baptized in October, is now a budget counselor in the program at South Church.

“If they can get a handle on a budget, they can get in control of something in their lives,” Harkema says. The Lansing Love INC, one of about 100 affiliates nationwide, helps support the Quality Living program in a dozen area churches. In all, 125 families in Lansing have gone through the program, which places churches in a mentoring relationship with families transitioning from welfare to work. Only 10 percent have dropped out.

“True compassion is living with someone, loving, and being close to someone during their ups and downs over a long period of time,” Harkema says.

Richardson knows that South Church’s help enabled her to break free from welfare. “They didn’t just say, OK, this is how you do it,” she says. “They were my friends.”

WILL CHURCHES FILL THE BREACH? Richardson’s metamorphosis has come in the midst of an upheaval in the federal welfare system. Two years ago, Congress passed legislation that ended welfare as America has known it since the New Deal (CT, April 7, 1997, p. 46).

Welfare-reform legislation has been a tremendous success if measured solely by reduction in the number of welfare cases. But when it comes to reducing the number of people trying to escape a lifestyle of poverty, reform has a ways to go. And willing churches have a historic opportunity to help poor people across the board, meeting their spiritual needs as well as their need to earn a living.

The radical overhaul of the system has been based partly on the assumption that faith-based assistance to the poor could not only provide a buffer, but help transform lives far more effectively than the government ever could.

“Society is saying in a way it hasn’t for decades that we need help from people of faith,” says Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA) president Ron Sider.

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 replaced AFDC —by then an entitlement to one out of seven American families—with block grants to the states called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. States are given the freedom and responsibility to design their own programs within certain limited federal guidelines, one being that adults receiving benefits must get a job within two years of receiving aid.

Across the country, caseloads are down, and churches and ministries have taken the lead in many areas in moving people from welfare to work (CT, Sept. 7, 1998, p. 21). But many weaned from welfare rolls still are without jobs.

In Oregon, caseloads have fallen from 42,700 four years ago to 19,300. Some of that decline may be due to a robust economy, analysts say, but studies indicate that welfare reform is likely the major factor.

Many critics of welfare reform note the decline in welfare recipients, but claim that there has also been a dramatic increase in homelessness. The U.S. Conference of Mayors a year ago indicated that homelessness had risen 12 percent, in part because of welfare reform.

“A lot of those families that are leaving welfare are not necessarily leaving because they found a job,” says Wendell Primus, director of income security for the federal government’s Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Surveys indicate that only 30 to 60 percent of the families who have left welfare are actually earning money, Primus says.

“The feds have never required the states to do much more than say, By how many has your caseload been reduced?” says Anita Beaty, director of the Atlanta Task Force on Homelessness. “That’s the goal—reduce the caseload, reduce the caseload.” A true gauge of welfare reform is, rather, how many people are attaining a living wage, Beaty says.

FINDING WORK IS KEY: Finding a job, any job, is the first step toward self-sufficiency, says Lisa Van Riper, executive director of Putting Families First (PFF), a privately financed foundation that places South Carolina welfare families in mentoring relationships with churches and other community groups.

Established in 1996 when Gov. David Beasley authorized the use of $200,000 of his private inaugural funds, PFF has contributed to a 40 percent reduction in South Carolina’s welfare role. Around 28,000 welfare families have been required to move toward employment within two years. Fewer than 400 have been terminated for lack of a job, says Van Riper.

“We have 27,600 people in South Carolina who have gotten jobs,” Van Riper says. “Our ultimate goal is restoration of a living wage, but it starts with the restoration of a personal work ethic and responsibility—if you have those two, you will get to a living wage.” Through PFF’s direction, churches form a partnership team to mentor a family for one year, helping meet material, emotional, and spiritual needs, and encouraging them through a two-year transition to build a resume and enhance job skills.

Van Riper says PFF finds that for people to reach a point where they can trade in their benefits for a job, it takes at least $9 an hour, which is more than many entry-level jobs pay. “If they will pay in their monthly stipend check, we counter with health care, transportation, and food stamps, and they can still stay in Section 8 housing,” she says. “We don’t just pull the rug out and say, Hey, you’ve got an entry-level wage; bye.“

CHARITABLE CHOICE DEBATE: The government’s new welfare-to-work emphasis largely complements the philosophy of the Denver Rescue Mission. The 106-year-old mission has a six-month to two-year spiritually based program for women, New Life Rehabilitation, that includes counseling, training in basic life skills, and academic and vocational education.

The program enabled Lynn Harrington, who had been on welfare for five years, to obtain a high-school equivalency degree and qualify to become a medical assistant.

“Without welfare reform I might still be sitting on my butt and not doing anything with my life,” Harrington says.

Of special interest to faith-based organizations is the “charitable choice” provision of the federal welfare reform law (CT, Dec. 11, 1995, p. 65), authored by U.S. Sen. John Ashcroft (R.-Mo.). It encourages states to contract with faith-based organizations to provide federally financed welfare services while protecting their religious character.

Whether because of lack of knowledge, confusion, or apprehensions about the law, few religious organizations have taken advantage of it, says Joe Loconte, a welfare reform expert at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. Many are concerned that charitable choice will lead to significant dependence of the church upon the state.

“The great strength of Ashcroft’s legislation is that it codifies this respect for the religious convictions of faith-based agencies and it recognizes in law that the religious dimension to life—what these groups bring—is important and significant,” Loconte says. “But I think that as groups begin to get significantly involved in government money, then they’re going to run into trouble.” Opponents of charitable choice, such as Washington, D.C.-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State, say that it violates the Establishment Clause. But charitable choice is embraced by a broad stream of evangelicals, from the Family Research Council (FRC) to ESA.

Charitable choice’s primary strength, says ESA’s Sider, is that it allows faith-based organizations to hire people according to its own standards and beliefs—a major sticking point for Americans United, which contends that this amounts to federally financed employment discrimination.

“One of the main things that charitable choice has done is it has helped to build relationships between the [government] human services community and the faith community, even if the faith community is choosing not to formally partner,” says FRC director of community outreach Deanna Carlson.

Sider believes that faith-based organizations should not fear a relationship with the government. “It’s neurotic to think that we’re going to be swept in by the secular forces if we go the route of charitable choice,” Sider says.

FAITH PLAYS A ROLE: A close church-state relationship has been crucial to the success of Michigan’s welfare reform, which began five years ago under Gov. John Engler. In 1996, Good Samaritan Ministries (GSM) in Holland, Michigan, contracted with a state program aimed at no unemployment, Project Zero.

Through the help of GSM and other faith-based groups, Ottawa County last year became the first in the nation to move every able-bodied welfare recipient into a job.

While GSM receives government funding, the churches it mobilizes, trains, and supports do not. GSM’s network of more than 90 churches represents a broad array of Christian beliefs, from Pentecostal to Roman Catholic.

GSM director Janet DeYoung says, “We try to help churches be sensitive to where families are in their spiritual journey, to listen to the questions that they are asking.”

Betty Williams, director of the Women’s Christian Life program at the Los Angeles Union Rescue Mission, says her clients must be willing to receive Bible instruction and attend church, because it is essential to the program.

“If we received government funding we would not be able to do that,” Williams says. “Those women who make serious changes reinforce what the Bible says—change happens on the inside.” The charitable choice provision, in fact, states explicitly that funds going directly to religious organizations cannot be used for sectarian worship, instruction, or proselytizing. Efforts are under way in Congress to give taxpayers credits or special deductions for contributing directly to a group of their choice that is helping fight poverty.

TAKING THE FIRST STEP: “For a church to get involved helping people make the transition off of welfare, you don’t need a government contract,” says Kevin Hunter, director of Vision Northwest, a domestic ministry of World Vision in Federal Way, Washington. “The need is not for the technical services—the state does a pretty good job providing those. What they need is a relationship, somebody to help walk them through the rocky road, up and over the barriers and down through the valleys of the setbacks and the emotional damage.”

Last year, a Denver homeless shelter evicted Janice Hannon and her two sons after they had used their maximum 30 days. They moved to a $190-a-week hotel frequented by prostitutes and drug addicts. Though she worked both a day and a night job seven days a week, Janice could not come up with enough cash to pay for a deposit and advance rent on an apartment.

On weekends she left then 12-year-old Ryan and 5-year-old Scotty alone, instructing them to push a chair up against the door for added security.

Hannon unsuccessfully sought help from several agencies in an effort to obtain enough money for an apartment. Finally, Hannon learned about Pros with a Purpose, which recruits church groups to adopt homeless, working families with children under 16. The organization, which this year came under the direction of the Denver Rescue Mission, paid the first month’s rent and security deposit for an apartment.

“The manager knew we were coming from a motel and didn’t do a credit check —he knew we wouldn’t pass,” Hannon says. Members of the church team came over each month to help with her budget. “I would still be homeless if not for them.”

Del Maxfield, president of the Denver Rescue Mission, warns that many of the people to whom his group ministers face enormous and complex problems that cannot be addressed simply through informal relationships and short-term programs. Both church and government officials sometimes have difficulty understanding that, he says.

A belief that persists in ministry to the poor is that “if you could sweep all the street guys in off the street into a chapel and give them a good message and have them all come forward to the altar, it would mean the end of homelessness,” Maxfield says. “That is the single biggest spiritual myth that ever happened in our work.

“These folks walk back out the doors and face some of the most difficult, practical, social, political, and every other kind of problem on the face of the earth,” Maxfield says. “And if we say, Here you have Christ, and you can walk out the door and your problems are solved; what we’ve done is just given them a piece of paper armor.”

In 1987, the Denver Rescue Mission designed the first five-phase, two-year program in the nation. “It was almost unheard of that you would keep anybody beyond a maximum of 120 days,” Maxfield says.

NATIONAL SUMMIT IN FEBRUARY: How will churches respond to a call for help by government that essentially amounts to reclaiming its historic role in social ministry? “We’re so trapped in our materialism and our self-centered narcissism that not many of us will do it,” Sider says.

Maxfield agrees. “We can’t get churches to respond,” he says, despite the mission’s $9 million budget and outreach to thousands of people.

He finds much more success in recruiting individual Christians to ministries such as Pros with a Purpose, which has pulled together 100 groups from churches since the beginning of the year.

“The vast majority of churches are doing very, very little and just beginning to say, Yeah, we’ve got to do something,” Sider says. “And they don’t know how to do it; so one of the most important things right now is work with local congregations.”

ESA is launching Network 935, a program to provide tools for local churches that want to combine evangelism with social concern.

Increasingly, socially conservative churches are dialoguing with their more liberal colleagues on ministry to the poor and finding a basis for agreement and cooperation.

“The heart is there to help their neighbor,” the FRC’s Carlson says of conservative evangelical churches. “On the practical side, they need some assistance in creating an infrastructure where they can actually help the poor, whereas the liberal churches seem to have that infrastructure, but maybe the heart isn’t there as much as it used to be.”

In February, church leaders will have a fresh opportunity to examine ways to debate additional welfare reform measures. Call to Renewal, the Washington, D.C.-based organization directed by Sojourners head Jim Wallis, will convene the National Summit on the Churches and Welfare Reform February 1-3. Participants will include the National Council of Churches, the National Association of Evangelicals, the U.S. Catholic Conference, the FRC, and World Vision.

Sider says, “The conservatives are sort of getting what they wanted on welfare reform and are now realizing that it’s more in the court of churches and volunteer organizations: We asked for it; we had better put up or shut up.”

Copyright © 1998 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

It is probably natural to want a child of one’s own. Is it also good? Perhaps if it is truly natural, in accord with our created nature, it must also be good. But the seemingly innocent desire to have “a child of one’s own,” combined with the high-tech possibilities of modern medicine and the ever-present pursuit of commercial gain, has fashioned a world in which we regularly create moral conundrums that are beyond our ability not only to solve but even to name. The things we are willing to do tell a story—a story about the point of having children.Gilbert Meilaender

Consider the following cases, all roughly adapted from “real life,” chosen almost at random:

1. A woman unable to have a child “of her own” had her ovum fertilized with her husband’s sperm in the laboratory. The resulting embryo was then implanted in the womb of the woman’s mother, who, having carried the pregnancy to term, gave birth to her own “grandchild.”

2. A husband and wife who thought they wanted a child “of their own” contracted for the conception of a child who would be conceived from sperm and ovum that came from anonymous donors and who would then be gestated in the womb of a hired surrogate. Shortly before the child was born, the husband and wife who had wanted this child divorced. A judge felt compelled to rule that the baby girl actually had no legal parents at all.

3. A woman undergoing infertility treatment in order to have a child “of her own” conceived triplets. For medical reasons she was advised that it would be safest if she were to undergo “fetal reduction”—that is, reduce by abortion the number of fetuses she was carrying to one. She did, but weeks later, having undergone amniocentesis, she learned that the one remaining fetus had a genetic anomaly. She therefore aborted that fetus as well.

4. An infertile married couple desiring a child “of their own” underwent in vitro fertilization (IVF) and conceived a child. Four-and-a-half months into the pregnancy they learned from amniocentesis that the child they had wanted so badly and worked so hard to make had Down’s syndrome. Having learned that, they decided to abort.

5. An infertile married couple sought in vitro fertilization in hopes of producing a child “of their own.” Before undergoing the procedure, the couple signed an agreement saying that the resulting embryos could not be used without the consent of both parties and that, should they divorce, ownership of the embryos would be decided either in a property settlement or through a court decision. Nine attempts to implant embryos fertilized in the laboratory failed to result in a pregnancy that could be carried to term. Four embryos were implanted in a surrogate, the woman’s older sister, but that procedure also failed. Shortly thereafter the couple divorced and the woman sought a court order giving her sole custody of the embryos so that she could try again to have a child “of her own.” Given the prior agreement the couple had made, the court ruled that the woman could not do this without the consent of her former husband.

6. A young woman about to undergo chemotherapy for leukemia but hoping nevertheless some day to have a child “of her own” had her ova harvested and fertilized with donor sperm before treatment—and the resulting embryos frozen. After she died of leukemia at age 28, her parents sought a surrogate who would agree to gestate the embryos. In this search they used the Internet and an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show, intending that their son and daughter-in-law would raise the child if the pregnancy could be successfully carried to term.

7. A 63-year-old woman, wanting a child “of her own” had implanted into her hormonally primed uterus an embryo made in the laboratory from her husband’s sperm and an ovum from a younger donor. She then completed the pregnancy and gave birth to a child.

Such cases could be multiplied almost without end, and we may sometimes find it hard to remember or believe that the first “test tube baby” was born only 20 years ago, in 1978. Two decades later we live in a world in which a woman can give birth to her own “grandchild”; in which a child can have as many as five “parents” (the donors of sperm and ovum, the surrogate who carries the child during pregnancy, and the two “rearing parents”); in which people can “have children” posthumously; in which parents can go to great trouble and expense to conceive a child whom they then abort if prenatal diagnosis shows that the child is “defective” in some way; in which quite soon it may be possible to give birth to identical twins born years apart; and in which it may soon be possible for a woman without ovaries to receive an ovary transplant from an aborted fetus, making that fetus the biological mother of her child. And none of this comes cheaply. A recent report of the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law notes that “[c]onservative estimates place the cost of a successful delivery via IVF at more than $40,000.”

Taken together these cases display the story we have begun to tell each other about the meaning of children. The story line is, roughly, as follows: Because having children is something many people want for their lives to be full and complete, and because it is such a fundamental aspect of human life, we ought to use our skills to help them achieve that desired fulfillment. Indeed, having children is an entitlement to which there are few limits. Of course, we ought not exercise this right in a way that directly harms children, but in many cases, after all, the children would not even exist were it not for the use of new reproductive technologies. If the suffering that infertility brings can be relieved, and if children are not harmed, then high-tech reproductive medicine is a good thing. This is the story that, more and more, we tell ourselves in this society.

Is there a different image of the child, an image that tells a different story about what it means to have children? Christians should hope so, and they should search for it. The poet Galway Kinnell, in a wonderful poem titled “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps,” provides such an image: The child is, he writes, a “blessing love gives again into our arms.” What makes this a better image than that emerging from the examples with which I began? What story of the meaning of a child underlies this image? One way to think about such questions is to reflect upon the desire to have “a child of one’s own.” This desire, which is simultaneously quite natural and problematic, needs examination.

THE STORY CHRISTIANS TELL

Christians have a story to tell, a story we regularly teach to our children—of an infertile woman who deeply desired a child of her own, how her wish was granted, and what she then did. It is the story of Hannah, her husband Elkanah, and their son Samuel (1 Sam. 1-2). Why did Hannah want a child of her own? In part, it seems, it was because she suffered the scorn of Peninnah, Elkanah’s other wife, who had children. But that only presses the question a step further. Why should this be an occasion for scorn? What is so important about having a child? Why do people care so deeply?

Sometimes today, when we ask such questions, answers of the following sort come back: “I desire the experience of pregnancy and childbirth.” “I want the experience of child rearing.” “Having a child is an important part of defining who I am.” No doubt there is some truth about us buried in such answers. There are deep psychological, and even biological, imperatives at work in the impulse to give birth. But such answers, which make of the child a means of meeting our needs, cannot be satisfactory. To think that way is already to begin to think of children as products made to satisfy some of our desires. And, of course, if and when the product turns out not really to satisfy us, we may be hard pressed to muster the kind of unconditional love children require if they are to flourish. That we do, nevertheless, often learn to love our children unconditionally suggests that the experience of child rearing teaches us about something more important than our own identity.

There are, though, deeper and better reasons for having children. We would make a little moral progress were we to say, “I want a child because I want a link to future generations.” Surely that was part of Hannah’s desire. In her world the link between the generations may have had greater economic importance than it now does, but even in our world it is of considerable human significance. We are not angels or free spirits who can choose to be whatever we wish; rather, we are embodied creatures, located in a particular time and place. In part, at least, it is lines of kinship and descent that identify us, even though we never choose our particular location. To learn to affirm and give thanks for our place in the world is part of growing up—and, more important, part of learning how to receive the mysterious gift of life. It is, therefore, quite natural that we should want to give life even as we have received it. That takes us some considerable way beyond the narcissism of wanting a child simply as a means to fulfilling ourselves.

But it does not take us quite far enough, for it continues to think simply of a child of my own, still part of the project by which I make my way in the world. We get much closer to a satisfactory understanding if we think of a child of our own. Elkanah is already a father, but he and Hannah together—as one flesh—are not parents. Even in so ancient a story as this one, there are hints that this too is part of the reason for wanting a child. We are specifically told that Elkanah loved Hannah. He himself tells her that she is more to him than ten sons. Their love-giving has not yet been life-giving, however. It is natural that they should want a child, for that child would be the sign that the love by which they give themselves to each other is creative and fruitful.

CHRISTIANS UNDERSTAND THE DEEP DESIRE TO HAVE CHILDREN. BUT WE MUST ALSO CONSTANTLY REMIND OURSELVES THAT CHILDREN ARE NOT OUR POSSESSION; THEY ARE GIFTS FROM GOD

Indeed, this last step—in which they seek a child not of his own or her own but of their own—begins to take them still further. It presses almost toward elimination of that little word own. In the passion of sexual love a man and woman step out of themselves, so to speak, and give themselves to each other. That is why we speak of sexual ecstasy—a word that means precisely standing outside oneself. No matter how much they may desire a child as the fruit of their love, in the act of love itself they must set aside all such projects and desires. They are not any longer making a baby of their own. They are giving themselves in love. And the child, if a child is conceived, is not then the product of their willed creation. The child is a gift and a mystery, springing from their embrace—a blessing love gives into their arms. They could and should, if they think the matter through, quite rightly say that they had received this child as a gift of God, as the biblical writer says of Hannah: “The LORD remembered her.”

Samuel is neither Elkanah’s “own,” nor Hannah’s “own,” nor even “their own.” He is “God’s own”—asked of the Lord and given by the Lord. He is not, therefore, simply Hannah’s or Elkanah’s to hold onto; rather, he must be offered back to God, as Hannah does. Lent to the Lord, for as long as he lives.

Christians, then, do not underestimate the sheer human significance of biological ties. We understand the deep desire to have children. But we must also constantly remind ourselves that children are not our possession; they are gifts of God. They exist not simply to fulfill us but as the sign that, by God’s continued blessing, self-giving love is creative and fruitful. And what if the Lord does not “remember” us as he remembered Hannah? That is reason for sadness, but it is not reason to take up the “project” of making a child. The couple who cannot have children may adopt children who need a home and parents, or they may find other ways in which their union can, as a union, turn outward and be fruitful.

LIVING OUR STORY

If this is how Christians understand the meaning of the presence of children, how shall we evaluate the vast array of new reproductive technologies—not, for the moment, as a matter of public policy, but simply as possibilities within our own lives?

The first thing to note is that many of the new techniques involve parties other than husband and wife in the reproductive process. (This is usually the case because the couple is infertile. There are also circumstances, however, in which fertile couples might turn to assisted reproduction techniques—for example, if one of the spouses carries a serious recessive genetic disorder. The moral issues remain essentially the same, however.) Artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization very often involve sperm and egg from anonymous donors, and there is an irony here that we should not ignore. If what infertile couples want is a child “of their own” in the genetic sense, techniques using donated gametes will not provide it. They are, in a sense, deceiving themselves. In the name of having a child of their own, they fail, in fact, to honor the importance of biological connection, of kinship and descent.

Imagine a case in which a married couple seeks donor insemination because of the husband’s infertility. Someone might say, of course, that the child whom they produce is at least genetically related to the mother—it is her own, even if not also his own in the same sense. And for Christians that is exactly the cause for worry. The child is to be theirs, not hers or his. The deliberate and willed asymmetry of relation—so unlike the mutual asymmetry that exists in adoption—is precisely the problem. This child is no longer the fruit of their one-flesh union. Its genetic connection to the mother or the opportunity it provides for her to experience pregnancy and childbirth are her individual projects. Even if her husband also desires that connection and wants her to have the experience, he shares this project only in thought, not in the body. The child cannot be the fruit of an embrace in which husband and wife step outside themselves, their aims and projects, and receive a child as a gift, a sign that the Lord has remembered them.

If we imagine the opposite sort of case—in which the ovum rather than the sperm is donated, or, even more, in which the child is gestated by a surrogate—the same concerns will be in play. In addition, however, something disturbing happens to the relation of mother and child. Fatherhood, paternity, has always been a somewhat detached and “intellectualized” relation during pregnancy. Paternity is not obvious. It can be disputed. Fathers must think themselves into relation with the child in the womb. Not so with maternity. A pregnant woman need not think herself into relation with the child—she experiences that bond constantly. But once more than one “mother”—genetic and gestational—has become part of the process, maternity also becomes a disputable fact, and we have the court cases all around us to prove it.

Moreover, Christian spouses who set foot on what was once a back road but has now become an interstate highway of assisted reproduction should know how difficult it may be to find an exit ramp once they have begun this journey. They are not really seeking to correct a medical problem but to bypass it. To bypass it in order to satisfy a deep and very important desire—to have a child. But if it is the couple’s desire that is being treated, we need to remember that they may not simply desire a child. They probably also desire, for example, a healthy child. And new reproductive technologies more and more commonly involve genetic diagnosis of the newly formed embryo before it is implanted in the uterus. The pressure to discard embryos who do not meet desired specifications—and to try again—may be almost impossible to resist. Spouses who undertake this journey are likely to have invested many dollars and years—not to say tears—along the way. It is only human to want the best possible result. Understandable as that is, however, it is no longer quite the same kind of unconditional love for a child who is not our product but God’s gift.

I can think of one possible exception to the claim that Christians ought not participate in new reproductive technologies that involve sperm or ovum from third parties. Rather than using either sperm donation alone or egg donation alone, a couple might “adopt,” gestate, and rear a donated embryo. In such a case, unlike sperm or egg donation, the child will not be genetically linked to either parent. Although this very fact may cause concern to some who think of reproductive medicine as providing new ways to get a child “of one’s own,” from the Christian perspective it is preferable. We might think of it as adoption that occurs before rather than after the child’s birth. The relation of husband and wife to the child is symmetrical, and they do not deceive themselves into supposing that this is in any genetic sense a child of their own.

Unfortunately—at least in our society at the present time—embryo donation is not likely really to be analogous to adoption. There are already, in fact, a few clinics that sell embryos to infertile couples who want a child. Sometimes the embryos are custom made—allowing prospective parents to choose a combination of sperm and egg donors that best satisfies them. Other times the embryos are extras that were made for an infertile couple who achieved a pregnancy without using them. Christians could, of course, understand themselves to be rescuing such children—who as spare embryos can only be implanted in a womb, used for research, frozen and stored indefinitely, or discarded. But if we are looking for needy children to rescue, they are, alas, all around us in our foster-care system. Prebirth embryo adoption is not likely to signal similar attempts at rescue. It is far more likely to be one more way of exercising quality control, of finding the child whom we want—rather than loving the child we have been given.

In short, many of the new reproductive technologies will involve the use of third parties. In doing so, they break the connection between love-giving and life-giving in marriage. That is not just a minor nuance, for it is this connection that teaches us to think of the child as a gift, that keeps us from thinking of children as our project, as existing for the sake of satisfying our desires. It is no accident, then, that these technologies usually encourage genetic diagnosis—whether before implantation or after—of the “fitness” of the embryo or the fetus. If we understand the child as our project, if we accept that kind of responsibility, then we may inevitably find that “quality control” seems like an obvious—perhaps even imperative—part of the process. This is a journey we ought not even begin.

But what if no third parties are involved? There are certainly some circumstances in which an infertile couple might make use of new reproductive technologies while using only their own sperm and ova. Women may take drugs to influence ovulation. This may be combined with assisted insemination—when the sperm are placed directly in the vagina, cervix, or even uterus—if the man’s sperm count is low. Either or both of these may often be part of an in vitro fertilization procedure in which both sperm and ovum are externalized and fertilization takes place in the laboratory. It is even possible now, within the IVF procedure, to inject a single sperm into the ovum.

Even when no third parties are involved there are serious moral concerns in the use of new reproductive technologies. The couple will be encouraged to “screen” the embryos formed in the laboratory, to consider whether a particular embryo is really the child they desire. If more embryos are produced than are implanted in the woman’s uterus, they will have to ask themselves what should be done with the extras. Even apart from any IVF procedure, the use of ovulation-enhancing drugs alone means that the possibility of multiple fetuses—triplets and even higher-order multiple births—is greatly increased, and such pregnancies involve significant risks for the children conceived. They are much more likely to be born prematurely and to have low birthweight, and they may suffer lifelong complications as a result. Multiple fetuses also mean that the couple will have to deal with recommendations of “fetal reduction.” In general, and even entirely apart from the use of donated sperm or eggs, it becomes increasingly difficult to think of the child as a gift and not a product. These are simply some of the hazards of the road they are traveling.

When we remember again the number of needy children who go unadopted precisely because of their needs, when we consider the degree to which new reproductive technologies have—in a very short time—begun to teach our society to think of reproduction as a right to which everyone is entitled, when we ponder the implications of these technologies for our society’s understanding of children, we must ask whether Christians should not call a halt—at least for themselves. We do not have a story that teaches us to think of children as our entitlement or our possession. Indeed, the story we tell goes even beyond that of Hannah, Elkanah, and Samuel. For knowing as we do that God has already provided The Child, we can free ourselves of the feverish need to have a child of our own, whatever the cost. Perhaps the greatest service we can perform for our own children and for the world into which they will be born is to live in such a way that we remind ourselves and others that each child is indeed not our product, our project, or our possession, but a “blessing” that “love gives again into our arms.”

Gilbert Meilaender holds the board of directors chair in Christian ethics at Valparaiso University. A second edition of his book The Taste for the Other: The Social and Ethical Thought of C. S. Lewis has just been released by Eerdmans.

Copyright © 1998 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Some years ago I cared for a nine-year-old boy with a deadly brain tumor. I have never known a child with that tumor to survive more than a year. One of my partners had the difficult task of telling his parents the diagnosis and prognosis. This doctor had told them the whole truth and nothing but. I know his style—patient, thorough, compassionate.

Young Kyle went through radiation treatments. With that and the help of steroids, most of his symptoms went away. About a month after the treatment ended, I repeated the mri to see where things stood. The pattern of black and white and gray said that nothing had changed. How much nicer it would have been if all the sinister shadows had disappeared, if only for a little while. How, I wondered, would I tell the family this?

Kyle was in the room when his mother asked the results. “I have some good news,” I told her. “The tumor has not progressed.” Well, my hopeful spin was true—half true. But neither had the tumor gone away.

That evening Kyle’s mother and I were guests on a local television talk-show. Kyle was there, too, sitting between us in a spiffy three-piece vested suit. At the end of the interview, his mother said directly to the camera, “I have to tell you what happened today. Today Doctor Komp told me that my baby is going to be okay. There was another doctor we called ‘Doctor Gloom and Doom,’ but Doctor Komp told me my son would be okay.”

How could I correct her in front of her son, in front of the television audience? I smiled weakly, regretting that I had so softened the news that she had drawn that incorrect conclusion.

When Kyle died, the family did fine, even with the less euphemistic doctor they called “Gloom and Doom.” But I’ve been thinking about my choice of words ever since.

There is so much bad news in this world that seems to beg to be softened, especially in the field of medicine. This verbal softening-up process intends to console the hearer, but more often it comforts the euphemizer rather than the “euphemizee.”

Euphemizing risks the dissolution of the truth, and sometimes it covers up danger.

One morning in Chicago I set off early from my hotel to mail a package and met two friendly police officers standing on the street corner. I asked them if there was a post office nearby.

“Whew!” said one cop shaking his head. “Not around here.”

“Where’s the nearest post office?” I wondered aloud, looking to his partner who might be more informative.

“Not within walking distance,” his partner answered. “About six blocks that way,” he said, waving his hand in the direction somewhat vaguely south.

“Not within walking distance,” both officers repeated. “ups will be open at 10:00 a.m. Why don’t you just wait?”

Why wait when six blocks is not too far to walk? Having the time and needing the exercise, I set off past handsome banners that proclaimed “Illinois Medical District.” The flags pointed to the illuminated crisp medical towers of South Ashland’s Bedpan Alley.

There were many churches along my route to the post office. Bullet-shaped holes marred the simple glass cross on a Lutheran house of worship. A sign was broken off another church, but her boarded doors still proclaimed her watchword: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Hard to serve God on South Ashland, it would seem. Hard to come within walking distance.

My path took me down the streets of Cook County’s encatchment area. Encatchment area—that’s medspeak for the ‘hood that fills the bedpans of this Chicago Hope. When I was a young doctor, Cook County had 3,000 active beds. Today fewer than 500 beds remain open for the sick of South Ashland who are sicker now than they have ever been before. I wondered whether visiting nurses need police escorts here as they do in the neighborhood that surrounds New Haven’s Pill Hill where I work. It’s not easy to serve those who have been managed-cared out of those 2,500 other beds.

“Not within walking distance” was the policeman’s way of saying to me, “You shouldn’t walk there.” But the people who live on South Ashland walk there every day. As I strolled past an old brownstone house on that nippy autumn day, a young working woman in stilettoed heels and micro-miniskirt shouted final instructions to her latchkey son before moving toward a shiny new Lincoln Town Car blasting gangsta rap music at the curb. The people of South Ashland live within walking distance of poverty and prostitution and crime.

Not within walking distance is a way we can use words to stand at a distance from truth, when truth is too uncomfortable. A euphemism is one way, but there are other wordy ways to separate ourselves from that which is truthful but painful.

With euphemisms and passive voice, it’s nobody’s fault. No-fault syntax, says John Leo, is crucially important when issuing vague, no-apology regrets (Charlestown Daily Mail, Feb. 11, 1997).

We don’t slice our hospital budgets these days. We participate in patient-focused operational redesign. Patients don’t die in our midst. They just expire. Following their expiration, we don’t send them to the morgue. We discharge them to Brady. A dead body isn’t a corpse either. It is the remains.

I like what Hannah More said about precision with words. “Let us fortify our virtue by calling things by their proper names” (Religion of the Heart, Paraclete, 1996).

Sasha is a recent college grad who had hoped by now to have found a high-paying engineering job. Instead, he’s hoisting trays at the Chowder Pot and is mighty, mighty eager to please.

“Did the Shrimp Florentine meet with your satisfaction, Ma-dam?” he purrs to me. Ma-dam beams back her approval as she reaches for her Visa Gold.

My wallet falls open, revealing the photo of a sweet-faced baby, my little Crumb Bunny. Praying for a better tip, Sasha seizes the moment and coos, “Your daughter?” (Well, not unless Sarah and Elizabeth move over for another late-life miracle!)

“No,” I explain. “My granddaughter.”

Sasha bows respectfully from the waist, “You must be very proud.”

I am proud. And in a way, I am Crumb Bunny’s “grandmother”—albeit an honorary and not a biological one. At my hospital a few years back, someone who didn’t know that I was her doctor mistook me for one of her grandmas. In all the excitement that day about the bone-marrow donation that was arriving from England to save the child’s life, someone interpreted my loving enthusiasm as an emblem of relationship.

Is it a lie, really, for me to perpetuate this warm, cozy myth of kinship? More a half-truth than a lie, it’s a proud piece of puffery. Perhaps even literary license. Certainly not as black as sin. Surely my tender words of appreciation for a fragile young life won’t poison the entire world. What difference does it make after all, I tell myself, if a childless, middle-aged woman embroiders a harmless piece of dining-room brocade?

The strangest thing about half-truths is how easy it would be most times for us simply to tell the whole truth. That day at the Chowder Pot I convinced myself that Sasha had no real interest in hearing my answer to his question. He was only making chit-chat, I concluded, just warming me up for a better tip. Does a brilliant young engineer cleverly disguised as a menial waiter really want to hear about me? Perhaps it is not Sasha but I who don’t want to invest the time in the truth.

Euphemizing risks the dissolution of the truth, and sometimes it covers up danger.

Awhile back I spoke to a group of women physicians who gathered to discuss the impact of their Christian faith on their personal and professional lives. One doctor came to that conference with her young baby. At the opening banquet, that tyke made quite a hit. Weary after a long work week, we now had a special reason to relax and smile together.

“Children are important to all of us,” I told that audience of professional women, “even for those of us who will never be biological moms.” Then I told these women doctors a story I had never told anyone else before.

One of the things a woman doctor learns early in her education is to put away her tears, even when the normal response would be to cry. “It’s not very professional.” “Big boys don’t cry.” “I’m tired of crying.” Name your own tear-stopper. But the most important day for us can be the day that we reclaim our canceled tears. For me, that date came soon after I came back to Christian faith at the age of 40. I wanted to learn how to pray, so I asked a hospital chaplain to be my guide.

Toby caught me off guard when he encouraged me to ask God for a gift, the deepest desire of my heart. Right there, on my knees, I began to weep, but I still held back from being honest with God.

“No! No! I can’t!” I insisted. Toby encouraged me to look into Jesus’ eyes. “Tell Jesus about the deepest desire of your heart.”

I resisted for the longest moments. Then, I told Jesus that I wanted a child.

There are those who might say that God never answered my prayer that day. I’m 58 years old and “barren,” as King James English puts it. Perhaps God has never fulfilled my heart’s desire in the way that I envisioned, but my prayer bore fruit at that conference when I told those women doctors the story of my recaptured tears.

The next afternoon, other women wept and shared deeply the wounds of their own hearts. Unlike the courtroom where the judge sternly warns witnesses to control their emotions, we gave each other permission to cry.

A beautiful young mother mourned as she told the story of her infertility, then later the crib death of her lovely, new adopted child. She and her husband were devastated by their double loss. More tears poured down her cheeks when she confessed her jealousy of that other mother whose baby stole the show at our opening dinner. Then, other women took off their smiley masks as well, and we all were healed as we listened to each other’s true stories.

Back at the Chowder Pot, I should not have crossed over the line from fact to fantasy with Sasha. I’m not at all certain that he would have heard what I had to say, but I don’t really know that for a fact. I should just honestly have said, “This is the child I always wished that I could have had.” That is the truth. I love my little Crumb Bunny with all of my heart.

If I had told Sasha that truth instead of my charming little puffed-up lie, who knows what desires of his own heart might have had the opportunity to rise to the surface? His own longings might have been translated into healing words or reconciling tears.

Diane M. Komp is professor of pediatrics at Yale University School of Medicine. This article is taken from Anatomy of a Lie, by Diane M. Komp. Copyright © 1998 by Diane M. Komp. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House.

Copyright © 1998 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Jim Bakker is a mover. For years he used television to move people to Christ and to move money from their pockets into his ministry. But after being indicted for fraud by the federal government, he was forced to sit still in prison for five years. During that time, Bakker renounced his faith-equals-fortunes message and embraced the Jesus of the poor. After prison, he wasted no time writing two books and, this fall, taking a new wife. (Tammy Faye divorced him six years ago while he was in prison.) These days he does penance on the streets of Los Angeles, volunteering with the staff of the Dream Center, a large, ministry-intensive church pastored by Tommy and Matthew Barnett. ct associate editor Kevin D. Miller along with managing editor Michael G. Maudlin talked with Bakker about his journey and his latest book, Prosperity and the Coming Apocalypse (Nelson).

On doing time. The first months of prison were devastating. After being in a public ministry every day of your life and then finding yourself with everything gone—not only the material things but friends and reputation—and facing 45 years, you wonder, Is God gone too? I began to seek God, but I couldn’t find him. I even prayed what I call stupid prayers—God, wiggle a plant or something in the room.

One night I had a dream. I was sitting next to Christ. He reached up into his eye and took out a sliver of his eye and then put it in my eye. He said, “I want you to see everything and everyone through my eyes.” That was the first time I had even an inkling that maybe God might still talk to me. When I woke up, I knew immediately I had to start reading the Word of God—if I was going to look at everything through Christ’s eyes, I had to know him.

I began to read and write down every word as recorded in the Gospels. I wept that I could have been so wrong, preaching another gospel and another Jesus. Jesus called riches “deceitfulness of riches.” He even said, “Woe unto the rich!” He was saying things like, “You can’t serve God and money.” He never cast wealth and riches into a good light. How could I have spent so much time emphasizing financial blessing?

On prosperity preaching. I’d always quoted 3 John 2, saying, “Above all things God wants you to prosper.”I loved that Scripture. It looks great on a tv screen when you’re raising funds, and I interpreted it as God wants you to be rich. But when I got to the words of John, I said, “Now this don’t make sense.” So I took the word prosper apart in the Greek and found out it’s made up of two words—the first word means good or well and the second road. It’s a progressive word, so it’s like a journey. So, here’s John saying, basically, “Beloved, I want you to have a good journey through life as your soul has a good journey to heaven.” It was a greeting! Building theology on that is like building the church on “Have a nice day.”

I began to look up all the Scriptures used in prosperity teaching, such as “Give and it shall be given unto you.” When I put that Scripture back into its context, I found Christ was teaching on forgiveness, not on money. He was teaching us that by the same measure that we forgive, we will be forgiven.

I had gotten my sermons from other people. The Bible warns about the shepherds who get their messages from each other. I think today the reason we have another gospel and another Jesus being preached is because men have gotten their sermons from each other and from motivational teaching. A lot of what’s being taught today is simply motivational teaching with a few Scriptures put to it.

On E. coli and asteroids. I believe the harlot of the Book of Revelation is materialism. Our denomination [the Assemblies of God], at least, used to teach that the harlot was the Catholic church. That was escapist—we wanted to blame somebody else and never look at ourselves. If you study the attributes of the harlot, she’s all about materialism. Everything is about the commerce of buying and selling and stuff. It’s about loving this world and the things of this world.

I believe the four horsemen of the apocalypse are already out of the barn. They’re saddled up; they’re riding. The last horseman is about death and the animals. I couldn’t figure out how animals could kill one-third of the population—you know, like elephants charging down our streets. Then I saw that the word death means pestilence or disease. And I thought, well, where does HIV come from? Where does E. coli come from? Animals! In Africa, millions of people are infected with HIV. So the stage is set for the horsemen of the apocalypse.

We have another Jesus being preached because men have gotten their sermons from motivational teaching.

You’ll probably brand me a fanatic for saying this, but the Bible says 17 times that the sun will be darkened before Jesus returns. In Matthew 24:29 it says the sun will be darkened and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars—that word is aster—and the powers of heaven shall be shaken. I believe aster means asteroid. Revelation 6 says the sun shall become black as sackcloth of hair, and the stars (asteres) of heaven will fall unto the earth. Revelation 8:8 talks about a great mountain burning with fire that is cast into the sea. What is that? That’s an asteroid. I believe that an asteroid or comet will hit the earth.

I saw a science documentary called Fire from the Sky. They said that when an asteroid hits the earth it will cause a cloud to go around the earth and cause a nuclear winter for one year. The sun would be darkened and even look blood red. I’m seeing this documentary thinking, These are the same things I read in the Bible!

On suffering. People say, “God’s not going to allow me to go through any tribulation.” I believe we have been teaching people an escapism gospel. I believe the Bible teaches clearly that the church will go through tribulation. Pretribulation rapture is fairly new theology. I know it’s in the beloved Scofield Bible, but I can’t find any solid Scripture except maybe a verse here and there. And as I studied the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, I couldn’t find one man or woman of God who lived a charmed life. All I could find was fiery furnaces and lion’s dens and deserts and pits. Jesus said John the Baptist was the greatest man to walk the earth. Not only does John end up in prison, but Jesus walks away and goes on teaching. Jesus lets John go to prison and get his head cut off! Well, that just flies in the face of modern prosperity teaching.

The whole Bible is built around knowing Christ and the fellowship of his suffering. Those kinds of things don’t preach very well. But I found that through the fellowship of his suffering, my time in prison became not a time of loneliness—though it was horribly lonely—but a time of solitude. It became a time where I walked closer with Christ than I ever had.

On returning to television. I don’t want to say never on anything. But with the money it takes to be on television—my budget was a million dollars every two days—the tail wags the dog. I don’t want money to be my consuming force again. Now I live in the ghetto of Los Angeles, where I work under a group of men that I highly respect. There are 160 different ministries working together. It’s like a New Testament church, a daily thing, where we are feeding people, working with drug addicts, and repainting whole city blocks. We have about 4,000 in our sidewalk Sunday schools, and 12 different language churches at the center.

On the Graham family. Franklin came to prison over and over again to see me. He wrote me every month. The funny thing is, when he’d come I’d ask him to teach and preach in the chapel. I didn’t want to just have him to myself in the visiting room. And the chaplain always would say to him, “Now don’t give an invitation to accept Christ and don’t admit you know Jim Bakker.” He broke the rules every time, both of them. You know when you’re down in prison and Franklin comes and says, “Jim Bakker’s my friend,” it would just elevate my life for that moment. And then he’d give an invitation to accept Christ, and guys would come to the Lord.

When I was transferred to my last prison, Franklin said he wanted to help me out when I got out—with a job, a house to live in, and a car. It was my fifth Christmas in prison. I thought it over and said, “Franklin, you can’t do this. It will hurt you. The Grahams don’t need my baggage.” He looked at me and he said, “Jim, you were my friend in the past and you are my friend now. If anyone doesn’t like it, I’m looking for a fight.”

So when I got out of prison the Grahams sponsored me and paid for a house for me to live in and gave me a car to drive. The first Sunday out, Ruth Graham called the halfway house I was living in at the Salvation Army and asked permission for me to go to the Montreat Presbyterian Church with her that Sunday morning. When I got there, the pastor welcomed me and sat me with the Graham family. There were like two whole rows of them—I think every Graham aunt and uncle and cousin was there. The organ began playing and the place was full except for a seat next to me. Then the doors opened and in walked Ruth Graham. She walked down that aisle and sat next to inmate 07407-058. I had only been out of prison 48 hours, but she told the world that morning that Jim Bakker was her friend.

Afterwards, she had me up to their cabin for dinner. When she asked me for some addresses, I pulled this envelope out of my pocket to look for them—in prison you’re not allowed to have a wallet, so you just carry an envelope. She asked, “Don’t you have a wallet?” And I said, “Well, yeah, this is my wallet.” After five years of brainwashing in prison you think an envelope is a wallet. She walked into the other room and came back and said, “Here’s one of Billy’s wallets. He doesn’t need it. You can have it.” It reminded me of the time I was in prison when she took all of Billy’s Bibles in his library he wasn’t using and gave them to me to give to other inmates.

God spoke in my heart that if I didn’t forgive my enemies, I would never leave prison.

On The Apostle. I’m not sure the film is good or bad. I think Franklin [who denounced the movie, which stars Robert Duvall as a wayward Pentecostal preacher] is coming from his perspective. He perhaps hasn’t seen that side of Christianity. But talking to some of the old-timers, they told me they felt that that Southern preacher portrayed a hard reality, that there are people with that kind of roughness to them.

The thing that did impress me in the movie was the salvation prayer near the end. It was the most moving conversion experience that I’ve ever seen portrayed by Hollywood. I went to see the movie with some friends, and I was determined not to have any emotion about it. But as it got near the end and Robert Duvall—the preacher—had gotten his life somewhat together and was loving those people and that church, and then the police came and put him in handcuffs, I began to sob in that theater. I didn’t realize the pain was still deep inside of me. I tried not to cry, so it came out in loud bursts. My friends didn’t know what to do. I guess I identified with the character at that point as I remembered the pain of being shackled and being taken away myself.

I grew up in an era of law. But either we believe in grace or we don’t. So I have to accept the grace in that story—even though it’s fictional—if I’m going to accept grace for myself. And to forgive me is the hardest thing I have to do today. I have no problems forgiving others. When I was in prison, God spoke in my heart that if I didn’t forgive my enemies and pray for God to bless them, I would never leave prison. But I am still struggling with my own forgiveness. The pain of my failure is something that’s hard for me to deal with. So for me The Apostle is the story of a man who did a terrible thing, but yet his heart, like David’s, was toward God. David murdered. David committed adultery. But the thing we learn from the life of David is that he kept his heart toward God. That’s why we can’t judge one another, because God sees the heart.

Copyright © 1998 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, the ex-Disney movie exec, was sipping wine at Steven Spielberg’s house along with ex-Sony music czar David Geffen, where the three were discussing the next frontier for animation. Katzenberg had shepherded the genre’s renaissance at Disney with such hits as The Little Mermaid and The Lion King. He felt animation was ready to burst its fairy-tale-for-toddlers trappings. This led to a discussion about what went into a cinematic epic. When they listed the different elements, Spielberg blurted out they all added up to The Ten Commandments. And with that, the three of them decided to start a new studio, DreamWorks, with its first project being an animated telling of the life of Moses, The Prince of Egypt (to be released Dec. 18).

But Geffen added a caution: They shouldn’t Disneyfy it—that is, reconfigure the ancient story in order to tell an upbeat American tale. “Moses is not our story.” And because of that injunction, I got to enjoy a special preview at DreamWorks’ state-of-the-art animation studio. Katzenberg took Geffen’s advice to heart and made an effort to transform Hollywood’s relationship to the religious community from enmity to partnership. At every stage of production—from storyboards to previewing the close-to-final film—hundreds of religious leaders have been brought in to consult, including Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, and Ralph Reed.

“Dozens and dozens of changes were made,” said Katzenberg. Of the ones he is willing to comment on, he tells of the song lyric that was already recorded as “You can work miracles when you believe.” “All three religious groups let us know that that line was a problem,” says Katzenberg. It was rerecorded as “There can be miracles when you believe.” The change was not cheap.

While DreamWorks decided to eschew crass commercialization—and so waved off opportunities to merchandise Burning Bush night-lights—they tapped Christian publisher Thomas Nelson to produce a smorgasbord of mostly children’s offerings, from The Prince of Egypt A to Z to The Exodus: Moses’ Story from the Bible with Notes by Charles R. Swindoll. Look for the cardboard dump in a bookstore near you. The books will be placed alongside three albums: the soundtrack and two “inspired by” productions, one called “Nashville” and the other “Inspirational.”

But merchandising and networking do not a hit movie make. If the movie flops, DreamWorks’ brave attempt at a positive relationship with faith communities might backfire, making other studios less likely to pursue religion-friendly projects. Then again, Steven Spielberg’s instincts were right: The Prince of Egypt is a great story. And Jeffrey Katzenberg was right: MovieGuide‘s Ted Baehr calls the film “a quantum leap in animation.”

In fact, the movie is more entertaining than the book. To speed up the action, the role of Aaron is severely downgraded (the Val Kilmer-voiced Moses speaks for himself), and at the time of the Exodus, Moses looks more like a spry 32 than a robust octogenarian. And there are none of those awkward scenes of Hebrews grumbling in the wilderness; the movie ends at the hooray-for-our-side moment on the other shore of the Red Sea. Yes, there are certain advantages to having entertainment rather than revelation as your goal.

Still, unlike in most entertainment vehicles, God plays a major role. God’s white fire in the burning bush wonderfully captures both his nurturing love and his majestic holiness. The plagues can only be interpreted as a revelation of Yahweh’s supremacy over the Egyptian gods. And the parting-of-the-waters scene would cause Cecil B. DeMille to faint. There is no doubt who pulled these wonders off.

DreamWorks sought a PG rating. They thought scenes of soldiers killing Hebrew babies and God killing all of Egypt’s firstborn—no matter how tastefully done—might be too much for toddlers. Still, the movie is one of those rare gifts from our consumer culture where what they are selling happens to further the work of the kingdom. My advice: Let the people go.

Copyright © 1998 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Almost a century ago, the scholar-turned-medical-missionary Albert Schweitzer published a little bombshell of a book with the bland title of The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906; reissued this year in paperback by the Johns Hopkins University Press). Schweitzer reviewed the history of critical studies of the life of Jesus, starting with the early eighteenth-century skeptic Hermann von Reimarus and concluding with the late nineteenth-century liberal theologian William Wrede. The central argument of Schweitzer’s book at the opening of the twentieth century is startlingly appropriate also at its end.

Scholar after scholar, Schweitzer contended, had looked for Jesus down the deep well of history and had seen instead the scholar’s own reflection. Some writers on Jesus marshaled impressive intellectual tools, from archaeological research to literary analysis, from comparative studies of Near Eastern religions to examination of talmudic materials. Others relied on personal intuition, perhaps a journey or two to the Holy Land, and vivid imagination to construct their own “lives of Jesus.” But in almost every case, Schweitzer concluded, two centuries of supposedly rigorous investigation had produced a wide range of portraits of Jesus, each of which bore a suspicious resemblance to the artist and none of which was conclusive.

Charlotte Allen has come to the same conclusion after almost another century of biblical scholarship. In her new book, The Human Christ: The Misguided Search for the Historical Jesus (Free Press), she begins by surveying early Christian understandings of Jesus, and then takes up her story proper with eighteenth-century Enlightenment inquiries into the “human” Jesus—that is, the “real” Jesus stripped of the superstitions and myths that had attached to him somehow over the centuries. Drawing her narrative up virtually to the present—yes, the Jesus Seminar appears, as do other contemporary scholars—Allen’s rather lightly argued verdict is Schweitzer’s redux: so-called critical examinations of the Gospels in search of Jesus over more than three centuries have been typically uncritical of the author’s own governing biases and have resulted, time after time, in the projection of one’s own ideals onto the figure of Jesus of Nazareth.

Skeptics dismiss Jesus as a lunatic, a charlatan, a troubled poet, or an impotent revolutionary—or embrace him as an ironical, detached, innocuous fellow such as they see themselves to be. Rationalists who do not discard him discover him to be logical, sensible, and practical. Liberals admire him as idealistic, brave, kind, and wise. Romantics extol him as passionate, vital, and free. Reformers revere him as bold, visionary, impatient, and forceful. Some modern Jewish scholars find Jesus to be, in fact, a pretty good Pharisee (while Paul, the ex-Pharisee, turns out to be the troublemaker who actually started the Christian religion).

The worst kind of scholarly self-indulgence is revealed in Allen’s painstaking account of two centuries of “lives of Jesus” that share one damning trait: whenever the historical evidence fails to fit the preconceived theory, the evidence has to give way. Books of the New Testament are assigned earlier or later dates of composition and to this or that author in order to conform to somebody’s scheme of how early Christianity developed. At the end of the nineteenth-century, the eminent scholar Martin KŠhler—no friend of orthodoxy—condemned the entire life-of-Jesus movement as having contributed virtually nothing to the store of historically reliable knowledge about Jesus. And many observers of the Jesus Seminar today see a similar dynamic at work in their deliberations: since “we” already “know” what Jesus typically said or did on the basis of our “study” of hypothetical documents such as “Q” or “proto-Luke,” or our reading back of Jewish or Gnostic texts from centuries later, then we can confidently assess the veracity of this or that report of a saying or action of Jesus. Yeah, sure.

Particularly striking in Allen’s account is how far back some of the purportedly “modern” and “critical” arguments go. Her earlier chapters show the second-century archcritic Celsus to have better claim on the title “first of the demythologizers” than D. F. Strauss, much less Rudolph Bultmann. So, too, Allen traces the fundamental modern critical disjunction between “the Jesus of history” and “the Christ of faith” to the second-century career of the heretic Marcion. Indeed, she asserts that “few modern skeptics about Jesus have improved on the theories of the early pagan critics.” So much, then, for the breathless announcements of cutting-edge scholarship by the Elaine Pagelses and John Spongs who, in fact, offer theories that are decades, if not centuries, old.

From a more traditional point of view, Allen’s account raises intriguing questions. Why, for starters, do traditional/orthodox/conservative critics get so little space in her story—and, to be fair to her, in most summaries of the history of biblical criticism? Allen notes with approval the nineteenth-century work of Konstantin von Tischendorf, who gave us a rendition of the Greek New Testament that still stands as the basis for all modern translations. And she does mention contemporary scholars such as N. T. Wright and Martin Hengel. But Tischendorf was a textual critic and thus did not work on the same problems as the life-of-Jesus scholars. Wright and Hengel barely get mentioned. And the work of previous worthies such as J. B. Lightfoot and Adolf von Schlatter receives little or no attention. This is a pity, because a survey of more conservative scholarship would have served as an important test of Allen’s hypothesis.

What happens, in other words, when orthodoxy is assumed? Have evangelicals, like their heterodox counterparts, simply remade the figure of Jesus in their own image? Yale scholar Jaroslav Pelikan’s book Jesus Through the Centuries has shown that, in fact, all Christians everywhere have tended to picture Christ according to their ethnic, economic, and political situations as well as according to their distinctive theological beliefs. And given that Jesus is the representative for all humanity, some of that variegation of portraiture is understandable and even splendid.

But when modern North American evangelicals picture Jesus on T-shirts as a righteous Rambo (yet recall “Behold, the Lamb of God”), or archdefender of the nuclear family (but see “Who are my mother and my brothers?”), or champion of our political causes (but “my kingdom is not of this world”), then we also are guilty of—to use a Bible word—idolatry.

The biblical presentation of Jesus refuses to remain nicely confined to any of our containers. In particular, Allen shows how one picture after another of Jesus in this long line of nontraditional portraits fails before one question dear to the hearts of all faithful Christians: “What about the Cross?”

I once encountered an articulate, angry young Marxist at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, London. As we had come upon a small knot of people during an afternoon stroll, it had appeared that the young Communist had silenced a gentle Christian preacher by loudly proclaiming that Jesus Christ was “not a pleasant person!” As he waved a New Testament under the nose of the abashed speaker, still marooned a foot above the rest of us on his soapbox, the assailant thought he was scoring an impressive point. But then another Christian in the audience, one with a firmer grasp of the gospel, spoke up: “Of course Jesus wasn’t a pleasant person. You don’t crucify nice guys!”

Why would anyone crucify the reasonable Jesus of the Enlightenment? Why would anyone crucify the dreamy poet of Romanticism? Why would anyone crucify the Law-abiding, mild-mannered rabbi of revisionist Jewish scholarship? Why would anyone crucify the witty, enigmatic, and marginal figure of the Jesus Seminar?

What Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner says about revisionist Jewish views of Jesus is true of most of Allen’s long line: “Theologians produced the figure they could admire most at the least cost.” But the Cross stands amidst each such easy path, each attempt to avoid the heart of the matter and the cost of discipleship. The Cross remains a stumbling block for all who encounter this Jesus. He is perhaps not the person we want, but he is surely the person we still—desperately—need.

John G. Stackhouse, Jr., is Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology at Regent College, Vancouver, and author of Can God Be Trusted? Faith and the Challenge of Evil (Oxford University Press).

Copyright © 1998 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.