BaylyBlog: Out of our minds, too...

'Sodomite' is the most accurate and loving word to use (part 3 of 3)...

It's taken a while to get around to it, but here are a few responses to one reader's comments on the two earlier posts, "'Sodomite' is the most accurate, loving word (part I)..." and "'Sodomite' is the most accurate, loving word (part II)...".

James writes: ... Mr. Bayly attempts to address comments (that) he "did not take Sodom's explicitly stated sins very seriously." After reading the entirety of his post and what followed, it seemed very obvious that the person who made that comment was referring to Mr. Bayly's nearly complete ignoring of the Ezekiel text and almost total exaltation of the Jude text.

James, my purpose in what I've written has never been to give an historical analysis of all the sins of Sodom for which she was judged. Rather it has been to defend the church's historic use of the word 'sodomy' to designate same-sex carnal relations and to establish that according to the Word of God this was at the center of Sodom's wickedness. Homosexualists have spent decades promoting a revisionist interpretation of the Genesis account, seeking to remove sodomy from the list of sins God judged when He destroyed Sodom. And to that end they emphasize all the sins of Sodom that have nothing to do with sexual immorality.  My purpose is not to analyze each of Sodom's sins but to defend the church's historic usage of the terms 'sodomy,' 'sodomitic,' and 'sodomite'...

Roe v. Wade's 39th anniversary: The Lord's throne is in Heaven...

(TB: On the occasion of the thirty-ninth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I post this message. It would please me if you would take the time to read it. Thank you.)

I remain amazed that abortion could even become a political issue in a country with pretensions to being civilized. It is as if we were to debate the merits of legalizing cannibalism, with the liberal side chanting the slogan "Keep government out of the kitchen!"

There is no danger that the other side will ever be persuaded that it is wrong; there is, however, the very real danger that we will become discouraged, worn down, and inured to an evil that should always horrify and sicken us. The erosion of our consciences is surely part of the destructiveness of this abominable "procedure."   - Joe Sobran

The Lord'€™s Throne Is in Heaven

(For the choir director; a psalm of David.) In the LORD I take refuge; how can you say to my soul, "Flee as a bird to your mountain; for, behold, the wicked bend the bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string to shoot in darkness at the upright in heart. If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?" The LORD is in His holy temple; the LORD'€™S throne is in heaven; His eyes behold, His eyelids test the sons of men. The LORD tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves violence His soul hates. Upon the wicked He will rain snares; fire and brimstone and burning wind will be the portion of their cup. For the LORD is righteous, He loves righteousness; the upright will behold His face. (Psalm 11:1-7)

Thirty one (now thirty-nine) years ago today, on January 22nd, 1973, the Supreme Court of these United States issued its infamous ruling, Roe v. Wade, in which the Court declared that a mother's intentional killing of her unborn child was a fundamental right guaranteed under our Constitution. Since that ruling, it has been a commonplace to observe that Roe v. Wade, the Court's repeal of the laws prohibiting abortion on the books of all fifty states, was simply the exercise of raw judicial power with a legal justification based upon a mist and a vapor--€”or as the Court itself might put it, emanations from penumbras.

Our Supreme Court: intentionally conniving at murder...

Since 1973, no one has made a name for himself defending Roe. v. Wade’s history, biology, ethics, logic, or justice; and only a few have been foolish enough to claim this ruling will stand the test of time...

Reilly on Tebow...

Another good piece by ESPN's Rick Reilly. You may remember Reilly's nasty piece attacking the home-schooled boy who, in a state wrestling tournament last year, declined to wrestle a girl? On a different note, in this piece Reilly commends Tim Tebow. As the Apostle Peter puts it, Tim Tebow is keeping his behavior excellent among the Gentiles:

Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation. (1Peter 2:12)

(TB, w/thanks to Doug)

"For the wrath of man shall praise you..."

Here's the manuscript for the sermon I preached the Lord's Day following 9/11 ten years ago, and then again yesterday on its tenth anniversary. I should add that the manuscript usually serves only as my loose outline for the preaching of God's Word.

Red and yellow, black and white...

A father of the fatherless and a judge for the widows, Is God in His holy habitation. - Psalms 68:5

If Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, what judgment of His wrath must He be preparing in the face of the wholesale slaughter of our little ones? And what does it say about our love for Him that we claim to be His adopted sons, yet are unconcerned for these little ones He loves? Has He not told us He is a Father to the fatherless?

These little ones' blood flows day by day in your own city--just down the block from your church office and almost kitty-corner to the Kroger where you do your grocery shopping. When you're driving your car filled with much-loved children on your way to home school co-op, little babies are being ripped apart inside the brick wall of that building on your left three buildings back from the stop light.

Remember? Your God is a Father to the fatherless.

India's child murders are sex-specific. So many of her little girls have been killed that for every 1,000 boys under age six, there are only 916 girls. Most of them are cut apart while in their mother's womb. Some make it to birth, though, and are starved to death. Little baby girls with toothpicks for arms and everyone knows why...

Nationalized health care and parental authority...

(Andrew Henry) The conflict over Joseph Maraachli throws into stark relief our modern age's attack on the authority of fathers and mothers.

The circumstances are simple and painful. Several years ago, Moe Maraachli and Sana Nader lost their daughter, Zina, to a degenerative neurological condition. Her respiratory function deteriorated so severely that she was placed on a ventilator. Rather than allowing her to die in the hospital, her parents decided to take her home. A simple tracheotomy allowed her to breathe without the aid of a ventilator and she lived for six more months at home with her family before passing away.

Fast forward several years to the birth of Joseph. He was considered to be at high risk for the same genetic condition and was closely monitored as he grew. At four months old, he began having seizures and his parents worst fears were confirmed...

Check it out...

(Tim) Just a note to direct readers to this ongoing discussion some may find helpful.

What do I have that I didn't receive...

(Tim, w/thanks to Michael for finding the text) Yesterday, our sermon text was 1Corinthians 4:7-16. Here the Apostle Paul rebukes the Corinthian super-apostles for bragging about their gifts and using them to diss Paul: "For who regards you as superior? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?"

During the sermon, I mentioned this closing section of Edwards'' sermon, "Christian Charity: The Duty of Charity to the Poor Explained and Enforced," in which Edwards answers common objections to sharing our gifts with others. Note particularly Objection IX and Edwards' answer. Since first reading it thirty or so years ago, I've never forgotten it.

Incidentally, note Edwards doesn't answer Objection I from an unregenerate man by exhorting that man simply to meditate on, and trust God's grace. Rather, he exhorts him to keep God's Law, trusting that Law to serve the man as his schoolmaster to Christ. This is the opposite of our pastoral method and preaching today in Reformed churches (at least)...

Six days old...

(Tim) I don't know where this came from, but it's beautiful. And instructive.

When Christians (like one of my former elders who's a pharmacist) say they have no objection to abortion in the first few days or weeks of life; that there's no life or image of God in the first few days or weeks of the life of man, and thus they're willing to fulfill prescriptions for chemical abortifacients that kill the baby in the first few days or weeks of life; look very closely at this picture. This is the man they approve of murdering, or themselves murder.

Yes, 'murder' is the proper word. Anything less would further obscure the wickedness of our bloodthirsty nation.

Two days ago, Mary Lee was at the birth of another baby of our church who is the product of our congregation's faithful witness outside Planned Parenthood's abortuary here in Bloomington...

I was in prison, and you came to Me...

(Tim) Speaking of the Gospel, what's the most productive building in the country for souls believing in the Lord Jesus and being saved? If you guessed Saddleback or Redeemer, you're wrong. It's the local county jail.

Maybe a man's spent his life escaping accountability, with the full complicity of his mother and father, teachers, coaches, and boss, but the day finally comes when he's arrested for hitting a young boy with his car, killing him while he's driving under the influence of alcohol. Then, for the first time in his life there in the county jail, this man is forced to take a hard look at himself. No more excuses. No manipulation or lies to his loved ones. He's going to face the judge and this time Daddy can't save him.

So there in his cell, he's ready to hear the message of the blood of Jesus Christ cleansing us from all sin, and each year God is pleased to give repentance and faith to many thousands in county jails around the country.

Think about the Philippian jailer. An earthquake hits his jail, causing the walls to crumble and the prisoners' chains to fall off. What's his immediate response? Thinking his prisoners have escaped, he draws his sword to kill himself.

Doesn't that strike you as odd--that this jailer would react to a natural disaster by committing suicide?

Slavery was the context for the birth of the spirtituality-of-the-church rubric...

In the deep South, Reformed people were adamantly opposed to any interference with the practice of black slavery and emphasized aspects of the tradition that favored confining the activities of the church to strictly "spiritual" issues. -George Marsden

(Tim) Where did R2-K Normative Withdrawalists come from? They like to claim the Apostolic Age, but the Apostles were persecuted and died at the hands of the civil magistrate, and it wasn't for their ministry of the Word and Sacrament during Lord's Day worship services. Certainly they can't trace their lineage back to Calvin's Geneva or Knox's Scotland. And they themselves deny a Puritan blood line and much of any affinity for Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards.

Some try to trace it back negatively, claiming it's the necessary lesson to be learned from certain errors of those who have given themselves to Christ's command to clothe the naked and feed the hungry. Men feeding the hungry and clothing the naked in the past were Quakers or suffragettes or Arminians, so there you have it: doctrinal heterodoxy proves the danger of Christians joining together to feed the hungry and clothe the naked.

Or it's bad when the church does it. Or bad when the pastor of the church does it. Or bad when the church and the pastor and the church officers do it. Or bad when someone preaches the necessity of doing it on a blog. Or bad when someone says its still normative today--the feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, that is--in such a way as to call into question justification by grace alone...

Calvin on submission to the civil magistrate: "manliness" vs. "effeminacy and cowardice"...

(Tim) Speaking of Shiphrah and Puah, here's Calvin on the godliness of these Hebrew midwives in rebelling against the unspeakable wickedness of Pharaoh demanding the slaughter of Hebrews' infants. It's clear Calvin would not be a 2-K man, today. TODAY.

* * *

Then the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other was named Puah; and he said, “When you are helping the Hebrew women to give birth and see them upon the birthstool, if it is a son, then you shall put him to death; but if it is a daughter, then she shall live.”  (Exodus 1:15-16).

The tyrant now descends from the open violence and cruelty which had availed nothing, to secret plots and deceit. He desires the infants to be killed at their birth; and commands the midwives to be the instruments of this dreadful barbarity.

We read of no such detestable example of inhumanity since the world began...

Pharisaism in retrospect...

(Tim) About forty years ago, Dad published this article in his "Out of My Mind" column in Eternity. It's helpful to the godly trying to make sense of the 2-kingdom men in our midst. Where and how ought we to stand as  we watch the oppression, not of negro slaves but unborn babies, today.

No generation of so-called Christians has ever lacked for careful theological distinctions that allow us to feel self-righteous in our cold silence towards the widow and orphan God commands us to love; to feel perfectly justified in looking the other way when we drive past the baby slaughterhouse on South College Avenue; to condemn others who engage in what we love to refer to as "the culture war" while we sleep well at night after leaving the drunk on the sidewalk outside our front door.

Titles and subtitles are precisely Dad's when the article first ran back in May of 1971, the month I graduated from high school...

The utility of the spirituality of the church yesterday and today...

(Tim) In a comment under the post, "Two-kingdom's tendentious misuse of the Establishment Clause," Ken Patrick wrote: "Christianity is a threat to the existing political order because it is a call to a new way of living." Here are some thoughts I've had while watching that discussion...

Excellent comments, Ken, although I'd like to tweak your statement slightly: "Christianity is a threat to the existing religious (or cultic) order because it’s a call to turn from the our worship of the cult of the state to worship the One True Living God. Mind you: He has appointed a day when He will judge all men..."

In other words, let's acknowledge not only that the US Constitution does not establish separation of church and state, but also that there's never been a politas in history that's had separation of church and state. And those who reassure themselves they live in such a politas today here in these United States are deluded.

Among a host of things proving their error is the river of Molech’s blood we swim in each day. Millions of slaughtered children—a billion worldwide, now—proving precisely which god our state worships. His name is Molech, and we remain at ease in Wheaton and Escondido and St. Louis and Manhattan.

It’s weird...

Our Reich of indifference...

(Tim) This piece ran in Eternity magazine back in June of 1984, in Dad's (Joe Bayly's) monthly column, "Out of My Mind." The sin of indifference Dad was condemning is the sin of reformed pastors and elders today. Some of us hide behind missional concerns and talk of contextualization; others behind talk of the spirituality of the Church; others two kingdom theology; others redemptive historical preaching; and there are those who make no effort at all to hide it. If nothing else, readers may understand David and I haven't fallen far from the tree. Dad was ordained to the Gospel ministry.

I should add that, when he wrote this, Dad had just served several years as Executive Director of Christian Medical Society, the national professional association of physicians with evangelical doctrinal commitments.

* * *

Our Reich of Indifference

"We castigate the apathy of Christians in Nazi Germany-and ignore our own silence on today's holocaust of abortion..."

There is a sin of indifference. It is the sin that binds evangelicals as the Lilliputians bound Gulliver, preventing us from exercising the influence that God has given us in these years-years that are destined to come to an end and may never be repeated.

To me, the outstanding example of indifference is in our reaction to the great sin of abortion that is the shame of our nation...

Alveda King has a dream that, one day, the unborn won't be slaughtered...

(Tim, w/thanks to Philip M.) Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., has issued this call to honor Dr. King's birthday:

* * *

Happy Birthday, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr./Life in the “Beloved Community” of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Beloved, let us love one another!

"Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loves (Agape) is born of God, and knows God. He that loves not knows not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwells in us, and his love is perfected in us" (1John 7-12).

In remembering my uncle, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on his birthday, I remember that he spoke of a Beloved Community where all are treated with respect and dignity. The unborn are as much a part of the Beloved Community as are newborns, infants, teenagers, adults, and the elderly. Too many of us speak of tolerance and inclusion, yet refuse to tolerate or include the weakest and most innocent among us in the human family...

Let us pray for Haiti, and give...

(Tim, w/thanks to David D.) Let us pray for Haiti, and give. Here's a prayer circulated within our presbytery. I don't know its origin.

Holy Father,

We are able to see a small glimpse of the devastation and human tragedy that has been visited upon this desperately poor nation of Haiti. The anguish on the faces of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and neighbors speaks volumes. O Lord, you alone know how many lie dead in the streets and under the rubble...

The Reformed doctrine of reaching down...

(Tim, w/thanks to Ben Cr.) One of the more hidden members of Good Shepherd Band is Aaron Jones, an early music keyboardist who serves the Lord by "reaching down." What's the reference?

Check out his myspace Radio Friendly: American Pirates page--particularly his song, "Reach Down." (I also appreciated "I Shall Be Satisfied.")

Knowing many of our readers are forthrightly Reformed, I can anticipate objections to a Reformed man putting "the least of these" to song...

Able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart...

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)

(Tim, w/thanks to Carole, Clint, and Ginger) Babies are slaughtered each Thursday at the abortuary on South College Avenue where Planned Parenthood makes its profit off the bloodshed of innocents. Three of the souls from Church of the Good Shepherd who are there crying out for mercy each week are Carole Canfield, and Clint and Ginger Mahoney. God bless them for doing their best to break the jaws of the wicked, snatching the prey from their teeth.

Today, Carole passed on this story from their work...

Praise God for the love and compassion of Bible-believing Christians...

(Tim) This is written by a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy. Thinking readers might have some responses, I post it here. I've received it second or third hand, so I don't know the writer or context.

While recognizing that some people have a calling from God to speak out specifically on these sins, I find that the focus among many Evangelicals on the abortion and same-sex marriage issues to the exclusion of all others reflects the extreme individualism of Protestant theology and ethics, both "conservative" and "liberal". Evangelicals care rightly about the killing that goes on within a woman's womb, and about the improper and irreverent use of our God-given sexual organs in our own bodies or in the bodies of others. But there is not always a corresponding concern about the killing and grave threats to human life that are present outside of the womb, and about the improper and irreverent use of the natural world and material possessions given to us by God.

I don't think it's an accident that the same individualistic faith traditions that emphasize and sanctify "my personal choice" (to accept Jesus as "personal Savior" in the case of conservative Protestants, to have an abortion as a "personal matter" in the case of the liberals) but downplay the physical unity and continuity of the Body of Christ across space and time would also be quite uncertain regarding the social obligations that Christians have to their political and military enemies, to the poor and sick among us, and to the rest of God's creation. A faith tradition that fails to connect our moral obligations inside our bodies with our moral obligations outside of our bodies is deficient in both its anthropology and its ecology.

To get things started, it seems to me evangelicals are now close to the heart of the movement for the social justice of cutting carbon emissions, calling for the government to increase funds for AIDS research, and shaming people who litter. Rick Warren, anyone? Brian McLaren? Rob Bell up there in Grand Rapids? Inter-Varsity? Zondervan? Navigators? Willow Creek? Tim Keller and his flock?

And of course, every last prof at Covenant and Taylor and Gordon and Westmont and Wheaton.

Maybe our critic is only speaking of historic evangelicalism--not the classic liberalism that's taken over these past few decades.

But then he has an entirely different problem...

Serving Christ in Cedar Rapids, Iowa...

(Tim) Two weeks ago, our high school men and women went over to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to serve those trying to recover from the terrible flood the community suffered last year. Led by their youth workers, David Abu-Sara, Veronica Allen, Abram Hess, Emily Hess, and Ryan Schnitzer, they returned reporting that the governmental authorities were not particularly helpful to the residents, being better at red tape than getting things done.

The work done by the group was coordinated by church planters, Jeremy Knapp and Michael Langer, of One Ancient Hope (PCA). Our men and women were given a place to sleep in the basement of Hope Evangelical Church (PCA).

The Iowa Independent ran an article on the post-flood political problems and our group made the blurb under one of the pictures...

The Lord giveth: Anne-Claire and Elise Holmes...

(Tim) God is so kind to us! Shortly after Noon, today, with her husband by her side, Mrs. Chris (Michelle) Holmes gave birth to twin daughters, Anne-Claire Evangeline Holmes at 12:52 PM weighing 3 lbs. 11 oz., and Elise Lydia Michelle Holmes at 12:54 PM weighing 2 lbs. 10 oz. Join us in giving thanks for the Lord's mercy to the least of these.

The first pic is of Anne-Claire, the second of Elise. Both babies are fine. Right now, Chris is up in the neonatal unit seeing his daughters, and Michelle is praising God with Barbara (who attended the birth with Chris) and Mary Lee (who arrived soon after). Praise God with us for saving both girls' lives, and protecting their mother!

And as an explanation to those of you who have not followed this dangerous work Michelle has been doing, her twins were diagnosed eleven weeks ago today with Twin-toTwin Transfusion Syndrome, and for most of the weeks since then, mother Michelle has been in the hospital hooked up to fetal monitors asking the Lord to allow her daughters to survive until they were large enough to live outside the womb. So today, by God's grace, they were both born--tiny, but living and healthy, even. And yes, that is a syringe.

Who was this man's neighbor?

(Tim, w/thanks to Taylor) Read this account of the man traded for ten bats, and remember we actually are our brother's keeper. The men who dished out the merciless taunts, chants, and catcalls at Mr. Odom's last appearance in a baseball game were accomplices to murder.

We can spill a lot of words talking about justice and mercy, AIDS orphans, and being missional while not giving a tinker's cuss about the man next to us on the bus, in the carpool, or sitting by himself Sunday morning during Lord's Day worship.

If they checked John Odom's cell phone, would they find a single call from a follower of Jesus Christ during this poor man's last week of life? One of us had a chance with him. One of us knew--I'm sure of it.

Abortion: Here am I, send me...

(Tim) Often when I write about the slaughter of the unborn, readers grow alarmed and wonder if I might be recommending armed revolution?

No, I've never recommended armed revolution, but any and everything short of it. Little ones made in the Image of our Mighty God are being heartlessly slaughtered in our cities and we eat turkey and stuffing, then gather Lord's Day to celebrate the beginning of Advent singing, "Away in a manger, no room for a bed; the little Lord Jesus lay down His sweet head."

Few times in salvation history have the people of God cultivated such a highly sophisticated ability to worship the God of justice and truth while living in the midst of unjust, oppressive bloodshed. Typical of cities around our nation, here in Bloomington approximately one out of every five children conceived in their mother's womb is slaughtered. The horror of Nazi Germany doesn't begin to approach us in numbers or the relative innocence and helplessness of its victims. Molech in ancient Canaan didn't devour twenty percent of the children of the land, nor did the death toll reach one billion children...

The practical atheism of Christians who vote for the Democratic Party...

(Tim, w/thanks to James) On this Election Day, here's an artifact of history from the editors of Touchstone, a Christian magazine I subscribe to and recommend. Originally run in 2003, this editorial is more pertinent today than it was five years ago. If you read nothing else, be sure to read the last two paragraphs...

Practical atheism revisited

Last week I came upon an editorial I wrote during the 2003 political season which seems to me even more applicable now. Today I would add that whatever one thinks about Senator Obama's plans for using government power to take money from those who have more of it and give it to those who have less, the social control which must be gained to make such things come to pass has never boded well for Christians in the countries where it has happened. The Gentiles, even--or perhaps especially--the religious ones, have not changed their opinions about people who regard them as morally unclean, nor will they fail to punish them for it when they gain sufficient power. What concerns them, I believe, is not so much that the poor be enriched, but that the middle classes be brought as low as possible by confiscation of their ethically significant wealth...

Sarah Palin, the new Christian woman from Suffragette City...

(Tim, w/thanks to Brian) If you, good reader, have never read G. K. Chesterton's essays on womanhood; if you've never allowed yourself to think thoughts contrary to our culture concerning woman's unique calling; if you've never noticed the patronizing attitude of evangelical feminists toward godly women of the church who cook, wash the feet of the saints, show hospitality, teach other women and children, and pray; if you've never taken particular notice of the transfer of charity from Christian women confessing their faith to well-paid female executives running nonprofits or working for government bureaucracies; if you've never had a wealthy female church member who serves as a county supervisor tell you not to worry about the poor in your community because "that's what we pay taxes for;" if you haven't noticed how the loss of constitutional government in these United States has produced bondage and bloodshed for her citizens; if you have never found yourself sickened over the naked pandering at the heart of every state of the union address and every campaign speech of our time; if you didn't hang out in the church parking lot yesterday, basking in the warm sunshine of an early Fall afternoon as you listened to a missionary couple's son explain...

Just down the street from our church-houses...

"For from the least of them even to the greatest of them, Everyone is greedy for gain, And from the prophet even to the priest Everyone deals falsely. They have healed the brokenness of My people superficially, Saying, 'Peace, peace,' But there is no peace. Were they ashamed because of the abomination they have done? They were not even ashamed at all; They did not even know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; At the time that I punish them, They shall be cast down," says the LORD. (Jeremiah 6:13-15)

(Tim) A few years after Yale was founded, a student spoke critically of one of Yale's tutors saying, "He has no more grace than this chair." Yale's response was swift: The student was expelled and, despite his apology (contra Wikipedia), Yale refused to reinstate him. Centuries later, Yale named one of her Divinity School buildings for this student. It's the only building ever named for a student who was expelled.

One of this student's contemporaries also attended Yale a few years earlier when Yale was just being chartered. At that time, Jonathan Edwards himself was caught up in the discipline of Yale's tutors. Their infraction?

They were promoting Arminian theology. Yale had been founded because of Harvard's betrayal of Christian doctrine, so no one involved in Yale's founding was about to let it happen again.

What does Yale discipline today?

This past year, a Yale art student regularly impregnated herself (artificially, with a syringe), then killed the babies she never knew by taking oral abortifacients--all of which she carefully documented with a video camera for display at a Yale art exhibition. Yale's administration was quite embarrassed and released a statement...

God is merciful...

Apropros to nothing and no one--or, rather, everything and everyone...

It is God's character to be merciful to miserable sinners, and we need that mercy--each of us. Having experienced that mercy, we are generous with one another showing the same mercy to our brothers we first received from Him. How can we be sons without demonstrating a tiny smidgen of our Father's character?

Mercy will avoid saying everything that could be said. It will avoid putting the worst construction possible on another's words and actions. It will refrain from returning good for evil. It will not keep track of a wrong done by another; it will not wait until the perfect moment with the perfect audience to be punitive.

Neither will mercy protect others from pain at any cost. Compassion often demands admonition and rebuke. We love souls, we want their best, so we warn them away from error and sin. This is Godly mercy no matter what others might think of it.

An admonition lovingly given with gentleness, yet keeping in mind the holiness of God, is one of the deepest expressions of mercy.

But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life. And have mercy on some, who are doubting; save others, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh. (Jude 1:20-23)