.JPG) THE ARIZONA CONSERVATIVE |
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FAITH & CULTURE
"The proper, biblical role of government is to protect
the well-being of its citizens—to provide security and promote justice,
not to usher them into the next world by denying them medical care. Do
we need health care reform? Of course we do; I’ve said so before. But as
Christians, we must not assent to giving unaccountable bureaucrats the
power to determine the value of a human life—or to withhold medical care
from those whose survival is somehow deemed outside the national
interest." "In my travels across the globe, I have found this
scenario to be conspicuous among our youth in universities everywhere as
these institutions deliver meaninglessness in large doses. On campus after
campus, in culture after culture, I have listened for hours to
intellectuals, young and old, who testify to a deep-seated emptiness. No
amount of philosophizing about a world without God brings hope." "After three decades of covering every continent
and delivering scores of university lectures, I have seen that this
sense of alienation and meaninglessness is the principal malady of young
minds. Academic degree after degree has not removed the haunting specter
of the pointlessness of existence in a random universe." Take a Stand for Your Heritage of Religious Freedom: Sign the Manhattan Declaration Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians are uniting to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:
Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them. We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Among the original 219 signers are three Christian leaders from Arizona: Dr. Wayne Grudem, Alan Sears, and Bishop Thomas Olmsted. Read the Manhattan Declaration and Endorse it Today Helping the Less Fortunate Get Back on Their Feet
For people attending churches in Mesa and Gilbert, the answer was giving up their shoes. In a season of need that never ends, shoes are a crying need for the poor. This fact prompted one pastor to challenge his flocks on two church campuses to give up their shoes, right there in the churches, during worship services. Hundreds sacrificially placed their shoes on the church stage and went home shoeless. The shoes were donated to the Dream Center in Phoenix for distribution to people who can put them to good use.
The same churches went further. The pastor told his flock that 2.6 billion people in the world are considered "poor," and many people in the world live on less than $2 a day. So he asked them to buy a tin cup made by poor people in India and inscribed with I John 3:18: "Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth." The minister asked the congregations to eat beans and rice and drink water out of that tin cup for the four days leading up the Thanksgiving meal, so they can leave their comfort zones and empathize with people who have little. Hundreds took the first step by giving up the shoes they wore to church and buying the tin cups. The Neglected Duty of Civic Awareness
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