Corby Stephens

The FoxNews.com headline reads, “Blue-eyed people are inbred mutants.” Obviously this article had something to do with darwinian evolution, so I thought I’d see what they are on about now. Here is the link to the full article. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,327070,00.html

What caught my attention was this.

Danish researchers have concluded that all blue-eyed people share a common ancestor, presumably the first man or woman to sport what must have seemed oddly colored peepers 6,000 to 10,000 years ago.

Wait, how long ago? 6,000 years ago? Hm. That would be about the time Adam and Eve started popping out kids. Fascinating.

“Originally, we all had brown eyes,” Professor Hans Eiberg of the University of Copenhagen said in a press release. “But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a ’switch,’ which literally ‘turned off’ the ability to produce brown eyes.”

This makes sense and is totally in line with what we see in scripture. Adam and Eve were essentially clones. The same, complete genetic pool, no mutations. As they had kids, and their kids had kids, and because of the curse on creation, mutations were inevitable. Either that, or it’s part of the genetic variability God built in to out DNA. From people who were middle brown with brown eyes, you can get the blackest blacks and the whitest whites. No, this isn’t a commercial for laundry detergent.

He also stresses that the switch, as the press release puts it, is “neither a positive nor a negative mutation.”

That’s a bit disingenuous, as the mutation also produces greater instance of blond hair (sexually selected for even today) and fair skin, which confers a survival advantage by stimulating greater production of vitamin D in sun-starved northern European countries — exactly where blue eyes are still most prevalent.

God built all of this into our DNA. DNA is information. Information, and the means to interpret and use information, cannot come about by chance random processes. The evidence points to, nay, it screams that there is, a Creator. And I’m glad I know Him.

You’ve seen the bumper stickers or tee-shirts before I’m sure. “Gun control means using both hands.” And then there is the other extreme that basically says guns should be illegal except for maybe law enforcement and the military. I might call it the doctrine of gun control. In that light, it isn’t too different from what is happening in Christianity as it relates to the Bible and how Christians, or Christ-followers, or whatever, live their lives.

There are those in the emergent church movement who say that the doctrine of inerrancy isn’t a Biblical doctrine and should not be so forcibly held onto. The doctrine of inerrancy basically says that there are no errors of fact nor are there any contradictions in the Bible. The Bible is 100% accurate when it speaks on matters of history, science, culture, etc. While the Bible may not contain a label that says, “This book is inerrant,” the concept can be found throughout the Bible. If it is the word of God, then it must be inerrant. When you look at the writing it’s pretty apparent which books are historical and which ones are poetic. There are ways to tell when the writing is being figurative and when it is being literal. If there is any confusion about anything it usually has to do with the fact that we are 21st century Americans reading about 2,000+ year middle eastern cultures. Once you get around that, things are clearer.

Why do some object to this doctrine? Because, they say, it is one of the things that has led to Christians becoming isolationists from the rest of the world. It is part of what has led to mainstream Christianity become so ineffective and irrelevant in our society. Those who hold to an inerrant view of scripture aren’t tolerant of other cultures and make Christianity look stupid.

Their answer? Get rid of the doctrine. And don’t stop there, look at all the other whacky stuff these inbred Christians are into and get rid of that too. Bible prophecy is irrelevant. The origins of mankind and the universe, as told in the Bible, are a myth, a morality tale, not a historical narrative. Basically, instead of using the Bible as God intended, redefine it. Take away these things and redefine or recreate Christianity and God in our own image. Don’t teach people how to use the gun, take it away from them. After all, it isn’t the only source of truth in this world. All truth is God’s truth, according to Rob Bell. The Bible isn’t the only source of truth, Christianity doesn’t hold the corner on truth, God is bigger than that.

Why am I on about this? Because I love God’s word. I get fired up when people attack it or abuse it ignorantly. When you have a false presupposition and come to a conclusion that happens to fit the evidence, your conclusion is still false. It so happens that I agree with many of the objections the emergent folks, and the world for that matter, have concerning the church and Christians in our culture. But their solutions are completely wrong, and in opposition to God’s word. Their presupposition is wrong, their observations are right, but their conclusions are wrong.

The answer isn’t redefining God’s word. The answer isn’t taking it less seriously. The answer is taking His word more seriously. The answer is studying it and applying it more. The agent of change in this world is the Holy Spirit. But when you don’t believe that the Spirit is active today, you are going to ignore Him and try to find your own way to be an agent of change. When you don’t believe Jesus is really going to come back, God is going to judge the world, and Jesus is our only hope for the future, you make up a new future, you spiritualize our hope. When you don’t believe those early chapters of Genesis, the Bible becomes a collection of stories, it becomes a pile of pillows upon which people are supposed to build their lives, instead of the firm foundation that it really is.

“Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” If I can’t trust the Bible then I can’t trust that Jesus love me. If I can’t trust that Jesus loves me, then what’s the point? I might as well believe in the Smurfs, and you darned well better respect my beliefs. Why? Because the Smurfs believe in truth, honesty, and sharing. So does God. Therefore, God must be in the Smurfs. Do you see where this leads? Now where did I put my white hat…

The Bible is the word of God. It tells us where we come from. It tells us that God made us for a purpose. It tells us that that purpose is to have a relationship with Him. It tells us that Adam an Eve disobeyed God which is sin, which resulted in all of their descendants (that’s us) being separated from God because we sin too. It tells us that there is no way we can fix that on our own. It tells us that God Himself had a plan to fix it because He doesn’t want us to be separated from Him. It tells us that Jesus’ death and resurrection was God’s plan to fix it, and that that is the only way it can be fixed. It tells us that He will give us His own Holy Spirit to change us, and He will use us to change the world around us. It tells us that God will tolerate the sin of the world for only so long and that He is going to judge it someday. It tells us that Jesus is the only way out of this judgment.

The Bible gives us a sense of purpose for our past and present, and it gives us hope for our future. We can have confidence in that. It is certain. It is absolute. Jesus love you, this you can know, for the Bible tells you so.

Next weekend (Feb 3rd) will be my one year anniversary as the pastor of the church. A year. We have come a ways. I won’t repeat how we have grown because I already talked about that. What’s bugging me now is the desire to see growth. As I have already written about, we are seeing some great internal growth. People are healthier in their relationship with the Lord than perhaps they have ever been. And that’s awesome. I praise God for that. So I’m not talking about that kind of growth. I’m also not talking about numbers for the sake of numbers. I’m talking about seeing more people in this community being plugged in and switched on in the Lord.

“Corby, are you saying that all of the people who attend all of the other churches in town aren’t plugged in and switched on in the Lord?” I can’t say that because I have not been to every church in town and observed every member of every church. I can say this. If they were, this community would look very, very different. The kind of growth I want to see is an increase in people who are hungry for God. I want people who are ready to, or at least willing to try to get past their preconceptions of what church and Christianity is supposed to be. Church isn’t the building. It isn’t where we go for Bingo night. It isn’t three points and a poem. It isn’t this style of music, dress, and decor. Christianity isn’t a moral code by which one does their best to live their life. God isn’t an old man in a robe with a white beard. Jesus isn’t white guy with blue eyes and long, straight, brown hair, walking around in sandals, a white robe and a purple sash.

I don’t want to pastor the church that tries to draw people in and keep them in by my own means. I don’t want to pastor the church that is known among Christians for it’s excellent youth program, so that’s where all the Christian families go. I don’t want to pastor the church with the new building that everyone wants to go check out.

I want to be a part of the church, a part of the body, where people who have a hunger for God go, connect, build each other up, go back out into the world and are used by the Holy Spirit to bring others to Jesus.

It may sound corny, especially if you know the song from LoveSong, but I want to be that little country church on the edge of town, where people come from miles around. I want people to show up and say, “This isn’t the way church used to be.” I don’t want to talk about religion, I want to praise the Lord with the rest of my family. I want our church to talk about revival and the need for love, I want it to come alive. I want to see the Spirit working among us so that we are working together in our community for the common good, putting anything that may hinder us from our past aside. Long hair, short hair, coats and ties, doesn’t matter. Looking past the hair, or tats, or clothes, or whatever, straight into people’s eyes, and knowing that we are one in Jesus.

That’s the kind of growth I want to see. I’m eager for it. Yeah, I know it takes time for the farmer to see the results of his labors. Yeah I know it takes 9 months for that baby to grow and a lot of labor pains before the new life appears. I know a watched church never boils. But sometimes I just want to yell, “God, you said you would build your church. So build it already!” I want to be used, I want the people in the fellowship to be used by God to welcome the lost into His family. I want to be used to be that place where all ye who labor and are heavy laiden can come and take up the Lord’s yoke, His easy and light burden. I want our fellowship to be that part of the branch on the vine (John 15) that is abiding in Him and being fruitful. I want to see that seed scattered, fall on good soil, and multiply 30, 60, and 100 fold.

When it happens I look forward to simply saying, “Thank you, Lord.” I look forward to telling others about what the Lord has done and is doing. I don’t want to be the one being told, “Don’t worry, trust in the Lord.” anymore. I want to be the one saying it to someone else.
When Jess was pregnant, both times, at the end I remember her saying, “Is this baby ever going to come out?” I kind of know how she feels. And I know I’m not alone in this.

If the fields are white unto harvest and the workers are few, God, show us where these fields are so that we might harvest.

Well, that about wraps up the trip. Last night the conference began so that’s about all that’s going on. There are about 50 or so pastors from all over Europe. Ironically, almost all of them are Americans, missionaries who came over to plant churches. In fact, I talked to one guy from New York who has been here for 10 years. He actually had an accent. I thought he was a native. Oops!

Honestly, I’m not much of on for conferences anymore. You meet people you don’t know. I don’t have a problem with that. I do have a problem with telling the same story every time I meet someone new. Questions like, “What’s your name? Where are you from? Where is that? How long have you been at your church? Did you start it? How long has it been there? How did you get there?” Rinse, lather, repeat. It gets kind of old an annoying very fast. So basically, I’m ready to hope a plane and go home now.

I’m am looking forward to sharing with people at church what happened. Mostly, because I can do it with everyone all at once and not 20 times over and over! This will probably be my last post from Germany. Hopefully not the last one ever in my life, unless we get “poofed” (Jonah refers to the rapture) sometime soon. So, with that, danke schoen. (fade in the Wayne Newton song…)

I went to bed last night looking forward to (not) a long day of traveling and shmoozing with a bunch of pastors. I was a little disappointed that I didn’t really get to see more than I did while in Berlin. We got up at 6:30 to go catch a 7:45 train from Berlin to Leipzig, and from their, Kurt (pastor of CC Leipzig) was going to drive six people to Siegen. Just as we got out of town he said, “Hey, you guys wanna see a concentration camp?” At first blush it seems like kind of a gory thing to want to go see a place where thousands of people were systematically slaughtered. But being a novice history buff, I definitely wanted to go see one, as did everyone else.

Buchenwald
Were it not for a massive tower-like monument on the scenic hillside, you would never know that, nestled in the little forest on the top of an ordinary hill surrounded by quaint villages and farms, there was a facility whose entire purpose was to process, store, and dispose of human beings of a certain ethnicity. Along the side of the road up the hill there are signs that basically say, “If you go past these signs you are taking your life in your own hands because there are still land mines in here.” Close to the top there is what is called, “The Blood Road.” A cobblestone road made by the prisoners. Not far past that is the train depot where the prisoners were brought in. Past that are the barracks for the guards, which today are apartments. (That just sounds kind of creepy to me.)

Past this is a road that leads to the gates that leads to the facilities where the Jews lived. The gates themselves are in the middle of a building that I will come back to later. Coming out of both sides of this building are barbed wire fences with guard towers.

Then the American soldiers made it into the camp they saw this view. In the second picture below on the left you can see one remaining barracks. The rest were burned down because they were so filled with cooties.

My understanding is that, for the most part, the prisoners didn’t know what awaited them. In that building with the gate, their countrymen were being tortured to death. Room #1 (first picture below) was where most of them who came into this building died. Across the hall were basic toilet facilities. Some sinks and a couple of toilets.

Just past Room #1 was a gate and a long hallway where there were many cells. Many people leave little flowers to pay their respects for those who suffered and died in this place. but in another part of the camp, an equally brutal fate was reserved for the rest.

I have to pause and tell you this. In this next building, as soon as I passed through the door, it physically felt as though there was this weight pressing down on my head and shoulders. It’s like someone put a pile of bricks into my backpack. It was difficult to breath. There was a definite funk in the air. It was powerful and tangible. There was a presence there. And I didn’t even know what I was walking into.

As I said, the prisoners didn’t even know what was going on. The main reason for this is because the Germans didn’t broadcast what they were doing. Instead, the brought the prisoners to their deaths in a rather orderly fashion under the guise of the chance to shower and/or a medical exam. Those who were offered a shower we brought into a room that looked like a shower room. Drains in the floor, shower heads in the walls. In reality, poisonous gas came out of those shower heads. (We either didn’t see this place or it didn’t exist anymore, so I don’t have any pictures of it.) The facility where people were brought in for medical exams was still there. They were brought into a room that looked like a doctors office. Cabinets with medicines, an eye chart on the wall, a heater, a table.

They were then brought into a room to have their height measured. The floor of the room is painted red and has what is essentially a wooden grate in the floor. The prisoner would be brought in and stood against the wall with the hight scale on it. Build into the wall, but invisible from within this room, is a slot wide enough for the barrel of a gun to fit in. As the prisoner is simply standing there, they were shot through the back of the head. The first picture below shows this room. That’s Kurt who happened to poke his head in the door way. At least it give you some sense of scale. His head is nearly in the spot where the prisoners would have stood. The next picture is the hidden room behind the wall where where the soldier with the the gun stood. The prisoner would have walked right by this room, perhaps assuming it was a closet. It didn’t occur to me why the floor was painted red with a grated. It was so that they could quickly hose it down for the next prisoner.

As soon as I left this building the weight lifted. It was like a switch. But I didn’t have to wait long for it to come back. In the basement of the building next door there is a chute from the outside. The bodies of the dead were slid down this chute and stored or staged to go on the elevator that led to the upstairs of this building. The reason they were staged there is because the Germans didn’t want them left out in the open for the other prisoners to see. And again, once I came out of that basement, the pressure left. Something lives there after all these years and through all that death. Once they were brought up to the lift the bodies were dissected to see if they had any gold fillings or if they had swallowed any gold jewelry. After this the bodies were brought to the crematorium. The bodies would go in one side (first and second photos), and their ashes would be collected collected from the other side (third photo), then placed in urns (fourth photo). Outside of the crematorium there is a plaque talking about the company commissioned to build these ovens. I wonder if the people who made them knew what they were making as they built them. (Last pho
to is crematorium building. The roof to the left is where the doctors “exams” took place.)

It just seems so unimaginable. The things we humans are capable of. In Genesis 6 God says that whatever we put our mind to we can do. The people who did these things, from their perspective, were committed to their ideals. They had a vision. They were devoted. And look at the lengths to which they went. The same could be said about many Muslims today who blow themselves up, pray five times a day, etc. It makes me feel like a very whimpy Christian. Those people are/were willing to go so far with their lives to believe in something that is false, farther than it seems I go with God’s truth.

I also tried to put myself in the boots of the American soldiers who would have had to fight their way up this hill, through mine fields, seeing their buddies getting blown up, crawling through the forest. They had fought through the winter. The had suffered. They had endured serious hardship, some of them for years. Then, to finally reach the top and enter those gates, the Germans left piles of bodies. They left the dead in the crematorium and showers and doctors office. The living weren’t much better off. Many were living skeletons literally piled up in their sleeping shacks, not to mention those locked in the cells being tortured. Many of the soldiers just started throwing up because of that they saw and smelled and heard. I imagine they didn’t think they had it so bad after all.

In the end, God used this tragedy (the word doesn’t do it justice) to compel the UN to create a nation for these people. If I remember correctly, Uganda was a proposed place for the Jews to have a homeland. Ultimately, they were given back their homeland of Israel, just as God had promised. God used these events to fulfill His word. God demonstrates His faithfulness through tragedy. It can be hard to recognize while one is in the midst of it, but He is and He does. That’s one thing I can take with me from Buchenwald.

I feel like I’ve come full circle in my own interest in WW2. In 8th grade my grandmother took me to the Island of Oahu. I got to visit Pearl Harbor and the Arizona memorial. I got to look down on the ship where dozens of sailors are still entombed. I got to see the skyline where the planes would have been buzzing. I got just a taste of the Pacific Theater. I had always wanted to come and see the European Theater. I got a very up-close and person look at that stage.

It seems clear to me, now more than ever, that there are things worth fighting for. War isn’t a bad thing, so long as the thing you are waring over is right and true and just. The sacrifices are worth it, whatever form they may take. Sometimes, war is the answer. Things worth fighting for cause division. We are going to be in Acts 15 this Sunday. There is a fight in the church in Acts. “No small fight.” It’s over whether or one has to abide by the Jewish law in addition to believing in Jesus in order to be saved. Paul felt this was something to fight for, to cause division over. There are some things we shouldn’t fight about, some thing we need to have more unity. There are some things we need to and should fight over and divide over. God’s word is absolute. It is absolute truth, justice, love, and grace. It’s worth dying over. Many have done that through the years as well.

I think I need to start thinking bigger. I think more Christians need to start thinking bigger. What we suffer today, the cost of our faith today in America is next to nothing. Thank you Jesus for paying the ultimate cost and buying us with your blood. I want my life to be worth that.