OUR CHANGING WORLD

 

It is gracious of our readers to be concerned about my health problem as reported in this column last month. Your prayers and expressions of goodwill are deeply appreciated. I went to Baylor Medical College in Houston on Dec. 5 as planned, and further tests were taken which confirmed the diagnosis of prostate cancer. I was in fact examined by three urologists at the college, for I volunteered to be part of a nationwide study on research in early detection of prostate cancer and its subsequent treatment, which involved several hours of further tests. It was to my advantage to volunteer, as well as for what it might eventually do for others, for it gave my urologist a thorough picture of my own case. While my urological surgeon is only about 45, he has performed over 300 prostatectomies, and he exudes a quiet confidence. He explained to me my options, as my Denton doctors did, which are limited to radiation and surgery. If done right, radiation can be effective, he said, but when I asked him what he would do if he were in my place, he advised surgery as the only means of lasting cure. I told him with some enthusiasm, "Then let's do it and be done with it!" He complemented me for taking good care of myself, suggesting that my long years of running had paid off, for I was surgically ten years younger than my age. He said the prognosis was excellent, and he set Dec.29 for the surgery, which gave me time to give autologous blood (a new term to me), but called after a few days and moved it back to Jan. 3. At this writing (Dec. 23)1 have finished giving the blood through the American Red Cross, and the latest word is that Ouida, having arranged for the c&e of her mother, is going to Houston with me. We fly down on Jan. 2. She will probably return home after two or three days and I by Jan.10, if all goes well and the Lord wills. So by the time you receive this issue it should all be over, except that they say it will be six weeks before I will be able to do anything much. Ouida is pleased that she can be with me, describing it as "the first medical crisis of our 45 years together." Not the first crisis, to be sure, but the first medical crisis. After 45 years!  Now that is something big to be thankful for, but I am thankful for all this—early detection, good doctors and surgeons, superb medical facilities, the latest in medical research. How blessed our country is! But, unfortunately, that does not keep me from being a coward. I keep thinking that the world might come to an end before Jan 3! I remember Socrates' definition of courage, "Action in the face of known danger." We all need such courage for the living of these days, don't we? One of Ouida's favorite proverbs is also in order, "If you have frogs to swallow, swallow the big ones first." The Lord will provide! The courage, I mean, not the frogs!

John Wright in the bulletin of the Burke Road Church of Christ in Houston grants that recent developments in Eastern Europe are almost beyond our ability to believe, but he reports on one thing he knows for sure. The Eastern European Missions have distributed 50,000 Bibles in Moscow, and these were taken into the Soviet Union legally, which is a great change from all those years when they had to be smuggled in. The E.E.M. was invited to participate in the Moscow Book Fair where another 10,000 Bibles were distributed.

The Wycliffe Bible Translators in the Philippines have completed their work on the Ibanag New Testament and Psalms, which can be read by the Filipinos living in the northern provinces.  Most of the 10,000 copies of the first printing have been distributed. Our friends, Dan and Suzanne New, whom I visited in 1988 in the Philippines, were involved in this ministry.

Harvard Divinity School now has a majority of 5% of its students who are women. Most all divinity schools have had in recent years a dramatic increase in women students, even though churches generally have not opened up all that much to the ministry of women.  We could not have imagined such when I was a student at Harvard 40 years ago. I don't recall that we had a single woman enrolled.

The West Side Church of Chnst in Hamilton, Illinois published this in one of their recent mailouts: "One hundred years ago at Sand Creek, Illinois, good brethren formally declared they would no longer regard other children of God (with whom they disagreed) as brethren. Sorrowfully, the widespread practice of this philosophy has resulted in disgraceful splintering and sectarianizing of the body of Christ. A lost world can never be won to Christ unless believers are one." They went on to say, "Let's adopt a new spirit!," and then gave this quote as one of their aims, "Making nothing a condition of fellowship which God has not made a condition of salvation."

I recently read with interest Wilson Wallace's tribute to his father Foy E. Wallace, Jr., longtime Church of Christ minister who died in 1979 at age 87, which was published in Torch of Truth. In reference to the controversy over divorce and remarriage, Wilson wrote of his father: "My father never believed that it was the work of preachers to divide established families. He was a man of the Bible, and he never tried to manipulate the word of God. He just believed that there were some situations that had to be left to God in the Judgment... He would not refuse to baptize those who had been involved in divorces, nor would he consent to breaking up families." I wish this could be said of many other of our preachers, some of whom are admirers of Foy E. Wallace, Jr.

The Christian Science church is in the throes of its most threatening crisis, not only because it has been declining in membership for decades but also because it is facing a frontal attack in the courts in reference to its most fundamental tenet, faith healing. In five states prosecutors are challenging the right of Christian Science parents to withhold medical treatment from their children. In two cases, one in Florida and the other in California, parents have been convicted in the deaths of their children. There is also dissension within the leadership overspending tens of millions in building a media empire, which some see as contrary to the founding principles of the church.