OUR CHANGING WORLD

 

On the second day after Thanksgiving Mother Pitts at last gave up the struggle and breathed her last. You might want to read the story I wrote about it in another part of this issue. She had absorbed so much of our lives for so long that it takes some getting used to not having her to care for. We were behind on so many things that we are just as busy as ever trying to catch up. We are thankful for the tasks the Lord has given us and for the strength to do them.

The Door, a spunky journal that has a critical eye for what goes on in American churches, presents a Loser of the Month award to the church that pulls the biggest boner. A recent award went to the Sycamore Church of Christ in Cookeville, Tn. for spending nine million dollars on its “One Nation Under God” project, which was the mailing of “an eight-page comic book,” as The Door described it, to 100 million American homes. The editor calls it a $9 million mistake, charging that the money could better be spent on things that really matter. The mail-out, one of the largest single mailings in U.S. postal history, may have been of “comic book” format, but it was an appeal to spiritual values. It offered the gospel of Christ as an alternative to materialism, drugs, violence, divorce, and pornography. But we concede The Door may have a point when it said, “Every time we see something like this we realize that revival does not need to come to the non-Christians in this country as much as it needs to begin with the Christians who have bought into the pagan belief that the best way to communicate the Gospel is by technology.”

Some Roman Catholic leaders express concern that more than 100,000 Roman Catholics abandon their faith each year to join some sect. Many become Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons, and even more become “Bible Christians.” Thousands more drop out of religion entirely or become only “nominal Catholics.” There is a para-church group known as Catholic Answers that is attacking this problem by holding hundreds of seminars in parishes across the country designed to strengthen Catholics in their faith and to answer doubts that might lead them astray. The ministry aggressively takes on all threats to “the Faith,”whether Mormonism or Fundamentalism. They distribute millions of tracts, flyers, tapes, and books, all designed to show Catholics how to defend their faith, which they confidently believe can be done. One of their mail-outs reads, “I don’t want Catholics to be Fundamentalists!” I agree with them. I don’t want Church of Christ/Christian Church people to become Mormons or Fundamentalists. I would not be enthusiastic about their becoming Greek or Roman Catholics, but I would delight in their becoming catholics!

Homer Matson, 13251 Jefferson High-way 99E SE, Jefferson, OR. 97352, has old copies of Mission Messenger, Restoration Review, and Macedonian Call that he will give away, but the recipient should pay the postage. Write to him if you are interested. Bob Lewis, 146 Country Manor Dr., DeFuniak Springs, FL 32433 has put five of Carl Ketcherside’s books on five floppy diskettes for use on a hard disk drive. He will provide sets at cost and shipping, which is only $10.00. Write to him if interested.

As I write this column a new year approaches, a time for resolutions for some people. When friends ask me if! have a new year’s resolution, I tell them yes, one that I make every year if not each day: “To know Christ more fully, to follow him more nearly, and to love him more dearly,” which I borrow from a Scottish divine. This makes for other resolutions, such as being more sensitive to the pain of others, especially the deprived and dispossessed of the world, and those in our own midst who have about given up hope.