SBC

1. The Southern Baptist Convention was organized in 1845 and now includes more than 45,000 churches and 16,000,000 members, which makes it the largest Protestant denomination in North America.

2. The “Southern Baptist Convention” is shorthand for all the churches and individuals who identify as Southern Baptist. Technically, however, the Southern Baptist Convention exists for only two days a year, at the annual gathering. The rest of the year, eleven denominational entities carry out the instructions of the messengers to the Convention. Actions by the Convention are nonbinding on local churches because every church is considered autonomous.

3. An individual becomes a Southern Baptist by joining a Southern Baptist church. A church qualifies as Southern Baptist by contributing to the mission causes of the Convention.

4. Theologically, the Convention holds to a consensus statement (Baptist Faith and Message), but this confession of faith is not binding on any church or individual because every Southern Baptist church is autonomous. An individual church may choose to adopt the BF&M or may create their own statement. Faculty at SBC-owned seminaries and missionaries who apply to serve through the various SBC missionary agencies must affirm that their practices, doctrine, and preaching are consistent with the BF&M.

5. The Southern Baptist Convention employs more than 5,000 international missionaries through International Mission Board. These workers are joined by thousands of volunteers to bring the saving message of the Gospel to 1,089 different people groups around the world. Last year, workers with the International Mission Board and their Baptist partners overseas reported 506,019 baptisms and 24,650 new churches worldwide.

6. The Southern Baptist Convention also oversees the work of the North American Mission Board, which exists to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, start New Testament congregations, minister to persons in the name of Christ, and assist churches in the United States and Canada in effectively performing these functions.

7. There are six Southern Baptist seminaries (Southern, Southwestern, Southeastern, New Orleans, Golden Gate, and Midwestern) that currently serve more than 13,000 students by providing theological education.

8. Because every local church is autonomous, ministry philosophy and methodology can differ substantially from church to church. David Dockery has listed seven types of Southern Baptists: fundamentalists, revivalists, traditionalists, orthodox evangelicals, Calvinists, contemporary church practitioners, and culture warriors.

9. Since 1925, Southern Baptist have been partnering together for missions by giving to these causes through the Cooperative Program – a unified giving system that allows churches to pool resources in order to fund mission work and theological education.

Grand-Distractions

We should celebrate grandparenting! We all know grandparents these days who are substantially involved in the lives of their grandchildren, often for the sake of both joy and help. There’s actually no joy quite like it, as you no longer sit in the driver’s seat but in the back. The back is a delightful place, where you’re not maneuvering through traffic; you’re taking in the faces around you, in light of the landscape you notice as it passes by.

It’s a pretty magnificent vantage point—getting to see close-up our God at work generation after generation, just like he promised. It’s a huge opportunity—having a chance to speak words of grace and truth into little lives opening in front of you like some time-lapse YouTube clip of flowers blooming. It’s the most consuming kind of fun—as you stop and read a story, and everything else in the world just disappears for a few minutes. Not too many things in this world can make that happen.

It’s not an exclusive activity, of course. We all know, as well, many women and men who take on the role of grandparenting (or aunt-ing or uncle-ing!) for children around them who don’t have such family in their lives. Ideally, in the church, there’s a constant flow of grandparent-like help and encouragement from older to younger generations: this is our final family, and we’re all responsible for its growth. Riding right along in the car (in all kinds of ways) with parents and their children offers immeasurable aid to parents, who feel the weight of raising their children to know and love and serve Jesus, in a world that’s pulling in all sorts of other directions. The world around us would justify the death of children; the body of Christ is called to celebrate and nurture new life, ultimately new life in Christ who died for us and who lives in us.

So . . . just a hurrah today from a grandmother who loves grandmothering. May God enable all of us to be a blessing to the next generations! I wish I could knit or sew like many amazing people I know, but I can’t; my gifts to my grandchildren come more in the form of food or walks or stories or poems. Here’s a blessing “knitted” for my second granddaughter:

Kathleen Nielson

So Much Favoritism

Obama administration gives wind farms a pass on eagle deaths, prosecutes oil companies
Published May 14, 2013
| Associated Press
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CONVERSE COUNTY, Wyo. – The Obama administration has never fined or prosecuted a wind farm for killing eagles and other protected bird species, shielding the industry from liability and helping keep the scope of the deaths secret, an Associated Press investigation has found.
More than 573,000 birds are killed by the country’s wind farms each year, including 83,000 hunting birds such as hawks, falcons and eagles, according to an estimate published in March in the peer-reviewed Wildlife Society Bulletin.
Each death is federal crime, a charge that the Obama administration has used to prosecute oil companies when birds drown in their waste pits, and power companies when birds are electrocuted by their power lines. No wind energy company has been prosecuted, even those that repeatedly flout the law.
Wind power, a pollution-free energy intended to ease global warming, is a cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s energy plan. His administration has championed a $1 billion-a-year tax break to the industry that has nearly doubled the amount of wind power in his first term.
The large death toll at wind farms shows how the renewable energy rush comes with its own environmental consequences, trade-offs the Obama administration is willing to make in the name of cleaner energy.
“It is the rationale that we have to get off of carbon, we have to get off of fossil fuels, that allows them to justify this,” said Tom Dougherty, a long-time environmentalist who worked for nearly 20 years for the National Wildlife Federation in the West, until his retirement in 2008. “But at what cost? In this case, the cost is too high.”
Documents and emails obtained by The Associated Press offer glimpses of the problem: 14 deaths at seven facilities in California, five each in New Mexico and Oregon, one in Washington state and another in Nevada, where an eagle was found with a hole in its neck, exposing the bone.
One of the deadliest places in the country for golden eagles is Wyoming, where federal officials said wind farms had killed more than four dozen golden eagles since 2009, predominantly in the southeastern part of the state. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the figures. Getting precise figures is impossible because many companies aren’t required to disclose how many birds they kill. And when they do, experts say, the data can be unreliable.
When companies voluntarily report deaths, the Obama administration in many cases refuses to make the information public, saying it belongs to the energy companies or that revealing it would expose trade secrets or implicate ongoing enforcement investigations.
Nearly all the birds being killed are protected under federal environmental laws, which prosecutors have used to generate tens of millions of dollars in fines and settlements from businesses, including oil and gas companies, over the past five years.
“What it boils down to is this: If you electrocute an eagle, that is bad, but if you chop it to pieces, that is OK,” said Tim Eicher, a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service enforcement agent based in Cody, Wyo.
The Fish and Wildlife Service says it is investigating 18 bird-death cases involving wind-power facilities and seven have been referred to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to discuss the status of those cases.
In its defense, the wind-energy industry points out that more eagles are killed each year by cars, electrocutions and poisoning than by turbines. Dan Ashe, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s director, said in an interview Monday with the AP said that his agency always has made clear to wind companies that if they kill birds they would still be liable.
“We are not allowing them to do it. They do it,” he said of the bird deaths. “And we will successfully prosecute wind companies if they are in significant noncompliance.”
But by not enforcing the law so far, the administration provides little incentive for companies to build wind farms where there are fewer birds. And while companies already operating turbines are supposed to do all they can to avoid killing birds, in reality there’s little they can do once the windmills are spinning.
Wind farms are clusters of turbines as tall as 30-story buildings, with spinning rotors the size of jetliners.
Flying eagles behave like drivers texting on their cell phones — they don’t look up. As they scan for food, they don’t notice the industrial turbine blades until it’s too late.
Former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, in an interview with the AP before his departure, denied any preferential treatment for wind. Interior Department officials said that criminal prosecution, regardless of the industry, is always a “last resort.”
“There’s still additional work to be done with eagles and other avian species, but we are working on it very hard,” Salazar said. “We will get to the right balance.”
Meanwhile, the Obama administration has proposed a rule that would give wind-energy companies potentially decades of shelter from prosecution for killing eagles. The regulation is currently under review at the White House.
The proposal, made at the urging of the wind-energy industry, would allow companies to apply for 30-year permits to kill a set number of bald or golden eagles. Previously, companies were only eligible for five-year permits.
“It’s basically guaranteeing a black box for 30 years, and they’re saying `trust us for oversight’. This is not the path forward,” said Katie Umekubo, a renewable energy attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, who argued in private meetings with the industry and government leaders that the 30-year permit needed an in-depth environmental review.
But the eagle rule is not the first time the administration has made concessions for the wind-energy industry.
Last year, over objections from some of its own wildlife investigators and biologists, the Interior Department updated its guidelines and provided more cover for wind companies that violate the law.
Under both the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, the death of a single bird without a permit is illegal.
But under the Obama administration’s new guidelines, wind-energy companies don’t face additional scrutiny until they have a “significant adverse impact” on wildlife or habitat.
That rare exception for one industry substantially weakened the government’s ability to enforce the law and ignited controversy inside the Interior Department.
“U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service does not do this for the electric utility industry or other industries,” Kevin Kritz, a government wildlife biologist in the Rocky Mountain region wrote in internal agency comments in September 2011. “Other industries will want to be judged on a similar standard.”
The Obama administration, however, repeatedly overruled its own experts. In the end, the wind-energy industry, which was part of the committee that drafted and edited the guidelines, got almost everything it wanted.
“Clearly, there was a bias to wind energy in their favor because they are a renewable source of energy, and justifiably so,” said Rob Manes, who runs the Kansas office for The Nature Conservancy and who served on the committee. “We need renewable energy in this country.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/14/obama-administration-gives-wind-farms-pass-on-eagle-deaths-prosecutes-oil/print#ixzz2THacH7SX

Quotes from Calvin Miller

Preaching is an art in which a studied, professional sinner tells the less studied sinners how they ought to believe, behave, and serve.

Preaching cannot afford to opt for being cute when it ought to be visceral.

Many preachers below the Mason-Dixon Line still yell a lot, which often accomplishes little more than to clothe weak sermons with volume.

No reasonable book on the subject of preaching can begin with what is said. The force of preaching must begin with who’s saying it.

The world is too sick to be healed by a preacher’s congenial placebos. Merely to build a big hospital is a lame dodge for practicing real medicine.

The world comes to church looking precisely for a sense of significance, and we who preach tell them week by week that God loves them. It’s a truth we tell to give them that sense of significance for which they sought us. But it is a truth that can only be told by those who sense that the preacher also loves them. There is not the slightest chance that they will get hold of the first truth, unless they feel the second.

Only the truly otherworldly have earned the right to speak of the other world.

The preacher is not an answer man. Preachers are God-lovers.

Great preachers are positive purveyors of the wonder of God.

God has a word for us, not an opinion. The kingdom of God is not a discussion club. The church doesn’t gather on Sunday to invite opinion. It gathers to hear the Bible—the Word of God—the wisdom of ancient saints and martyrs comes down to the current calendar after a march of centuries.

Doctrines are the high-voltage center of the faith. Doctrines are the faith.

Sermons that are only about the practical things of this world are often too bound by this world to help them. And this world is too weak to heal what is wrong with most people’s lives.

The best of sermons have never been a belch of information or piety. Good homiletics are wellness reports that take seriously the cure of souls.

The noblest of prophets should feel before they advise.

Preaching Christ is the purpose and intent of the sermon and comes from a preacher whose life is captive to the momentary presence of Christ.

The best preached sermons don’t try to write the Bible on the lives of their hearers, they write their hearers into the Bible.

The pastor who doesn’t care for people has missed the heart of God.

Sermons grow robust in the soul of the listening servant. The best prophets listen before they preach—they reason before they rage.

All application comes to rest on the hearer as one basic conundrum. Shall I be the lord of my life or shall I have a Lord for my life?

Surrender is the only option when God is the only subject.

Propositions give you the information you need to build a life on, and stories motivate you to want to build such a life.

Pain itself does not make us preach well, but it builds a sensitivity that does make our particular emotional experience speak to that of the whole. Only weathered wood makes singing violins.

Where there is real preaching, the sermon is always reminding the flock that the church doesn’t just get together to be told how to live more morally but to remind itself that the church is on a mission.

For those who preach, the most important question for the preacher is not “What shall I say in this sermon?” but “What do I want to happen?”

Resting and Rejoicing in God’s Sovereignty

When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously. Then these men came by agreement and found Daniel making petition and pleas before his God. Dan. 6:10-11

Dear heavenly Father, I am so drawn to the heart which beat in Daniel’s breast—a heart filled with praise for you, not a preoccupation with his life. He just learned of a decree that anybody praying to any other god or man but King Darius would become lions’ lunch. So what did he do? The same thing he’d been doing for decades inBabylon. The windows are open, his knees are bent, his gaze is set; and even before he asks you for help, he offers you thanks. He’s neither paranoid nor presumptuous, but he’s most definitely at peace.

What freedom, what beauty, what intimacy with you, this aging, beloved servant of yours enjoyed. But why am I surprised? Haven’t you promised, “The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon; planted in the house of the Lord, they will flourish in the courts of our God. They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green”? (Ps. 92:12-14)

Father, you never demanded that Daniel get on his knees three times a day. You didn’t have to—it was his delight. No government decree could keep him from praying to you, loving you, seeking you, worshiping you. He was much more committed to your eternal glory than to his personal survival. Your grace radically reoriented his life.

Father, I long for much more of Daniel’s peace and praise mark my life—no matter how difficult my circumstances, intense the spiritual warfare, or out of control my world may feel. For even as “the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour”(1 Pet. 5:8), he’s already a defeated foe.

We live in the victorious day Daniel anticipated from afar. Indeed, your beloved Son, “the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed” (Rev. 5:5). Jesus is the Lion with whom I want to be thoroughly preoccupied—without any ultimate concern for any other kind of “lion’s den” into which I might be thrown.

Father, as I get older, please keep me fresh and green and fruitful through the gospel. Fill my heart with your glory and grace, freedom and hope; and use me however you choose, all the remaining days you give me in this, your world. So very Amen I pray, in Jesus’ magnificent and merciful name.

Scotty Smith

Jordan over Kobe

I’m not much of a basketball fan anymore, but I used to be and I was a Jordan fan.

Phil Jackson always has been hesitant to compare Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. Until now.

In his new book, co-written with Hugh Delehanty and entitled “Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success,” Jackson breaks down what separated Jordan from Bryant, the biggest stars and personalities that he coached during his Hall of Fame career.

The Los Angeles Times, which received an advance copy of the 339-page book, provided some details of Jackson’s Jordan and Bryant comparison.

In terms of advantages, the biggest that Jordan has over Bryant comes in the leadership department, according to Jackson.

“One of the biggest differences between the two stars from my perspective was Michael’s superior skills as a leader,” Jackson writes. “Though at times he could be hard on his teammates, Michael was masterful at controlling the emotional climate of the team with the power of his presence. Kobe had a long way to go before he could make that claim. He talked a good game, but he’d yet to experience the cold truth of leadership in his bones, as Michael had in his bones.”

Jackson, who coached Jordan to six titles with the Chicago Bulls and Bryant to five with the Los Angeles Lakers, also compared the players’ defensive skills and accuracy. Once again, Jackson sided with Jordan.

“No question, Michael was a tougher, more intimidating defender,” Jackson writes. “He could break through virtually any screen and shut down almost any player with his intense, laser-focused style of defense.”

Saying Bryant learned some of Jordan’s defensive tricks, Jackson added: “In general, Kobe tends to rely more heavily on his flexibility and craftiness, but he takes a lot of gambles on defense and sometimes pays the price.”

On offense, Jackson said: “Jordan was also more naturally inclined to let the game come to him and not overplay his hand, whereas Kobe tends to force the action, especially when the game isn’t going his way. When his shot is off, Kobe will pound away relentlessly until his luck turns. Michael, on the other hand, would shift his attention to defense or passing or setting screens to help the team win the game.”

Jackson also touched on the difference in personalities.

“Michael was more charismatic and gregarious than Kobe,” Jackson writes. “He loved hanging out with his teammates and security guards, playing cards, smoking cigars, and joking around.

“Kobe is different. He was reserved as a teenager, in part because he was younger than the other players and hadn’t developed strong social skills in college. When Kobe first joined the Lakers, he avoided fraternizing with his teammates. But his inclination to keep to himself shifted as he grew older. Increasingly, Kobe put more energy into getting to know the other players, especially when the team was on the road.”

Jackson also revealed that the sexual assault charges levied against Bryant in 2003 temporarily clouded his outlook of the Lakers star. The situation “cracked open an old wound” because Jackson’s daughter Brooke had been sexually assaulted by an athlete in college.

“The Kobe incident triggered all my unprocessed anger and tainted my perception of him. … It distorted my view of Kobe throughout the 2003-04 season,” Jackson writes. “No matter what I did to extinguish it, the anger kept smoldering in the background.”

The Times also revealed other tidbits from the book, which is set to be released Tuesday.

• Jackson’s interest in Zen picked up after he met a practicing Buddhist, who was a construction worker and helped build his house in the 1970s.

• Jackson’s words to Jordan after he showed up in the coach’s office in 1995 hoping to return to basketball after a failed attempt at a baseball career: “Well, I think we’ve got a uniform here that might fit you.”

• Jackson considers the Lakers’ Game 7 victory over the Boston Celtics in the 2010 NBA Finals the most satisfying of his career.

Even Worse

This country is worse than Germany in the WWII era.

Second ‘house of horrors’ abortion clinic where doctor ‘twisted heads off fetus’ necks with his bare hands’ is investigated in Texas Houston doctor Douglas Karpen is accused by four former employees of delivering live babies during third-trimester abortions and killing themWitnesses said he would either snip their spinal cords, stab a surgical instrument into their heads or twist their heads off with his handsTexas Department of State Health Services is using in its investigating of the doctorAccusations come days after Dr Kermit Gosnells was found guilty of murdering newborns at his Philadelphia abortion clinic

By Helen Pow

PUBLISHED: 17:24 EST, 16 May 2013 | UPDATED: 18:56 EST, 16 May 2013

Comments (52) Share

A second ‘house of horrors’ abortion clinic is being investigated in Texas, just days after Dr Kermit Gosnells was found guilty of murdering newborns at his Philadelphia termination center.

Dr. Douglas Karpen, seen here in court, is accused of killing babies aborted in their third trimester

Houston doctor Douglas Karpen is accused by four former employees of delivering live fetuses during third-trimester abortions and killing them by either snipping their spinal cord, stabbing a surgical instrument into their heads or ‘twisting their heads off their necks with his own bare hands’.

Other times the fetus was so big he would have to pull it out of the womb in pieces, Karpen’s ex-assistant, Deborah Edge, said in an Operation Rescue video, which has prompted a criminal investigation into the doctor.

‘Sometimes he couldn’t get the fetus out… he would yank pieces – piece by piece – when they were oversize,’ Edge explained.

‘And I’m talking about the whole floor dirty. I’m talking about me drenched in blood.’

Two of Edge’s colleagues, Gigi Aguliar, and Krystal Rodriguez, also described the hellish scenes which took place at the Aaron Women’s Clinic in Houston in 2011, and possibly two other abortion clinics run by Karpen in Texas.

Another staffer, who remains anonymous, filed an affidavit with her account of events, which the Texas Department of State Health Services is using in its investigation.

‘We have several people looking into the allegations,’ Harris County District Attorney spokesman Sara Marie Kinney told Chron.com.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said he had read the allegations ‘with disgust’ before calling for a full investigation into Karpen and his clinics.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO – WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

Speaking out: Krystal Rodriguez, left, Deborah Edge, center, and Gigi Aguliar, right, have all come forward to talk about their former boss Karpan

Lifenews.com, an anti-abortion news website, has published cell phone photographs taken by the employees of fetuses with gashes in their necks after they were killed at the clinic, though these are far too gruesome for MailOnline to show.

Edge said fetuses were killed well after 24 weeks gestation at the Houston clinic, which resulted in a sweat-inducing job that took about an hour per procedure. She said every morning on multiple occasions she would see fetuses born alive and then quickly killed by the doctor.

More… Son of fertility doctor ‘tricked his pregnant girlfriend into taking an abortion pill’ Pregnant teens yanked from high school yearbook for showing off baby bumps

‘When he did an abortion, especially an over 20 week abortion, most of the time the fetus would come completely out before he either cut the spinal cord or he introduced one of the instruments into the soft spot of the fetus in order to kill it…. or actually twisting the head off the neck with his own bare hands,’ she explained.

‘It was still alive because it was still moving and you could see the stomach breathing.’

The women described one occasion where a fetus that Karpen thought was dead suddenly ‘opened its eyes and grabbed (the doctor’s) finger’ after he wrenched it from the womb. However, it met a similar fate to the other fetuses at the clinic, the women said.

‘He thought it was dead but the fetus actually opened its eyes and grabbed his finger,’ Aguliar said. ‘He was alive. He thought it was deceased already. He was getting ready to put it in the back.’

Crime scene: The hellish scenes allegedly took place at the Aaron Women’s Clinic, pictured, in Houston in 2011, and possibly two other abortion clinics run by Karpen in Texas

They also recounted occasions when women were so far along with their pregnancy they were actually induced into labor and in two cases their fetus’ came out while they were in the bathroom.

Rodriguez described another incident where a patient’s fetus fell from her and onto the floor in the clinic’s waiting room.

‘(Karpen) just picked it up with a Chux and put it in the trash bag,’ she said.

According to Rodriguez, as long as patients had the cash, Karpen would perform an abortion well past 24 weeks. A late-term procedure cost between $4,000 and $5,000 at the clinic, they said in the video which was filmed as the clinic was still operating and released on Wednesday.

Edge said she regularly got upset during her work and couldn’t watch when Karpen allegedly killed the newborns. But she said she didn’t know that what he was doing was illegal.

‘We used to look at each other and sometimes our tears would come out with the other assistants,’ Edge said. ‘We would always think “he’s so greedy.”‘

J & J

The world is full of liars.

“No more tears? I would rather have no more formaldehyde. I just might get my wish.

Don’t cry! They finally are concerned about your safety!

Today, the personal care giant announced that it would voluntarily (after consistent pressure from the public and groups like EWG) remove hidden formaldehyde from their baby products like baby shampoo and baby washes. Don’t see formaldehyde listed on the back of your bottle of “no more tears” shampoo? Formaldehyde is “hidden” in these products in ingredient names like “DMDM hydantoin“, and “1,4 dioxane” (which is “hidden” in listed ingredients like “fragrance”. It’s all a big fun game, you see.).

“There’s a very lively public discussion going on about the safety of ingredients in personal care products,” said Susan Nettesheim, VP for product stewardship and toxicology for J & J.

Lively discussion? If someone was selling you shampoo for your baby that had cancer causing agents hidden in it, I hardly think the discussion with that person would be “lively”.

About the known cancer causing (as listed on the US EPA carcinogen list) chemicals, Ms Nettesheim says, ““…as a scientist I will sit here and tell you these things are perfectly safe.” (I wonder what shampoo she uses on her kids)

To J & J’s credit, they are also going to phase out other harmful chemicals like pthalates and parabens which have estrogen-like properties and are suspected to be linked to hormone related cancers. They plan to phase these chemicals out in their adult brands as well. Johnson & Johnson also operates under squeaky clean names like Neutrogena, Aveno, and Clean & Clear.

Hopefully this will have a domino effect and other big names will follow. I would score this as a victory for everyone who wants to wash their kid’s hair without risk of exposing them to carcinogens.

I would advise you to wait to use the new J & J products until you see the big bright labels that say “No more carcinogens!”

As The Savvy Sister says ” Your skin is a carrier…NOT a barrier!””

No Rights

It has begun…the loss of freedom by this evil admin.

The Romeike family has for years been battling for the right to educate their children as they see fit. Today, the United States government has denied their request.

Originally from Germany, Evangelical Christians Uwe and Hannelore Romeike wanted to homeschool their six children, but it is against the law in Germany. They faced threats of legal action from the government and crippling fines before choosing to immigrate to the United States in 2010, seeking political asylum.

U.S. Immigration Judge Lawrence Burman granted the Romeike’s request, but it was overturned in 2012 by the Board of Immigration Appeals, after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement challenged the decision.

Today, in the words of the Home School Defense League Association, which has represented the family, “the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Obama Administration’s denial of asylum granted to the Romeike family.”

The parents could face jail time if forced to return home.

The ruling essentially states that “the Romeikes [have] not shown that Germany’s enforcement of its general school-attendance law amounts to persecution against them, whether on grounds of religion or membership in a recognized social group.”

The compulsory attendance laws — and related punishments if violated — apply to everyone, and therefore this isn’t a case of persecution, they say.

“The United States has not opened its doors to every victim of unfair treatment, even treatment that our laws do not allow,” the ruling explains.

Michael Farris, the founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), which has been representing the family, commented in a press release: “We believe the Sixth Circuit is wrong and we will appeal their decision…America has room for this family and we will do everything we can to help them.”

Mike Donnelly, HSLDA’s Director of Internal Affairs, added in the release: “Germany continues to persecute homeschoolers. The court ignored mountains of evidence that homeschoolers are harshly fined and that custody of their children is gravely threatened—something most people would call persecution. This is what the Romeikes will suffer if they are sent back to Germany.”

The family has appeared multiple times on TheBlaze TV, and Glenn Beck has donated $50,000 to their legal defense.

Am I receiving and giving criticism well in Godly manner?

Alfred Poirier summarizes four points:

1. Critique yourself.

How do I typically react to correction?

Do I pout when criticized or corrected?

What is my first response when someone says I’m wrong?

Do I tend to attack the person?

To reject the content of criticism?

To react to the manner?

How well do I take advice?

How well do I seek it?

Are people able to approach me to correct me?

Am I teachable?

Do I harbor anger against the person who criticizes me?

Do I immediately seek to defend myself, hauling out my righteous acts and personal opinions in order to defend myself and display my rightness?

Can my spouse, parents, children, brothers, sisters, or friends correct me?

2. Ask the Lord to give you a desire to be wise instead of a fool.

Use Proverbs to commend to yourself the goodness of being willing and able to receive criticism, advice, rebuke, counsel, or correction. Meditate upon the passages given above: Proverbs 9:9; 12:15; 13:10,13; 15:32; 17:10; Psalm 141:5.

3. Focus on your crucifixion with Christ.

While I can say I have faith in Christ, and even say with Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ,” yet I still find myself not living in light of the cross. So I challenge myself with two questions.

First, if I continually squirm under the criticism of others, how can I say I know and agree with the criticism of the cross?

Second, if I typically justify myself, how can I say I know, love, and cling to God’s justification of me through Christ’s cross?

This drives me back to contemplating God’s judgment and justification of the sinner in Christ on the cross. As I meditate on what God has done in Christ for me, I find a resolve to agree with and affirm all that God says about me in Christ, with whom I’ve been crucified.

4. Learn to speak nourishing words to others.

I want to receive criticism as a sinner living within Jesus’ mercy, so how can I give criticism in a way that communicates mercy to another?

Accurate, balanced criticism, given mercifully, is the easiest to hear—and even against that my pride rebels.

Unfair criticism or harsh criticism (whether fair or unfair) is needlessly hard to hear.

How can I best give accurate, fair criticism, well tempered with mercy and affirmation?

* * *

Justin Taylor