As a New York Jets fan, I was both frustrated and fascinated as I watched the Indianapolis Colts dismantle the Jets’ Super Bowl hopes in a conference title game on Sunday (Jan. 24).

In losing 30-17, our Jets weren’t out-hustled, out-skilled or out-coached. What I saw from the vantage point of HDTV and endless replays of nearly every down was simple yet profound: the Jets were out-thought.

Like an expert chess player, Colts quarterback Peyton Manning probed the Jets’ vaunted defense, found its weakness — the mid-range seam between linebackers defending short passes and safeties preventing bombs — and relentlessly exploited it.

Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez has skills equal to Manning’s, but he’s a rookie and hasn’t yet learned how to “think” the opponent into submission. In a game that can seem to be dominated by brawn and breaks, thinking might be the ultimate weapon.

The realization was sobering and yet hopeful.

We live in an anti-thinking era that denigrates “pointy-headed intellectuals” (as George Wallace famously dismissed opponents of segregation) and refuses to accept nuance, subtleties, compromise and doubt.

It often seems better to tap the mindless rage of the vexed than to examine reality; better to turn the downtrodden into swarming mobs than to address their legitimate needs; better to paint critical political issues as good vs. evil than to balance competing self-interests in solutions that a majority can live with; better to demonize one’s enemy than to show respect for a different opinion; better to distort facts than to probe complex situations.

Rather than be troubled by a candidate’s lack of knowledge and poor preparation, partisans exalt inadequacy as an asset promising a “common touch.” We surrender prime time to the shouters, not the thoughtful.     

The drive against thinking is more than politics. Rather than encourage young adults to use computers for exploring human knowledge and resolving human problems, we encourage an estimated seven hours a day of texting and gaming, as if multi-tasking during class and manual dexterity in virtual combat were critical skills.

Religion, too, is marred by partisans who throw sacred texts as weapons, rather than deeply study them.

Education also prizes obedience and conformity — from standing in line to taking standardized tests — and treats the restlessness, curiosity and boredom of children as problems requiring medication.

Entertainment is no better — it prefers violence and voyeurism to the subtleties of character development and ambiguities of human motivation.

Business turns predatory, rather than thoughtful, and heaps outlandish rewards on those who react quarter to quarter, rather than those who think long-term.

We need more players like Peyton Manning, who can think their way through a problem.

We need more engineers whose instinct is to solve problems, not pursue short-term gain through trivial fads.

We need more teachers who challenge students to think and hold them accountable for laziness, even if parents object.

We need political leaders who explore complexities, not yesterday’s polling figures, and think their way through to actual solutions.

We need religious leaders who affirm different opinions and encourage the humility that comes from thinking. We need cultural leaders who see our hunger for meaning.     

We need business leaders who value invention, research, long-term horizons and thoughtful engagement with a volatile global economy.

I’m convinced we have such thoughtfulness in our midst. We just need more examples like No. 18, who took a bad first half in stride and just thought harder.

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project.)

The fact that you’re reading this column likely means you are a reader.

I don’t mean a reader, as in you are capable of reading; I mean someone who loves to read and reads a lot every day.

My father was a clergyman who started his career in Bly, a rough logging town in Southern Oregon. I remember as a 4-year-old sitting in a clearing in the woods and watching a deer at a salt lick, while dad sat on a tree stump reading. By the time I was a teen we had moved to Fullerton, Calif., and dad went back to school part time to get a master’s in English literature. Books were piled everywhere.

I don’t remember a day when my parents weren’t sitting in adjacent chairs reading books and stopping occasionally to share some pithy excerpt. I read eagerly in school and remember how delicious it was to learn a new word like “fiddlesticks.” It was a long word and sounded vaguely illicit, which is the kind of word a pastor’s son is sure to treasure.

In my senior year of high school I was to write a paper on Robert Burns and I put off the research and writing until the day before it was due. On that memorable day, when I was supposed to be in the public library, I was across the street at the gym, having been easily seduced into a long basketball game that ended after the library closed.

Bookless, I retuned home to inform my dad that I was dropping out of school.

Dad hauled me into his library and pulled a stack of Burns books off the shelves and introduced me to the concept of an all-nighter, which sounded more appealing than unemployment, another concept he explained with some conviction and passion that night.

My first year of college I took a literature class from Elizabeth Hough, who required us to read a novel each week. She also assigned a term paper involving literary interpretation. I chose to research and write about the significance of the birdcage in Frank Norris’s “McTeague.” I didn’t put it off to the last minute.

While in college and then again after graduate school, I attended Berkeley Presbyterian Church, where a dynamic, intellectually curious young pastor named Earl Palmer preached. Not a week went by without him mentioning some book that went immediately to my must-read list: Dostoevsky, Bonhoeffer, Karl Barth, C.S Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, Charles Williams, G.K. Chesterton and J.R.R. Tolkien are but a few of the names he introduced to me.

I got into broadcasting almost by accident, my interest piqued when I learned I could receive free review copies of newly published books, and that better yet, I could interview the authors! This was back in the days before hostile political talk radio, back in a kinder, gentler, more erudite time when broadcasters were expected to read books and conduct intelligent long-form interviews with authors. It was back in a time when America still nurtured a “middlebrow culture” of individuals interested in thinking through ideas and issues and equally turned off by highbrow academic pretensions and lowbrow bottom-shelf mindlessness. Middlebrow culture is a reading, thinking culture.

All this is on my mind because last year Earl Palmer retired and asked if I would host a live “The Kindlings Muse” podcast event with him. The concept is simple. Earl makes a list of books thoughtful Christians ought to read. We all read one book a month and gather at the Burke Museum Cafe at the University of Washington for a discussion. Earl brings a pile of books from home and reads selected excerpts. Each book has his name on the inside cover and the date when he bought it. Each is dog-eared and worn, underlined and highlighted and has been read and reread.

I asked Earl how in his busy schedule he has had time to read all these years. He talked about reading on planes, reading before bed, always carrying a book wherever he goes; he fervently advised severely limiting television viewing.

His wife Shirley said she could have answered my question more succinctly. “When does Earl read?” she asked, then answered, “always.”    

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Staub is the author of “The Culturally Savvy Christian” and the host of The Kindlings Muse.)

Miep Gies died at age 100 in Holland on Jan. 11, a living reminder that while 6 million innocent Jews died one by one, there were also brave souls like Gies who tried to save and protect them, one by one.

During World War II, Gies and four others in the Dutch resistance movement protected eight Jews, including teenager Anne Frank, who secretly hid in an Amsterdam attic for 25 months before her family was discovered and seized by the Nazis in August 1944.

Anne and her sister Margot died of typhus in March 1945 in the Bergen Belsen camp, just two months before the war ended; their mother Edith was killed at Auschwitz. Only Otto Frank, the family patriarch, survived the war; he died in 1980. Had she lived, Anne Frank today would be 80 years old.

Aiding Jews in any manner inside Nazi-occupied Europe was a crime punishable by death. Although Gies put her life at risk to save Jews, she was always modest about her courageous efforts.

“I am not a hero ... I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did and more — much more — during those dark and terrible times years ago,” she later wrote.

After the Gestapo agents arrested “Miep’s Jews,” she discovered Anne’s abandoned diary in the attic. After the war, she gave the handwritten pages to Otto Frank.  The young girl “left a remarkable legacy to the world. But always, every day of my life, I’ve wished that things had been different. ... Not a day goes by that I do not grieve for them.”

Every Aug. 4, the date of the Gestapo arrests, Miep and Jan Gies remained alone inside their home, where they recalled that horrific event. Today, the building at Prinsengracht 263, Anne Frank’s hiding place, is a museum of remembrance.

Gies may have downplayed her heroism, but others didn’t. Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial honored her and her husband in 1972 on its list of “Righteous Among the Nations,” the courageous Gentiles who risked everything to protect endangered Jews.

Since it was first published in the original Dutch in 1947 and in English five years later, The Diary of Anne Frank has been translated into numerous languages and quickly became a classic. Broadway and Hollywood dramatized Anne’s story, and for millions of people, the diary remains their sole (and often their first) reference point to the Holocaust.

Anne’s diary has been called a work of universal optimism, especially because of these sentences: “It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

While Anne Frank may have believed people “are really good at heart,” she was keenly aware of the radical evil of the Nazi’s lethal anti-Semitism, which had forced her into hiding. Her diary entry from April 11, 1944 is a poignant quest for meaning, and ends with a profound theological conclusion:

The mass murder of 6 million innocent people is an overwhelming statistic, but one teenage girl and her two years of hiding in the attic puts a terribly human face on such a dreadful statistic.

The Italian chemist and novelist Primo Levi, who survived the Holocaust, put it this way: “One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did but whose faces have remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is better that way; if we were capable of taking in all the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live.”

Yet if it weren’t for righteous Gentiles like Gies, we might never have known her story.

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)    

Just when you think nothing worse can happen, it does. They say as many as 200,000 people have died in Haiti; no one knows for sure. We might never know for sure.

Viewed from space, Haiti is a rough-cut emerald in an azure sea. On the ground it is, and has been for centuries, a beleaguered loosely-governed nation sagging under the weight of its modern past.

Theft and corruption in every avenue of life bent Haiti’s back and slowed its gait. For a while, there seemed to be promise for the poor, descendents of the half million African slaves brought by the French to mine wealth from forests and sugar cane fields.

After nearly 200 years enriching France, those slaves rebelled and set up the first independent black national government in 1804. France demanded payment for their freedom and Haitians paid it. A few years ago, Haiti’s president, former priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, sent France a bill. He wanted $21 billion in repayment. Not surprisingly, the check never came.

But now, with the world’s antennae broadcasting nearly every rescue or recovery, every medical intervention or food drop, money from around the globe is washing up on Haiti’s sparkling shores.

The cynics will say it’s not enough, and what arrives will be stolen anyway. The hopeful point to new generators and cases of antibiotics for aid agencies, to tent cities pitched next to mountains of rubble, to pallets of food and water arriving daily.

Every new story is more incredible and more wrenching than the last. CNN’s medical correspondent, neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta, was airlifted out of Port-au-Prince to the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, where he operated on a young Haitian girl whose head was peppered with shards of concrete. The Haitian-born surgeon-in-chief of Los Angeles Pediatric Hospital was there as well.

Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll be seeing such stories a few months from now. The United Nations’ peace-keeping troops were already there, and thousands of U.S. Marines have arrived or are on the way. But neither they, nor the U.S. Navy ships anchored off Haiti’s crystal beaches can remain forever.

Someone has to take charge. Someone has to save Haiti.

The country has a president. It also has a retired dictator and a popular former president. Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, now in Paris, was run out in 1986; Aristide, now in South Africa, got a one-way ride to exile compliments of the U.S. government just five years ago. The current president is Rene Preval, once a close associate of Aristide.  

The poor may still want Aristide back in Haiti. Why? Quite simply, Aristide saw, and tried to tell the world, what we are all seeing now. In a dreadful twist, his prediction that the rich “up on a hill ... eating steaks and pate and veal flown in from across the water” will be overcome by the poor, who will “knock the table of privilege over, and take what rightfully belongs to them.”

Parts of Haiti are now in anarchy. Are the poor claiming what Aristide claims belongs to them? From clean offices and homes thousands of miles away, it’s hard to make a judgment.

The problem, of course, is that you don’t know who is legitimately rich, and who has strip-mined the lives of the poor. Corruption is not a pretty, or easy, thing to gauge. For now, we can be grateful that the world is paying attention, at least for a little while, and we can only hope that whoever ends up saving Haiti pays close attention to the poorest of the poor as well.

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Zagano is visiting professor of theology and religion at St. Leo University in Florida, and author of several books in Catholic Studies. She also holds a research appointment at Hofstra University, N.Y.)

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With a fresh 2010 calendar before us, we try to shake off memories of disturbing tales from Christmas 2009. A mentally disturbed woman tackled Pope Benedict XVI on Christmas Eve. A young Nigerian man tried to blow up a plane on Christmas Day.

She is 25. He is 23.

Do they represent out common future?

Each of these young people — Susanna Maiolo and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — appears to be healthy, well-clothed and well-nourished. We may never know what caused them to act as they did, but we do know that each spent a significant amount of time planning. She tried to hop the barriers in St. Peter’s Basilica at Midnight Mass a year ago; he was involved enough in Yemeni anti-Americanism that his worried father notified U.S. officials in Nigeria.

Finger pointing does little good. We know now that “the system” failed. But which “system”?

President Obama returned a day early from his Christmas break to sort out the causes of the intelligence failure. The papal bodyguards surely got a talking to, but the pope’s private secretary, Monsignor Georg Ganswein, visited a small psychiatric clinic outside Rome carrying rosary beads and forgiveness for Maiolo.

To be sure, blowing up a plane is not quite the same as tackling a major religious leader in a bid (it appears) to get a little closer. But, somehow I think the pope got it right in his response.

Of course, we first want to patch the torn security blanket, whether around air travel or the pope. But the deeper response to both threats is hinted at by the rosary beads. It is not enough to create better barriers; it is too much to respond in kind. As Benedict said in his Christmas message: believers invite the world to “abandon every logic of violence and vengeance.”

But how? Sensible people recognize boundaries, whether personal, professional or national. They who encroach on boundaries must be stopped and repelled. But, again, how?

I think the answer is only partly in barricades and body scanners. I think we need to promise hope more concretely than we have in the past, especially to the Susanna Maiolos and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallabs of the world. They hurt, and they carry the world’s hurts with them.

There is something terribly wrong about the international consumerist society that projects itself in Technicolor to poor Yemeni men, for whom (truth be told) the real dream is having enough water for their crops and families.

There is little future in Yemen where, according to the CIA World Factbook, nearly half the population is under the age of 15. Oil reserves are sinking, agriculture is difficult, manufacturing is minimal. Yet there is enough technology in Yemen for angry young men to snare and reel in a young Nigerian from a privileged background, who soon became a mule in their deadly scheme.

It’s a shame that the world — including young people in Italy, Nigeria and Yemen — knows more about Tiger Woods’s dalliances than about what the great religions teach. For my part, I’d much rather see the pope’s Christmas message in the newspaper than details of yet another scandal about a starlet, sports figure, or stockbroker.

I know, I know — that’s not the way it works, but feeding the world with bad music, bad entertainment, and non-stop ads for cars and computers contributes to, if not causes, the sorts of mental imbalances that make young people think the cure is to explode a plane or jump the pope.

Surely we can do better than that.

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Zagano is visiting professor of theology and religion at St. Leo University in Florida, and is the author of several books in Catholic Studies. She also holds a research appointment at Hofstra University in New York.)  

Religion and sports have always been intertwined, especially when players and coaches use Scripture and prayer in an attempt to gain victory over their rivals. The problem is that while the devil can quote the Bible, so can opposing teams. God is an equal-opportunity sports spectator.

In his four amazing years as the University of Florida’s Heisman-winning quarterback, Tim Tebow significantly tightened the knot between faith and football. On game days, Tebow painted Bible verses below his eyes in letters large enough to be seen by the TV audience.

Some critics called Tebow’s face-based evangelism improper, worried that they could pave the way for athletes from other religious and political groups to decorate their faces and uniforms with their own favorite texts or symbols.

In Florida’s loss to Alabama for the SEC championship, Tebow had John 16:33 on his face: “... In the world you shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”

Unfortunately, No. 2 Alabama also overcame the No. 1 Gators by a score of 32-13.

As Florida crushed Cincinnati in the Sugar Bowl on New Years Day, Tebow chose a less triumphant selection, Ephesians 2:8-10: “... For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God ...” Maybe the more modest words did the trick as Florida battered Cincinnati, 51-24.

Tebow’s super-facial use of Scripture set me thinking how his example might be applied to other individuals and teams:

• Brett Favre, the Minnesota Vikings quarterback, recently turned 40, an advanced age in the NFL. As he prepares for (future games), Favre might want to paste these biblical words on his helmet: “And now, in my old age, don’t set me aside. Don’t abandon me when my strength is failing.” (Psalm 71:9).
• For fervent New York Mets fans (including me) who are crushed every year by the team’s failure to win a divisional championship, God’s words to Joshua should be recited before each of the Mets’ 162 games: “Be strong and of good courage” (Joshua 1:6).
• The NBA’s New Jersey Nets set a league record this season by losing their first 18 games in a row. Although the Nets finally broke the horrific streak, they remain trapped as prisoners in the NBA’s Atlantic Division cellar. Even the call of Zachariah 9:12 to be “prisoners of hope” may not be enough for the hapless Nets. Then again, it can’t hurt.
• For decades the University of Notre Dame football team was a national icon and a gridiron dynasty. But during the past three seasons, the once mighty “Fighting Irish” have won only 16 games and lost 20. 2 Samuel 1:27 has the best description of that decline: “How the mighty have fallen.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter describes how the letter “A” was on the breast of Hester Prynne who was ostracized in colonial Massachusetts for adultery. While we no longer banish adulterers — indeed, sometimes we idolize them — I do have a modest proposal.     

If and when Tiger Woods returns to the professional golf tour, he may want to place a specific verse — Exodus 20:14 — on his cap instead of his initials. The same verse could also serve a useful purpose for former Sen. John Edwards, Nevada Republican Sen. John Ensign, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and former New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer.

The words of that verse from Exodus? In the immortal words of Yankees manager Casey Stengel, “You could look it up.”    

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Is your church pro-life? As a body, are you encouraging each other not only to think in a pro-life way but also to act in a pro-life way?

Undeniably, Christians have been the backbone of the pro-life movement since its inception. If more churches would harness their membership and organizational power on behalf of pro-life causes, however, perhaps the tide could be turned in America and we would once again live in a society that values every human life.

Let’s think about some practical ways your church members can be pro-life.

• Teach your children

“Impress these words of Mine on your hearts and souls ... teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road” (Deuteronomy 11:18-19).

Explain to your children from an early age why human life is sacred. Impress upon them that humans are made in the image of God, who loves and has a purpose for every person. In age-appropriate ways, prepare them to defend the pro-life ethic.

• Pray for a pro-life ministry

“In everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6).

The pro-life ministries in your area covet your prayers! Pregnancy care centers, Baptist children’s homes, Christian nursing homes and adoption agencies are just a few of the pro-life ministries that depend on God’s grace and the prayers of His people. Most will joyfully provide you with a list of their prayer concerns.

• Support a pregnancy care center

“Rescue those being taken off to death, and save those stumbling toward slaughter” (Proverbs 24:11).

Pregnancy care centers typically have a paid director and some paid staff, but they could not function without an army of volunteers. If your church members have skills such as nursing, sonography, counseling, fundraising, graphic design, etc., your local pregnancy care center probably needs their help.

• Establish a mentoring organization

“Whoever welcomes one little child such as this in My name welcomes Me. And whoever welcomes Me does not welcome Me, but Him who sent Me” (Mark 9:37).

The National Fatherhood Initiative reported that 23.3 percent of children lived in single-mother families in 2006. Many single parents are eager to find Christian role models for their children. In the past, parents looked to Big Brothers Big Sisters of America; that organization now requires that every local affiliate accept homosexuals as mentors. You could establish a Christian mentoring organization within your congregation, being diligent to implement measures to protect the children from abuse.

• Provide relief for stressed caregivers

“Blessed are the merciful, because they will be shown mercy” (Matthew 5:7).

Parents of special needs children and adult caregivers of the elderly or disabled live in stressful environments. For some, everyday errands must be scheduled when a relief caregiver is available, and the opportunity to attend church is priceless. Perhaps Sunday School classes or other small groups could share this responsibility. Some churches have had success with a regularly scheduled monthly night of care and activities for special needs children and adults, allowing a few hours away for their regular caregivers.

• Support foster and adoptive families

“Pure and undefiled religion before our God and Father is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress” (James 1:27).

Children across the United States and around the world are in need of families to be a part of for a short while or a lifetime. Evangelical Christian social workers have long lamented the lack of Christian foster and adoptive families, people willing to share their homes, their hearts and their love for Christ with vulnerable children. People in your church can form a loose fellowship or an organized group to promote awareness of the needs and support the families who make these children a part of their lives.

• Remember senior adults

“You are to rise in the presence of the elderly and honor the old” (Leviticus 19:32).

The aging Baby Boomer generation coupled with advances in health care have produced a growing senior population. Ministry to the senior adults in your area will be a blessing to all involved. Make an effort to connect the younger families in your church with the senior adults. Encourage them to keep in touch, help with household tasks and errands, and share special days together.

• Volunteer with a hospice

“Carry one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2).

Many people find great fulfillment in giving their time to help improve the lives of those who are terminally ill. Volunteers can provide companionship, do light housekeeping or use their skills and talents to improve the quality of life for both patients and their families.

• Express your opinion

“You are the light of the world ... let your light shine before men” (Matthew 5:14,16).

Issues regarding the sanctity of human life are constantly being debated in the media and in local, state and federal government. These issues include abortion, genetic engineering, stem cell research, reproductive technology, sexuality education, marriage, child welfare, euthanasia and assisted suicide, insurance regulations, etc. Keep your congregation informed of these issues and provide contact information for your state and federal legislators, government agencies and the media. The statement “All politics is local” is true because people in politics usually are very sensitive to the people who voted them into office. School boards have changed their policies on abstinence education because one citizen took a stand, and legislators have been known to vote a particular way on an issue because of just a handful of correspondence.

• Give to the Psalm 139 Project

“For it was You who created my inward parts; You knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13).

The Psalm 139 Project gives women in crisis pregnancies a “window” into the world of the children they are carrying by helping pregnancy care centers secure sonogram machines. One hundred percent of the funds given to the Psalm 139 Project are used to purchase and place sonogram machines and for the ongoing work of the fund. The Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission provides the administrative oversight as a part of its ongoing Cooperative Program-funded ministry. Your tax-deductible gifts can be sent to the “Psalm 139 Project,” c/o ERLC, 901 Commerce St., Suite 550, Nashville, TN 37203. An acknowledgment and proper accounting of your gift will be provided. Visit psalm139project.org (where you can give online through PayPal) or contact the ERLC (1-800-475-9127) for more information.

• Celebrate Sanctity of Human Life Sunday

“A truthful witness rescues lives.” (Proverbs 14:25).

The Southern Baptist Convention observes Sanctity of Human Life Sunday on the third Sunday in January. This date was chosen to both mourn the children lost to abortion since the Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade in January 1973 and remind us that there is much work to be done before all human life will once again be cherished in America. Host a pro-life speaker on that Sunday and allow local pro-life organizations to promote their work. A free bulletin insert can be downloaded at www.ilivevalues.com/life and other materials may be purchased at www.familybookstore.net.

“We just don’t have the influence we once did,” some pro-life Christians lament. How does God expect us to remedy that situation? The answer is simple: Go to work for Him. Whether you are a caregiver, mentor, prayer warrior or parent with enough love for just one more, He is calling you to stand up for Him. “Here I am” are words He is longing to hear.

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Cole is an editor at the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Sunday, Jan. 17, is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday in the Southern Baptist Convention.)

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ALEXANDRIA, La. — Fifty million is a huge number. So significant is the number that its very presence makes a huge impact.

If you had $50 million in your bank account you would be financially free. If you live 50 million minutes you will celebrate 105 birthdays.

In similar fashion, the absence of 50 million of anything can have staggering impact. On Jan. 22, 1973 the United States Supreme Court ruled that abortion on demand was legal in the U.S. Since that day, approximately 50 million unborn children have had their lives snuffed out.

The impact of abortion in America over the past 37 years means that 50 million people were never known. This fact is incredibly significant.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor .29 percent of the total American population are medical doctors and .78 percent are nurses. Apply these percentages to the number of babies aborted in the U.S over the past 37 years and there is quite an impact. If the percentages held true for the babies born between 1973 and 1983 (had these children been born they would now be between the ages of 27 and 37) 40,000 would now be practicing physicians — if they hadn’t been aborted.

Because nurses begin their careers earlier than doctors, if we take the children that would have been born between 1973 and 1988 (these children would now be between the ages of 22 and 37) 158,000 would have chosen nursing as a career.

Currently America is facing a serious shortage of both doctors and nurses. Some contend the situation may soon reach crisis levels. The shortage of health care workers the United States is now facing can be blamed, in part, on the fact that scores of potential doctors and nurses have been aborted since 1973.

The same statistics previously mentioned could be applied to every profession. Abortion has robbed our nation of scores of potential productive members of society.

America is currently facing critical economic issues. Cities, states and the federal government are looking at significant budget deficits. On the state and local level the reason can be traced to a decline in sales and income taxes. Federally, the issue is more complex, and a main reason is few tax dollars are being collected.

While there is no doubt that the fiscal policy of deficit spending has contributed mightily to America’s economic woes, just imagine millions of more consumers and taxpayers contributing to the U.S. economy.

Of course some of the 50 million would have likely turned to crime and others would have died due to a variety of causes. However, the numbers would not be significant enough to mute the impact that could have been made had abortion not been legalized. Some would argue that abortions would have continued even if the practice had not been legalized. Yes, illegal abortions would have continued. However, they would not have occurred at the rate of 1.2 to 1.4 million a year, which is has been the past 15 or so years. I would argue the number would have been a tiny fraction of that number.

Can you imagine the outcry from the environmental community if 50 million spotted owls had been mercilessly slaughtered over the past 37 years? How about if 50 million polar bears had been brutally destroyed?

The clamor from environmental activists and their liberal friends would be deafening. While birds and bears contribute to our world, their worth does not even compare to the infinite worth of a human being.

Fifty million is a huge number anywhere it is applied. When the number is 50 million babies that have been aborted in the past 37 years the number is not only incredibly significant, it is also tragic.

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Boggs is a weekly columnist for Baptist Press and editor of the Baptist Message, newsjournal of the Louisiana Baptist Convention. Sunday, Jan. 17, is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday in the Southern Baptist Convention.)

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NAMB video
Baptist State Convention of North Carolina video

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--During the last decade or so there has been a lot of experimentation with Bible study ministries in churches. Some have changed the named from Sunday School to Bible fellowships, Life Groups or just Bible study in hopes of seeming more relevant to newcomers.

Others have tried larger groups for children as well as adults, striving to create more enthusiasm -- and deal with a shortage of committed leaders. A few have just given up on an on-campus Bible study ministry, launching small, off-campus groups instead.

For most, these experiments have produced only modest or short-term results. Many are now asking a "new" question: "What if we just tried to do really excellent basic Sunday School work?"

It's a good question, but first you need to know those basics. Here are a few:

-- Five step formula. Arthur Flake's "Formula for Sunday School Growth" still works today. A simple acrostic can help you remember it: "KEEP Go." Know the possibilities. Enlarge the organization. Enlist and train the leaders. Provide space and resources. Go after the people. For more information, check out a free download of "The Five Step Formula for Sunday School Growth." Visit LifeWay.com and type "Five step formula" in the search box.

-- Four critical elements. There are a lot of different elements in a vibrant Sunday School ministry. At least four are critical to success.

1. The ministry list, or class roll, includes the names of all members -- active or inactive -- and the class commits to minister to each person on that roll.

2. The prospect list, which includes the names and contact information for every prospective member. Remember that it is crucial to collect that information from every guest.

3. Open enrollment allows any person of any age to enroll as a member of Sunday School without regard to the requirements of church membership. Remember to invite prospects to enroll.

4. Sunday School is an open group, which means that a new person can come at any time and every lesson will be completed during the Bible study session even though it may be part of a larger unit of study.

-- Three dimensions. Every successful Sunday School class operates simultaneously around three dimensions. The classic terms to describe these dimensions are Reach, Teach and Minister. More contemporary words with the same idea are Invite, Discover and Connect.

Effective classes balance these three dimensions and typically have at least three leaders, one of whom takes the lead on each dimension. A ministry book, "The 3D Sunday School," is available for download at LifeWay.com/sskickoff.

-- Two marks. Release and Reproduce are the two marks of every outstanding adult Sunday School class. Such classes release members to serve in the preschool, children and student areas of the church's Sunday School program. These adult classes keep up with their associate members serving in other areas of the program and celebrate their service.

Excellent adult classes also plan to reproduce themselves. They enlist and train apprentice leaders in each of the three dimensions with the expectation that the class will eventually become two.

-- One textbook. The Bible is the textbook of a Sunday School class. Bible study is the most basic of all the basics of Sunday School. Curriculum materials that engage people in discovering the truths of God's Word are important, but they should never be viewed as a substitute for the Bible.

Leader guides provide commentary, teaching plans and application ideas. Learner guides help members prepare for the Bible study session and make excellent resources for outreach to prospective members. Just remember, we don't study "quarterlies" in Sunday School; we study the Bible.

Blessings as you get back to the basics.

David Francis is director of Sunday School at LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention.

 

CARY (BSCNC Communications) - I drive by an abortion clinic many days. It’s near my home and just around the corner from where my children went to high school. The parking lot is always full, except on Sundays when it’s closed. For some months after the facility opened, I would see a group of people, led by a Catholic priest, praying quietly on the sidewalk in front of the clinic.

Over the years, we’ve all watched as those opposed to abortion have grappled with the appropriate response to it.  We are, after all, Christians attempting to emulate the life of Jesus before a watching world. We work to balance His attributes of grace and truth (John 1:14) especially on this issue.  We know the answer lies somewhere between the bombers/snipers (which we vehemently condemn) and the apathetic. We also recognize that there are those sitting in our churches who have experienced abortion and we’re conscious of the pain that condemning abortion could inflict.

However, as we recognize the 36th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, which legalized abortion in every state across the nation, Christians fight a malaise that has settled over the issue. Unless we go to Web sites that show graphic pictures of aborted babies or drive by an abortion clinic every day, the issue fades into the background for many of us.

Meanwhile, the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, has crafted a public image that appeals to the masses and certainly to our lawmakers.  American taxpayers support Planned Parenthood to the tune of  $349 million a year (2007-2008 Planned Parenthood Annual Report), freeing up the organization to fiercely advocate legalization of abortion around the world and to fight any efforts by states to restrict it.

It goes without saying that abortion is an emotionally charged issue that has become hot politically. Perhaps for that reason, some Christians shy away from dealing with it. “Let’s concentrate on what we’re for and not what we’re against,” was the recent comment from one pastor. The 2010 Explore the Bible Adult Learner Guide from LifeWay has a lesson for January 17 entitled, “Sanctity of Human Life.”  Its suggestions for supporting Sanctity of Life include concern for children with special needs, concern for sick and dying people, and concern for parents and children. These are important matters, but does such a lesson address the core concern?  Does it challenge people to grapple with the question of how Christians should be thinking about and responding to abortion?

We are 36 years beyond the passage of Roe v. Wade. Nearly two generations have grown up with legalized abortion as status quo.  If the Senate version of the Health Reform bill passes, we will see a surge in taxpayer funded abortions in this country. (Current federal law prohibits the use of federal funds for abortions except in the case of rape, incest, or if the mother’s life is in danger.) And yet, some of us choose to give only passing notice to the estimated 1.2 million abortions performed each year in local communities all around our country.

How then should we respond? I think we would all agree that a biblical issue is a biblical issue, even when it turns political. We are not relieved of our responsibility to respond simply because the issue is incendiary. But how to do it?  

John Piper, pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in a sermon delivered on 2009 Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, chooses a hard line. He chastises those who say abortion is an issue of reproductive freedom for women. “You are not protecting reproductive freedom, you are authorizing the destruction of freedom for one million little human beings every year…. Killing our children is killing our children no matter how many times you say it is a private family matter.”  However, Piper then goes on to examine biblical references that shed light on God’s view of the unborn and marvels at the “wonder in the womb.”

Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in a blog post from August 21, 2009, points out how thinking people of all backgrounds are beginning to peer beyond the rhetoric of pro-choice advocates to see abortion for what it really is.  This truth is being revealed in many ways, including the increased use of ultrasounds in pregnancy resource centers and mainstream movies such as Bella and Juno. Mohler writes, “The evil of abortion cannot be hidden…the voice of life cannot be forgotten.”  

However, for those of us not endowed with a pulpit from which to exposit, here are some practical suggestions:

       Write. Write letters and/or e-mails to your lawmakers when issues come up pertaining to abortion.  Nearly every year, legislation is considered which would restrict abortion in our state and nation.  Don’t underestimate how much effect a short note to your representative can have.

       Advocate. Ask your pastor what your church will do to commemorate Sanctity of Human Life Sunday each year.  Have some suggestions ready including video resources or speakers that can provide a testimonial.

       Volunteer. Pregnancy Resource Centers and Maternity Homes offer alternatives to abortion and are found in almost every community. Most are run by professional staff but volunteers are the lifeblood. They can use help with counseling, fundraising, event planning, marketing, etc.

       Get involved in sex education curriculum selection. There is an immediate need for parents to get involved in sex education curriculum selection in their local school systems. The sex education law in North Carolina has changed, opening the door to teaching a pro-abortion philosophy in our public schools. Contact me (tgriggs@ncbaptist.org) for more information.

Sanctity of Human Life Sunday is recognized each year near the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. This year, Southern Baptists are marking Sunday, January 17 but many national organizations are observing January 24.  The date is not important, but it is important to take some time to recognize the horror of abortion, to recommit to pray for laws that will reduce abortions, to pray for people who are considering abortion, and to commit to some form of action. The suggestions above are a good place to start.  


A Sanctity of Human Life video from the BSCNC is available here for you to download and use in your church service if you would like.

Traci Griggs is the Liaison to the Christian Life and Public Affairs Committee of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.