Parkinson’s: The quest for a cure

It was only the second time I ever saw my dad cry. He walked in the front door of our home in Reedley, California and told me, “I have Parkinson’s Disease.”

He’d had a relative who had Parkinson’s Disease, so he knew well what it does. It’s a degenerative neurological disease that does terrible things to the body. Over the past several years, we’ve watched as it has taken its toll on my dad. Through it all, he’s managed to stay in good spirits and provide us all with a good example of strong faith and resilience in the midst of adversity. In some ways, I think his spirit may be stronger than ever, though his body is weak.

All the same, how many times we’ve all wished and prayed for a cure!

In America alone, more than half a million people are affected with this disease. At least six million around the world have been diagnosed with it. I’m sure they’re all hoping and praying for a cure.

But is a cure possible?

Prominent neurologists believe it is. In the 1980s, a doctor named Bill Langston made a breakthrough that opened up several promising avenues of investigation into the causes of Parkinson’s. Since then, prominent researchers such as Dr. Langston, Dr. Jeffrey Kordower and Duke University researcher, Miquel Nicolelis, have made great strides toward finding better treatments for the disease and towards the possibility of a cure.

Ten years ago, many in the field of neurology believed in the possibility of finding a cure but very little research was being done. This was due to a lack of finances made available for that research. In the mid-1990s, very little research money was directed toward this disease, in spite of the fact the research opportunities were so promising.

However, in 2000, actor Michael J. Fox (who has Parkinson’s Disease) started the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. In the past nine years, the foundation has funded more than $149 million in research directly or via partnerships. Through the work of aggressive funding and the raising of awareness around the world, great strides have been made in the improvement of treatment and the quest for a cure. In fact, they believe that a cure could be found within the next decade.

As a follower of Christ, I believe that one way we can live out our faith is by responding to causes such as this one. We are not called just to preach a message of “going to heaven someday,” but to also seek out ways of demonstrating God’s love and the values of His Kingdom through frontal assaults upon issues of injustice, poverty and illness around the world.

The Michael J. Fox Foundation generates funds for research through the generous giving of people around the world who care about the cause. For me, this cause is not some generic concern out there that is competing for our attention. For me, it has a name, and its name is Dad.

It has various names and some who are reading this will know it by one dear to you as well. Maybe it is you, or maybe it’s somebody you love.

If you’d like to join the quest for the cure, you can find out more about it at this link:

About The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research

I believe this urgent goal will finally be reached as more and more of us get involved.

“Medical science has proven time and again that when the resources are provided, great progress in the treatment, cure, and prevention of disease can occur.” — Michael J. Fox

Prostitutes and the Kingdom

Jesus once told a bunch of church-goers that prostitutes would enter the Kingdom of God before they did. I bet they didn’t like that much! Of course, Jesus wasn’t a people-pleaser. He was more concerned with truth.

Let’s look at the story where he said that…

“What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’

“‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.

“Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.

“Which of the two did what his father wanted?” 
 “The first,” they answered.

Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him. — Matthew 21:28-32

The people Jesus was talking to in this chapter were his culture’s version of the faithful church-goer. In fact, according to verse 23, they weren’t just the church “goers,” they were the “chief-priests and elders,” the leaders of the religious people.

But he was telling them they were getting it all wrong. They were very religious in their dedication to the Temple and to religious observances, but they weren’t serious about a true relationship with God.

In the context of this discussion in the Bible, Jesus is talking about those who had been baptized under John the Baptist. Baptism was seen as a sign of obedience to God, to leaving the old life behind and submitting to Him. A lot of tax-collectors and prostitutes had taken this step, whilst these religious “leaders” had seen it as below them and refused to participate. They were good at doing the religious things that their community thought of as “religious,” but they were lacking the qualities Jesus really valued: submission and obedience to HIM.

I wonder how many of us who are church “goers,” would fit into the same category as these Jewish priests and elders? We go to church and do all the “Christian” things, but do we submit to God when he tells us to live our lives in obedience to Him? After all, that’s what he’s asking of us. Obedience to HIM.

Some think that this simply means living as decent people and going to church, but the people Jesus was talking to would almost certainly have fit into that category.

What was different about the prostitutes and tax-collectors?

A few things really:

1. They realized they were messed up.

   The people Jesus was talking to were self-righteous. They thought they could get by on their own and that they were “good enough.” The people Jesus came for, however, were those who were ready to realize that we’re all messed up. That’s what the Bible really means when it says, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We’ve all messed up, none of us is perfect, and we all need grace.

   People who truly realize that don’t feel the need to judge others anymore. They just live in an amazing appreciation for the fact that God has accepted them and forgiven them, even with all their flaws and failures.

2. They realized he was their only hope.

   The people Jesus was talking to actually still thought they could do it on their own. They weren’t going to submit themselves to anything that would suggest they didn’t “have it all together.” They weren’t ready to depend on God because they thought they could make it on their own.

   The prostitutes and tax-collectors knew that they couldn’t make it on their own. He was their only hope. Yet, in the end, I think that’s true for all of us. But too many of us go to church and go through the motions, whilst still believing we can “do it on our own.”

3. They wanted to please God.

   Many religious people are more concerned with pleasing each other than they are with pleasing God. Can you imagine the humiliation these men would have experienced if they’d gone to be baptized by John the Baptist, who was not your typical “church type”?

   But the prostitutes and tax-collectors didn’t care what the world thought. Or at least, if they did, they were more concerned about getting right with God than with getting laughed at by their friends. They knew they needed God, so they went to him.

The people Jesus was talking to would have been known in their day as the cream of the crop in the religious world, but Jesus was essentially telling them, “The prostitutes are better off than you are.” Why? Because they allowed themselves to realize they needed him, that their lives needed to change, that he was their only hope…and they wanted to please God more than to hold onto their own world as it was.

It’s so like Jesus to raise up the prostitute and humble the proud. Sadly, some of us who call ourselves his followers would more likely praise the proud and shun the prostitute. These chief priests and elders would probably have never let them in the Temple. But that was their biggest problem. Their hearts were closed to receiving grace because they were unwilling to give it. May God deliver us from being like that!

Your Kingdom come?

When Jesus’ disciples — the men who traveled together with him for three years to learn under his tutelage — asked him to teach them how to pray, he gave them a very interesting prayer model. It’s one that has been prayed by many throughout the centuries, though I fear that many pray the words without really grasping what they mean.

He said to them, “When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.’” — Luke 11: 2-4

It’s a very interesting prayer, a very earthy prayer in fact. I’m particularly interested in these words:

“Your Kingdom come…”

Jesus didn’t tell them to pray, “Take me up to heaven someday” but “your kingdom come.”

What did he mean?

It might help us to think about this question: What is the “Gospel”? The word “gospel” is one that is used often by Christians, and it means literally “good news.” But what is the good news that Jesus came to bring?

Some think the good news is simply that, if we will believe in Him, we can go to heaven someday. However, in his ministry, Jesus preached “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near.” (Matthew 4:17, emphasis mine) He didn’t talk about his kingdom being something that was only far away in the heavens, and his news wasn’t simply that “you can go to the kingdom someday.” He actually talked about something that was near, and when he taught his followers to pray, he didn’t tell them to pray, “Take us up to your kingdom someday.” Rather, he taught them to pray, “Your kingdom come.”

In order to better understand these words, “your kingdom come,” it can help to know something about the world in which Jesus first said them. He was entering into the age-old story of the Jewish people. They had once had their own nation, but then had gone into exile in a foreign land. For years, they dreamed of going back into their land, the land of Israel.

Although living in the land again, they were still in a form of exile. They were living under foreign rule and had for several centuries. They were hoping for freedom and believed, as the Old Testament had shown them, that freedom would come through the Messiah that was to be sent by God. The word Messiah, from the Jewish Scriptures that Christians call the Old Testament, means “anointed one.” They were waiting for the anointed one, the Messiah, to come from heaven and to bring his kingdom.

So what did these words, “Kingdom of Heaven,” mean? They did not refer to a place. Rather, they referred to God’s rule coming to earth; His justice and peace on earth. The Jewish people were waiting for a king.

As to how they interpreted this “rule of God” coming to earth, it depended on who you talked to. While waiting for the coming of God’s kingdom, there were basically three different groups of Jews who each chose a different way to use their time and live their lives until the King came.

1. The first group are the ones we might call separatists. Their approach toward how they would wait for the coming of God’s kingdom was as follows: Separate yourself from the wicked world and just wait for God to do whatever He’s gonna do.
2. The second group are the ones we might call the compromisers. They would be represented by the example of King Herod in the Bible. He took this point of view to heart: Build yourself fortresses and palaces, get along with your political bosses as well as you can, do as well out of it as you can and just hope that God will bless it somehow anyway.
3. Then there was the third group, who were called the “zealots.” This was their approach toward waiting for the kingdom: Take the kingdom by force, fight a holy war and bring in the kingdom on earth by military means.

Now Jesus was a true revolutionary. He came to turn all their expectations upside down. His option was a fourth approach — one that totally fit with the predictions of the Old Testament, but which they’d all missed until he came. He WAS the expected KING, but his KINGDOM was different than anything they’d ever imagined.

Jesus didn’t do things the way people expected him to. From the world’s point of view, in many ways the Kingdom of God is an upside-down kingdom. When God’s rule comes into a group of people, it takes a form that no other government or political movement on earth would even consider.

In Luke 4, Jesus stood up in front of a Jewish synagogue and explained the values of his kingdom and his interpretation of the words, “good news,” with the following:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, 
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” — Luke 4:18-19

When Jesus told his people to pray, “Your Kingdom come,” he was calling for a massive revolution. However, it was a revolution of a different kind. Rather than a call to upward mobility and a fight for free-market economy, it was a call to downward mobility. A call to “humble yourself in the sight of the Lord,” (James 4:10) and to “be the servant of all.” (Mark 9:35) It was a call to speak out for those who did not have a voice in the world, to set the captives free, to release the oppressed. It was a call to the kind of revolution that only comes through love, sacrifice and service.

When we pray, “Your kingdom come,” we’re praying that God’s way of thinking would become our way of thinking, and that his concerns would rule in our lives. We’re praying that we would become less selfish and more selfless. We’re not praying that our political party would win the next election, but we are praying that God would help us to stand up for issues of justice in the world and to seek ways to reach out to the poor, the sick and the hurting.

Whenever we reach out in these ways, God’s rule starts to take hold in our world. We get glimpses of his kingdom NOW, knowing that one day his Kingdom will arrive completely.

“But,” someone might say to me, “doesn’t the good news mean we will have eternal life?”

Yes, of course it does! Jesus said:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” — John 3:16

The Greek word translated as “eternal,” however, does not just refer to something that starts at some day in the future after you die. That word, aionios, refers to something that has no end and will never cease. It refers to something that starts now and continues into eternity.

In other words, in biblical thinking, eternal life begins immediately when we trust Jesus. He comes into our life and then desires us to submit to him as King now and forever. Submitting to him as king, of course, does not just mean going to church and doing religious things. It means submitting our very lives into his hands and seeking to live in such a way that his kingdom principles are lived out in us.

And so we pray, “Your kingdom come.”

I wonder, when a young starving boy prays this in an African slum, what kind of image he has in mind. “Your kingdom come.” Or the woman who is being sold into slavery in order for her children to eat, or the little girl dying of AIDS.

When we consider that 25,000 children die every day of hunger, poverty, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes, what does it mean to pray, “Your kingdom come”?

That’s the equivalent of 1 child dying every 3.5 seconds.

And let’s consider the rest of this model prayer Jesus gave us. He said things like:

“Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Some people act like being a Christian is just about getting by on earth until the “real life” begins in heaven. But Jesus told us to pray that His will be done on earth.

About 1.1 billion people in the world don’t have adequate access to water, something you and I might take for granted, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation.

Many millions of people around the world don’t have access to healthcare.

Between 1 and 1.5 million people die of malaria every year, a disease that could easily be cured for less than the price of a Happy Meal at McDonald’s.

“Your Kingdom come.”

I wonder what it means for little Peter, a young man I know in the Mathare slums in Nairobi, when he prays, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

As I said, it’s really a very earthy prayer. It’s about praying for God’s rule to come into the everyday situations of life, where people are suffering. And, if we read it in the context of the rest of the Bible, it’s clearly about praying with the knowledge that God wants those of us who can to help play a part in answering that suffering.

Even the words, “Forgive as we forgive those who have sinned against us,” take on an especially powerful tone if we think of them in the terms of their original context.

The original audience lived under Roman rule, in an atmosphere of oppression. They longed for deliverance…

Just like in the Mathare slums, where Peter lives. The people live in “houses” made of the flimsiest, dirtiest of materials. The first time I visited Mathare, I noticed a stream of dirty water running down the uneven, dirt road. I was told that it was both the drinking water and the toilet for the residents. Rubbish lined the roads and filled the corners between the homes.

The pastor of a local church told us that diseases like malaria, diptheria, AIDS, etc. were just as common to them as the common cold is to Americans, if not moreso.

And I was told that the local government charges the people to live there. Their leaders live nearby in mansions partially paid for by their rent.

“Forgive those who have sinned against us…”

What about this part of the prayer?

“Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil…”

I think about the many children I’ve met who steal bread, and the girls who have been sold into prostitution; spurred on by sheer desperation.

“Yours is the kingdom and the power and glory forever. Amen.”

The Bible assures us that one day every wrong will be made right, God’s Kingdom will come fully, all evil will be judged, the oppressed will be set free…

But the Bible also makes it clear that God’s Kingdom is meant to break into the world NOW through those of us who claim to follow him.

What are you and I doing to see to it that bits of God’s rule breaks into a world where so much pain and injustice still reign? I wonder if, after thinking through their meaning, we’ll think a little differently about these words when we pray, “Your Kingdom come.”

Is Jesus a good American?

What does it actually mean to be a Christian in America?

I have traveled across a lot of the country and talked to a lot of church-people about their faith. What I’ve discovered is interesting.

For many church-goers in America, to be a good Christian means to be a good patriot and a good Republican. In fact, the conservative movement, in linking itself with the Christian faith, has been so vocal in recent years that for many — Christian and non-Christian alike — the term “Christian” has come to be nearly synonymous with words like “conservative” and “Republican.”

Of course, there have been those who have resisted these labels, but equally interesting is the observation that many Americans who react to these labels do so by claiming Jesus for their political parties instead. So, for some, Jesus is really a liberal democrat.

How sad that so many of us have completely lost sight of what Christ and his message are all about. I would like to remind my fellow Americans of two facts that we need to remember if we are going to hold on to the integrity of Christ’s message.

1. JESUS IS NOT A REPUBLICAN.

   He’s also not a Democrat.

   When people start to claim Jesus for their particular political agenda, they lose sight of Who Jesus really is and what He’s all about. Jesus said:

   My kingdom is not of this world. — John 18:36a

   There were people among the Jews who thought that the Kingdom of God was about bringing God’s rule to the earth through taking control of the nation’s government. They were called “zealots” and, though they tried to win Jesus to their cause, he was not interested. His kingdom was not the kind of kingdom that could be brought through political or military force. It was one that would be brought through servanthood, love and sacrifice.

2. JESUS IS NOT AMERICAN.

   I’ve noticed that a lot of American churches have a cross, a “Christian” flag, and an American flag all sitting on the platform. The theological message conveyed by this, even by those who don’t consciously realize it, is that the cross and the American flag are equal in importance to the Christian. This has become so ingrained in our culture that most of us go for years before it even dawns on us that this borders on idolatry.

   Jesus never promised a preference for America above other nations, and God never once indicated in His Word that America is meant to hold any kind of status as a new Promised Land.

   Don’t get me wrong. He loves America.

   But He also loves Iran, Britain, Tanzania, and every other country in the world. As Revelation 5:9 speaks of Christ’s sacrifice:

   …with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.

   Has He especially blessed America through the years? I think it can rightfully be argued that He has. However, He has equally blessed other nations at times through the years, and He has also removed that blessing according to His will.

We need not ask if God is on our side, but if we are on His.

Many Christians put God and Country on an equal footing, some consciously and others unconsciously.

However, for a true Christ-follower, the Bible tells us that “our citizenship is in Heaven” (Philippians 3:20) and that we are part of a different Kingdom, the Kingdom of God. Our first priority, if we are truly Christ-followers, is to His Kingdom and not to any other Kingdom on earth.

This does not mean, of course, that we should not honor our leaders or take part in politics. What it does mean is that our political agendas should never govern our theology and faith. No political party or nation can claim God’s endorsement because these very parties and nations are our creations, not His.

Once we get our priorities straight, placing God’s Kingdom above all other kingdoms, we can begin to work together across party lines and national lines to seek relevant answers to life’s questions and this world’s needs. As long as we let those lines get in the way, we are in danger of missing the very point of being Christ’s followers in the world.