Today is the anniversary of Christian songwriter, Rich Mullin's death. I read this from another post and decided it belongs here.

 

15 And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,

16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them

after those days, declares the Lord:

I will put my laws on their hearts,

and write them on their minds,”

17 then he adds,

“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”

18 Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.

A little tribute to Rich Mullins. 

20 years ago today --Sept.19,1997-- musical legend Rich Mullins died in a tragic car accident.

I know many of you don't know his name -- he died before you were born... he lived before the internet was much of a thing... before Facebook, way before Twitter, etc. I know it's hard to imagine that ancient world back in the 1900s.

But Rich Mullins is a name I want us to pass on to our kids and grandkids. 

He had Quaker roots, and you could hear his disdain for violence in his songs, with lyrics like: "Why do the nations rage? Why do they plot and scheme? The bullets can't stop the prayers we pray in the name of the Prince of Peace."

He often joked about how surprising it was that so many evangelicals took him seriously. He said things that--even though they came straight from the Gospels-- were at odds with what had come to characterize much of evangelicalism in the 1980s and 1990s. 

Here's one of my favorite quotes:

“Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in your beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken... This, I know, will go against the teachings of all the popular evangelical preachers. But they're wrong. They are not bad, they're just wrong.” -- Rich Mullins (he said that in the 1990s)

I can remember when I was at Wheaton College. Rich spoke in chapel and told this very evangelical audience essentially this: "You're all into the 'born-again' thing. And that's great -- Jesus said that to a man named Nicodemus, to enter the Kingdom of God you need to be born again... But if you tell me that I've got to be born again, I can tell you that you need to sell everything you have and give it to the poor. Because Jesus said that to one guy too. But I guess that's why God invented highlighters... so we can highlight the parts we like."

That's what I love about Rich -- he spoke truth, and laughed as he did it. He had the winsomeness of a kid, and the wisdom of an elder. 

There's an old story about Rich and his buddy riding on a train. As they travelled, they began to share some of their deepest struggles, pouring out their souls, including some of the not-so-pretty stuff. As they arrived at the station, one of the passengers in front of them recognized Rich, and said, "Excuse me, are you Rich Mullins?" Rich said that he immediately began to rehearse in his mind all of the things she might have heard him say... and he had to decide whether or not he was Rich Mullins. And of course, he looked her in the face, smiling, and said, "Yes... I am Rich Mullins." He owned his funk, and he gave us permission to own ours.

He struggled with his own darkness, loneliness, sexuality. And because of that, he is an inspiration to all ragamuffins. He's a reminder that the world out there is not looking for Christians who are perfect, but they are looking for Christians who are honest. 

When people remind me that the church is full of hypocrites I often say -- inspired by Rich-- "No we aren't full of hypocrites... we always have room for more." Rich Mullins reminds us that this whole Christian thing is not about how good we are, but how good God is. The Church is a bunch of imperfect people falling in love with a perfect God, and hopefully becoming more like the one we Love. 

I had the honor of spending some time with Rich (I ended up being in a musical with him about the life of St. Francis). I wrote this little blurb about him a while back:

“Rich Mullins is one of the most interesting people I’ve ever known. Interesting because he was honest — not perfect. He made you feel like Jesus was right beside you -- part of the band, telling stories around the fire, laughing with you at the bar. He made you feel like you could own your darkness and be honest with your doubts. He knew that inside each of us there is a sinner and a saint at war, and on good days the saint prevails, and on bad days... Jesus loves sinners. He is one of the most important people in the history of modern evangelicalism, a ragamuffin that our children and our grandchildren need to know about.”

So that's it for now... I'm going to go listen to me some Rich Mullins, starting with the song I danced to on my wedding day, "If I Stand." 

It goes like this...

"So if I stand, let me stand on the promise that You will pull me through... And if I can't let me fall on the grace that first brought me to You." 

Amen.

When you have 60 million black babies being aborted with their baby parts being sold to pharmaceutical companies it really is about profitting from black genocide.

I find it interesting as I watch the footage of the abortion protestors to see a sea of white faces and when I look at the pro-life demonstrators I see multiracial colors in the crowd.  If anyone studies American history, it is easy to see that the abortion movement really had its beginnings going back to the day when the white democratic slave owners could no longer profit off of slaves.  Initially, they wanted to send the black slaves back to Africa and when that was not the option they looked at ways to terrorize this group.  It was around 1900 that the Eugenics movement became a movement that had racist underpinnings. https://www.nature.com/scitable/forums/genetics-generation/america-s-hidden-history-the-eugenics-movement-123919444/#:~:text=The%20eugenics%20movement%20took%20root,and%20principal%20interested%20in%20breeding.

A little later, Margaret Sanger came on the scene declaring racist statements like referring to black people as weeds that are breeding out of control. She was the founder of the American Birth Control League in 1921 as a means of stopping the excessive growth of the black population.  Her work in the eugenics movement inspired Adolph Hitler and his quest to exterminate 6 million Jewish men, women, and children during the Nazi regime. 

Margaret Sanger was a woman whom Hillary Clinton most admired.  At one time,  Reverend Jesse Jackson was on a campaign to end abortion, until the democratic party told him that unless he disavowed any connection with his anti-abortion beliefs he would never get their endorsement. I'm positive that other political candidates in the democratic party had to do the same thing. Quietly, they swept the controversial abortion issues under the rug, saying instead, that planned parenthood is about woman's healthcare.

There have been numerous lies about the reality of abortion perpetrated by the democrats. Lies like the end of abortion will mean unprecedented high crime rates when these children are released on the streets. They never mention the millions of couples who would be glad to adopt these children, or how the impact of instilling faith and knowledge of God in these children will assure their success down the road.

Someone wonder if the pro-life movement cared so much about this issue then why hasn't something been done about abortion from the beginning? I believe they have, but the news media has silenced Christians from being able to provide resources about adoption and other services to these mothers in crisis.  Planned Parenthood is about profits. It's about how much money is made selling fetal tissue to pharmaceutical companies. It's about selling unborn baby organs to the highest bidder.In this video, this planned parenthood spokesperson explains how much they charge for various baby organs.  https://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/2020/05/planned-parenthood-testimony-on-selling-baby-parts-unsealed-new-videos-released/

It doesn't take any imagination to see the enormous profits that aborted baby parts can net for planned parenthood, nor does it take imagination to picture the profits that go into the back pockets of our democratic leaders.

Finally, when over 63 million black babies have been aborted since 1973 it no longer is about woman's health care and everything to do with black genocide.