A recent online discussion of President Obama’s rescinding of his predecessor’s ban on government funding of embryonic stem cell research prompted an arresting question. If pro-lifers are so het up about embryo-destructive research, will we reject treatments that grow as fruit on that poisonous tree?

My head says a quick “yes,” my heart cautions some humility in the answer. If I live long enough (if any of us do) to actually see beneficial treatments derived from the destruction of human life, I’ll be old enough so that the need for treatment will be dire and emotionally compelling. That will be a difficult choice for those loved ones who will help make decisions regarding treatment?maybe not a difficult choice but certainly one fraught with controversy and self doubt.

Still, I say that I will refuse such treatment, and will refuse the results of such tainted research on behalf of any whose power of attorney I possess. If I do not do so, I say now, when less burdened by the emotion and grief of a specific choice, that I should refuse treatment of this kind. What’s the choice?

I came across a verse in Isaiah last week that got under my skin regarding this subject. In chapter 33:15, God describes a righteous person as one who “despises the gains of oppressions.” That could be a pretty broad variety of things. It could speak to spoils of an unjust war, or profit made dishonestly or at the expense of the weak.

There are many who profit from the terrible oppression of children, born and unborn. Some are elected to office by promising to support the continuation of such oppression through abortion. They, like clinic investors, are exalting the gains of oppressions.

Embryonic stem cell research will provide gains to many people and institutions decades before any effective treatment is even possible. Research hospitals, universities, private researchers, bio tech companies, communities, and community leaders all stand to gain from the distribution of billions of state and federal dollars allocated for research based on the destruction of human life. God calls this unrighteous.

Some of this allocation is the responsibility of citizens?we empower it and support it by the people we elect. A heavier guilt rests on the shoulders of presidents and governors and research directors and deans who lobby for and order and enable the gains of oppression. On the individual level, we absolutely have a responsibility to manage our health according to what we know to be right and wrong.

In Texas, our Senate Finance Committee has placed language in the proposed budget forbidding state funding of any research that destroys human embryos. Senate Democrats have vowed to fight the language, even if they must defeat the budget to do so. Interesting that the headline I saw about the debate referred to the pro-life language potentially “derailing” the budget process. It sounds to me like the Democrats are threatening to do so.

Without a doubt, we will have multiplied opportunities to consider questions of moral stewardship in the future. The difference between a bribe and the proceeds of oppression is not significant morally?both silence our convictions because of our participation in evil. We must be attentive to the sources of our income, profit, winnings, entertainment, and so on. The more we have, the more attention stewardship requires.

As with most things, this can be taken to an absurd level. The intertwining of corporations makes difficult an effort to have no indirect contact with immoral causes. I eat at restaurants and shop at stores that also sell alcohol and lottery tickets, for example. One could make a case that I benefit from the presence of a business that depends on the sale of destructive products. This would be a strained case but some will doubtless make it. I guess if a young brother says, “Let’s eat at Chili’s, they serve beer,” I might suggest something else for his sake. I Corinthians 10:23-31 speaks a word of sanity for all ages.

I think this is quibbling, an effort to weaken the point by making an absurd application. We live in the world and know the difference between consumer approval of evil and consumer innocence. I’m asking that we set an example of righteousness in a culture that worships anything that works, especially when we have an opportunity to gain from injustice. I agree with our critics that pro-lifers that benefit, or are willing to benefit, from anti-life research undermine important points of a crucial argument in our nation.

AUSTIN?One day after failing to uphold a 20-year-old requirement that Texas public high school students evaluate the “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories, including evolution, the State Board of Education on March 27 ratified new standards requiring biology students to “analyze, evaluate and critique” scientific theories.

Additionally, the language, approved by a 13-2 vote, requires “examining all sides of scientific evidence” and encourages “critical thinking.”

Jonathan Saenz, legislative affairs director for the Plano, Texas-based Free Market Foundation, said the board action was “a huge victory for school students and validation that the people of Texas and the State Board of Education reject censorship in the classroom and embrace open and critical discussion in the science classroom.”

Saenz wrote on his blog that he believed the mounting pressure from the public on the elected board was evident in the vote.

Meanwhile, Texas Citizens for Science’s Steven Schafersman stated that while the new language is preferred to the “strengths and weaknesses” requirement, he wrote on a blog for the Houston Chronicle: “Of course, the new language can be read (“all sides of scientific evidence”) that will permit anti-evolution Creationists to attack Biology textbooks, and they most certainly will ?”

Following several amendments and counter amendments to wording the board initially approved in January, the board adopted the following language: “In all fields of Science; analyze, evaluate and critique scientific explanations of science by using empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and experimental and observational testing including examining all sides of scientific evidence of those scientific explanations so as to encourage critical thinking by the student.”

Democrats Rene Nunez and Mary Helen Berlanga were the lone dissent.

Texas science standards are revised every 10 years, which makes the Texas decision important for textbook publishers, who are reluctant to publish multiple editions for different states, and for smaller states that must buy available textbooks.

The education board was bombarded with e-mails, letters, phone calls and editorials from evolution-only proponents and critics in the weeks leading up to the meeting March 25-27 in Austin.

On Friday afternoon, the board was debating final approval of amendments dealing with the analysis and evaluation of the key evolution tenets of common descent and natural selection, which were also initially approved in January and the source of angst for evolution-only proponents.

The effort to retain the “strengths and weaknesses” requirement failed March 26 in a 7-7 vote with Berlanga absent.

Supporters of evolution had assailed the 20-year-old “strengths and weaknesses” clause as a back door to teaching biblical creationism, while evolution-only critics spoke of weaknesses in Darwinian theory.

Those who testified March 25 before the board included Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education and a vocal critic of the intelligent design movement, and Pierre Velasquez of San Antonio, a 31-year veteran science teacher who said preventing teachers from discussing strengths and weaknesses in scientific theories would stifle classroom discussion.

The Texas Republican Party entered the fray on March 7, adopting a resolution titled “Supporting Rigorous Educational Standards for Science in Texas” that opposed abandoning the strengths and weaknesses requirement.

Campaigning for evolution-only instruction was the Texas Freedom Network, founde

BOLIVAR PENINSULA?As many as 3,000 students and adults, about one third from Southern Baptists of Texas Convention churches, gave up their spring break vacations?camping, visiting theme parks, relaxing from school work, or sunning on the beach?to work at the beach, or, at least, what’s left of it on Bolivar Peninsula in Galveston County.

Homes in the communities along this barrier island are still in desperate need of repair from the ravages of Hurricane Ike last fall, with many homeowners feeling forgotten.

The remainder of volunteers traveled with churches and organizations from across the country, with one couple traveling from Alaska to help with the rebuild efforts coordinated by the SBTC and Nehemiah’s Vision.

Volunteers from the SBTC Disaster Relief (DR) teams and Nehemiah’s Vision were among the first crews to arrive in southeast Texas in the wake of the category 2 hurricane that brought wind and flood damage to a large swath of the region last Sept. 13. Hardest hit was the 27-mile stretch of land on Bolivar Peninsula with the tidal surge reaching its apex at 27 feet, wiping away entire communities.

Of the homes that remained, some were built according to new storm codes and withstood the wind and water. Others, not completely submerged, were damaged beyond repair while still others were salvageable but their owners needed more help than an insurance check or government relief funds could provide.

That, said Gordon Knight, is where the SBTC and Nehemiah’s Vision partnership can help. Knight, SBTC rebuild director and convention liaison for the Nehemiah’s Vision ministry based in Vidor, said the convention’s DR crews worked into November of last year. By partnering with Nehemiah’s Vision?a ministry that repaired about 630 homes and 38 churches and built 10 new homes in the months after Hurricane Rita in 2005?Knight said the convention is able to prolong its ministry to the community long after the DR teams move on.

Today the ministry works to rebuild homes and churches, stepping into action when the clean-up crews have completed their jobs.

STUDENTS UNLEASHED

First Baptist Church of Crystal Beach was the command site for the spring break work crews. Built up on a 25-foot manmade knoll, the church still took on about two feet of water during the storm. Repairs are being made to the building but enough has been completed for the church to play host to the students.

SBTC feeding units were set up at the Crystal Beach site and First Baptist Church of Galveston and churches as far away as Texas City housed the students each night. Shower and laundry units were also made available at the varying locations.

Knight said the volunteers come to the project with varying degrees of abilities, expectations, and spiritual maturity. One student, Jordan Vaught, a high school senior from Glenview Baptist Church in Haltom City, had spent last year’s spring break doing relief work in New Orleans.

“I just loved that so much,” he said, noting that being able to meet the people whose homes he had been working on and see the expressions of gratitude on their faces made all of his work worth the sacrifice. For Vaught ministry work won’t end after spring break. He said he wants to major in nursing so he can continue to help people in need.

Also considering work in the mission field is Chris Morrill, another high school senior. He took a break from hanging drywall at a home to tell about how his experiences with disaster relief and the rebuild efforts are leading him to a lifetime of service.

“I feel like God’s calling me into the mission field,” he said.

Working in dis

“Gone are the days when Christians understood that the home — and not the Christian church or school — is principally and primarily responsible for the education, evangelism, and discipleship of children and that our ecclesiology should reflect that reality.”

These words, taken from the foreword of a new book, Turning the Ship, pinpoint the problem that troubled Dustin Guidry, pastor of Ridgewood Baptist Church in Port Arthur.

Written by Guidry, the book chronicles how he and staff members came to grips with, and solved their unwillingness to place their children in age-segregated, church discipleship programs, be they Sunday school, children’s church, youth department and camps, even the nursery, all of which were the traditional methodology at Ridgewood.

Following a long season of soul-searching and scriptural study, Guidry and staff have returned to a biblical model of discipleship and to those days long gone cited in the opening sentence above, cited from the foreword of Guidry’s book, and written by Voddie Baucham, pastor of Grace Family Baptist Church in Spring, Texas.

According to Baucham, Guidry has “done what many thought was impossible. He has taken a

neo-traditional church and moved it toward family integration. In Turning the Ship, he offers an honest, hard-hitting, no-holds-barred look at the origins, the path, obstacles, and the tremendous rewards of his church’s journey. This is not a panacea. Nor is it a program-oriented marketing scheme designed to get every church on the same path in forty days. This is one man’s story of triumph, tragedy, heartache, and joy as he pursued biblical ecclesiology with tenacity that at

times resembled Jacob wrestling with the angel.”

Taking the cue from Titus 2, Guidry and staff fashioned a mid-week discipleship approach for the entire church where the older men teach the younger men, and the older women teach the younger women.

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WAKE FOREST, N.C.?Mindful of proposed Texas legislation that seeks to strengthen marriage, Christian ethicist David Jones urges Southern Baptists to employ a biblical understanding of marriage prior to supporting family law reform. Expectations that the state is able to provide lasting solutions to the spiritual problem of martial decay are based on false hope, said Jones, associate professor of Christian ethics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C.

“Generally speaking, I think the Southern Baptist Convention should support it,” Jones said, referring to covenant marriage laws, which would require marriage license applicants to choose between a standard marriage and a covenant marriage.

“However, we must not fall into the trap of thinking that the state has the ability to define marriage, nor should we view external laws as the only (or even proper) way to fix the moral erosion of the institution of marriage.”

Noting that covenant marriage legislation possesses potential to curb divorce rates, Jones believes the best way to “fix the estate of marriage is to internally understand the nature and purpose of the institution.”

What is a marriage covenant?

Marriage covenant laws imply a covenantal union is one of two marital categories, of which one is a standard version and the other a more stringent, binding commitment.

However, Jones points out that marriage is by definition a covenant. “Whether you are a Christian or not, it is impossible to have a marriage that is not a covenant marriage,” said Jones, a contributor to the 2004 book “God, Marriage, and Family: Rebuilding the Biblical Foundation” by Andreas Kostenberger. “The institution of marriage is, by divine design, constitutionally covenantal.”

In short, a proper definition of covenant marriage must include permanence of the union and recognition that “three parties” are rooted in the agreement?God, husband, and wife. Although secular marital laws seek a return to traditional values, the legislation only speaks to spousal relationships. The laws also include caveats for dissolution of marital unions.

Among the ethics courses Jones teaches at Southeastern, his class “Marriage and Family: Foundations” underscores the differences between prominent views of marriage. Class notes describe the covenantal model of marriage as a creation ordinance rooted in divine law, which creates a permanent bond between a man, a woman and God. This God-centered model for understanding marriage was the prevailing model in the church from the cross until the 16th century when a sacramental model of marriage was introduced at the Roman Catholic Council of Trent.

However, modern views of marriage stem from Enlightenment-era thinkers who hailed matrimony as “a bilateral contract that is voluntarily formed, maintained, and dissolved by two individuals.”

A contractual view of marriage is inherently man-centered, Jones said. Today, marriage is no longer conceptualized as an “institution in which two individuals participate,” but rather a contract created by two parties. This relatively new understanding of marriage did not become widespread until the 19th century, Jones said.

Who has the authority to marry?

In distinguishing between a covenantal and contractual view of marriage, questions of authority inevitably arise. In a contractual view of marriage, authority to marry rests squarely in the hands of the state as it dispenses marriage licenses and grants divorces. Although couples are free to marry in a church, officiating ministers perform wedding ceremonies “by the authority vested by the state.”

“The minister basically becomes a civil authority in order to legally marry you,” Jones told students in his marriage and family class. “So, you can see, a church wedding is really window dressing. The minister only has the authority to marry you based on the authority of the state?not the church.”

While the state has been entrusted by God with maintaining order in society, Jones said it is the body of Christ that should bear the responsibility of defining and defendi