June 23, 2015

End-of-Life

Life? I’m not really that into it any more by Michael Cook

AP Orders Media to Stop Using “Committed Suicide” by Wesley J. Smith

Family Living

Video: $#!+ People Say To Foster Parents

Worldview and Culture

The Coming of Medical Martyrdom by Wesley J. Smith

The day we were threatened with arrest for not wanting to watch “Modern Family” on an airplane by Sofia Vazquez-Mellado

We’re Not About To Crawl Into A Hole and Die by Michael Brown

How Shall They Hear …? – This is the latest newsletter from Siberia by Rev. Alan Ludwig. This issue has an interesting article about “Evangelism Russian Style.”

Forgiveness in Charleston – Light Shining in Darkness by John Stonestreet – “Some acts are so terrible, it seems masochistic to talk about them. Some acts are so gracious, we marvel at them and must talk about them.”

We have featured articles by James M. Kushiner in LifeDate. Here is a column that was sent out on June 22:

Eusebius & Dylan Roof

My word for today concerns Eusebius of Samasota, who is commemorated in the West on June 21 and in the East on June 22. A fourth- century Bishop in Syria (Samasota now lies in Turkey), Eusebius strove against the Arian heresy, suffered exiled, and ultimately died because of his witness. In 380, upon entering Dolikha in northern Syria, an Arian woman hurled a roof tile down at him; it struck him in the head and killed him.

Before he died, however, Eusebius forgave his assailant and instructed those about him to not seek her out and punish her. In this, Eusebius follows in the footsteps of other Christian martyrs, such as Stephen, who sought God’s mercy upon the guilty. This powerful testimony of God’s mercy is dynamically rooted in the example of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, who even in his dying agony interceded on behalf of of his executioners.

One cannot get closer to the Gospel than this, and we witnessed a stunning example of this last week in a courtroom in South Carolina, where Dylann Roof, the killer of nine black men and women during a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston–was forgiven by survivors and relatives of the victims. There is no more important News than the Good News seen in that courtroom. It goes way beyond words. Jesus was there.

James M. Kushiner
Executive Director, The Fellowship of St. James