One of His best stories was about a guy who had been robbed and left for dead on the roadside. Two religious leaders walked by, noticed the body, and kept walking.

A third guy, with a reputation despised by his contemporary culture, stopped to help.

He changed a life.

Jesus asked, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The religious leader listening answered, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus answered, “Go and do likewise.”

+++

DILLON BURROUGHS is a writer on issues of spirituality.
He also serves as an activist for World Vision.
Dillon lives with his wife, Debbie, and three children in Tennessee.

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Or you can just email me at dillon at dillonburroughs dot org.

Thanks!

Focus on the Family, the organization founded by James Dobson, is often criticized by the media for its stand on political issues. However, their latest effort is one I highly applaud.

From their news release,

About 1,300 people flooded into New Life Church in Colorado Springs on Saturday. Their mission: To learn more about the 700 kids in Colorado’s foster care system waiting for adoptive families.

Focus on the Family and the other sponsors of the Wait No More event had hoped 100 families would feel led to welcome a child home.

“We are thrilled that nearly 250 families started the process of adoption from foster care, and we will continue our efforts until we are the first state with no more waiting kids in foster care,” said Kelly Rosati, Focus on the Family’s senior director of Sanctity of Human Life.

Jim Daly, president and CEO of Focus on the Family, knows what it’s like to be an orphan. He shares his story in his book, Finding Home.

Daly said the momentum needs to continue.

“The vision is clear from the Lord to take care of the widow and the orphan,” he said. “I don’t want to turn my back on that. We’ll do what it takes to use Colorado as an example.

“I think the Lord will honor us because we’re taking care of the least among us, and for that reason I’m excited about it.”

When Christians choose to step up and care for children in need of a family, it is a cause for celebration.

Great job, Focus on the Family!

For more information, see http://www.icareaboutorphans.org.

If you listened in and enjoyed the discussion, please let someone at WMBI know by emailing mornings@moody.edu or calling 312-274-9624. Thanks!

I’ll be talking about “Obama and Young Evangelicals.” Listen live at wmbi.mbn.org and maybe even email or call the station to tell them you liked the show (That is, if you actually like it.). Also, please pray for God’s wisdom and blessing for this one. I’m going to need it.

If you are a college student or college-aged (18-29ish), please let me know your thoughts on any of the following:

-Why do you think many young evangelicals voted for Obama? (I’m especially interested if you did.)

-Why are young evangelicals willing to overlook some serious Christian social or moral issues to vote for Obama? (Including the big ones like abortion and same-sex marriage.)

-How big of a factor do you think race was in the election? Was it the deciding factor, or only one of many?

-What positives could an Obama administration provide for young evangelicals? (Such as health care, bringing troops home from the Middle East, economy, jobs, education, racial issues.)

-What concerns should Christians (of all ages) have about Obama’s popularity among young evangelicals (if any)?

-What practical steps can people take to support our new president while standing strong on Christian convictions?

You can email your comments via this blog, via facebook, email me, or even text me via email (if it’s short).

Thanks for your help on this. I intend to post a follow up after the Friday morning interview (details here).

DILLON BURROUGHS is a writer on issues of spirituality.
He also serves as a social justice advocate for World Vision.
Dillon lives with his wife, Debbie, and three children in Tennessee.

But then someone asked me to talk on the radio about Obama and evangelicals. I said, “Sure, why not?” I had no idea what I was getting into.

I found out after accepting the interview that many Christians don’t like Barack Obama. It’s not because he’s African American; it’s because of abortion, his views on same-sex marriage, war, and a whole lot more. But then I said the Bible gave two clear concepts for relating to our president: pray and submit.

People didn’t like that. They wanted me to call Democrats the devil and lead a movement to impeach Obama and make Jesus president. But I didn’t.

So now I’m the bad guy.

I get hate mail, hate Facebook-mail, hate email, and hate-blog comments—mostly from Christians.

Let me be honest for a minute: that just sucks. Jesus said A) love God, B) love your neighbor, and C) love your enemies. I don’t consider Obama my God nor my enemy but he’s my neighbor (not literally, but I’m originally from Indiana, so close enough). So I love Barack Obama. If you’re a Christian, pick options B or C and do likewise.

Then pray for him. He has a tougher job than you do and if he does blow it, it won’t help any of us. Plus, if you keep making Christians look stupid, we’ll eventually become the bad guys (we often already are) and people will ignore us completely instead of listening to our ideas to make this country a better place.

You don’t have to vote for someone to love them.

But if you’re a Christian, you have to love Barack Obama.

Whether you like it or not.

DILLON BURROUGHS is a writer on issues of spirituality.
He also serves as a social justice advocate for World Vision.
Dillon lives with his wife, Debbie, and three children in Tennessee.

“What is a hate crime?” you ask. Hate crime is a potential piece of legislation that would make certain speech punishable by law. In other words, if I made a comment about Muslims or Native Americans or Homosexuals that someone considered offensive, I could be fined, arrested, or even jailed.

This could be applied to conversations, but typically is used in public communications, which even includes sermons by ministers. In other words, a pastor could say a person who is a Buddhist will go to hell when he or she dies and later be arrested for it.

“Aren’t you blowing this out of proportion?” you may be thinking. Consider this: In Canada, where hate crime law is already in place, a pastor said some words about Muslims that some Muslims didn’t like. They took it to the law and the pastor was sentenced (yes, “sentenced”) to 300 hours of community service in a local Muslim community.

In other Western nations were hate crime laws are in effect, there have been cases where ministers have called homosexuality a sinful practice and have been sued. This could even be applied to speaking out on issues such as premarital sex being sinful for Christians to practice or speaking out on a biblical view of divorce or church leadership standards.

America cherishes free speech. However, there are ratings on movies and video games for a reason. Americans can say what they want, but I can’t yell “Fire!” in a theater or “Bomb!” in an airport without getting into trouble. However, both free speech and religious freedom is in trouble if people of a particular religious persuasion (Christian or otherwise) cannot say what their religious teachings teach during their assemblies.

Why am I talking about this now? Because as new political leaders take office in 2009, hate crime bills will once again be in discussion. It will be pitched as helping end racism and discrimination, issues I do care deeply about (and you probably do, too).

However, hate crime law will end up hurting religious free speech. I want anyone who cares about religious freedom to know NOW so we can help people understand this issue when it hits FOX and CNN in a few months.

So when hate crimes start coming up in conversation or on the news, tell people you hate hate crimes.

Why? I tell people it’s because I love Jesus and want to be able to tell other people what His favorite book says about life. But even non-Christians can often agree that they don’t want a law telling them they can’t comment on controversial areas of life.

And that’s why I hate hate crimes. My name is Dillon Burroughs and I approve this message.

I spoke with my students about it this morning and felt the need for someone to respond with what my university is really all about and inject a little truth in love in the process. I’ve copied my post to Channel 12 below which you may end up seeing on other online news sources. Please feel free to comment or tell Obama I’m praying for him today.

ORIGINAL COMMENTS AS POSTED AT NEWS 12 Chattanooga:

Racial Slurs toward Obama at Tennessee Temple

Submitted by Dillon Burroughs (not verified) on November 13, 2008 – 12:41pm.

I teach at Tennessee Temple and need to share a couple of comments on this Obama racial slur debacle.

First, Tennessee Temple has made significant gains in minority student enrollment and involvement in recent years and has a clear desire to increase diversity on its campus.

As a school, it is improving in its fight against racism. If it wasn’t, I would not teach there. If it stops improving, I will personally quit my job so an African American professor can teach in my place. I care that deeply about ending racism.

Second, Tennessee Temple consists of hundreds of students from many cultures and maturity levels. Sometimes students do dumb stuff like call the President-elect N*#%&.

I’ll apologize for the whole school on this one and say I’m sorry it happened. Every person I know on Tennessee Temple’s campus is sick that this event took place. We are students and faculty who love Jesus and love people, including Barack Obama.

Regardless of the controversy surrounding who wrote the comment, whether white, African American, or otherwise, it was highly disrespectful and inappropriate.

It ultimately doesn’t matter whether a student did it to get attention or whether the offender was white or African American. The fact is that a student wrote a highly inappropriate comment about our nation’s President-elect. That sucks and should not continue.

So guilty student, whoever you are, stop making yourself, your school, and Jesus look like redneck racists and Klan member wannabes by your racial slurs.

Instead, let’s agree to pray for our nation’s new leader and do all we can to help promote the love of Jesus.

And stop calling people Nigga because Jesus hates racism. Plus, I think He even likes good grammar.