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Criminals and Murderers carve out a Career among God’s People

Christian forgiveness is so complete that in the Bible there are men and women with dark pasts who rise up to become premier role models and leaders. Paul writes to this effect in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11:

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Particular Role Models in the Faith and their Misdeeds, etc., prior to their Conversion to Faith in God or to their Calling

Rahab	Prostitute	Josua 2:1; 6:17.25; Hebrews 11:31
Moses	Murderer	Exodus 2:11-15; comp. 18:4
Simon (Disciple of Jesus)	Zealot = Violent Revolutionary	Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13
Zacchaeus	White Collar Criminal	Luke 19:2-10
Paul	Murderer, Violent Fanatic	Acts 9:1; 8:3; Galatians 1:13-14

Particular Role Models in the Faith and their Crimes, etc., prior to their Conversion to Faith in God or to their Calling

Noah	Naked and Drunk	Genesis 9:21-24
Jacob	Deceiver, Legacy Hunter	Genesis 27:36+12; comp. Deu-teronomy 27:18
David	Murderer and Adulterer	2 Samuel 11:2-12:5; Psalm 51, in part. verse 2
Peter	Cuts off the Ear of an Official, denies Jesus by swearing that he does not know Him	John 18:10+26; Mark 14:66-72; Matthew 26:69-75; Luke 22:56-62; John 18:15-18+25-27

Wrongdoings of other Members of God’s People, who are not necessarily to be considered Role Models

Levi	Murderer	Genesis 49:5-7
Lot	Commits Incest while drunk	Genesis 19:30-38
Rebecca	Deceiver	Genesis 27:12; comp. Deuteronomy 27:18
Judah	Prostitution, Incest	Genesis 38
Gideon	Seducer, innumerable Affairs with Women	Judges 8:22-33; comp. his Son in Judges 9
Samson	Desecrator of a Corpse, Drunk-enness, Rape, Concubinage	Judges 13-16; Hebrews 11:32
Couple in Corinth	Incest (with Stepmother)	1 Corinthians 5:1-2 (comp. Le-viticus 18:18); 2 Corinthians 2:5-11

What applies to severe sin in 1 Corinthians prior to conversion to faith in God even applies to severe sins which are committed by Christians. The best examples are the Christians in Corinth. They lived in incest (1 Corinthians 5:1-2) and prompted Paul, among other things, to write the first letter to the Corinthians so that they would be excluded and the second letter to the Corinthians so that they would be received again after repenting (2 Corinthians 2:5-11)! Paul confronts the church, which had just finally managed to draw conclusions and exclude the concerned individuals, with what had come to their mind, namely not to immediately accept those whom God has forgiven back into the church. Paul justifies the ‘forgiveness’ (verses 9-10) as follows: “I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him. . . . in order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes“ (verses 8, 11)!

Do people in our churches have similar backgrounds about which they can speak openly, either from before the time they became Christians or since they have been Christians? Or is something still hanging on there? Are we not often stricter than God, who has long since forgiven them?

There are a lot of women who are active in the right to life movement who in the past had an abortion. Now, after having received God’s forgiveness, they willingly help others and indeed warn others. They perform an important and ‘effective’ service. And yet many report that they do not receive support from their churches at all and rather that listeners are uncomfortably affected when they hear about their pasts.

Several theses underscore this:

1. Forgiveness is what defines the essence of Jesus‘ church. Even as forgiveness presupposes change of mind and deed, we have to forgive as Christ himself forgives. For this very reason the Lord’s Supper is a permanent mark of Jesus’ church.
2. The Church is a home for the homeless, since many people who experience fundamental changes in their lives lose their old home forever and often find a new one in Jesus‘ church. When Paul became a Christian, he lost all his old friends but unfortunately had trouble finding a new home in the church. This is due to the fact that many doubted this sudden change in Paul.
3. The special thing about the Christian faith is that an admission of guilt and forgiveness belong together. The admission of guilt does not lead to condemnation but rather to forgiveness. However, there is no forgiveness for concealing, trivializing, making excuses, blameshifting or sweeping things under the carpet, but rather for accepting responsibility and admitting one’s guilt. Forgiveness without confession is a cheap brushing aside, while confession without forgiveness is self-mutilation.
4. Self-criticism belongs to the essence of being a Christian. Christians are not better but they have it better. According to Luther, being a Christian means one beggar telling another beggar where there is something to eat. For this reason Christians do not gloss over their pasts before and after they convert to Christianity. Rather, they point out that they are only what they are through the grace of God. For instance, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:9-10: ´”For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.

No religion knows self-criticism like Old Testament Judaism and New Testament Christianity. It does not matter whether this has always shaped its history or not. The errors of their most important leaders have been laid bare and all too often God has called upon outsiders to bring his people back to their senses. “In contrast to the Holy Scriptures of Mohammed, the Hebrew Bible is not a book but rather a library. It is a colorful tapestry of accounts which an entire people wove together over millennia. No misdeed on the part of the children of Israel is left out of this incomparable convolution. No wrongdoing by its greatest king is concealed. Paul Badde comments that “up to the New Testament one can look at each book of the Bible as an objection, contradiction or a critical commentary of its own earlier history.’ The result of this historical frankness is that since that time self-criticism in the Judeo-Christian world has counted as a virtue: it is a sign of strength and not an admission of weakness. In Islam it is different: a critique of one’s own history? Unthinkable, a blasphemy! It would pull the foundation out from under revelation. It would be an insult to the prophet. Therefore, it is the case that up until today in countries shaped by Islam there is neither freedom of speech nor debate in freely elected parliaments“ (the Jewish author Hannes Stein). There is no religion where the adherents of their own religion come away so badly as in the Old and New Testaments. The teaching that Jews and Christians are sinners and are capable of the worst deeds is something that is shown quite plainly in the Bible. In the Old Testament it is not the pagan peoples, nor is it the Romans and Greeks in the New Testament whose atrocities and fallacious outlooks stand in the center of things. Rather, it is the alleged or actual people of God. The Bible does not dispense belief and unbelief according to races or nations. For that reason pagans and unbelieving Jews are designated with the same words in both the Old and the New Testaments. Christianity itself becomes a heinous religion if it denies the true power of God (2 Timothy 3:5: “. . . having a form of godliness but denying its power”) or places human laws and commandments in the place of divine revelation (Mark 7:1-13; Isaiah 28:13-14). The Jews are for instance criticized because in studying the Bible they overlook the essence, namely Jesus (John 5:39). They strive after God, but they do so without following him (Romans 10: 2-3) and because they call upon God and his word but actually do not live according to it (Romans 2).

Who is scared of Evangelical Terrorists?

Against maliciously equating Evangelicals with Islamic Terrorists

Within three days I found the following randomly chosen reports about Islamists, which were published almost simultaneously in practically all major media in Germany: in the Pakistan capital of Islamabad, an Islamic suicide bomber had killed four UN employees at the local headquarters of the World Food Program when a bomb he was carrying exploded.

• For an entire day Islamists paralyzed the headquarters of the Pakistani Army by placing it under fire and taking hostages. Now 30,000 Pakistani soldiers are attempting to move against the Islamists and compensate for the disgrace.
• A one-hour German language video with an Islamic group tied to Al Qaeda, in which German and German-speaking Islamists threatened Germany, shows background pictures of terror training camps in which numerous blond or European looking children are conspicuous.
• In Yemen the government is fighting a desperate battle against the Islamic Al Qaeda network, which wants to expand Yemen into its new operational headquarters. Although the future of Islamic terrorism could be decided here, Yemen is missing international support.
• In Hamburg a ten-man Islamic terror cell that traveled in March to Hindu Kush was discovered. In Germany there is estimated to be around 80 trained Islamic terrorists at present living in the country.
• In Berlin in one fell swoop 155 officials were searching through apartments in order to move against a group of 15 Islamists who are suspected of planning attacks against Russia and who wanted to defect.
• A book about honor killings that was about to be released was withdrawn at the last minute by the publisher Droste Verlag due to fear of acts of vengeance by Islamists.

That was all just within three days!

And Evangelicals are compared with such Islamists in the sme media? Absurd! Unfounded! Malevolent! Even to compare my peaceful Muslim neighbors with such terrorists would be a disgrace, but peaceful, often pacifistically oriented Evangelicals?

Evangelicals are allowed to pay required fees for German state TV ARD and ZDF television so that with conspiratoranial means they can ‘prove’ and advance what cannot be demonstrated – that Evangelicals are a type of Christian Islamists. The fact is: there are no Evangelical terrorists, no suicide attackers, and no Evangelical network which is planning to conduct something that brings death and violence. Anything else is virtual nonsense and the worst type of slander.

Where is it necessary to search for weapons in Evangelical churches? Where are Evangelical terror camps being maintained, army headquarters attacked, and skirmishes conducted against 30,000 soldiers?

Who is scared of traveling to a particular country for vacation because Evangelicals live there? Where are the Evangelicals who are threatening journalists who hold dissenting ideas or threatening their families? Why do Evangelicals not come under the rubric of constitutional protection, either in Germany or anywhere else in the world?

And in addition to this: in spite of the non-stop horror reports about Islamism, we are – and rightly so – repeatedly reminded and even remind ourselves again and again that we have to distinguish between Islamists and peaceful Muslims. For once just consider the thought that the 1.8 million Evangelicals in Germany would want to limit freedom with violence. And while no one has witnessed anything like that, at the same time several thousand Islamists keep us on edge?

In the case of 400 million Evangelicals, in contrast, it seems as if one does not have to differentiate between Terrorists (wherever they might be) and the millions and millions of peaceful adherents. One negative example is enough to make everyone responsible for their counterparts! Even if there were to be one single Evangelical terrorist or an individual who even dreamed of being a terrorist, one would still have to clearly distinguish between that individual and the millions and millions of peaceful Evangelicals.

One more question to pose to ARD and ZDF television: Is it not also an aspect of religious freedom that one is to be protected from governmental and semi-governmental institutions? Does our state media know that there is no persecution of minorities where the media is not playing a central role? And does our state media know that nowadays it is often the media who more than anyone else decides which minorities are seen as victims and which ones are leprous and themselves held accountable for the situation?

My book on internetpornography in Russian

My book on internetpornography (‘Internetpornografie’, SCM Hänssler, 2008) has been published in Russian.

Thomas Schirrmacher. Prawda o pornografii. übersetzt von I. W. Proswirjakowoj, Lek-torat W. S. Rjagusowa. Copyright: Ewangelskij aljans. Moskau: Wjatka, 2009. 224 S.

It is available in Russian internet book shops, eg:
(But as I do not know Russian, I better do not provide any links.)

• http://www.books.ru/shop/
• http://www.my-shop.ru/shop/books/510051.html
• http://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/4835068/

I am in discussion with another publisher to provide an edition in Western Europa.

• The cover is here.
• The back cover is here.
• The impressum is here.

The Right to Life Movement as a Human Rights Movement

The right to life movement has always understood itself to be a human rights movement. Above all it advocates the right to life for those who cannot represent themselves. While at the beginning it only had to do with the unborn, societal and medical developments in the meantime have brought along additional spheres: the aged, the sick, and the handicapped as well as test tube embryos.

Nowadays the unborn individual is in a sense not a person who is received, but rather, and contrary to all logic, not a person until he or she is received – an unwanted child does not have a right to life.

Human rights means, however, that a person is endowed with dignity before encountering any other person or institution such as the family or the state. Every other person, and a fortiori the state, finds us imbued with dignity. No one creates it by the power of his or her office.

The prohibition against killing the innocent belongs to the essence of a constitutional state. All opponents of the death penalty in fact expect from the state that they will not even kill anyone who is guilty. But the most innocent and the most helpless, those who are in a mother’s womb, are left without any government protection when those who should actually protect them more than everyone else, the mother, father, and physician, determine their death.

At present there is one national or European anti-discrimination measure and guideline chasing the other. However, the fact that the unborn are discriminated against, or additionally the handicapped or unloved, or even worse, those because of their gender, does not concern those who say that protection against discrimination so far does not go far enough.

Every unborn child is, from the moment it is conceived, a person who has a claim on the same human rights as every member of the human community. His or her life is to be protected unconditionally, and to kill that individual is unthinkable.

As are all human rights, the human rights of embryos are also independent of others’ consciences, for instance the consciences of mothers or physicians.

Cases where an individual can still be legally killed include the situation where it is done to prevent that individual from killing (e.g., self-defense, the self-defense of the state) – something that is excluded with respect to the unborn.  Another case where an individual can be legally killed is in a grave situation where there is a collision of obligations, one in which life is pitted against life (e.g., just war, self-sacrifice for another individual), but never, however, in order to defend a lesser value.