The Salty Peanut Gallery

Last Sunday morning just before the 8:15 early service, the unthinkable happened at First Baptist Church in Maryville, Illinois. A man came strolling down the aisle of the church seemingly to speak with the pastor. He pulled out a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol and opened fire. The first shot was deflected by the pastor’s Bible sending a spray of confetti into the air. The gunman fired three more times before his gun jammed. Two church members wrestled him to the ground as he pulled out a knife and began waving it around, slashing himself and the men who tackled him. They knocked him down between two sets of pews and held him there until police arrived. Rev. Fred Winters was pronounced dead at Anderson Hospital from a gunshot wound to the chest.

Even though I’ve never attended this church, nor have I ever met any of these people before in my life, I can’t help reading this story without finding it intensely personal. Certainly this is a severe blow to the body of Christ. Dr. Winters had been the pastor at First Baptist for nearly 22 years. His presence will be greatly missed. They will most certainly be in need of God’s comfort and wisdom as they face the days ahead. But my heart especially goes out to the family of Fred Winters, his wife, Cindy, and daughters, Alysia and Cassidy.

Someone once said, “The Pastor’s wife is the only woman I know who is asked to work full time without pay on her husband’s job, in a role no one has yet defined.” It is without question the most thankless role in the church. Heading up women’s ministries, organizing church fellowships, coordinating benevolent meals for the sick and bereaved, not to mention being homemaker, mom and confidant. No one else fully understands the pressures of the ministry like she does; no one knows the private pain, putting on her pastor’s wife smile in front of church people she knows are critical of her husband, always feeling guilty that her family is being sacrificed for the sake of the ministry. These are the untold struggles of the ministry wife.

Fred and Cindy met in the summer of 1984 and were married September 7, 1987. They came to serve at First Baptist Church that same year when the church consisted of only a small number of families. In 1995 they welcomed daughter Alysia into the family and in 1997 daughter Cassidy was born. In 2007, Fred and Cindy celebrated 20 years of marriage and 20 years of service at First Baptist Church Maryville.

Cindy Winters has written this post about her husband on the church website:

“Fred Winters was the love of my life. With his outgoing personality, charm, and sense of humor, he was such an easy person to love. He was my best friend, confidant, cheerleader, and the person I looked up to the most. Although he is gone from this earth, he will remain in my heart forever. I eagerly look forward to once again seeing his smiling face, hearing him laugh, and feeling his warm embrace.”

Lord, our hearts are moved by the news of this great tragedy. May the God of all comfort pour out your mercy on the wife of this beloved pastor and strengthen this family as they face the days ahead. We can’t imagine the pain they must be suffering right now, but we know that you see and that you know, and no matter how shocking a tragedy this might be, we know that nothing takes you by surprise. Please use this calamity to reveal yourself in new and greater ways and to bring glory to your name.

In case you didn’t see the 81st Annual Academy Awards show that aired a week ago, Sunday night, you may have missed the blatantly anti-Christian remarks uttered by Sean Penn in his acceptance speech for best actor in “Milk”, a film promoting the homosexual agenda. I of course was watching Matt Kenseth take the checkered flag in the Auto Club 500 at Fantana, California and consequently passed on watching the gala event. On the other hand, I would sooner have my eyeballs gouged out with red hot pokers then sit through that three-hour-plus Hollywood extravaganza, but I digress.

Penn’s remarks began with “You Commie, homo-loving sons of guns,” a phrase he later repeated (in case we missed it the first time). He went on to reference seeing “signs of hatred as our cars drove in tonight.” He was of course referring to that fun loving bunch over at Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas who showed up waving anti-gay signs along Hollywood Blvd. and outside the Kodak Theatre. Penn used that as a springboard for chastising supporters of Proposition 8, the California gay marriage ban that passed last fall.

“I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren’s eyes if they continue that way of support. We’ve got to have equal rights for everyone.”

Not willing to take these inflammatory remarks lying down, Dr. James White, director of Alpha and Omega Ministries has posted a Youtube video in response:

Here are the main points of Dr White’s rebuttal:

1) “I would simply point out that Hollywood has no basis for making moral and ethical pronouncements. One need only look at the situation in Hollywood these days in regards to illegitimate children, marriages, drug usage, suicide and things like that to recognize that Hollywood is the last place that we should be looking for any type of moral guidance.”

2) “It is quite obvious that Mr. Penn is making reference to Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church cult out of Kansas…a very small group of hate filled people who are false teachers and need to be identified as such. They do of course provide a useful foil for people like Mr. Penn to take their activities, their perspectives and just simply expand them out as if they are representative of sound biblical theology and those who believe the Bible to be the Word of God.”

3) “You heard Mr. Penn completely change the reality of history in regards to the situation in California with Proposition 8. This is not a ban on same sex marriage. It as a reaffirmation of the view of marriage that had existed in California from the beginning. And so what you have is the revolutionary attempt to change the definition of marriage.”

4) “He tried to hide the revolutionary rejection of the moral and ethical standards of the nation under the banner of equal rights. This has nothing to do with equal rights. Everyone has the right to marry. This is an issue of what marriage is.”

5) “Finally, I would simply say to Mr. Penn himself, ‘Upon what basis do you assert that I should reject the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and why do you think that you have the right to offend Christians while accepting an academy award?’ Mr. Penn stood in front of an audience of people that wildly applauded his words and in essence said that I should be ashamed to be a Christian. I should be ashamed to hold the same view that Christians have held down through the ages. If that’s not anti-Christian bigotry what is it? Can someone identify it for me please? Could Mr. Penn say these words to Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists? Or is it just because it’s Christians that it’s okay? That seems to be the case in our society today.”

Now if you’re like me, you find this kind of blatantly bigoted double standard absolutely maddening. Seriously, do people like Sean Penn really not see the outrageous hypocrisy in their intolerance toward Christianity? But then I’m reminded in 2 Corinthian 10 of the kind of warfare we’re up against. The Apostle Paul warned us of the mighty fortresses of Satan, “strongholds” of arguments and thoughts and lofty opinions “raised against the knowledge of God.”

Paul explains that “though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power” – 2 Corinthians 10:3-4. You see our tendency is to get all militant, demanding our rights and launching into all out assaults against the opposition. But victory cannot be won in this way using conventional human methodology. Protests, petitions, political activisms are useless in spiritual warfare.

As Dr White reminds us, “We are not given by God the authority to somehow do something about this in this life by force or anger, hatred or anything like that. God is the one who is the author of justice.” On the other hand White urges, “The Christian can respond with rationality, doesn’t have to respond with anger, nastiness, but just simply pointing out the many logical contradictions and the misuse of reasoning.” There’s only one way to take wrong thoughts and make them right and that is to replace error with what?

The TRUTH