Author: Wes White

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The Influence of a Mother and a Mother’s Mother and . . .

My Great Grandmother Roberta McMillan is the little girl on the bottom left; her parents are Florence Maupin McMillan (middle) and Clyde McMillan (right) with Jairus McMillan, her Grandfather on the left
How much do our mothers influence us? Probably more than we think.

Being a mother is a position of influence in a family, and it is highly significant.

The Apostle Paul had a young apprentice named Timothy. When Paul sent him to the Philippian church, he commended him this way: “I have no one else like him, who will show genuine concern for your welfare” (Phil. 2:21).

Paul taught Timothy and trained him, but Timothy didn’t come out of nowhere. Paul recognized that Timothy was the product of generations: “I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also” (2 Tim. 1:5). Sometimes people make a relatively clean break with the past, but in Timothy’s case, he was following the pattern of the generations.

Most of us tend to think of ourselves as our own person following our own ideas and preferences. We give little thought to how we may be following the patterns of the generations. The more I have learned about my family, the more I have realized that many of the patterns of my life are following patterns set by families long gone.

In my case, I am a minister. Now, I have never thought of that choice as coming out of nowhere.

My Father, Sam White, is a minister. Growing up, however, I never, to my knowledge, thought of being a minister. It wasn’t until my sophomore year of college that I thought about going in that direction. I think, though, that because my Dad was a minister, it wasn’t a very big jump for me to think of doing the work of a minister.

This isn’t only due to my Father. My Mother, Muriel, is a deeply spiritual woman who talked to my brother and me regularly about spiritual things.

But it’s not too surprising that my Mother is a spiritual woman. Her Father, my Grandfather, David Livingstone Keith, is a minister as well. My Mother was born in South Africa because her Father was serving there as a minister/missionary.

My Great Grandparents Clarence and Roberta McMillan Keith
But it’s not surprising that David Keith was a missionary in South Africa. He was born in Swaziland in the middle of the Republic of South Africa. His parents, Clarence Keith and Roberta McMillan Keith, had left their homes in southern Indiana and gone there in the 1920s as part of the wave of Methodist missionaries that went to South Africa at the turn of the 19th to 20th century.

In 2014, I went to a family reunion with 100 of the descendants of Clarence and Roberta. I was shocked at how alive faith was throughout the family. But really, this is not surprising since all three of their sons served as ministers and three of their five daughters married ministers!

Until this year, I would have considered this strong faith connection as being due to Clarence, and Clarence was a great man whom I admire deeply. However, I now tend to think of Roberta being the major conduit. Continue reading “The Influence of a Mother and a Mother’s Mother and . . .”

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Return to the Battlefield

“I’d like to hike the Union line trail.” I told the rangers at the counter of the Visitor Center of the Chickamauga National Military.”

They looked at me like I had styrofoam cups on my ears and then began to show me hiking maps.

Oops. No Union line trail. Of course, there was a Confederate Line Trail but no Union Line Trail. This was Georgia, after all.

Since 2011, I’ve had a fascination with battlefields. They combine the history of our nation together with the study of strategy. Seeing the terrain of the battlefield always gives me a fuller perspective than just reading about a battle.

But this visit was going to be different.

Over the past year, I had researched my own family history and genealogy. What I had come to realize is that my own family history intersects the great points of our nation’s history at so many points.

I had identified 15 of 16 of my 3rd Great Grandfathers (in other words, my grandparents’ great grandfathers). I was amazed to find that 6 of these 15 were soldiers in the Civil War, all on the Union side (I thought for sure I had found my first Confederate ancestor when I discovered that 3rd great William Smith had served in the 1st Alabama Cavalry. Turns out it was Union and accompanied Sherman on his infamous “March to the Sea.” Not surprisingly, he moved to Kentucky from his Georgia home shortly after the war). Continue reading “Return to the Battlefield”

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The English are Celtic?

When you think of Celtic heritage, you may think of the Irish, the Scots-Irish, the Welsh, or the Scots.

You probably don’t think of the English because they are called Anglo-Saxons after the Germanic tribes that invaded at the end of the Roman Empire. They also don’t claim a Celtic heritage the like the Irish, Welsh, and Scots do.

That’s wrong, says Bryan Sykes, on the basis of his research into the DNA of the people living in the Isles today.

Sykes describes his research in his book Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland. If you like detailed stories of scientific discovery, then you will love this book. If not, here’s a brief summary of what he found.

There are two main questions that arise in considering the genetic history of the British Isles. First, are all of the people who were there prior to the Roman invasion of common descent?

To answer the first: there is a basic, common “Celtic” substratum that exists throughout the Isles.

In answer to the second: not very much.

The Roman invasion left almost no mark on the DNA of the British Isles.

It is difficult, according to Sykes, to distinguish the DNA of the Normans, Vikings, and Anglo-Saxons. They were all basically from the same Germanic people group. The Normans were simply Vikings that extorted the King of France into giving them Normandy and then ended up conquering England.

These groups left a minor impact on the genetic makeup of the isles. Sykes estimates that their DNA constitutes about 10% of the DNA in the southwestern part of England. Above the Danelaw line, the percentage rises to around 15% and to a high of 20% in East Anglia.

Americans who came from England are often called WASPs: White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants. Based on Sykes’ research, they may need to be called WCPs: White, Celtic, Protestants. The English are much closer to the Irish and Scots than any of them would have believed.

For, according to Sykes, the English are basically Celtic.

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Will God Forgive Me?

A young man came into my office after our worship service one Sunday morning. He was clearly distraught. As he told me of the wrong things he had done and the guilt he had experienced, tears came to his eyes.

What message did I have for him?

The most basic message of Christianity: no matter what we have done, where we have been, or how much we have sinned, God freely offers to us a restored relationship with Him and the healing and forgiveness that go with it.

Guilt is a universal phenomenon. It is based on the fact that we have not done what we should have done and and not become what we should have become. It is a basic reality of human existence (this side of Adam’s fall).

What are we to do with the guilt we feel? The message of evangelical Christianity is to come, come back to God, come home, and receive forgiveness and new life.

I love the way Isaiah describes this. He compares a life of a restored relationship with God to eating at a banquet table. He says: “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost” (Is. 55:1).

This is a message not only for unbelievers. It is a message for believers. As Christians, we have not made our Christian life what it should have been. But: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

I have encountered so many people who have felt that they were worthless because they had failed. They failed God. They failed other people. They failed themselves.

The good news: God still wants to use you. He wants to restore you. He wants you to come home. He values you even others don’t, even when you don’t value yourself.

It’s crucial to see that though this forgiveness is free for us, it cost God something very weighty: His own Son. Isaiah 55 comes on the heels of Isaiah 53: “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (5–6).

He pays. We get life for free.

That is an astonishing and joyful message. It is a message for the weary soul burdened with guilt and for those searching for meaning. It’s the joy of this message that led people like Billy Graham to preach to millions. He wanted to let people know that the way to God was wide open because of Jesus.

In Isaiah 55, there are several pictures of what happens when people receive this offer.

One of these pictures of new life in God is this: “instead of briers the myrtle will grow” (v. 12). Since I’ve been in the South, I’ve grown to love the myrtle trees. I finally got tired of the ugly trees on the side of my driveway and replaced them with two myrtle trees this winter. I have great hope that these will beautify my landscape and symbolize the beauty of God’s forgiveness.

Isaiah also says that these things are “for an everlasting sign, that will endure forever.” I recently hiked the Chickamauga National Military Park. There are monuments everywhere: to man’s sacrifice and to his strength in the face of battle.

When people accept God’s forgiveness, they become monuments, too. Not to man’s strength and sacrifice, but to God’s sacrifice and grace.

And we can be sure that God’s Word will produce such monuments wherever we announce God’s free grace. “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (10–11).

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What Is Evangelicalism?

The overwhelming majority of white American evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in the last presidential election. This fact is as controversial as the president himself is, and, to many, it sullies the reputation of evangelicalism.

The important thing to note here is that we are talking about the majority of “white” evangelicals in America. It’s very important to note that there are also African-American evangelicals and Hispanic-American evangelicals who have a very different perspective.

Please also consider that all of the above are “American” evangelicals. There are also Korean evangelicals, African evangelicals, European evangelicals, Chinese evangelicals, and so on.

This shows us that evangelicalism is something independent of America, ethnicity, nationality, and even Donald Trump. Continue reading “What Is Evangelicalism?”

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