24 Hours for Darfur

Meet George Jetson

How much would you be willing to pay for a vehicle that will get you 330 mpg?  No, my finger did not get stuck on the "3" and I did not misplace my decimal.  That’s three-hundred thirty miles per gallon.  Well, fancy yourself in this three-wheeled, one-seater with your single-cylinder putting some G-Forces on your lips to the tune of zero to sixty in eleven seconds! 
At that rate you’d better keep Rosie out of the passenger seat because she might start losing bolts left and right.  A half-a-day later you might even reach the top speed of 95 mph.

I wonder how many miles per gallon I’d get walking?  I’m crazy efficient, though I’m unsure of my emissions rating.  Seriously, I can’t wait to see one of these things on the road.

Ice Ice Baby - The Podcast

Here’s my first foray into the wubulous world of podcasting.  I’m not exactly sure why I sound like I’m doing this from the inside of a 55 gallon drum and I’ll try to figure that out before next time.  The screeching sound is my wife ripping tape as she was wrapping Christmas gifts.  Aside from that I thought it turned out pretty well for a first-timer.  Later I’ll post some pics of the now famous ice storm.  For your listening enjoyment:

Download BruisedButNotBroken.mp3

Slavery? In Our World?

According to Free The Slaves there are 27 million slaves in the world today, though there is nowhere in the world today in which slavery is legal. Instead slavery is referred to in a variety of ways: debt bondage, bonded labor, attached labor, restavec, forced labor, indentured servitude, and human trafficking. The US State Department recognizes the reality of worldwide human trafficking and says that there are between 15-20,000 non-US citizens who are being trafficked in the US. Most slaves worldwide are women and children.

But what can an American do about it? Most instances of human trafficking occur in India, east Asia or Africa. How can an average person in the US make a difference? Let me make some suggestions.

First, become aware. A good one-stop resource site can be found at the Not For Sale Campaign. Learn, and then speak out. Express your concerns to your governmental representatives. But in the end, the State Department is already aware of the problem and political forces are already at work to bring pressure on those who deal in human trafficking.

Our other options will challenge our economic interests. One of the reasons there is such a thing as forced labor is because Americans demand everything to be as inexpensive as possible. The Levi’s you wear are likely made in another country by a woman who works 14-16 hour days for wages that even she and her family cannot live on. You see, the US has labor laws that protect people from this sort of thing. A great many other countries around the world do not, and we don’t complain because it benefits our pocketbooks.

But Christians must serve a higher cause than economic prosperity. Some things are more important than saving a few dollars here and there. So pay attention to the things you buy. Is it made in Sri Lanka? Bangladesh? India? China? If it is there is a good chance slave labor (or slave-like labor) helped produce it. Can we knowingly participate in that? Some will object that we really have no choice. But do we understand that that sort of language is the language of slavery? Do we really have no choice? Even in our city of 20,000 there is at least one second-hand store.

Lastly, we must break our own slavery to things. Yes, clothes are a necessity, but clothes are still made by tailors and can still be found from sources other than usual ones. As a parent with small children I’ve become more aware of how much of the stuff that is advertised to them on TV is a) worthless junk, and b) made in some impoverished country so that Americans can happily buy them for next-to-nothing. Perhaps we need to turn our televisions off so that we are not inundated with the constant barrage of advertising that feeds into the problem.

Christmas is coming. What sort of choices will we make in our purchases? My wife and I have committed that we will no longer buy the cheap junk for our kids just because it makes their eyes light up for 30 seconds - only for the thing to be thrown in a corner shortly thereafter. It isn’t worth it either economically for us as a family or conscientiously when we consider who likely made it and at what personal cost. Our Sunday School class at church usually has a dirty Santa gift exchange with a limit of $5 or $10. This year we’ve committed to pool our collective $5-$10 and use it to help either a local ministry, person in need, or some other missions or benevolence cause around the globe.

These things may provide some examples of where we can start. Where will you start?

Christo-fascism?

I just recently ran across this post: The Jig is Up: American Evangelicals and Fascist Seduction by Paul Grabill, pastor of State College Assembly of God in State College, Pennsylvania.  He gives a strong challenge to consider our true allegiance as American Christians.  Check out a few salient quotes:

I’m saying it as clearly as I know how to say it. Christian patriotism
in America has crossed the line into clear idolatry. We evangelicals
are very close to apostasy, and I can tell you that many of our
brothers and sisters around the world can see it. I believe this
idolatry—not Sun Myung Moon, not the DaVinci Code, not Hillary
Clinton–is our our last-days deception. Those other things are bad,
but there’s little danger that evangelicals will be deceived by them.

It ain’t deception if it ain’t seductive.

and then this one:

It’s time for American Christians to repent (turn around). Yes,
liberals need to repent for selling out the core of the gospel, but
conservatives also need to repent of our nationalistic idolatry. Truth
will set us free, not leaders that promise us security by means of an
endless war and torture. Our rage toward the enemies of America has
blinded us. We don’t even recognize God’s Word when we hear it applied
to our times. Can it get worse than that? Jesus said, “My sheep hear my
voice.”

What’s worse, spiritually lost people in America see our hypocrisy when
we don’t. No wonder our evangelism efforts have flat-lined. How can we
convince them of the Truth of Jesus if we aren’t convinced ourselves
(i.e., “What Jesus taught doesn’t work in the ‘real’ world)?

Sadly I’ve actually heard long-time church members who would claim to be spiritually mature believers repeat that last phrase almost verbatim multiple times recently.  The church needs to wake up.

Divest for Darfur

Our world is experiencing a modern-day tragedy that is largely underreported.  The problem is that Sudan doesn’t have anything we want or need.  Thus, when two million people are displaced from their homes, hundreds of thousands are murdered, hundreds of thousands more are beaten and raped and those poor souls have to compete with the chaos that is Iraq, they go largely unnoticed.  Well, I’ve noticed.  And I hope you have, too.  We can do something.  Will we do something?

Have you heard of divestment?  It’s one of the key tactics that was successfully used to end apartheid in South Africa and it can help end the violence in Darfur, too. 

To "divest" means to withdraw investments from companies who are supporting the genocide in Darfur by doing business with the government of Sudan.   

Join me in fighting the genocide by urging Fidelity and other investment institutions to divest their holdings from any and all companies doing business with the government of Sudan. 

Click this link to sign the Divest for Darfur petition now and help cut off financial support for the government-sponsored violence in Darfur!

Diplomacy is crucial, but economic pressure may prove an even more powerful way to force Sudan to cooperate with international efforts to end the genocide.

Sudan has been very responsive to economic pressure in the past so we have reason to hope that they will pay heed to the divestment efforts.

Please do not stand by while the violence continues - you can make a difference.

Click here to add your name to the Divest for Darfur petition to Fidelity now.

Thank you for your help.

——————————————–

The Save Darfur Coalition is an alliance of over 180 faith-based, advocacy and humanitarian organizations whose mission is to raise public awareness about the ongoing genocide in Darfur and to mobilize a unified response to the atrocities that threaten the lives of more than two million people in the Darfur region.  To learn more, please visit http://www.SaveDarfur.org

Evangelism As Apologetics

A year or so ago I took one of my really rare visits to my local LifeWay store.  As I scanned the theology section I noticed that about half of all the theology books were in a section labeled "Apologetics."  One whole shelf consisted of nothing but EvangeCubes.

Theology and evangelism seem to be dominated by apologetics.  Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with apologetics, per se.  There were times the apostle Paul used a form of apologetics in his preaching, though I don’t believe in the way apologetics are predominantly used today.  Maybe I should make an important distinction here.  In The Great Giveaway, David Fitch writes about evidentiary apologetics.  That would include things such as the classical arguments for the existence of God (teleological, cosmological, etc.) along with the new arguments for Intelligent Design as well as information to combat various cults.

The apostle Paul used a different apologetic as did, it appears to me, most of the other New Testament writers and Jesus himself.  Their apologetic was at least two-fold.  First, it was a faith-based apologetic.  It was an argument based upon God’s activity in creation, Israel’s history and finally in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah.  Paul’s long sermon in Acts 13 is a good example of this kind of apologetic, as is the book of Romans where Paul draws in creation, the stories of Adam and Abraham and the fulfillment of God’s faithfulness/righteousness through Jesus the Christ.  Telling the story of God and inviting people to live into that story rather than the alternative stories of the day - such as the story of the Roman Empire where Caesar was declared Lord and if you and your city or town were in trouble it made sense to declare that "Caesar Saves!"

But to enter into God’s story you must give up the story you are living your life by now.  N.T. Wright notes that this was the exact language Josephus used when he called the Jews to give up the notion that God was working through Israel, but that God had gone over to the Romans.  In fact, the phrase Josephus used was, "Repent and believe."  Forsake the old story that God is with Israel because that is a lie.  He is now with the Romans.  This is repentance.  Then trust me, that this is what God is doing.  Jesus’ message, and the apostolic message, was a call to repent of this notion that God would act through a violent revolt against the Romans.  That is actually rebellion.  Sin.  Repent, then, and follow Jesus.  This, they said, is what it means to do what Abraham did - to believe God.

Secondly it was an embodied apologetic.  There was no greater argument for who God is and what God has done and is doing than for his people to embody the life of Christ in their world, not only in some individualistic morality, but as a community of faith.  It was the people of God living the kingdom kind of life together in their world through a new social ethic, sexual ethic, and economic ethic that reflected the reality of Christ in them, and of them in Christ (see, for instance, Romans 6 and all of 1 & 2 Corinthians).  This embodied apologetic, in fact, is exactly what revolutionized the Roman Empire after the death of Jesus.  People weren’t by-and-large persuaded by slick arguments, but by this new community of faith where love reigned supreme.

And these continue to be our most powerful apologetics today as well.  People will not, by and large, be convinced that Jesus is Lord because of an argument about Intelligent Design.  They will not forsake their ways (repent) in favor of the way of Christ because Ray Comfort says a banana demonstrates incontrovertible evidence of the existence of God.  But they just might when we tell and re-tell the story of God in his world through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, through Daniel and finally and ultimately through Jesus - and then on down to you and me.  They just might when they see an embodied apologetic of the kingdom life lived out in this world in dramatic ways - socially, sexually and economically.  When they see that we love our neighbors as ourselves and that we even love our enemies.  When they see our faithfulness to one another sexually.  When they see that economic generosity flows out of us and into the lives of the needy all around us.  This is, I believe, an evangelistic apologetic for a postmodern world.

Your Killing Me

I want to give a follow-up to yesterday’s post.  I spent much of the afternoon yesterday reading the articles that the BP story linked to which can be found at the Evangelical Outpost blog.  On the whole they offer some very good perspectives.  I would rank two of them as very good and another as outstanding.

Outstanding
Darrell Cole, Assistant Professor of Religion at Drew University

"To torture someone, or to countenance your government torturing
someone, is to admit that you fear death more than you fear displeasing
God and it is to admit that you love something more than you love God.
To torture someone is to betray a disordered love for something that
can never be a proper ultimate good. Not even our society or our own
lives, as much as we love them, are that good."

Very Good
Robert Vischer, Associate Professor at the University of St. Thomas school of Law in Minneapolis

"Self-preservation is not the ultimate value underlying Christian
ethics, and recognition of that fact must underlie any attempt to
articulate a Christian response to torture. The specter of terrorists
holding information that could save thousands of lives does not alter
or eviscerate the Gospel’s call to transform our world through an
abiding and uncompromising ethic of love. Foremost in any framework
purporting to implement this ethic is a prohibition against using our
fellow humans instrumentally, as a convenient means to our chosen ends,
no matter how noble."

Mark Liederbach, Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

"One can’t help in the final analysis recall the words of Caiaphas as he
argued that crucifying Jesus was the only way to save the way of life
the Pharisees had come to love and cherish: "It is expedient for you
that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation
should not perish." Caiaphas was right in the sense that his prediction
did prove to be of great value for the many, but this does not justify
the ethic under which he functioned. One would need to be perfectly
omniscient in order to have proportionalism or utilitarianism be the
guiding moral principle. For those of us who are not omniscient,
commands and principles must lead the way and shape how a utilitarian
calculus is employed. Certainly one could foresee that if employed
Krauthammer’s Caiaphas ethic may indeed provide the results he argues
for–but at what price? The argument may sound good, but we must be
careful lest we forget that this "Caiaphas ethic" is far more dangerous
than it appears. Indeed, it can even be used to justify the murder of
God."

These are well worth your time as together we consider a Christian response to torture.

The Biblical Docrtine Of Hair

Several SBC bloggers, not least of all Wade Burleson, have been warning us against the increasing narrowing of cooperation within the Southern Baptist Convention.  There seems to be a growing trend toward neo-fundamentalism.  Could this be where we’re headed?

HT: Gary Snowden

McLaren’s Advice To Obama

I’m sure those two names, perhaps especially together as they are, will bring out the shrill voices of some.  So, if that weren’t enough, let me add the name Jim Wallis to the mix so that the words that follow can be entirely discounted.

OK.  Now that we’ve settled that, let me point you to a blog post that Brian McLaren has written to Barak Obama.  If you are one of those people who believes that you just might learn something from someone who doesn’t think exactly like you then you might want to take a look.  If you’re not one of those people then you can get back to whatever it was you were doing.  Check it out here.

One thing I would add, and sort-of wish that McLaren had done, is that I would hope that what he writes in this post would be read by every Presidential candidate.  If they all followed it, now that would be refreshing.

Next Page »