When Violence Kills Itself

by Shane Claiborne

I’ve always heard the old adage, “violence is a weapon of the weak.” But after events like the Virginia Tech massacre, it’s easy to think that violence has ultimate power. After all, we’ve learned history through the lens of war. And we read the news through acts of violence rather than the hidden acts of love that keep hope alive.

But there is a common thread in many of the most horrific perpetrators of violence that begs our attention – they kill themselves. Violence kills the image of God in us. It is a cry of desperation, a weak and cowardly cry of a person suffocated of hope. Violence goes against everything that we are created for--to love and to be loved--so it inevitably ends in misery and suicide. When people succumb to violence it ultimately infects them like a disease or a poison that leads to their own death. Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus with a violent kiss, ends his life by hanging himself with a noose. After his notorious persecutions, the Emperor Nero’s story ends as he stabs himself. Hitler passed out suicide pills to all his heads of staff, and ended his life as one of the most pitifully lonely people to walk the earth. We see the same in the case of Columbine, the 2007 Amish school shootings, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and this recent Virginia Tech massacre--each ends in suicide.

Violence is suicidal. Suicide rates of folks in the military and working the chambers of death row execution are astronomical; they kill themselves as they feel the image of God dying in them.

It is in moments like these violent times that grace looks so magnificent. It is in the shadow of such violence, as was the case after the Amish school shooting, that the victims' grace to the murderer’s family shines so brightly. Sometimes all the peacemakers need to do is practice revolutionary patience, and steadfast hope--for the universe bends toward justice, and the entire Christian story demonstrates the triumph of love. And it makes it even more scandalous to think of killing someone who kills--for they, more than anyone in the world, need to hear that they are created for something better than that.

I am reminded of a letter I got from someone currently on death row. After reading some of my writing, he wrote to me to share that he was a living testimony against the myth of redemptive violence (the idea that violence can bring redemption or peace). This fellow on death row told me that the family of his victim argued that he should not be killed for what he did, that he was not beyond redemption, and so he did not receive the death penalty for his crime. “That gave me a lot of time to think about grace,” he said. And he became a Christian in prison. Another story of scandalous love and grace.

So in these days after Easter, even as we see the horror of death, may we be reminded that in the end love wins. Mercy triumphs. Life is more powerful than death. And even those who have committed great violence can have the image of God come to life again within them as they hear the whisper of love. May the whisper of love grow louder than the thunder of violence. May we love loudly.

35 Million Ways to Be Black

Look at these black college students today. They’re worried about somebody black jumping in their face and saying, “You’re not black enough. You’re a Harvard kid, a turncoat, a traitor, you speak standard English, you get straight A’s—those are all white things.” And they had to put up with that all their lives, probably. I give a speech to the black freshmen at Harvard each year, and I say, “You can like Mozart and ice hockey . . .”—and then I used to say “golf,” but Tiger took over golf!—“and Picasso and still be as black as the ace of spades. You know, there are 35 million black people in this country and there are 35 million ways to be black.” When I say that, I get a standing ovation.

--Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

What Patriotism Requires

Government is set up--and here's what a Declaration of Independence is about--government is set up by the people in order to fulfill certain responsibilities: equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. And according to the Declaration of Independence, when the government violates those responsibilities, then, and these are the words of the Declaration of Independence, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish the government.

In other words, the government is not holy; the government is not to be obeyed when the government is wrong. So to me patriotism in its best sense means thinking about the people in the country, the principles for which the country stands for, and it requires opposing the government when the government violates those principles.

So today, for instance, the highest act of patriotism, I suggest, would be opposing the war in Iraq and calling for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Simply because everything about the war violates the fundamental principles of equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, not just for Americans, but for people in another part of the world. So, yes, patriotism today requires citizens to be active on many, many different fronts to oppose government policies on the war, government policies that have taken trillions of dollars from this country's treasury and used it for war and militarism. That's what patriotism would require today.

--Howard Zinn

Dilemma

by Max Lucado

John has a dilemma. He and the other disciples ran into someone who was doing great work. This man was casting out demons (the very act the disciples had trouble doing in Mark 9:20). He was changing lives. And, what’s more, the man was giving the credit to God. He was doing it in the name of Christ.

Everything about him was so right. Right results. Right heart. But there was one problem. He was from the wrong group.

So the disciples did what any able-bodied religious person would do with someone from the wrong group. “We told him to stop, because he does not belong to our group” (v. 38).

John wants to know if they did the right thing. John’s not cocky; he’s confused. So are many people today. What do you do about good things done in another group? What do you do when you like the fruit but not the orchard?

I’ve asked that question. I am deeply appreciative of my heritage. It was through a small, West Texas Church of Christ that I came to know the Nazarene, the cross, and the Word. The congregation wasn’t large, maybe two hundred on a good Sunday. Most of the families were like mine, blue-collar oil-field workers. But it was a loving church. When our family was sick, the members visited us. When we were absent, they called. And when this prodigal returned, they embraced me.

I deeply appreciate my heritage. But through the years, my faith has been supplemented by people of other groups.

A Brazilian Pentecostal taught me about prayer. A British Anglican by the name of C.S. Lewis put muscle in my faith. A Southern Baptist helped me understand grace.

One Presbyterian, Steve Brown, taught me about God’s sovereignty while another, Frederick Buechner, taught me about God’s passion. A Catholic, Brennan Manning, convinced me that Jesus is relentlessly tender. I’m a better husband because I read James Dobson and a better preacher because I listened to Chuck Swindoll and Bill Hybels.

And only when I get home will I learn the name of a radio preacher whose message steered me back to Christ. I was a graduate student who’d lost his bearings. Needing some money over Christmas break, I took a job driving an oil-field delivery truck. The radio only picked up one station. A preacher was preaching. On a cold December day in 1978 I heard him describe the cross. I don’t know his name. I don’t know his heritage. He could have been a Quaker or an angel or both for all I know. But something about what he said caused me to pull the pickup onto the side of the road and rededicate my life to Christ.

Imus Isn't the Real Bad Guy

by Jason Whitlock

Thank you, Don Imus. You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.

You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.

You’ve given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor.

Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.

The bigots win again.

While we’re fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I’m sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent’s or Snoop Dogg’s or Young Jeezy’s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos.

I ain’t saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don’t have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas.

It is us. At this time, we are our own worst enemies. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.

Rather than confront this heinous enemy from within, we sit back and wait for someone like Imus to have a slip of the tongue and make the mistake of repeating the things we say about ourselves.

It’s embarrassing. Dave Chappelle was offered $50 million to make racially insensitive jokes about black and white people on TV. He was hailed as a genius. Black comedians routinely crack jokes about white and black people, and we all laugh out loud.

I’m no Don Imus apologist. He and his tiny companion Mike Lupica blasted me after I fell out with ESPN. Imus is a hack.

But, in my view, he didn’t do anything outside the norm for shock jocks and comedians. He also offered an apology. That should’ve been the end of this whole affair. Instead, it’s only the beginning. It’s an opportunity for Stringer, Jackson and Sharpton to step on victim platforms and elevate themselves and their agenda$.

I watched the Rutgers news conference and was ashamed.

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke for eight minutes in 1963 at the March on Washington. At the time, black people could be lynched and denied fundamental rights with little thought. With the comments of a talk-show host most of her players had never heard of before last week serving as her excuse, Vivian Stringer rambled on for 30 minutes about the amazing season her team had.

Somehow, we’re supposed to believe that the comments of a man with virtually no connection to the sports world ruined Rutgers’ wonderful season. Had a broadcaster with credibility and a platform in the sports world uttered the words Imus did, I could understand a level of outrage.

But an hourlong press conference over a man who has already apologized, already been suspended and is already insignificant is just plain intellectually dishonest. This is opportunism. This is a distraction.

In the grand scheme, Don Imus is no threat to us in general and no threat to black women in particular. If his words are so powerful and so destructive and must be rebuked so forcefully, then what should we do about the idiot rappers on BET, MTV and every black-owned radio station in the country who use words much more powerful and much more destructive?

I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?

When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset. Until then, he is what he is--a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you’re not looking to be made a victim.

No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There’s no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.

Theologian Sees Jesus the Beloved, Not a List of Beliefs

by Nancy Haught

Oregon's leading theologian walks his dog up and down the trendy streets of the Pearl District. His neighbors know Henry, the shaggy gray Glen of Imaal terrier, whose short legs set the pace. But few recognize Marcus Borg, the graying guy in the wool cap, as the spokesman for a different approach to Jesus Christ.

At 64, Borg is a public theologian and a private mystic.

He writes best-selling books on theology and reads murder mysteries. He was trained at Oxford University and teaches at Oregon State. He lives in a neighborhood overflowing with espresso but drinks Taster's Choice instant decaf.

But mostly, his is a polite and progressive voice in an often intense conversation about who Jesus was and what his life may mean to his modern followers.

Borg talks, primarily, to three decidedly different groups: his students, who are mostly undergraduates; his readers, who are mostly Christians who question long-held beliefs about Jesus; and his critics, who are mostly evangelical or orthodox Christians. They confess their beliefs in familiar terms. Jesus was, the last say, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of a virgin, suffered for human sins, died, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven and will come again.

As a historian and a biblical scholar, Borg was a member of the Jesus Seminar, a scholarly group that spent years evaluating the historical evidence of Jesus' life and sayings. Borg emerged from the process with deeper faith in Jesus and a different understanding of Scripture.Borg interprets the Bible and its descriptions of Jesus as a mixture of memory and metaphor, better suited to preserving meaning than as a list of beliefs fashioned by Jesus' followers into a list that Christians must believe.

"For me, to believe a set of statements is impossible," Borg says. What is possible, he argues, is to "belove" Jesus and walk in his path.

"For the past 300 years," Borg says, "faith was a matter of believing a list of beliefs about Jesus. The list varied among Christians--that Jesus was the son of God, that he was born of a virgin, that the tomb was empty on Easter morning.

"But in the pre-modern world, before about 1600, the object of belief was never a statement," he says. "It was always a person. To believe meant to belove a person.

"To belove Jesus means more than simply loving Jesus. It means to love what Jesus loved. That is at the heart of Christianity."

Faith, Borg says, is a matter of living in relationship with Jesus and working politically, first for justice and then for peace.

Borg has taught religion at OSU for 28 years. He'll retire this spring and continue his writing and speaking, but says he'll miss his encounters with undergraduates.

"There is something wonderful about their openness," he says in his office, brimming with books and papers, on the Corvallis campus.

His fans, the ones who read his books and fill church halls as he travels the country talking about Jesus, express their admiration with a sense of humor. They wear T-shirts proclaiming themselves "Borg Again Christians" and, borrowing from "Star Wars," "May the 'phors (as in "metaphors") be with you."

"There is a hunger for something other than a fundamentalist, literal understanding of the Bible," says the Rev. Tom Tate of Portland's Rose City Park United Methodist Church. Tate says he doesn't always "buy" the traditional viewpoint. "Borg has given me the courage to come out and say certain things."

Borg's critics are his toughest audience, but one he is determined to engage. He says he accepts every chance he has to talk to them in public settings, preferably with an opportunity for questions and answers from an audience.

In February, Borg debated OSU history professor Gary Ferngren in front of 750 people. Their back-and-forth exchanges on the heart of Christianity sparked a few good-natured jibes and an unexpected measure of laughter.

In a characteristic quick show of hands, Borg observed that fewer than a third of the audience members were sympathetic to his position, a third were already in Ferngren's camp, and the others had come to listen.

"I'm not so interested in changing people's minds," he says, "as to let them hear and see a Christian like me instead of reading people who are critical of us."

Paul Metzger, a theology professor at Multnomah Biblical Seminary, is very clear about where he disagrees with Borg.

"I appreciate Professor Borg's emphasis on Jesus having been crucified for his identification with the poor and oppressed, a point often lost on many conservatives," Metzger says. "But there is more: Jesus' suffering was part and parcel of his dying for the sins of the world. Jesus was also raised bodily from the dead to bring new life."

That said, Metzger appreciates the serious and civil debate that Borg encourages. The alternatives are dangerous, he says.

"If people don't dialogue because they think that only their ideas matter, or if we put all the ideas to the side and just go for some neutral frame of reference, neither is meaningful."

And meaning, Borg would say, is the point of the Bible, of Jesus and of Christianity.

Jesus "is for us the decisive revelation of God--of what can be seen of God's character and passion in human life," Borg says. "But for followers of Jesus, the unending conversation about Jesus is the conversation that matters most."

What Would Jesus Really Do?

by Roland Martin

When did it come to the point that being a Christian meant caring about only two issues, abortion and homosexuality?

Ask the nonreligious what being a Christian today means, and based on what we see and read, it's a good bet they will say that followers of Jesus Christ are preoccupied with those two points.

Poverty? Whatever. Homelessness? An afterthought. A widening gap between the have and have-nots? Immaterial. Divorce? The divorce rate of Christians mirrors the national average, so that's no big deal.

The point is that being a Christian should be about more than abortion and homosexuality, and it's high time that those not considered a part of the religious right expose the hypocrisy of our brothers and sisters in Christianity and take back the faith. And those on the left who believe they have a "get out of sin free" card must not be allowed to justify their actions.

Many people believe we are engaged in a holy war. And we are. But it's not with Muslims. The real war--the silent war--is being engaged among Christians, and that's what we must set our sights on.

As we celebrate Holy Week, our focus is on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But aren't we also to recommit ourselves to live more like Jesus? Did Jesus spend his time focusing on all that he didn't like, or did Jesus raise the consciousness of the people to understand love, compassion and teach them about following the will of God?

As a layman studying to receive a master's in Christian communications, and the husband of an ordained minister, it's troubling to listen to "Christian radio" and hear the kind of hate spewing out of the mouths of my brothers and sisters in the faith.

In fact, I've grown tired of people who pimp God. That's right; we have a litany of individuals today who are holy, holy, holy, sing hallelujah, talk about how they love the Lord, but when it's time to walk the walk, somehow the spirit evaporates.

A couple of years ago I took exception to an e-mail blast from the Concerned Women for America. The group was angry that Democrats were blocking certain judges put up for the federal bench by President Bush. It called on Americans to fight Democrats who wanted to keep Christians off the bench.

So I called and sent an e-mail asking, "So, where were you when President Clinton appointed Christian judges to the bench? Were they truly behind Christian judges, or Republican Christian judges?

Surprise, surprise. There was never a response.

An African-American pastor I know in the Midwest was asked by a group of mostly white clergy to march in an anti-abortion rally. He was fine with that, but then asked the clergy if they would work with him to fight crack houses in predominantly black neighborhoods.

"That's really your problem," he was told.

They saw abortion as a moral imperative, but not a community ravaged by crack.

If abortion and gay marriage are part of the Christian agenda, I have no issue with that. Those are moral issues that should be of importance to people of the faith, but the agenda should be much, much broader.

I'm looking for the day when Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Joyce Meyer, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, James Kennedy, Rod Parsley, " Patriot Pastors" and Rick Warren will sit at the same table as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Cynthia Hale, Eddie L. Long, James Meek, Fred Price, Emmanuel Cleaver and Floyd Flake to establish a call to arms on racism, AIDS, police brutality, a national health care policy, our sorry education system.

If they all say they love and worship one God, one Jesus, let's see them rally their members behind one agenda.

I stand here today not as a Republican or a liberal. And don't bother calling me a Democrat or a conservative. I am a man, an African-American man who has professed that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that's to whom I bow down.

If you concur, it's time to stop allowing a chosen few to speak for the masses. Quit letting them define the agenda.

So put on the full armor of God because we have work to do.

Fall in Love

Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone--we find it with another. We do not discover the secret of our lives merely by study and calculation in our own isolated meditations. The meaning of our life is a secret that has to be revealed to us in love, by the one we love. And if this love is unreal, the secret will not be found, the meaning will never reveal itself, the message will never be decoded. At best, we will receive a scrambled and partial message, one that will deceive and confuse us. We will never be fully real until we let ourselves fall in love--either with another human person or with God.

--Thomas Merton

What Are We Spreading?

I find this so unsavory; they‘re going out and killing people around the world to spread democracy, and what are we spreading? A form of government based on how much money you can raise from rich people.

--Chris Matthews

Revolution of Values

When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism, are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.


--Martin Luther King, Jr

Disciples

If you have any knowledge at all of human nature, you know that those who only admire the truth will, when danger appears, become traitors. The admirer is infatuated with the false security of greatness; but if there is any inconvenience or trouble, he pulls back. Admiring the truth, instead of following it, is just as dubious a fire as the fire of erotic love, which at the turn of the hand can be changed into exactly the opposite, to hate, jealousy, and revenge. Christ, however, never asked for admirers, worshippers, or adherents. He consistently spoke of "followers" and "disciples."

--Soren Kierkegaard

To Be a Follower of Jesus

To be a follower of Jesus means in the first place to enter by compassion into his experience, with all that it expresses of the divine and of the human. And it means in the second place to enter with him into the suffering and the hope of all human persons, making common cause with them as he does, and seeking out as he does the places of his predilection among the poor and despised and oppressed.

--Monika K. Hellwig

We Must Repent of This War

by Jim Wallis

The war in Iraq is personal for me.

It’s personal for the families and loved ones of the more than 3,200 American soldiers who have lost the precious gift of life. The stories I hear every day on the radio and TV break my heart. They are so young to die, and it is so unnecessary. When I look at my son and celebrate his birthday, I think of all the children whose fathers or mothers won’t be coming back from the war to celebrate theirs.

It’s personal for the tens of thousands of service men and women who have lost their limbs or their mental and emotional health, and who now feel abandoned and mistreated.

It’s personal for all the Iraqis who have lost their loved ones, as many as hundreds of thousands. What would it be like to wait in line at morgues to check dead bodies, desperately hoping that you don’t recognize someone you love? I can only imagine. And when I look at my son, I think of all the Iraqi children who will never celebrate another birthday.

This isn’t just political; it’s personal for millions of us now. And for all of us here tonight, the war in Iraq is actually more than personal--it has become a matter of faith.

By our deepest convictions about Christian standards and teaching, the war in Iraq was not just a well-intended mistake or only mismanaged. This war, from a Christian point of view, is morally wrong--and was from the very start. It cannot be justified with either the teaching of Jesus Christ or the criteria of St. Augustine’s just war. It simply doesn’t pass either test, and did not from its beginning. This war is not just an offense against the young Americans who have made the ultimate sacrifice or the Iraqis who have paid such a horrible price. This war is not only an offense to the poor at home and around the world who have paid the price of misdirected resources and priorities--this war is also an offense against God.

And so we are here tonight, very simply and resolutely, to begin to end the war in Iraq--not by anger, though we are angry; not just by politics, though it will take political courage; but by faith, because we are people of faith.

This service and procession are not just another political protest, but an act of faith, an act of prayer, an act of non-violent witness. Politics led us into this war, and politics is unlikely to save us by itself. The American people have voted against the war in Iraq, but political proposals keep failing one after the other.

I believe it will take faith to end this war. It will take prayer to end it. It will take a mobilization of the faith community to end it--to change the political climate, to change the wind. It will take a revolution of love to end it, because this endless war in Iraq is based ultimately on fear, and Jesus says that only perfect love will cast out fear.

So tonight we say, as people of faith, as followers of Jesus, that the deep fear that has paralyzed the conscience of this nation, which has caused us to become the kind of people that we are not called to be, that has allowed us to tolerate violations of our most basic values, and that has perpetuated an endless cycle of violence and counter-violence must be exorcised as the demon it is--this fear must be cast out!

And to cast out that fear, we must act in faith, in prayer, in love, and in hope--so we might help to heal the fears that keep this war going. Tonight we march not in belligerence, or to attack individuals (even those leaders directly responsible for the war), or to use human suffering for partisan political purposes. Rather, we process to the White House tonight as an act of faith, believing that only faith can save us now.

Ironically, this war has often been cloaked in the name and symbols of our faith, confused American imperial designs with God’s purposes, and tragically discredited Christian faith around the world, having so tied it to flawed American behavior and agendas. Millions of people around the world sadly believe this is a Christian war. So as people of faith, let us say tonight to our brothers and sisters around the world, and as clearly as we can--America is not the hope of the earth and the light of the world, Jesus Christ is! And it is his way that we follow, and not the flawed path of our nation’s leaders who prosecute this war. As an evangelical Christian, I must say that the war in Iraq has hindered the cause of Christ and, in this season of Lent, we must repent of this war!

More Powerful?

To suggest that the sin of man so corrupted his creation that God cannot fix it but can only junk it in favor of some other world is to say that ultimately the kingdom of evil is more powerful than the kingdom of God. It makes sin more powerful than redemption, and Satan the victor over God. Reducing the gospel to a strictly spiritual dimension of human existence concedes everything outside of that dimension to the enemy.

--Michael D. Williams

What Will Quench the Light?

It is not scientific doubt, not atheism, not pantheism, not agnosticism, that in our day and in this land is likely to quench the light of the gospel. It is a proud, sensuous, selfish, luxurious, church-going, hollow-hearted prosperity.

--Frederic D. Huntington

Transforming Effect

What God requires of those who call on God's name is responsive servanthood. God wishes to act in and through us, so Christian hope does not relieve men and women of responsibility. We are not primarily responsible for shrewd analysis of problems, for strategic selection of means, for maximizing the chances of success. We are primarily responsible for turning to God, for attempting to know and do God's will. That well may lead us into actions which are not shrewd, strategic, or successful, as the life of Jesus suggests. But as Jesus' life demonstrates, human action which is faithful to God's will can have transforming effect.

--Parker Palmer

The Sin of Self-Sovereignty

An interview with Eugene Peterson:

RADIX: [In EAT THIS BOOK (Eerdmans, 2006), you write that] "the text that seems to be most in favor on the American landscape today is the Sovereign Self." Do you think there are reasons why that's a special problem in this particular culture in a way that it wasn't in the past?

PETERSON: Well, the basic ingredients go back to Eden. But I think American culture with our combination of individualism and consumerism has taken it pretty far. We've got the money, most of us do, to do whatever we want to. With our post-Enlightenment individualism and consumerism, combined with the total erosion of community, which we're all experiencing, I think America has almost perfected the self-sovereignty sin.

RADIX: Do you notice a difference when you travel in other countries?

PETERSON: I don't do that much traveling, but when I talk to friends who are in Third World countries, it's very different. The little bit of travel I do is usually in Scotland and Ireland, and Christians are such a minority people there, they don't have that same sense of self-sovereignty--they're more marginal to the culture. So I think it's an American problem, although some of the Asians might be catching up with us--the Hong Kong, Korean, Japanese Asians.

RADIX: Toward the end of the book, you say that when the Hebrews were at home in the Canaanite culture, they knew how to say "no" to the culture when they needed to. So I'm wondering, at what points do you think we American Christians need to be saying "no" to our culture? Are there any points that are especially important?

PETERSON: Well, yes. I think the identification of the culture with the church, with the evangelical church, makes us prone to an idolatry of nation. That's so pervasive it's almost impossible to carry on a conversation about it. America's founders left Europe because of nationalized churches. Now we've got one of our own, and we aren't even aware of it. So the nationalism combined with the pervasive consumerism are big problems for the American church.

We go church-shopping; we demand services of the church. The scary thing about this for me is that the vocabulary stays the same. We use all the right words, and we still keep all our doctrines in the evangelical church, but the context has changed so radically that they no longer mean anything. I don't know how the Devil works, but if I were the Devil, I don't think I could have devised a better way of destroying the congregation than talking about "big"--you know, the bigger, the bigger, the bigger, the more glamorous. And that destroys congregations. Congregations aren't glamorous; they're comprised of sinners.

But we've got these poster pictures, glamour shots of what churches ought to be. It can destroy pastors of small churches--they feel always inadequate, always inferior. And it destroys the people in the big churches, because they're no longer dealing with community; they're just part of a crowd. In the vaunted small-group movement--which certainly has some good things going for it (probably earlier on, more than now)--people say, "Well, we take care of community by having small groups." Well, those aren't communities--those are people you like. And, you know, a community has to have people you don't like in it.

RADIX: Yes, actually, my small group is made up of people I like.

PETERSON: They all are. If you don't like them, you just drop out. Good things happen in these groups, but it's not community. Congregation is God's way to give us community.

Great Moral Issues

Is the fact that 30,000 children will die globally today, and everyday, from needless hunger and disease a great moral issue for evangelical Christians? How about the reality of 3 billion of God’s children living on less than $2 per day? And isn’t the still-widespread and needless poverty in our own country, the richest nation in the world, a moral scandal? What about pandemics like HIV/AIDS that wipe out whole generations and countries, or the sex trafficking of massive numbers of women and children? Should genocide in Darfur be a moral issue for Christians? And what about disastrous wars like Iraq? And then there is, of course, the issue that got Dobson and his allies so agitated. If the scientific consensus is right--climate change is real, is caused substantially by human activity, and could result in hundreds of thousands of deaths--then isn’t that also a great moral issue? Could global warming actually be alarming evidence of human tinkering with God’s creation?

Or, are the only really "great moral issues" those concerning abortion, gay marriage, and the teaching of sexual abstinence? I happen to believe that the sanctity of life, the health of marriages, and teaching sexual morality to our children are, indeed, among the great moral issues of our time. But I believe they are not the only great moral issues.

--Jim Wallis

The True Hermeneutic

For in Christ and through Christ and because of Christ Christians have been given a revealed insight into God's nature and character. This understanding of God was vindicated for us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, whom we acclaim as the Christ, God incarnate. Jesus the Christ thus becomes--in himself and in his teaching--the true hermeneutic, the key to the understanding of the Bible, and beyond the Bible to the understanding of the action of God throughout history. In other words, the Word of God incarnate in Jesus the Christ interprets for us the word of God in the Bible.

--Naim Ateek

Resources

The earth provides enough resources for everyone's need, but not for some people's greed.

--Mahatma Gandhi

Big Ideas That Can Change the World

By David Batstone

Pedagogy--a word rarely used. And in our age of achievement testing, a bit of a lost art. For nearly 15 years I have been a professor in the university system. I guess by now I cease to be annoyed by the students who approach school like an obstacle course: hurdles they need to crawl under or jump over in order to achieve the grade they want.

I make it my personal challenge each semester to inspire these students to love the process of learning. I tell them that they soon will enter a world of work that will value individuals who can apply intelligence and emotional tools to evolving environments. Memorizing a set of data or mastering a skill has a value, to be sure. In the 21st century, however, a law of diminishing returns immediately kicks in to depreciate the value of those personal assets.

It jars my students--who obsess over the major of study they should choose--when I proclaim, "It really doesn't matter what you study, but it does matter immensely that you study with curiosity and passion." At this point, I imagine more than a few parents with teenagers roll their eyes and mutter, "If only." They would be content to get their kids to complete their homework, and do so in a way that does not feel like pulling their teeth. If this battleground scene sounds all too familiar, your teen sounds like a good candidate this summer for a SuperCamp.

Meet Bobbi DePorter, who started the SuperCamps over 25 years ago and continues to run them as part of her Quantum Learning Network. More than 43,000 youth are now graduates of her camps that focus on learning and life skills. The camps operate in 10 countries and take place on top-grade university campuses--Stanford University and the Claremont Colleges host the camps in California--across the United States.

"Most young people are not taught to learn effectively," Ms. DePorter told me. "They do not understand how to discover their strengths, pursue goals, make decisions, solve problems and resolve conflicts," she added. Ms. DePorter launched the SuperCamps to give kids confidence to develop and follow their own interests and curiosities. Over a 10-day SuperCamp experience, youth learn better strategies for reading, writing, public speaking, memorizing, note-taking and test-taking.

Sounds like an intensive summer school, doesn't it? Yet kids want to keep coming back. The SuperCamp experience shows that to pique a kid's curiosity translates into a fun experience. I imagine they are inspired once they look inside themselves and find new ways to reach out to everything around them.

The SuperCamps engage in some bold myth-busting: Myth: Teens waste their minds on video games. Reality: Teens decode and create games as well as play them. SuperCamp Insight: Getting inside video games can help teens reconsider their cognitive boundaries.

Myth: Teens believe they are entitled to whatever they want. Reality: Teens yearn to know how to take responsibility to earn their success. SuperCamp Insight: Teen's struggle for independence is also a search for ownership of their personal achievements.

I latched onto Quantum's program because it became obvious to me that, with notable exceptions, our school system is not preparing young people for a society of hyper-connected networks. Many parents--and teachers--wish that young people would not be so mega-sensory oriented and drawn to producing their own knowledge more than they are absorbing the classics. Instead of berating youth for being wired differently, wouldn't it be better to help them feel confident about themselves and help them to build bridges from classical knowledge to emerging ideas?

Ms. DePorter has a big vision for her SuperCamp. Yes, she is boosting student performance; The Wall Street Journal reports that SuperCamp "turns so-so students into academic achievers." Yet her more expansive dream is to set a new standard for learning and life skills that fills the social and leadership gaps of our institutions. Helping kids gain tools for the little things leads them to big ideas that can change the world.

American Polytheism

by James W. Skillen

Much of today's media coverage of religion identifies its subject matter by referring to the number of Americans who attend church, or to the Jewish observance of holy days, or to the Muslim practice of praying five times a day. Church, synagogue, or mosque--that's the religion tag. Then, since many Christians who attend church regularly also happen to be politically conservative, the media identifies them with the "Christian right." Positions that "right-wing" Christians take on political issues such as abortion, or interpreting the Constitution, or marriage, are then viewed as expressions of Bible-believing fundamentalists. This, in part, is what Jeff Sharlet does in a recent and provocative essay in Harper's Magazine (December 2006) on "how the Christian right is reimagining U.S. history."

There are at least two major problems with this approach, however. First, many Bible-believing Christians, like Jimmy Carter, are not part of the Christian right. And second, what the political right does with religion and politics does not necessarily qualify as Christian.

Consider a recent piece by George F. Will in which he expresses sympathy with a new book on Ronald Reagan by John Patrick Diggins. Diggins, who is enthusiastic about Reagan, argues that Reagan's god was the god bequeathed to America by Ralph Waldo Emerson, not by the Bible. Diggins contends that in effect "Reagan's religion 'enables us to forget religion' because it banishes the idea of 'a God of judgment and punishment.'"

Emerson's and Reagan's god is good and therefore humans are good. A good god couldn't have created evil; consequently, we and our desires must be good. Therefore, no American leader needs to "suggest that the public has shortcomings and should engage in critical self-examination."

Americans should be optimistic about the future. For example, "Reagan said that the people never start wars, only governments do." Under Reagan, according to Diggins, "Americans could live off government and hate it at the same time." They could (and still do), as I would put it, love America while holding government suspect. With this religious spirit of goodness and freedom, Reagan, says Will, "frequently quoted [Thomas] Paine's preposterous cry that 'we have it in our power to begin the world over again.'"

Now, we know that many conservative Christians turned enthusiastically to Reagan and away from the born-again Carter. Yet this cannot be explained in terms of the degree of Christian orthodoxy of the two presidents. To make sense of American public religiosity, in other words, we need to look at what Americans - including many American Christians--believe about the god (or gods) of America and not first at what they believe about Jesus Christ.

Yet how can any Christian accept such a dualism of religions--serving an American god in public who may be at odds with Jesus Christ? Can it even be done? My friend, Joe Loconte, with whom I radically disagree at this point, offers one familiar way to do it. "The Church," he explains, "aims to create a spiritual community grounded in the law of love. The State seeks to maintain justice in a secular society that rejects the divine law."

Never mind that Jesus told his followers that they cannot serve two masters and that the totality of their lives should be oriented by the love of God and the love of their neighbors as themselves. Never mind that Jesus claimed that all authority in heaven and on earth (not just spiritual authority) had been given to him. Is it perhaps the case that Christians have found room for American gods in the vacuum they have created by trying to confine Christ's authority and love to a spiritual community?

I must be quick to say that I do not belong to the pro-appeasement, be-nice-to-fascists camp that Loconte sets up in his lecture as the foil for his support of the stay-tough-America war against terrorism. My disagreement with him does not arise from within the polarized alternatives he presents in his speech. His polarity works only so long as one accepts the privatization of Christian love so that the American military is free to do un-spiritual and nasty things to defend the world from evil. As Loconte puts it, "Biblical realism does not seek to make the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount a road map for U.S. foreign policy" But it is precisely this kind of dualism--all too prevalent among Christians of both liberal and conservative stripes--that cuts off any possible consideration of a deeply biblical, seriously Christian approach to politics and government.

How will we ever be able to assess from a Christian point of view what is on track or off track in the work of government if we insist at the outset on making one or both of two errors? The first is to assume that America's god is the God of the Bible. The second is to assume that Jesus Christ puts the work of politics and government in the hands of America's god.

Revolution of Love

In essence, what Jesus imparted to his disciples was that they must strive for true justice on earth as in heaven, as their righteous service to God; that they must honor God by doing indiscriminate justice, by lifting up "the least of these" on the altar of God's justice and mercy; that they must set into motion a revolution of love and holistic spirituality that demonstrates love for God by treating the needs of even the least of God's children as holy.

--Obery M. Hendericks, Jr.

The Wilderness

by Joy Carroll Wallis

What can be very difficult in Lent is the wilderness. The wilderness within, or the wilderness we find ourselves in. We may be led quite involuntarily into the wilderness – and not just in Lent. What we call in spiritual speak "the time of testing" can actually feel like desperation, a loss of hope. We may cry out, "where is God?" in the face of random or meaningless suffering, immense stress, depression, illness, debilitating grief, war, and tragic death.

Reading about the temptations of Jesus, his "time of testing" in the wilderness, might offer some guidance. All of Jesus' replies to the devil come from Deuteronomy 6-8 and each temptation is a temptation to sin against the great commandment in Deuteronomy 6:5, to love God "with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might."

Firstly, we read that Jesus was tempted to turn stones into bread. There's a great humanity about this temptation. You have to remember now that he was hungry, he was exhausted; he hadn't eaten for 40 days! This was a temptation to security. Immediate gratification, the quick fix, the easy answer. My kids know all about that temptation! So do I. In my constant efforts to be efficient, I am always looking for the easy, instant solution. On a purely domestic level, it's so tempting to buy the ready-to-serve juice pouches, the individual applesauce pots--but all that excess packaging!

Much of life is like that. We go to great lengths to have an easy life. It can be a daily temptation for us not to discipline ourselves in areas of greed, materialism, or even sensuality. Health and wealth--we want it now. We want God to speak to us now, to guide us now, to heal us now. And Jesus is saying: No, have patience. Be in the wilderness and discover how to rely on God. Simplify your lifestyle, reject the easy answers, and the wilderness journey will start to teach you something about trust in God and how to serve God with your heart, your soul, and your mind.

The second temptation was to power and wealth over and against loving God. Satan showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and said, "I will give you their glory and all this authority." He's promised "all the kingdoms of the world"--if he will only bow down to the voice behind the principalities and powers. This is a particularly American temptation, the notion that America is indispensable, the one remaining superpower that is needed by the world. George Bush has given us plenty of reason to believe that he puts his hope in America rather than God and indeed can confuse the two. In his address delivered on the anniversary of September 11, he quoted from John's gospel, "And the light shines in the darkness. And the darkness has not overcome it." The trouble is that he was not referring to the light of the world, Jesus Christ. Rather, he was referring to America and its ideals of freedom and democracy as the light and hope of the world. It's easy to apply this to the administration and to George Bush, but we should also consider how it challenges us--this is especially true for the third temptation.

The third temptation was to the spectacular. Satan took Jesus to Jerusalem, placed him on the pinnacle of the temple and said, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down--the angels will bear you up." This is the temptation to fame, or to the spectacular. Almost four years ago to the day, as many of you were working very hard to stop the war in Iraq from happening, the official Pentagon language was that an attack would leave Iraq and the world in a state of "shock and awe." Three thousand bombs will be dropped in the first week. It doesn't matter about the weather, we'll amaze them with our technology. And America did the spectacular. But it was the devil's temptation, and so much more evil abounds right now because the administration succumbed to that particular temptation.

God's way of transformation is not spectacle, but the patient enduring of the wilderness and the cross. As I said, this temptation can hit home personally too. We can all be tempted to seek God in the spectacular and not in the struggle and the suffering. It's also a challenge for Sojourners, particularly in the face of success, to remain humble.

In his Lenten reflection last year, Jim said, "Humility is difficult for people who think they are, or want to be, 'radical Christians.' Humility is difficult when you're always calling other people--the church, the nation, and the world--to stop doing the things you think are wrong and start doing the things you think are right. Humility is difficult for the bearers of radical messages. When we're always calling other people to repent and change, it's not always easy to hear that message for ourselves. I want to suggest that there is a real and very deep tension between humility and the prophetic vocation."

We can be tempted by the idols of materialism, power and spectacle, in the forms of war, wealth, prestige, and celebrity, just to name a few. But Jesus said, "Away with you Satan! For it is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only God.'" Then the tempter left him, and will leave us, too, if we stand our ground passing with Jesus through the wilderness.

Are Evangelicals Fixated on Homosexuality?

by Tony Campolo

Sigmund Freud would have something to say about the ways in which we evangelicals seem to be fixated on homosexuality. That fixation became abundantly clear to me recently when I was doing radio interviews upon the publication of my most recent book, Letters to a Young Evangelical. The book has 21 chapters, yet on every one of the two dozen interviews that I had on Christian radio stations, I had to spend at least 80 percent of my air time concentrating on the few pages that dealt with homosexuality.

The primary focus of the questioning during these interviews focused on my assertions, based on my own research and a survey of literature on the subject, that nobody has come up with a conclusive explanation of what causes a homosexual orientation, and that it develops so early in the bio-physical and social development of children that it's practically impossible that it could be something that is deliberately chosen. It seemed to me that the interviewers were not willing to accept what I had to say, and wanted me to commit to one of two other options that I believe to be erroneous. The first was the suggestion that the homosexual orientation is the result of poor socialization. This is the commonly held belief among those evangelicals who head up ministries that propose to “deliver” homosexuals and make them into heterosexuals. The most cited version is that a boy overly identifies with a dominant mother, while his father is either absent from the household or is a somewhat weak personality. This theory puts already upset and confused parents of gays on unnecessary guilt trips.

The other theory often proposed in these interviews was that being homosexual is somehow the result of trauma resulting from the gay person being sexually molested as a child.

The reasons for these beliefs were all too obvious to me. If either of these theories had validity, then it could be said that homosexuals who wanted to change could do so by making the decision to be open to the work of God in their lives and getting some good Christian counseling. When I questioned such conclusions, the interviewers usually came back at me by claiming that if I did not accept what they were saying, then I must be implying that the homosexual orientation was inborn. That, to them, was unthinkable because accordingly, this would lead to the assumption that God created homosexuals the way they are, and that we should accept them as such. Over and over, I would have to repeat that nobody knows definitively what establishes same-sex attraction in persons--and again I would have to assert that what we do know is that it is practically never the result of any conscious decision.

The interviewers immediately sensed that I was suggesting that there are no easy answers that we evangelicals can offer to gays and lesbians who ask us about changing their sexual orientation. I added to their anxieties when I went on to say that it is very rare that sexual orientations ever do change. I never say “never” because with God miracles are always possible. I make it clear, however, that barring miracles, we evangelicals have little to offer in the way of positive suggestions for those who are struggling with being homosexual in a homophobic world. In reality, we only have two proposals--celibacy, which is my answer; and monogamous partnerships, which is an answer posed by my wife.

In my book, Letters to a Young Evangelical, I point out that there is an emerging new generation of young evangelicals who are still conservative on their views on homosexual behavior, but refuse to make gay marriage the defining issue that it has become for older Christians. Instead, these young people are more concerned with such issues as poverty, the AIDS crisis, the environment, and war. It is no surprise, therefore, that they take Bono as their model for Christian activism. This rock singer who has raised their consciousness about the crisis in Africa is working hard to eliminate Third World debts. Bono is committed to the causes that young evangelicals deem significant and they are joining with enthusiasm in his crusade to “Make Poverty History.”

In many instances, those in this new generation are even reluctant to accept being called evangelicals. They sense that the label “evangelical” is commonly thought to be synonymous with right-wing politics and suggests a gay-bashing, anti-environmentalist, anti-feminist, and pro-war mindset. Instead, they are increasingly calling themselves Red Letter Christians. This name, of course, associates them with those verses in scripture that record the words that Jesus spoke, which in many Bibles are printed in red. That I affirm this designation and promote this new label in my book often greatly disturbs my interviewers. They quickly remind me that Jesus never mentioned homosexuality. “That’s right!” I respond. “He most likely maintained ancient Jewish laws on the matter, but condemning gays was not on His big-ten hit list, while attacking judgmental religious people was.”

In Letters to a Young Evangelical, I call young people to move beyond the preoccupation with sexual issues that have so absorbed the discussion of the over-50s crowd and coalesce into a new movement that is committed to also include a whole range of other crucial social justice issues. I let them know that while they ought not to neglect sexual issues, they really must move beyond them and overcome the fixation on homosexuality that I found so evident in my recent radio interviews. Embracing a Christianity that deals with the broad spectrum of social concerns that are relevant to living out love and justice in the 21st century is required for an emerging church of young evangelicals. Any other kind of Christianity will prove irrelevant to them.

Nature

We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.

--Henry David Thoreau

Public Witness

Because Jesus' teachings are so challenging and radical, it is much more comfortable to focus on a quiet, private, personal relationship with him than it is to follow his teachings that call for a public prophetic witness.

--Alvin Alexi Currier

Advice for Barack Obama

by Brian McLaren

Thanks for entering the 2008 presidential race. I know a lot of people feel as I do: After several elections where we felt we were left to choose between tired and uninspiring candidates with little fresh to offer except new twists on old electioneering techniques, it seems that in the upcoming primary elections, at least, we will have several exciting options. In both parties, in fact, we may get to choose between a number of fresh, creative, and substantial candidates instead of settling for the lesser of famliar disappointments. I hope that we will feel the same way when it comes down to two candidates in the 2008 presidential elections as well.

No doubt you'll be getting a lot of advice and requests from a lot of people in the coming weeks, and the only reason I think mine deserves to be heard is that I know I'm expressing what a lot of people feel. So I would like to make this request at the beginning of your campaign.

Please don't lie to us. Please forego both the repulsive, deceptive, and twisted lies and also the flattering lies we like to hear. For example, I heard a fellow candidate recently trot out the tired old line, "America is the greatest country in the history of the world." This makes Americans feel good and gets applause. Maybe it wins votes. But it is a lie.

Yes, we are the richest country. Yes, we have the most weapons. Yes, we dominate in many fields, from sports to pop music to movies to pornographic websites to resource consumption and waste production. But the seductive lie of superiority is bad for any nation, including ours. Any nation that keeps telling itself that it is the greatest will become a proud nation (if it isn't already), and pride, I have it on good authority, comes before a fall. Pride makes nations, as
individuals, unpleasant and ugly neighbors, and so candidates make a bad long-term decision when they seek to coddle pride in exchange for votes. If they win, they will preside over a country that their rhetoric has made more ugly and more likely to fall.

Instead of telling us this lie of American superiority, please tell us the truths that we need to hear. Tell us, as you just did in your campaign-launch speech, inconvenient truths * that we and our leaders have a habit of making mistakes and blaming others * whether it's in New Orleans or Baghdad. Tell us the truth about our past * from our own original genocide and ongoing apartheid regarding the Native peoples of this land, to our profoundly unacknowledged and unhealed legacy of slavery and racism, to our failure to care properly for this beautiful part of God's green earth, to our desperate and shameful violations of our own principles and ideals around the world, from Congo to Chile, and from Central America to the Middle East.

Those who say, "Those things are in the past, we should just move on," would never say that about, say, September 11, 2001. Tell us the truth that we have unfinished business, recalling the old proverb that says the one who hides his transgressions will not prosper, but the one who confesses and forsakes them will find mercy. South Africa discovered how a different future is possible when a nation tells the truth about its past, and you could help us have our own time of truth and reconciliation.

And of course, please tell us the truth about the hope that comes through truth-telling. You and John Edwards and several other candidates have already begun inspiring many of us with your hope * audacious hope regarding poverty, environmental healing, and peace. Because, as you say, another world is possible. Many of us dare to hope that, and if you don't tell us the old political lies and instead tell us the inconvenient truth, then our shared emerging hopes
can become a dynamic new reality.

All of us are cynical at times, but in the launch of your campaign, I feel more hopeful and inspired than I have in a long time. Thank you.

Slaves

Twenty-seven million slaves exist in our world today. Girls and boys, women and men of all ages are forced to toil in the rug looms of Nepal, sell their bodies in the brothels of Rome, break rocks in the quarries of Pakistan, and fight wars in the jungles of Africa. Go behind the façade in any major town or city in the world today and you are likely to find a thriving commerce in human beings.

--David Batstone

From Plato's Republic

Socrates: "Now, all this study of reckoning and geometry and all the preliminary studies that are indispensable preparation for dialectic must be presented to them while still young, not in the form of compulsory instruction."

Glaucon: "Why so?"

Socrates: "Because, said I, a free soul ought not to pursue any study slavishly, for while bodily labors performed under constraint do not harm the body, nothing that is learned under compulsion stays with the mind."

Glaucon: "True," he said.

Socrates: "Do not, then, my friend, keep children to their studies by compulsion but by play. That will also better enable you to discern the natural capacities of each."

Glaucon: "There is reason in that," he said.

Free to Begin to Become

Often I am tempted to mold or guide my children while forgetting that there is an essence, a budding life, that I must first nurture and acquaint myself with, before attempting to lead. Socrates words caught my attention for that ingenious combination of simplicity and profundity. How can you guide what you do not know?

As educators we must first create an environment of life where the child feels free to begin to become. Then we must attune our senses to the recognition of the many and varied ways a child can become in order to rightly nurture and care for the way they begin to grow. Once we have "discerned the natural capacities" we can begin to provide a curriculum or environment further suited to those capacities.

This is obviously a very idealistic picture which would be almost impossible to implement on a "mass" scale in our current educational system. But I think Socrates' words speak well of the type of "education" our children need. At this stage it is the educator who is being educated about the child in order to later provide the education the child will need.

--Daniel Kruidenier

Work Has to Work

Americans think that if you work hard and full time, you shouldn't be poor. But 9.2 million American families are. Somebody in all those households works hard, full time, and yet they're all raising their kids in poverty. That's wrong. It's against our theology and it's un-American.

What is at risk here is a genuine opportunity society. It's a "fraud," I would say, when the average CEO of a Standard & Poor's 500 company made $13.5 million in total compensation in 2005, while a minimum wage worker made $10,700. Thirty years ago CEOs made 30 times what their average workers made. Japan and Germany are still at about that ratio. Now in America its 400 to 1--which means the average worker has to work a whole year to make what their boss makes in one day. This is wrong; it's an injustice; it's a theological issue.

The House has acted, now the Senate has decided to act. And when the minimum wage passes, we must then take the next step needed to guarantee that work works in America and provides a family success and security. Those who work responsibly should have a living family income with a combination of a family's earnings, and supports for transportation, health care, nutrition, child care, education, and housing. Tax policies should reward work and family stability. Ownership and job creation is critical. Work has to work in America. It doesn't right now.

--Jim Wallis

An Open Letter to the President

Dear Mr. President:

I was disappointed and frightened by your long-awaited address to the nation on Iraq. Your words will not leave one person in the entire world unaffected. Therefore, I hope you will feel my love and concern in writing. The "new course" that you propose for Iraq is flawed and will lead to disaster. It will bring more death and destruction to friends and enemies alike. Most of all, it leaves God out of the picture.

Mr. President, I respect you deeply. You are daily in my prayers. Even on TV, it is obvious how lonely you must feel, separated from your fellow Americans and from the entire international community. Yet there are millions of people who would love to help you, and pray for you, if only you would reach out to them. This is why I want to reach out to you and humbly ask that, in this moment of world crisis, you lead our nation by putting your trust in God alone and not in our military superiority.

The world is full of fear because of the events that have occurred since our country started the "War on Terror." No one has become any safer.

We cannot ignore the important lessons that are taught to us in the Old and New Testaments. For God is a jealous God. He will not let Himself be mocked. He wants our leaders to lead us in humility and compassion. When King Ahab realized that he had done wrong, he tore his clothes, and put on sackcloth and fasted (1 King 21:27). When Jonah finally preached the word of God to Nineveh, the king himself rose from his throne and laid down his robe, and covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes. When God saw this humility, he relented from the disaster that he had planned to bring upon them (Jonah 3).

In Isaiah 1:15-16, the kings of Judah are warned sternly about leaving God out of the equation:

When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you. Even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight. Stop doing wrong.

In the same way, the words of the prophet Obadiah speak directly to this moment:

"Behold, I will make you small among the nations; you shall be greatly despised. The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who dwell in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high; you who say in your heart, 'Who will bring me down to the ground?' Though you ascend as high as the eagle, and though you set your nest among the stars, from there I will bring you down," says the LORD. (Obadiah l: 2-4)

Mr. President, you profess to be a man of God. Show the world that the words of the prophets are still true today, and pray with us that God will not forsake our nation even in its darkest moment.

God wants to give more grace. That is why the Apostle James writes, "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble" (James 4:6).

As a pastor who has worked with government officials for years, I feel a special burden for your task, and would strongly desire to meet with you to discuss these matters further.

Respectfully,

Johann Christoph Arnold (Senior Pastor, Church Communities International)

Mad Jesus Skilz

by Shane Claiborne

I've been thinking a lot about the ethos of violence that is spreading like a disease through our world. I just read that TV violence is at a record high, with an average of 13 incidents of violence every hour. News headlines tell of the murders down in New Orleans. Homocides here in Philly and Camden have been happening almost every day. And of course there is Iraq.

I just told a group of graduate students I would like to see them do a study comparing the ethos of violence globally with the violence on the streets here in the U.S. Remember how the Columbine shooting happened on the same day that the Clinton-led U.S. bombed Kosovo most intensively? It's hard to imagine that these recent murders and school shootings are somehow separate from the current escalation of violence by our government. After all, we are wrestling against principalities and powers. These are not just lofty thoughts to ponder, but they are realities that sometimes hit pretty close to home. The only incidents of violence I have experienced in the last 10 years of living here in the inner city have been since the Iraq war. One of them was about a week ago. I am including a little account of it here, mostly because I am really proud of my friend Cassim, and how he handled the situation. I think he has some things to teach those who continue to trust in the myth of redemptive violence.

Cassim and I were walking to the post-office, a walk I take several times a week. It's on the "other side of the tracks," in a neighborhood called Port Richmond, where lots of folks say they want to move to get out of Kensington, where we live. In fact, most locals call Kensington "the Badlands." But I always warn folks to be careful with that, lest they think "nothing good can come out of Kensington." After all, that's exactly what folks said about Nazareth, Jesus' neighborhood. God seems to have a special knack for showing up in the Badlands. After all, there are really good kids here, like Cassim. Cassim is one of the gentle kids, one I hope to never see lose his innocence and trust, or his heart grow hard. He likes cooking with us, gardening, getting beat at Othello--even cleaning the house or doing homework. I've always thought it funny and out-of-character that he is in a boxing club run by some Christians around the corner from us. Christian boxing, hmm.

Cassim is 11 and his mom doesn't let him out a lot, so you can imagine that when we got jumped, I was caught a little off-guard. We were walking down the narrow side street, and some teenaged guys started following behind. You could just feel the mischief brewing, and it grew from two young men to four and then eight, until there was a little mob of sorts. They started calling out some names, throwing rocks and sticks, trying to stir up trouble.

It's always hard on the spot like that to know exactly what Jesus would do. I told Cassim, "Let's go say hi." He looked at me skeptically. We turned back and walked towards them (knowing full well that if we had run we may have made it to the post office). "Hey, I'm Shane. And this is my friend Cassim. We live around the corner," I said with my hand out. They weren't really sure what to do with that. A couple of them shook my hand and introduced themselves. Others snickered. One or two refused the handshake. We said, "Nice to meet you guys," and headed on our walk.

With the wind taken out of their sail a bit, they regrouped, and then continued to build momentum towards a violent brawl. They ran after us, throwing some rocks and bottles, and I noticed two of them now carried a couple of broomsticks from the trash. We picked up the pace a bit, and then I looked at Cassim and said, "No, don't run." We turned back, and before we knew it, one of them clocked Cassim on the side of the head with a stick. I said firmly, "Why would you do that? We haven't done anything to hurt you." They laughed. Then they started hitting me with the broomstick until it broke over my back. At this point I decided to bust out a can of holy anger. I looked them in the eyes and said as forcefully as I could, "You are created in the image of God, every single one of you. And you were made for something better than this. Cassim and I are followers of Jesus and we do not fight, but we will love you no matter what you do to us." That wasn't exactly what they expected or hoped for. They looked at each other, startled a bit; for the first time, they were completely quiet. And then they scurried off in every direction.

I'll never forget what Cassim said afterwords. "Shane, why am I taking boxing lessons?" We laughed at the irony of it, having just experienced a prime chance to implement his mad skilz. I asked Cassim frankly what he thought would have happened if he had chosen to fight. "It would have been ugly," he said. "They might have been bloody and we probably would have been real bloody." No one would have left any nicer, that was for sure.

I asked Cassim if he thought Jesus was happy with how we acted. He thought about it, and then nodded with a smile. I told him that, honestly, I wasn't sure exactly what Jesus would have done if he were in our place; but there are two things I know Jesus would not have done. He would not have fought. And he would not have run. I told him Jesus may have thought of something else, or he may have done something weird to throw them off, as he often seems to do--like drawing in the dirt with his finger (or writing on the road with sidewalk chalk, "you are better than this"), or maybe pulling a coin out of a fish's mouth (or pulling a piece of candy out of a pigeon's mouth). But I think Jesus was happy with how we acted, and that we were good representatives--good witnesses--of Christ to them. Cassim agreed, and then we prayed for them together. And finally, as he was leaving, Cassim reminded me that each of those boys has to go to bed thinking about what they did that day, and so did we.

I'm not sure about those other boys, but Cassim and I both slept well that night and woke up a little sore but happy the next morning. Hopefully Cassim's mom will let him come out of the house.


I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. But they asked, and rightly so, what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today--my own government.

--Martin Luther King Jr.

Holy and Absurd

Most of what we do in worldly life is geared toward our staying dry, looking good, not going under. But in baptism, in lakes and rain and tanks and fonts, you agree to do something that's a little sloppy because at the same time it's also holy, and absurd. It's about surrender, giving in to all those things we can't control; it's a willingness to let go of balance and decorum and get drenched.

--Anne Lamott

Make Them Fight All of Us

by Tom Friedman

I’ve heard the president’s surge speech, and I have a reaction, an observation and some advice.

My reaction to the president’s speech was to recall a line from Bill Maher’s book about the war against terrorists: "Make them fight all of us."

Mr. President, you want a surge? I’ll surge. I’ll surge on the condition that you once and for all enlist the entire American people in this war effort, and stop putting it all on the shoulders of 130,000 military families, and now 20,000 more. I’ll surge on the condition that you make them fight all of us--and that means a real energy policy, with a real gasoline tax, that ends our addiction to oil, shrinks the flow of petro-dollars to bad actors and makes America the world’s leader in conservation.

But please, Mr. President, stop insulting our intelligence by telling us that this is the "decisive ideological struggle of our time," but we’re going to put the whole burden of victory on 150,000 U.S. soldiers.

Religious Superiority?

by Brian McLaren

I was recently interviewed by a "secular" journalist who had read some of my books. He said, "Your religion doesn't seem to keep you constantly dividing the world into us and them, in and out, good and bad. Is that legitimate, or is that compromise?"

I explained that as a follower of God in the way of Jesus, I am taught to see every person as my neighbor. The first thing I think upon meeting someone is not, "I wonder if she's a Christian?" but "This is my neighbor. This is a beautiful person, a bearer of the image of God, someone I have the opportunity to know and appreciate and perhaps even serve in some way." Seeing others this way isn't a compromise of my Christian commitment; it's an expression of it, I explained.

The reporter responded humorously, "What good is being religious if you can't feel superior to anybody?" We both laughed, but after the interview, I couldn't stop thinking about the serious point conveyed by his ironic comment.

What is religion for? Is it for creating an in-group that feels superior? Or is it for turning us into neighbors who want to appreciate, love, and serve one another?

Of course next to nobody would ever say overtly that the purpose of their religion is to feel superior. In fact, it just struck me that at this very moment, my act of writing, and your act of reading, could turn us into a kind of elite "in-group" who share the superiority of having one kind of religion over another.

The danger of in-grouping and out-grouping is, I think, subtle, inescapable, and universal, whatever the religion (or irreligion, or political party, or ideology) one holds. No wonder Jesus said, "A tree is known by its fruit;" Paul said, "If I don't have love, I'm nothing;" James said, "Faith without works is dead;" and John said, "Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother."

Last time I checked, three of the top 10 "religious" books were in praise of atheism and against religion in all its forms. In these times of snarky religious cold wars in some quarters and hot religious violence in others, I'm not surprised. Those of us who see religion in a different light--who see religion as a powerful motivation to care for the widow and orphan, to seek justice and peace, to love our neighbors and our enemies--shouldn't feel superior, but we should keep practicing, and preaching, with humility and focus. It's so easy to get distracted, and a lot is at stake.

Purpose of the Gospel

The only purpose of the gospel is to reconcile people to God and to each other. A gospel that doesn't reconcile is not a Christian gospel at all. But in America, it seems as if we don't believe that. We don't really believe that the proof of our discipleship is that we love one another (see John 13:35). No, we think the proof is in numbers ... Even if our "converts" continue to hate each other, even if they will not worship with their brothers and sisters in Christ, we point to their "conversion" as evidence of the gospel's success. We have substituted a gospel of church growth for a gospel of reconciliation.

--John Perkins

Death Penalty Fuels Crime

by Howard Zehr

I am with a group of men in prison. We are in a seminar I have been leading for some weeks. Most are many years into serving life sentences. One young man, however, expects to be released soon.

We get to talking about justice. "When we were outside," the older men say, "if someone dissed (wronged) us, we had to fight but we didn't have to win. Otherwise, we wouldn't be a man."

"You're out of touch," says the younger man. "If someone disses me, I have to waste them--I have to kill them." His classmates - all of whom have been convicted of taking a life--are appalled.

My argument is this: the death penalty fuels the very phenomenon it claims to suppress. Taking a life--whether on the streets or in the courtroom--is driven by the same motive: to do justice. Both are part of the same cycle of violence.

As we move into this new year, it bears considering that this cycle of violence is what Jesus was trying to break when he preached against vengeance, even when someone is clearly wronged, as Jesus was when put to death. This is not just mushy idealism or preachy Christianity. Actually the lesson Jesus taught is supported by current experience.

In Canada, homicides actually decreased when the death penalty was eliminated. Homicides sometimes rise after executions and homicide rates are often higher in locales that use the death penalty. Why?

Perhaps it is linked to an observation made by James Gilligan, a university-based psychiatrist who treated and studied Massachusetts prisoners for more than 10 years: "All violence is an effort to do justice, or to undo injustice." In my experience, Gilligan's observation rings true--whether it is ordinary street crime or terrorism. Violence reflects a tit-for-tat worldview: it is people giving to other people what they "deserve."

No credible evidence exists that the death penalty deters would-be killers or causes the murder rate to go down. Gilligan offers a possible explanation for why the contrary seems to be true. Rather than undermine a tit-for-tat worldview--as Jesus tried to do--it confirms it. Rather than slowing the cycle, it feeds it.

Giving people what they deserve--death for death--thus does not make rational or empirical sense. But it does make emotional and intuitive sense. In working with victims of crimes over many years, I have come to some understanding of why they wish the one who killed their loved one to suffer. Unlike Jesus who said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," I too feel the urge for vengeance sometimes. But I try to resist the urge to act on this feeling, as I believe our society should similarly resist it.

I don't discount the need for victims to "balance the score." In fact, I think it reflects the human need for making things even. When you receive a gift, don't you feel an obligation to return the favor in most cases? Ironically, the urge to exchange Christmas gifts and the urge to revenge may come from the same instinct: a need for reciprocity or balance. Yet there are other, more life-giving, ways to achieve this sense of reciprocity and justice.

Victims and society at large need validation and vindication after murder or other violent crimes. The death penalty, however, is not the way to accomplish this. In fact, it apparently leads to more murders. What if Jesus had taught the opposite--if he had told his followers to exact an "eye for an eye" for every wrongdoing committed against them? If so, I doubt many of us Christians would be around to celebrate his birth at this season.

King's Radical Message

by Adam Taylor

This weekend, our nation paused once again to remember the life of a modern-day prophet. In pulpits across the country, preachers offered sermons reflecting on Dr. Martin Luther King's seemingly timeless message. While Dr. King's words were quoted across the nation, I fear that the majority of Americans only heard a perfunctory mention of King's dream of racial harmony, with barely a mention of his even bolder words against what he called the "giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism."

Too often our churches are guilty of sanitizing and domesticating King's radical message. We embrace the King of Montgomery, Selma, and Birmingham, while ignoring the King who boldly and courageously opposed the Vietnam War, arguing that "America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube."

The Gates of Hell

by Shane Claiborne

I figure anytime you are about to talk about hell it's good to start with a joke, so here we go. It was a busy day in heaven as folks waited in line at the pearly gates. Peter stood as gatekeeper checking each newcomer's name in the Lamb's Book of Life. But there was some confusion, as the numbers were not adding up. Heaven was a little overcrowded, and a bunch of folks were unaccounted for. So some of the angels were sent on a mission to investigate things. And it was not long before two of them returned, "We found the problem," they said. "Jesus is out back, lifting people up over the gate."

I remember as a child hearing all the hellfire and damnation sermons. We had a theater group perform a play called "Heaven's Gates and Hell's Flames" where actors presented scenes of folks being ripped away from loved ones only to be sent to the fiery pits of hell where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, and we all went forward to repent of all the evil things we had done over our first decade of life, in paralyzing fear of being "left behind." The preacher literally scared the "hell" out of us.

But have you ever noticed that Jesus didn't spend much time on hell? In fact there are really only a couple of times he speaks of weeping and gnashing of teeth, of hell and God's judgment. And both of them have to do with the walls we create between ourselves and our suffering neighbors. One is Matthew 25 where the sheep and the goats are separated, and the goats who did not care for the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned. are sent off to endure an agony akin to that experienced by the ones that they neglected on this earth. And then there is the story of the rich man and Lazarus, a parable Jesus tells about a rich man who neglected the poor beggar outside his gate.

In the parable we hear of a wealthy man who builds a gate between himself and the poor man, and that chasm becomes an unbridgeable gap not only with Lazarus but with God. He is no doubt a religious man (he calls out "Father" Abraham and knew the prophets), and undoubtedly he had made a name for himself on earth, but is now a nameless rich man begging the beggar for a drop of water. And Lazarus who lived a nameless life in the shadows of misery is seated next to God, and given a name. Lazarus is the only person named in Jesus' parables, and his name means "the one God rescues." God is in the business of rescuing people from the hells they experience on earth. And God is asking us to love people out of those hells.

Nowadays many of us spend a lot of time pondering and theologizing about heaven on earth and God's Kingdom coming here (and rightly so!), but it seems we would also do well to do a little work with the reality of hell. Hell is not just something that comes after death, but something many are living in this very moment. 1.2 billion people that are groaning for a drop of water each day, over 30,000 kids starving to death each day, 38 million folks dying of AIDS. It seems ludicrous to think of preaching to them about hell. I see Jesus spending far more energy loving the "hell" out of people, and lifting people out of the hells in which they are trapped, than trying to scare them into heaven. And one of the most beautiful things we get to see in community here in Kensington, is people who have been loved out of the hells that they find themselves in--domestic violence, addiction, sex trafficking, loneliness.

C.S. Lewis understood hell, not as a place where God locks people out of heaven, but as a dungeon that we lock ourselves into and that we as a Church hold the keys. I think that gives us new insight when we look at the parable of Lazarus or hear the brilliant words with which Jesus reassures Peter: "The gates of Hell will not prevail against you." As an adolescent, I understood that to mean that the demons and fiery darts of the devil will not hit us. But lately I've done a little more thinking and praying, and I have a bit more insight on the idea of "gates." Gates are not offensive weapons. Gates are defensive--walls and fences we build to keep people out. God is not saying the gates of hell will not prevail as they come at us. God is saying that we are in the business of storming the gates of hell, and the gates will not prevail as we crash through them with grace.

People sometimes ask if we are scared of the inner city. I say that I am more scared of the suburbs. Our Jesus warns that we can fear those things which can hurt our bodies or we can fear those things which can destroy our souls, and we should be far more fearful of the latter. Those are the subtle demons of suburbia. As my mother once told me, "Perhaps there is no more dangerous place for a Christian to be than in safety and comfort, detached from the suffering of others." I'm scared of apathy and complacency, of detaching myself from the suffering. It's hard to see until our 20/20 hindsight hits us--but every time we lock someone out, we lock ourselves further in. Just as we are building walls to keep people out of our comfortable, insulated existence, we are trapping ourselves in a hell of isolation, loneliness and fear. We have "gated communities" where rich folks live. We put up picket fences around our suburban homes. We place barbed wire and razer-wire around our buildings and churches. We put bars on our windows in the ghettos of fear. We build up walls to keep immigrants from entering our country. We guard our borders with those walls--Berlin, Jerusalem, Jericho. And the more walls and gates and fences we have, the closer we are to hell. We, like the rich man, find ourselves locked into our gated homes and far from the tears of Lazarus outside, far from the tears of God.

Let us pray that God would give us the strength to storm the gates of hell, and tear down the walls we have created between those whose suffering would disrupt our comfort. May we become familiar with the suffering of the poor outside our gates, know their names, and taste the salt in their tears. Then when "the ones God has rescued," the Lazaruses of our world--the baby refugees, the mentally-ill wanderers, and the homeless outcasts--are seated next to God, we can say, "We're with them." Jesus has given them the keys to enter the Kingdom. Maybe they will give us a little boost over the gate.

And in the New Jerusalem, the great City of God, "on no day will its gates ever be shut." The gates of the Kingdom will forever be open. (Revelation 21:25)

Determined to Make War

George W. Bush is determined to continue making war in Iraq. I agree with Bush on one point--we need a new strategy in Iraq. But last night, George Bush decided to escalate the war and increase the American occupation--which he still doesn't seem to realize is at the center of the problem. Bush stubbornly believes that military solutions are always the best answer, and consistently chooses war over politics. But without a political solution in Iraq, no escalation of the war will succeed. Whether in Iraq, or even in the larger war on terrorism, Bush believes, as he said again last night, that we are in a great "ideological struggle" between us and them, good and evil--and that only military solutions against "them" will suffice. Both wisdom and humility (two religious virtues) suggest that political and diplomatic resolutions to conflict are ultimately required. But last night, Bush again chose the primacy of military solutions.

--Jim Wallis

A Critical Reassessment

What made the teaching of Jesus different and apparently so hard to accept then as now, was that it required a critical reassessment of the structures and values and attitudes of human society as his listeners and followers shared in it.

--Monika K. Hellwig

How Does Saddam's Execution Make You Feel?

by Brian McLaren

I see little or no value to weighing in on the subject of capital punishment. People have their opinions and relatively few seem interested in changing them. But I would like to express in personal terms how I felt after the news coverage of Saddam Hussein's hanging. I'd like to share it especially for those who support executions, not to change their opinion necessarily, but simply to make a request of them.

The best word to describe my feeling: dirty.

I felt the same way when the "Shock and Awe" campaign was launched on Baghdad. I thought of all the little children cowering in closets and under beds, feeling (I imagine) that the whole world was coming to an end. I imagined them tearfully asking their moms and dads why this was happening and who was doing this to them, and them answering, "The United States." I felt embarrassed, ashamed, and polluted to be party to frightening innocent people, much less killing them as collateral damage. I thought of how similar "shock and awe" are to "terror," and because I don't want to terrorize anybody, those bombs didn't speak for me. And yet, against my will they did, and I felt dirty.

I know that Saddam was in no way innocent. I know he deserved to be held accountable for his disregard for human rights, for human life. But even if I supported capital punishment, I think I would still have felt dirty. Perhaps I'm too morally thin-skinned, but taking the human life of a person in the name of human life brings no sense of justice or satisfaction to me. Rather, it brings the opposite.

Others see it differently, I know. Some might use Bible verses to justify "eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life" (although Jesus seemed to put a rather authoritative spin on those verses, preceding them with "You have heard it said," and following them up with "But I say to you..."). Whether executions are justified or not, I feel dirty and ashamed whenever I hear of an execution, and Saddam's was no different. I hope I don't ever stop feeling that way.

I have friends who have become sexual addicts. They tell me the first time they cheated on their spouses, they felt terrible. But somehow they survived, and the next time, they still felt bad, but a little less so. By the twentieth time or the fiftieth time, they felt the tiniest pang of guilt, nothing much, really. Cheating became easy. The same thing happens with liars and spouse abusers and other addicts.

We've all seen similar patterns in our own lives. We become desensitized to things we shouldn't, and as that happens, we are in such great danger of becoming worse people than we ever imagined being, ever wanted to be.

So, if you felt as I did after the execution of Saddam Hussein, dirty, I wouldn't dismiss the feeling. I would say that it might be a redemptive dirtiness, and without it, I am afraid of what we could become.

Communicating Through a Noose

by Shane Claiborne

"What do you think of that man?" the old guy asked in a raspy voice as I settled in next to him on the plane. He pointed to the face of Saddam Hussein on the front of his newspaper with a headline story of the looming execution. I gathered myself, and prepared for what could turn out to be a rather chatty plane ride. I replied gently, "I think that man needs some love." And the rather boisterous gentleman sat still, perhaps not exactly the response he predicted. Then he said pensively, "Hmmmm. I think you're right..." And finally, he whispered in a forlorn tone, "And it is hard to communicate love through a noose."

Sometimes we just need permission to say, "It's not okay to kill someone to show everyone how much we hate killing." As Christian artist Derek Webb sings, " Peace by way of war is like purity by way of fornication. It's like saying murder is wrong and showing them by way of execution." I am encouraged by how many Christians I hear voicing an alternative to the myth of redemptive violence in light of the recent killing of Saddam, folks who love Jesus and have the unsettling feeling that Jesus loves evildoers so much he died for them, for us. I have heard many evangelicals who see Saddam's execution as the ultimate act of hopelessness and faithlessness – after all it is humanity stepping in to make the final judgment, that this human created in God's image is beyond redemption. And for those who believe in hell, executing someone who may not yet know of the love and grace of Christ is doubly offensive.

It is rather scandalous to think that we have a God who loves murderers and terrorists like Saul of Tarsus, Osama bin Laden, or Sadaam Hussein – but that is the "good news" isn't it? It's the old eye for an eye thing that gets us. But the more I've studied the Hebrew Scriptures the more I am convinced that this was just a boundary for people who lashed back. As the young exodus people are trying to discover a new way of living outside the empire, God made sure there were some boundaries, like if someone breaks your arm, you cannot go back and break their arm and their leg. If someone kills hundreds of your people, you cannot kill 160,000 of theirs.

We've learned the eye for an eye thing all too well. A shock and awe bombing leads to a shock and awe beheading. A Pearl Harbor leads to a Hiroshima. A murder leads to an execution. A rude look leads to a cold shoulder. An eye for an eye we have indeed heard before and learned its logic all too well. But Jesus comes declaring in his State of the Union Sermon on the Mount address (Matthew 5): "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,'" but there is a another way. No wonder Jesus wept over Jerusalem because the people "did not know the things that make for peace."

Gandhi and King used to say, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth leaves the whole world blind" (and with dentures). The gospels tell the story of a group of people who have dragged forward an adulteress and are ready to stone her (this was the legal consequence). Jesus is asked for his support of this death penalty case. His response is this... "You are all adulterers. If you have looked at someone lustfully, you have committed adultery in your heart." And the people drop their stones and walk away with their heads bowed. We want to kill the murderers, and Jesus says to us: "You are all murderers. If you have called your neighbor 'Raca, Fool' you are guilty of murder in your heart." Again the stones drop. We are all murderers and adulterers and terrorists. And we are all precious.

When we have new eyes we can look into the faces of those we don't even like, and see the One we love. We can see God's image in everyone we encounter. As Henri Nouwen puts it: "In the face of the oppressed I recognize my own face and in the hands of the oppressor I recognize my own hands. Their flesh is my flesh, their blood is my blood, their pain is my pain, their smile is my smile." We are made of the same dust. We cry the same tears. No one is beyond redemption and no one is beyond repute. And that is when we are free to imagine a revolution that sets both the oppressed and the oppressors free. The world is starving for grace. And grace is hard to communicate with a noose.

Paradox of Modernity

Why is it that a world dedicated to the pursuit of leisure and of machines that save labor is chiefly marked by its levels of rush, frenetic busyness and stress? The paradox of modernity is that however successful the understanding of time and space, the modern is less at home in the actual time and space of daily living than peoples less touched by [modern] changes. Whatever the integration of space and time in science, in modern life there is at once cultural stagnation and febrile change, a restless movement from place to place, experience to experience, revealing little evidence of a serene dwelling in the body and on the good earth."

--Colin Gunton