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Tuesday, August 19, 2008
My wife and I are starting the book of Luke for our devotional reading this week. The whole Christmas story comes up so fast, and it is a bit strange to consider the story in August. We talked about the extreme categorization of the Western church and how certain stories are usually told only at one time of the year. Well, not so now.
We thought if we can separate ourselves from the "assigned category" of Christmas and hear the story as a story -- not just as the propositional truth we are expected to hear -- maybe something different will surface, and it did. It was very simple, really. Just one thought we always missed when hearing the story at Christmas.
The scriptures give us the words to Mary's song. In Luke 1:52-53, she sings out for joy after the conception of Christ:
"He has brought down princes from their thrones and exalted the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away with empty hands."
I had understood before that the Messiah was to bring Jubilee and justice, but I had never really applied this to Mary's heart for justice as preparation for the Christ. Of all the women in Israel, Mary's heart was prepared to see justice from God's purview. She had a divine perspective to see the haughty, rich rulers brought low and the poor, hungry oppressed receive some of their wealth. It was in a heart like this that God chose to make possible the birth that was to bring about our salvation.
Is this our perspective and heart? If not, will there really be a place for Jesus there? Our actions often reveal what is in our hearts. Are we serving the marginalized of society? According to the scriptures, they are whom God favors. Do our wallets reflect this heart for poor and oppressed people? Do our votes reflect God's sense of justice for the poor and oppressed? Like you, I need to answer this question today in August -- rather than waiting until Christmas.
Rev. Randy Woodley is a Keetoowah Cherokee Indian teacher, lecturer, poet, activist, pastor, and the author of Living in Color: Embracing God's Passion for Ethnic Diversity (InterVarsity Press). http://www.eagleswingsministry.com/
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Sunday, August 17, 2008
 There's a great deal of conversation these days about the nature of human consciousness and, as a related issue, about the true definition of "human" and how it can be best described. There's so much such conversation, in fact, that it is essentially impossible (especially in my business, Lord knows) to avoid getting sucked into it, whether as an active participant or simply as a passive, and sometimes unwilling, hearer.
The question -- or questions, though I don't think the two can be separated -- of human consciousness and of the actual structure of the human as a being lies at the base of religion as surely and deftly as the soil embraces and sustains a living tree. As a result, ours is hardly the first time in human history that the question(s) has been asked and, temporarily at least, answered. Descartes's famous "Cogito ergo sum" stands as a prime example of an earlier, albeit transitory, solution. The difference between our asking and the asking of five centuries ago is that we in the 21st century now have a body of physical science far in excess of anything earlier periods of history could have ever even dreamed of, much less enjoyed.
Everything from cognitive science to artificial intelligence to nanotechnology, from human physiology to neurobiology to neurosurgery, from quantum theories of consciousness to mechanistic psychology ... each of them, along with the disciplines related to, or descended from them, contributes on an almost hourly basis to our bank of sheer physical information. We know "how" mentation works ... or we are well on our way to knowing with considerable precision the first steps toward mapping how a great deal of it works; and there is every reason to assume we will be closer tomorrow than we are today to fathoming the mechanics of human thought. The question, in other words, increasingly is not how the human animal thinks and/or develops an autobiographical self, but rather the question is what is that "self" and how is it related to, or identical with, the human being.
The presence of the question and the myriad of theories swarming around it like bees to the flower pot have led to an increasing, and a certainly invigorated, atheism that is itself by way of becoming a serious religion, having all the hallmarks by which a religion can objectively be delineated. That development is ironic enough to amuse me at times and passingly, but it also has a popular appeal that deeply troubles me.
There is a distinct difference between the skin or peel of the peach and the germ of the peach resting interior to its pit and being the life that will make another tree after the peach itself is destroyed. Science, child of religion and gift of God to our lives, can tell us grand things about the peach's exterior, about the chemicals used by it and needed by it, about its proper care, about the adjustments possible in enhancing its flavor or appeal, about increasing its longevity after picking and its resistance to the bruises of being shipped. Science can tell us all of these things; and if we're smart, we'll accept and employ every one of them. Science cannot tell us what it is that the peach's germ contains. Science cannot show us the life there. It never will be able to, nor should we ever expect it to do so.
What we should be smart enough to understand, however, is that the peach itself has to die to get at the pit and the kernel it contains. The peach we know and the peach we can describe and the peach we can more or less understand, but the peach we will either toss out or eat and then evacuate into the sewer line. It was never about the peach. It was always about the germ.
Confusing the two can lead to a lot of foggy thinking and, as a result, to a lot of bombast and hot air, but all the rhetorical gymnastics in the world can neither make the peach eternal nor define the vita et spiritus in its germ.
And that's my greeting from The Farm In Lucy on this bright Sabbath morning, where the peaches are plump and juicy and where my heart, as well as my tongue, delights in them.
 Phyllis Tickle (www.phyllistickle.com) is the founding editor of the religion department of Publishers Weekly and author of The Words of Jesus: A Gospel of the Sayings of Our Lord and the forthcoming fall release, The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
The combined outcome of events happening at the moment is hard to predict, but something is brewing in the southern African region around the issue of Zimbabwe. Here are "the key ingredients" in this pot:
1. The Southern African Development Community (SADC), a group of regional leaders representing 14 countries in southern Africa, are meeting this weekend. Top on the agenda is the situation in Zimbabwe.
2. At this meeting there will be a change of leadership from the president of Zambia to the president of South Africa.
3. The Zimbabwean opposition party leaders are expected at the meeting, but yesterday their passports were seized at the airport, preventing them from leaving Zimbabwe. Their passports were subsequently returned.
4. Botswana has threatened to boycott the meeting if there is no resolution to the Zimbabwe crisis by the time the conference starts.
5. The largest trade union organisation in South Africa (COSATU) will be holding marches against the Zimbabwean and Swaziland governments' presence at the SADC summit.
6. COSATU is also planning to boycott all imports passing through South Africa to Zimbabwe, from Sept. 3. Most Zimbabwean imports come through South Africa.
7. The power-sharing deal between ZANU-PF and the opposition party (MDC) has hit a brick wall. The contentious issue is power and control of the military.
8. Temporary shelters set up by the South African government for victims of xenophobic violence were due to be dismantled yesterday, as the government feels it is safe for the victims to return to communities that burned their homes and killed some of them. A court application barring the closure of these camps will be heard this afternoon.
There is an expectation that these events will not only shape the politics of the region, but the direction of the negotiations in Zimbabwe. May God help us. Please continue to pray.
Isaiah 40:27-29:
O Jacob, (Zimbabwe) how can you say the Lord does not see your troubles?
O Israel, (Zimbabwe) how can you say God ignores your rights?
Have you never heard?
Have you never understood?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of all the earth.
God never grows weak or weary.
No one can measure the depths of God's understanding.
God gives power to the weak
and strength to the powerless.
Torture is a moral issue. On Sept. 11-12, 2008, in Atlanta, Georgia, Christians will be sharing their grave concerns over the United States' position on this practice at "A National Summit on Torture: Religious Faith, Torture, and our National Soul."
In order to bring this subject to the forefront of the church's dialogue, Sojourners is proud to help sponsor the conference, alongside Mercer University, Evangelicals for Human Rights, and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture -- in cooperation with the Center for Victims of Torture, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Faith and the City, Faith in Public Life, Evangelicals for Social Action, and the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference.
The two days will look at the path the U.S. has taken since Sept. 11, 2001, and the ways we can, without exceptions, reject torture. A variety of speakers and faith backgrounds will be represented, so all are welcome and all should join in. It will be an open dialogue and discussion, and will set the example for the type of discourse needed to achieve success against torture.
Please take a look at the Web site for "A National Summit on Torture: Religious Faith, Torture, and our National Soul," and register to attend.
Chuck Gutenson is chief operating officer of Sojourners.
Friday, August 15, 2008
I've been reading through the extensive comments on my blog post on abortion reduction and the Democratic Platform. As usual, the comments span the spectrum. But I found it puzzling that those who are so adamantly against the Democrats on abortion (as I have also been) seem so satisfied with the Republicans just repeating that abortion should be illegal, while the abortion rate never changes, even under Republican rule. The Republican position often feels cynical to me -- privately admitting that a total ban on abortion in America will never happen, but using it every four years to get the votes of people who genuinely care about saving unborn lives (as I do).
I would encourage those critics to listen to the comments of Doug Kmiec, a Republican judicial appointee of Ronald Reagan, a Catholic intellectual, and Chair & Professor of Law at Pepperdine University, who cares deeply about abortion but now thinks the Democrats have a good chance to reduce the abortion rate. During a conference call that Sojourners hosted this week with evangelical and Catholic leaders, Doug said, "What this does is commit the Democratic Party to supply real support for the child and for the woman facing this question in terms of pre- and post-natal healthcare, in terms of income support, the kind of support like paternity leave, family leave and an improvement in the accessibility in adoption. These are tangible things and very much related to Catholic social teachings." He also sees a positive step in the Democratic Platform language in the affirmation of abortion reduction and the practical solutions that would support that goal; rather than just repeating a symbolic ban. I agree with him.
Sojourners is on record in support of a ban on partial birth abortions and other restrictions but we don't believe that simple bans are possible or even the most pro-life solutions. Support for women caught up in difficult situations and tragic choices is a better path than coercion for really reducing the abortion rate. Yes, I agree there is never a "need" for abortion except in the case where the health of the mother is threatened. But until we can reach out to women who "feel" the need for abortion and support them in alternative choices, we will never change the shameful abortion rate that both sides seem content to live with while they just attack each other. It is time to move from symbols to solutions.
I've been on lots of roads trips, but none of them compare to The Walnut Hills Fellowship's weekend journey to Chicago. Start to finish, it was a thing of rare beauty. We had been talking about it for months, of course, but I think most of our neighborhood friends still didn't really believe it was going to happen. After all, people around here are always talking about things they don't really intend to do. As plans firmed up the week before we left, however, people got nervous in a big way. All of a sudden, nearly everybody had a reason they couldn't go.
At first I was shocked that people who had never been on a real vacation were ready to throw away such a golden opportunity because they couldn't afford new traveling clothes, or because there was no television or smoking in the dorm rooms were staying in, or because we decided against beer-drinking and spending money in the interest of group solidarity, or because they were less than thrilled with one or another activity on our itinerary. It angered me that my friends were so inflexible, especially because most were contributing little or nothing at all to the trip. Fortunately, just before I shot off my mouth at dinner the week before we left, Karen and Mark set me straight: Our neighbors weren't ungrateful. They were terrified.
There I was, an educated and experienced world traveler, talking about familiar attractions like the Navy Pier and the Magnificent Mile, secure in the knowledge that I would be driving one of the vans, holding lots of cash and a handful of credit cards, along with my unlimited-use cell phone and a long list of Chicago friends in case of an emergency. There they were, with no such knowledge and no control whatsoever, being asked almost casually to just relax, follow directions, and unquestioningly trust me and my more privileged buddies with their lives. Really, it's a wonder we made it out of town at all. ...
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Wednesday's New York Times gives a shocking description of the death of Hiu Liu Ng, also known as Jason Ng. Cause of death? Untreated cancer after nearly a year in an ICE detention center. Ng was a 34 year old computer programmer who worked at the Empire State Building and the father of two young sons. He was married to a U.S. citizen and was seeking his green card. Originally from Hong Kong, he had lived over half of his life in the United States. Not your typical or convenient description of an "illegal alien."
Would this have happened to a U.S. citizen? No. Did Jesus say in Matthew 25, "For I was sick and you questioned my documentation status, I was in prison and you reminded me that I was an illegal in the first place?" No. Shouldn't we as Christians be outraged at the mistreatment of vulnerable people, regardless of their origin or status?
I implore you to read this article about Ng's death and the response of our government, which denied him medical treatment, access to a wheelchair, and visits from family members and attorneys because he was too weak to enter the visitor's area. This is a real story of loss and suffering at the hands of a broken system. Even when people enter our country the "right way," nothing is guaranteed and nothing is certain. Our current ailing system, riddled with mistakes, loopholes and extended processes led to broken dreams and broken lives in the case of Hiu Lui Ng and his entire family.
 Allison Johnson is the policy and organizing assistant for Sojourners.
When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them on the day when, according to my gospel, God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all.
- Romans 2:14-16
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