The Posture of a Prophet (3): Criticize and Energize

Continuing out reflections on prophetic ministry/life, Brueggemann gives shape to what the vocation of a prophet is all about: "The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us....[It] serves to criticize and dismantle the dominant consciousness. To that extent, it attempts to do what the liberal tendency has done: engage in a rejection and delegitimizing of the present ordering of things. On the other hand, that alternative consciousness to be nurtured serves to energize persons and communities by its promise of another time and situation toward which the community of faith may move...[We must not choose between criticism and energizing] to choose between them is the temptation of liberalism and conservatism. Liberals are good at criticism but often have no word of promise to speak; conservatives tend to future well and invite alternative visions, but a germane criticism by the prophet is often not forthcoming" (The Prophetic Imagination, p. 4-5) .

The point here is that the Church is not to be a body of people who only offer criticism of the world, which we often do, but at times only focused on some types of issues while missing other ones (which the Bibilical prophets focus on: war, oppression of people groups, and yes immorality as well). But it is to be a community that offers energizing visions of alternative practices and ideologies than the world has on offer. And we are to offer that both in our message and our actually living. Our role in the world is to be "salt and light" be being an alternative community--that is what the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5-7) is all about. That is what Israel in Egypt/Bablyon/Rome was supposed to be. And what we are called to be in an age of war, abortion, sexual promiscuity, economic/enviromental exploitation--we are to be a community that speaks against such injustice and lives contrary to a world made up of such patterns. We are called to stop the pattern of such a society in its tracks. We stand in its way and say: "this is not the way it is supposed to be", indeed "this is not the way it has to be."

But our calling is deeper than just looking at issue to issue and saying "That is bad"--that was not Moses role in Egypt--his role, like ours was to point out and challenge the enduring larger crisis of history. Politician come and go. Issues flourish and die, and when abuses are taking place it is sruely important to protest, but what is important is why the injustices keep cycling through history and that cannot be blamed ona person, a nation, or anything else--there is something deeper at work--and the roel of the prophet is to identify that thing, expose it and call people to live alternatively to it. Again Brueggemann helps us here: "Moses did not engage in anything like what we identify as social action. He was not engaged in a struggle to transform a regime; rather, his concern was with the consciousness that undergirded and made such a regime possible...specific actions of a political kind are at times mandatory according to the gospel. But they are not inherently linked to nor the focus of prophetic ministry any more than is a hopstial call or a service of worship, Moses was not concerned with societal betterment through the repentence of a regime but rather with totally dismantling it in order to permit a new reality to appear" (21).

So the question becomes: how is the churh an alternative community to that of the empire? Or does it so reflect the empire that no one can tell the difference anymore? What is the new reality that can appear and how can we model it to show the world that what we are talking about is not fairies, and flying pigs, is not impossible, (because the empire has convinced people that it is impossible: that third world debt and rich getting richer ont he backs of the poor is "just the way it is")-- but that such alternative community is a reality on offer by the God of all creation? Now that is a vision of energizing hope that I can spend my life working to see come into being!

The Posture of a Prophet (2): Imagine

Years ago Walter Brueggemann wrote a book, check that, the book on the role/vocation of a prophet, called The Prophetic Imagination. His basic thesis was this: like Israel in Egypt or Babylon, or the Christian in Rome, we live in an age of Empire, which tries to make us slaves, by capturing our minds with its symbols and propoganda. Its practices are not much different then those Empires of the Ancient Near East, and our cirticism of them need not be much different either. For instance under Solomon Israel's monarchy became like their pagan neighbors, and thus the prophets called down the interplay between idolatry and abusive economic policies in regards to labor (1 Kings 11-12).

The problem, Brueggemann said, was that the people would adopt what he called a "royal consciousness," which God wanted to break. So he used the prophets to do so. Their job was to dream an alternative vision of reality, one that broke imperial brain-washing that convinced people that the world was the way it was and nothing could change.

The prophetic reaction, in the words of Brueggemann must be as follows: "prophetic speech is a sharp-sword, conveying a vision designed to shock rather than edify. Moderation is a delusion, and only extremists are in touch with reality. Thus prophetic must be imaginative because it is urgently out beyond the ordinary and the reasonable." In Lawrence Thornton novel Imagining Argentina (a novel based in Argentina during the terrifying rule of Pinochet), the key character Carlos is visited with a peculiar miraclous gift---the capacity to create futures by acts of anticipatory imagination. Confronted with evidence of the miraculous, Carlos' friends nevertheless remain skeptical, convinced that Carlos cannot confront tanks with stories, helicopters with mere imagination. They can only see the conflict in terms of fantasy versus reality. Carlos on the other hand rightly grasps that the contest is not between imagination and the real, but between two types of imagination. "We have to believe in the power of imagination" Carlos says "because it is all we have, and ours is stronger than theirs." Writing about Imagining Argentina William Cavanaugh comments "To refer to torture as the imagination of the state is obvioulsy not to deny the reality of torture, but to call attention to the fact that torture is part of a drama of inscribing bodies to perform certain roles in the imaginative project which is the nation-state."

During the first years of Pinochet's rule, the church was asleep in the face of state-sanctioned torture and authority. The Empire had made community and human alternative impossible. Until the Bishops in the Catholic Church began to realize that the communion table (the Eucharist) was becoming a community-forming miracle; a vehicle for the rule of God and a practical instrument for generating communities of resistance against the state...it became an antidote to torture.

I think what is important for us as Christians/People in the Empire of Western democracy is the prophetic call to resist the Empires ability to define what is real. We have become complacent and numbed to the hurt and pain among us, and though "numbness doesn't hurt like torture, in a quite parellel way, numbness robs us of our capacity for humanity."

How do we speak the life-forming message of Jesus into a culture of numbness?

The Posture of a Prophet (1): "Jesus Wept"

People respond to the tragedies of the world with numbness.
Prophets don't.
People walk past the broken.
Prophets don't.
People think only of themselves--from day to day.
Prophets don't.

When Jesus saw the tragedies he spoke: "You are forgiven; go and sin no more" (how often I have longed to hear those words--have you?)

When Jesus saw the broken he loved, he ate, he embraced (how often I have wanted to collapse into the arms of Jesus in my brokeness; to hide from a world that will mistake it for weakness)

When Jesus was given opportunity to think of himself he chose to think only of others: "Please, if it be possible, may this cup pass from me; not my will though Lord, but yours be done" and then he went to the cross (how often I have yearned for a grain of heart like his; to be focused outward)

There was a reason Jesus wept. That what prophets do. They can't help it. They see things as they are; and it makes them sad. They do not only see a drug user--they see the demons that lie behind drug abuse, behind sexual promiscuity, behind twisted humanity.

They see the abuse of people by misused religion. They see through others--to the deepest fears of their heart: that they may be found out--that someone may be looking.

Jeremiah was known as the weeping prophet--multiple times, the Gospels record Jesus weeping. There is nothing left to do when one understands the world in all its complexity. When one sees past the lies people are telling themselves.

I wonder how I make Jesus weep?

Global Warming: The Debate is On!

Well it is official, the debate is on. My friend Jeremy and I (I love you Jeremy), spent over an hour "discussing" Global Warming (GW) the other night at a friends house and I realized that we are not the only ones. Like most things in our culture, the debate has come into the popular conscious by way of popular-film. Last years An Inconveniant Truth brought the discussion about GW into the living rooms of most people living in the Americas. Now many people might wonder at my use of the word debate here. "Who is actually debating the issue anymore?" they say "Everyone believes in GW!" To them I would say not so fast. Not everyone does believe in it. If you are interested in the discussion, which will be part of our cultural discourse for the next decade at least so you might want to be informed, I would refer you to watch An Inconvenient Truth, which is an Oscar-winning documentary by Al Gore, and presents the issue from the left--Human beings are drastically negatively effecting our environment; and The Great Global Warming Swindle ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU ) a one hour film shown on the BBC critiquing the basic argument of the left and of the arguments presented in Gore's film. Let me sketch both sides of this debate, as I understand it.

On the one hand there are those, like Gore and others, who believe that the temp. of the earth is warming, that it is doing so beause of the harmful emission that humans produce, and that we are causing the earth major damage, through industrial development and the abuse of planetary resources. This side highlights the level of CO2 in ice-deposits and concludes that the temp. of the earth can be correlated with those deposits. So higher CO2 levels = higher temperatures. The solution, they suggest, is to focus a higher percentage of the economy on "green iniatives", and to place restrictions and laws on large oil companies, forcing them to research "alternative energies". Simplistic but good for now.

On the other hand there are those, like the scientists in the aforementioned film, who believe that the temp. of the earth is not doing anything it hasn't done before (the outcry in the 1970's was actually that the earth was cooling), and nothing the earth wion't do again--not based on anything human beings do but based on two other things: the sun and the oceans, the two greatest influencers on climate change. One scientist gives the image of a car which is breaking down--and people who are talking about the bolt on the hubcap instead of the engine and the transmission, which are the real issues. They argue that the CO2 levels are not changed substantially by negative human influence but by "sun-spots" (see Wikipedia), and that if one were to map out the CO2 levels they would follow perfectly the patterns of sun-spots, and not industrial development. The concern, here is the many billions of dollars that are being allocated to "alternative energy solutions" (Canadians 2007 budget 4.5 billion) is a waste of money, propogated by a myth and a lie, and could be used more responsibly toward third-world causes etc. They say that the fact that the West has suddenly grown a conscious toward such things is hurting Africa--because we are now putting major sanctions on them, forcing them to use wind-power, which is useless and expensive at this point. Just causing more problems in a continent that has little to offer by way of natural resources.

For my reflections here, I want to assume that human beings do effect their environment, and often times negatively (not too hard to prove--think about exitinction of species, due to industrial developlment, expanding suburbs, and oceanic pollution), my question, has to do with the extent of human influence in the realm of Greehouse gases (specifically CO2, which we all produce, and nature produces). I think it is important to get the answer to this question right before the debate moves on.

As a point of Christian reflection I want to say that any discussion that leads to care for the environment over and above industrial exploitation is the right direction. We have a responsibility to care for creation in all the ways we can. That is part of our Adamic mandate--the question becomes whether we are looking in the wrong direction for solutions to the existing problems. Everyone loves an apocalyptic story, and right now the media loves the one about humans destroying the world, single-handedly, through smoke-stacks, the questions becomes: Are we really? If we are, let's move quicker to solutions, lets force these oil companies to come up with some better solutions. Let's listen to prophets like Wendell Berry, and Al Gore. If not, then lets re-look at our budget priorities (a prophetic call as well) and focus our attention on the right kinds of things.

Two final thoughts: Let us not reflect on our experience as the tell-tale sign of global anything. First off, effects to the environment take time to impact--sometimes hundred of years. I was at home at Christmas and my friend said "GW is true, look I am wearing a T-shirt!" (I didn't want to call him up in February and ask him how cold it was!). Many people are not aware that there was actually a "little iceage" in the 15 century in Europe, and crazier climate changes then that throughout history that cannot be explained by industrial development. Second, Wendell Berry reminds us of something important in his book Sex, God, Economy and Community : that we should not think globally first about issue, because that takes the issue out of our hands, out of our reality, and into a blackhole of theory, we should talk only locally, for the local solutions to environmental issues are the global solutions. My challenge is that we begin to speak and act locally if we want to create changes--weather we are the major problem or not.

Iraq, 4 Years Later: The Temptation to Move On

Unfortunately today I must offer the US a sorry Happy Anniversary. Yes, it has been four years since the invasion of Iraq "the worst foreign policy debacle in US history"(Arianna Huffington, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ Much has been written and much will continue to be written about this war, and as a Christian I cannot support it for two reasons: politically it is a disaster, and it is against what my Lord desires. Most people understand by now that the path to Iraq was paved with lies, agendas and people who wanted to build up their legacy. It has turned into a nightmare, and unfortunately I think it will only get worse---if not worse, it will continue for a longer time than many of us might think. Here are some random thoughts about the issue, both political and theological to think on today.

1. This war was decided long before 9/11. Many people don't realize that the key players involved in this war (Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz) have been involved in this for three or four decades. Remember Rumsfeld was the Secretary of Defense under President Gerald Ford from 1975–1977, and was part of President Reagan's Special Envoy to the Middle East (1983–1984); which is when he was involved in the selling of weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein in Iraq. That's why it is was said when Bush was arguing that Iraq had WMD's people said "America knows that they have WMD's because they still have the receipts". Ever since the first gulf war plan have been in development among these people to invade Iraq. Rumsfeld was convinced that Bush I, did not go far enough.

2. There are so many issues at play when it comes to the reason why America entered this war. But let's be clear: It has nothing to do with 9/11. It has to do with very complex middle eastern politics. How can America both have the closest of relationship with the House of Saudi Arabia (for Oil interests), and protect Israel (Islams great enemy) all at the same time? Quite a balancing act. We must remember that America armed and trained the Taliban and Afghan soldiers in the war with Russia in the 1970's and 80's. By extension they created Osama bin Laden. They left Iran, Iraq and many other nations alone when they were killing thousands of people, in fact they armed them with the weapons to do so. See we tend to fulfill Orwell's prophecy: he said that when we are at war we start believing that the people we are fighting have always been our enemies. This is simply not true. These were America's allies, they armed them and they let them exist in all of their monstrous ways for decades without ever doing anything. And then someone enters the whitehouse who wants to do something and he used 9/11 as the reason why he should---even though not one reason they gave for going in to Iraq has ever proven true!

3. Finally, I must move away from politics, cause now even as I read over what I have written it has all been reported before and is beginning to sound so empty, and it also is so incomlete (for more on the above discussion/connections see House of Bush, House of Saud, by Craig Unger). I must not appeal to the most important thing for me: I cannot agree with the war because of my faith. This war does not fit into either the teachings of Jesus nor St. Augustine's "just war". This is a complete devastation of human life for no good reason. God loves all races, and he sees the mistakes of Iraqi politicians as well as the hypcrisy of western ones and takes it all into account. God does not see the Western world as the great "light of the world", Jesus is the light, only he can offer salvation to a decaying world--only he can have lasting effect. In the teachings of Jesus we never see any room for aggression: turn the other cheek, pray for enemies.

Conclusion: I would like to say two things to close. First, I think the church has failed. One thing that the church noticed in the years of Vietnam was that its voice was silent, until a few stood up and spoke out. If our Christian generation does not speak up I think we might be accountable before God. But we have not only failed in speaking out against the war, we actually helped support it and for that we must repent. Christians have blindly supported George H.W. Bush, for whatever reason (because James Dobson told them to, or because they couldn't see beyond hot-button issues like gay marriage)---and for that I think we have been duped--- we have had the cotton pulled over our eyes; made to think if you were a Christian one had to vote Republican! Not true. (Recently there was a meeting of conservative Christians like Dobson, Falwell, LaHaye, to figure out who their going to back for the whitehouse in '08--they are nervous because they are going to lose their political clout--needless to say they can't agree on any Republican for the job: See "Angst and Anger as Evangelical Republicans Worry about an 08 Candidate" on http://www.benwitherington.blogspot.com/).

Secondly, and finally I want to say that the tendency/temptation for us will be to forget about this war (too complicated, too divisive), and get sick of it---thus news companies will move on to something else, politicians will stop the debate and everytime you see something about you will groan and switch channels---don't do that. There are brave men and women dying everyday over their because of the failure of policy makers and politicians who represent the Western world, which you are a part of! It effects you and it should. The temptation is to move on, but we can't afford to. 4 long years, and in my view, it looks like it will be a hundred more. Ted Coppel recently did a special which had as its thesis the fact that this war is going to go on for hundreds of years. Encouragingly the title was: "Your Children's Children's War". Brian Walsh always says that prophets offer both propetic critique and prophetic hope---But today I am feeling rather hopless, and maybe that is exactly the point: when it comes to this war, aren't we all?

Thesis Proposal Turned In

Well, I turned in my thesis proposal today. So, now I must wait to see if the comittee (a group of scholars from Regent my friend Steve and I call the Wizards, because of what they wear every year for graduation--those who have graduated from college or university know of what I speak). Anyway, so I await word from the Wizard Council, to see if I can finally sink my teeth into my thesis full time. I am looking forward to it, and to this point have find of been approaching it rather slowly (due to having a baby, working, etc.). But now is the time to get serious, bear down and go!

For those of you interested let me explain what I am writing my thesis on: I am writing a critique of what has come to be called a "two-covenant" view of Romans 9-11. Basically scholars are now arguing that Paul thought that there were two covenants that God was, and is, nurturing (one with Jews, the other with Gentiles). They propose that Paul thought that though Gentiles are saved by faith in Christ, Jews continued to be saved through obedience to the Law of Moses and that Paul was alright with these two co-existing communities. They also propose that Romans 11.26 "all Israel will be saved" means that every Jew living at the time of Christs return will be saved. And that Christians must therefore not try to bring the gospel of Jesus to Jews because they are already God's special people.

I believe that Paul disagrees with each of the above tenents. More than that I believe the above ideas are dangerous, and if accepted by the Christian community, where they have already taken root, potentially devastating to the gospel. The impact has already reached the evangelical world: George Sheridan, once Coast Regional Director for the Southern Baptist department of Interfaith Witness, asserted that God’s bond with the Jewish people was never superseded with the coming of Jesus. He wrote: “The Jews of today, as ever, receive salvation through their having been chosen by God in covenant with Abraham, Moses, and the prophets....My position is that the Jews do not require evangelization.” My understanding is that many within the mainline protestant churches today would echoe Sheridan's sentiments here.

I will attempt to show that exegesis of Romans 9-11 does not only not produce the aforementioned conclusions, but counters those conclusions. I will seek to exhaustively critique the above position by surveying its historical inception, and putting its interpretation of Romans through rigorous testing (against the text itself and the conclusions of other scholars) to see if it holds water. Though I understand the reason many want to believe this idea I cannot agree with it. It is an example of biblical interpretation being informed by historical crisis--there is much guilt toward the Jewish community following WWI and WWII, and we Christians should surely be sensitive in our dialogue, but not to the point where we interpret the New Testament to be saying something it is not out of that sensitivity...(the propisition by the two-covenant movvement is to keep all mission to Jewish communities in check)--Paul would say they need Jesus, and to not bring them the gospel is precisely the anti-Jewish position--after all it is their history that we Gentiles get grafted into thus it makes the most sense for them to believe in Christ, again after all the Christ (the Messiah) is a Jewish concept and category not a Gentile one!

There is a lot more to say but that is the basic premise. So i will let you know the verdict on my proposal when I hear something...


"For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. 7Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham's children." (Romans 9.6-7)

"And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again." (Romans 11.23)

Though at the end of the day, Paul, and by extension the church should agree, that having Jews believe in their Messiah would be the most amazing thing and their rejection of him, broke his heart as it should ours: I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, 4the people of Israel. (Romans 9.2-3)


Blessings,

Mark Clark

Death, Mourning and Hope

In the last three days two of my friends fathers have died. It has caused me to reflect...

Death is kind of the forgotten right of passage. One that we all must take sooner or later. Most of us think that day is far off, like a sight we cannot see because we cannot fathom it-- but fathom it or not, it is coming, and for some sooner than others. And for some sooner than you think.

Death is not spoken of much. It is covered over by make-up and poetry so often it seems to come and go without much notice. We do the opposite of what God's people have done throughout history. We move on quickly, tell people to move forward and try to heal swiftly so that life is bearable. When we do that we deny people of what it means to be human. Most other cultures in the world mourn for weeks or months, in the Jewish culture years, when somone dies--and rightly so! To be human should mean that we mourn death. That is why the prophets, and Jesus, wept when friends died (John 11.35). That is why there is the book of Lamentations, why Jesus says his people will celebrate with those who celebrate and mourn with those who mourn--because God's people are supposed to lament when death takes a life. That is why the Psalms are filled with lament--when we don't mourn we are acting out something the world has convinced us of: we pretend that death is alright, that it is normal, something to heal from--but let the Scriptures wash over you when you are tempted to such lunacy, such blasphemy! Death is not normal! It is not natural! It is the odd thing out in this world. It entered as the result of sin and seperation from God (from life itself). You know that though, because you feel it.

To borrow a phrase from James "Death is a vapor here today but gone tomorrow" that is what we celebrate at Easter, and beyond that, every time we pray in the name of the risen Lord Jesus--that death has in principle been defeated. That is what the gospel is about. The gospel is not about going to heaven when a person dies, it is about a truly human life here and now forgiven from sin and living in the Spirit connected to God which results in going to be with God when we expire, but even that is an intermediate stage--beyond "life after death" (heaven if you will) there is something else, the great hope of the gospel: 'life after "life after death"'--resurrection life in a renewed body. That is where this story is going--not to harps and disembodied bliss (more a picture of medieval art than biblical theology), but a new heaven and a new earth--praise God!

So, as you live today, as you breathe and eat and sleep and kiss your loved ones and plan and drive, realize that death is just a moment away from you, but that it does not have to be the last scene of your story--for those who trust in Christ, it is but a temporary scene, which gives way to a renewed creation where we will eat and live and run and play and work again, in the presence of our risen Lord and together as family and friends again.

"300"-- A Gratuitous Bloodbath for the Ages

300 is truly a film like no other (okay it is like Sin City in its look, because it shares the same director), but beyond that you have rarely seen anything like it. That is not to say it is all good--just that it is creative. Indeed from a Christian perspective, there is much to feel uncomfortable about in this film: there is unneeded, gratuitous nudity, an insane amount of violence (which is to be expected from a movie with a title written in blood), over-the-top characters, pretty much an all white cast in a movie about ancient Greeks and Persians, and Scottish and English actors whose accents come and go with each scene. Like I said there is much not to like.

Those things being said the film is one crazy ride, and does what it promises: it entertains. The story loosely depicts the historical "Battle of Thermopylae" from the perspective of Leonidas I, king of Sparta, a battle where 300 Spartans fought the massive army of Persia under King Xerxes. 300 versus close to a million some historians say. Spartans were the craziest of warriors-- shaped that way since birth. They know it is a suicide mission, but think they will have some chance if they can lure the enemy into a small crevice of mountain where "numbers will mean nothing" because only a few hundred of the Persians will be able to fight at once. That is pretty much where history ends in the film and where Frank Miller's graphic novel (a grown-up comic book) takes over, which the film is based on. The characters are way over the top: giants, men with lobster arms, leper-type magic men, immortals-- the list is too long and bizarre. Which is one of my critiques of the film beyond my moral complaints: it could have approached the subject matter from more of a historical perspective while still using Miller's basic premise, but it chooses to go way over the top, and it does take away from it.

The film is dazzling at every turn and will impress the most avid fans of fantasy. It is violent, though nor more so than other films of recent years, and hence it is one of the many films that have me reflecting on how gruesome war and violence really is. Though these types of films certainly diminish our capacities in regards to violence etc., (300 especially has this potential because of its form), they do depict war in its rawest form, and force us, a people who do not live with war everyday like so many millions around the world, to think about our role of peacemaking. It is interesting to think that we view ourselves as such a civilized society, which would never be barbarious enough to do the things these cultures did to people--but then to realize sadly that nothing has changed..seriously nothign has changed. We go to war for the same reasons they cite, and are as commmitted to nationalism and patriotic propganda just as much or more so than these people at times--is what these people were doing any different from what our governments are doing today: "same stuff, different day" as they say. So, when all is said and done everything about 300 is gratuitous--it is truly a bloodbath for the ages.

Guest Blogger (Jim Wallis): Dr. Dobson Let's Have a Real Debate--A Challenge

Last week, James Dobson and a number of other Religious Right leaders wrote a letter to the National Association of Evangelicals, claiming that work on climate change was a distraction from "the great moral issues of our time." http://www.citizenlink.org/pdfs/NAELetterFinal.pdf

I responded on our God’s Politics blog on Friday, with the piece Dobson and Friends, Outside the Mainstream. I’ve invited James Dobson to a debate on the question, "What are the great moral issues of our time for evangelical Christians?"

James Dobson’s letter attacking Rich Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals has caused a firestorm, and maybe the beginning of a really good dialogue. The letter from Dobson and friends actually acknowledged that there is a real debate among evangelicals about the seriousness of climate change and the reasons for it. So instead of calling for Cizik’s resignation for saying global warming should be a moral issue for evangelical Christians, why don’t Dobson and his friends accept a real debate on whether climate change is, indeed, one of the great moral issues of our time? A major evangelical Christian university should host just such a debate.But I want to focus on the following very clear statement from Dobson's letter:
"More importantly, we have observed that Cizik and others are using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time, notably the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children."

That is indeed the key criticism, and the foundation for the real debate. 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, and Dobson says they are.

So Jim, let’s have that debate - the big debate. What are the great moral issues of our time for evangelical Christians? You’re right, a new generation is embracing a wider and deeper agenda than you want them to. I think that is a very good thing. You think it is a bad thing, and want to get people fired for raising broader issues than those connected to sexual morality. So, today, I am inviting you to have that debate about what the great moral issues of our time really are. Again, let’s ask a leading evangelical university to invite us both and host a public debate, and perhaps ask a major evangelical publication to co-sponsor it. Let’s have that debate, Jim, and see what America’s evangelicals think the great moral issues of our time really are. How about it?

"Zodiac"-- True Story, Scary Story and a Pointer to Evil

The new movie Zodiac had me loosing sleep the other night. There are scenes in the movie that are very real and haunting-- for days and nights after you see them. I was awake staring at my bedroom door for at least a half an hour at about 3 am, and looking behind me as I walked around for days after. It is not a normal thriller movie--I do not like horrors-- it is based on the true story of a serial killer who terrorized the San Francisco area for decades, beginning in the mid-Seventies.

There are a couple problems about the film and I will mention them to start. The first problem with the film is its notorious ending: the real-life killer was never captured. Thus one leaves wanting resolution--but of course this points to the reality. The critics are right as well: it is too long. It is almost three hours and really doesn't need to be.

Those things being said the film is amazing. Brilliantly acting, written and directed-- it is a good old fashion thriller/detective drama. It is the best film I have seen this year. It is so real and haunting-- and accomplishes what it sets out to: to tell the story of Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle who kept pursuing the Zodiac killer even though the police gave up on it. He commits himself to the task at the cost of everything he holds dear.

The movie subtly highlights what one feels while watching it: that real criminal cases move slowly, are tedious, and do not often end "happily", contrasted with such stories as told on film, and within the media. In Zodiac, a screening of 1971’s Dirty Harry provides rueful commentary on the action. While this “real-life” movie about Zodiac submits that only a furious, out-of-bounds cop can catch a psychokiller, Zodiac shows that the cops are repeatedly hampered by rules, demands for warrants or for multi-jurisdictional sanctions.

One leaves the movie wondering: what is wrong with people? Really, that sounds like a kind of cliche question but what is wrong? The depth of human depravity and evil is profound. One of the basic questions of being human is to feel this sense and ask what is wrong with the world? Something feels wrong. We live in a broken world, with people who have been effected by sin and evil in many different ways and on different scales. I wonder if many people have thought of comitting such attrocities at some point and asked: Could I get away with it? Maybe not all of us, but maybe on a smaller scale-- something else that we would never dream about sharing, something in the darkness of our soul that we have thought up that speaks to our own evil-- a darkness that we are so uncomfortable with that we shutter at the thought of thinking it again. Why have we thought those things before? Because there is a disconnect between us and the Holy One who made us-- and we know what it means to feel right but that has been disconnected. This disconnect causes us to think and act wrongly against ourselves, God and our neighbor. We are, if left to ourselves, truly "fallen."

But the gospel is the great answer to that despair-- that through the death and resurrection of Jesus that "discarded image", as CS Lewis called it, can be restored, by a response of trust and faith in that redemptive work, and moves us forward to a restoration that will fully be seen and experienced in God's new creation (Revelation 21-22), where every wrong will be righted, even the wrongs done to the poor victims of the Zodiac. May God grant them mercy-- for we must not forget they are not characters in a movie, but people, victims, who died horrific deaths, who experienced first hand the evil that Christ came to defeat.

Thurday: The Silence

Though the air is full of singing
my head is loud with the labor of words.
Though the season is rich with fruit,
my tongue hungers for the sweet of speech.
Though the beech is golden I cannot stand beside it mute, but must say "It is golden," while the leaves stir and fall with a sound that is not a name.
It is in the silence that my hope is, and my aim.
A song whose lines I cannot make or sing sounds men's silence like a root.
Let me say and not mourn: the world lives in the death of speech and sings there.

--Wendell Berry

Wednesday: The Wish to be Generous

ALL that I serve will die, all my delights,
the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,
the silent lilies standing in the woods,
the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all
will burn in man's evil, or dwindle
in its own age.

Let the world bring on me
the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know
my little light taken from me into the seed
of the beginning and the end, so I may bow
to mystery, and take my stand on the earth
like a tree in a field, passing without haste
or regret toward what will be, my life
a patient willing descent into the grass.


--Wendell Berry