fragments and reflections
Fragments & Reflections
Daca e vara, e scoala pentru parinti! | Lume Buna
Un articol despre o activitate noua: Daca e vara, e scoala pentru parinti! | Lume Buna.
Calling for Unity across Gender Barriers in the Cape Town Commitment
This is the final blog post on my contribution to the Cape Town Commitment.
In the draft of the Commitments that we received in Cape Town, section 9, entitled “We Love the People of God”, calls for unity. Christian believers are called to unite in love across inveterate barriers of race, color, social class, economic privilege or political alignment. The draft did not mention “gender” which is another major division in the world and a barrier that Paul says is healed in Christ (Galatians 3:28). I suggested its inclusion, and it is mentioned in the final version.
Q: ideas for the common good
Q has featured an article I wrote on the church. You can find it on the Word Made Flesh website or at Q: http://www.qideas.org/
Noua Ordine Mondială: Lumea rămâne fără mâncare
Cei de la Business Insider au realizat o lista cu 12 semne care arată că lumea rămâne fără mâncare. Enumerăm doar câteva dintre ele:
1. Mai mult de 3 miliarde de oameni, aproximativ jumătate din populația lumii, trăiesc cu mai puțin de 2 dolari pe zi.
2. În ultimii ani, prețul global al alimentelor a crescut cu 37%.
3. Prețurile unor cereale “cheie” precum porumbul sau grâul au explodat de-a dreptul: de exemplu, prețul porumbului a crescut cu 77% într-un singur an, orezul cu 39%, iar zahărul cu 64%.
4. Conform FAO, prețul alimentelor va cunoaște o creștere de 240% față de nivelul din 2004.
5. Se estimează că 80% din populația globului trăiește în state unde diferența de venit dintre bogați și săraci se adâncește.
6. Aproximativ un miliard de oameni se duc seara la culcare înfometați. În fiecare zi!
7. La fiecare 3,6 secunde cineva sfârșește de foame, trei sferturi fiind copii sub 5 ani.
8. Se estimează că toată Africa deține doar 1% din întreaga avere a lumii, spre deosebire de bogaţii lumii( estimaţi ca având o pondere de 0,5% din populația totală) care dețin 35%.
Interrupted by Mosquitoes and Sheep
Summers are busy for us. I am spending a lot of time helping to facilitate the summer activities for our teenagers. The other day I had two of them picking cherries from the tree, three of them pulling weeds in the garden, and another three were writing out their answers to some questions from our discipleship program. At the same time, I was trying to help one of our mothers get the heart medication she can’t afford to buy and locate some charities in London to assist her husband, who had just been evicted from the house in which he was living while he looked for work.
As I walked from this mother’s home back through the gates of our Community Center, the sun was hot, the kids were loud, and I was taken by the hand by 8 year-old Gheorghitsa. He said, “You come with me.” I had lots to do and was feeling a little overwhelmed, but even if I wanted to ask Gheorghitsa to wait, he wouldn’t let me. He gripped my wrist and would not let go. He led me past the flower garden and into the Community Center. He opened his locker with one hand, and he pulled out the picture that he had just colored. He said, “This is David.” I stopped and admired his coloring – one of the activities that go along with the summer Bible study about David’s life.
Then I looked at the little sheep and said, “Then this is Gheorghitsa.” I wasn’t trying to make any spiritualized claims of being a pastor or of him being part of our flock. You see, Gheorghitsa and I often wrestle and box. I gave him the nickname “mosquito” as a way of trash-talking his punches and kicks. (No, I am not too old to trash talk 8 year-olds!) So, by calling him a sheep, it’s more about letting him know that I can keep him in a mean head-lock.
But in the midst of my busyness and my chaotic and seemingly urgent environment, I realized that I’d been sucker-punched, stopped dead in my tracks and forced, yet invited to look at myself and to look at Gheorghitsa. These interruptions are often only possible through the sneaky power of mosquitoes and sheep and the likes of Gheorghitsa.
Loving your neighbor as a survival strategy
The political scientist Daniel Aldrich has been looking at what most helps people survive and recover after a disaster. His research has shown that it is not ambulances, firetrucks or other government assistance, nor is it twitter or other social networking devices; rather, it is neighbors.
As Christians, we usually hear and interpret the biblical command to love our neighbors as a moral mandate through which we reflect God’s love and help others experience that love. But Aldrich shows the pragmatic effects of caring for our neighbors.
Before government officials issued the evacuation of New Orleans, people had fled before Katrina hit and survived because a neighbor knocked on their door and warned them.
NPR reports that when Aldrich visited villages in India hit by the giant 2004 tsunami, he found that villagers who fared best after the disaster weren’t those with the most money, or the most power. They were people who knew lots of other people — the most socially connected individuals. In other words, if you want to predict who will do well after a disaster, you look for faces that keep showing up at all the weddings and funerals.
After the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, neighbors knew where their neighbors slept and began digging through the rubble in those places. Consequentially, people were found early enough to survive.
Of course, when we read Jesus’ parable about the Good Samaritan, we don’t find an other-worldly vision or a call to a higher moral plain. We simply see a person who stops and assists another person that has just been beaten and robbed. The actions of one led to the survival of the other. Although this is not pragmatism, the results of the command are pragmatic – a command not just to love one’s neighbor but to be a neighbor.
A Feminist Theologian Supports the Candidacy of Michele Bachmann, while an Evangelical Does Not
I find it interesting and often amusing when the inner contradictions of our thought and worldview create a social space in which those once thought to be opponents become allies.
The BBC reported yesterday on the difficulty that Michele Bachmann is having with so-called “evangelical” Christians. You can listen to it between minutes 30:40 and 37:50 at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p00hj6t8. Although Bachmann defines herself as an “evangelical,” many of her fellow evangelicals do not support her candidacy for president of the United States simply because she is a woman. The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, a Christian feminist, however, does support Bachmann’s candidacy – although she probably does not support Bachmann’s political agenda.
The Rev. William Einwechter of a Free Reformed Baptist Church gave voice to many “evangelicals” who do not believe that women should be in positions of authority in their family, in their church, or in civil society. The basis for Einwechter’s belief is his particular interpretation of the Bible, which subordinates women to men because man was created first, because they interpret women as being portrayed as submissive and in a domestic context in Proverbs 31 and Titus 2, and because female leadership is depicted negatively in Isaiah 3:12. This is a particular interpretation as it does not identify the wife’s leadership in Proverbs 31, does not note positive examples of women in authority over men as in Judges 5, and struggles to reconcile to their proposal Paul’s statement “for just as woman came from man, so man comes through woman; but all things come from God” (1 Corinthians 11:12). Moreover, Einwechter’s appeal to the Bible for models of civil leadership is weak because he does not consider the historical context as a limitation and contribution to God’s particular act or word for that time, person and setting. Also, God’s commandments concerning government are given within the context of the covenanted people ofIsrael; other forms of government, of which women sometimes led, are accepted as God-ordained (Romans 13).
Evangelicals, like Einwechter, support their position by appealing to the authority of Scripture as God’s definitive and infallible word. Einwechter believes that God’s word is not always understood, as in the case at hand, but should be obeyed even if it contradicts reason or experience. What Einwechter fails to see is that “God’s word” is always interpreted. And, on the basis of God’s word, I would interpret Einwechter’s interpretation as wrong. I do not find God doing anything in Scripture that is not explicable, and it seems that the appeal to a supra-rationality or a non-rationality ultimately leads to an anti-intellectual God and “stupid” and easily-manipulated Christians. I think that on the basis of their interpretive strategies they are unable to simultaneously subject women to men while viewing the killing one’s enemy (Joshua 8 ) or slavery (Titus 2) as being wrong. While I appreciate that Einwechter doesn’t think that political expediency should drive Christian faith, I actually think that he would be hard-pressed to support democracy and other American values with his biblical theology. What Michele Bachmann does for politics, Einwechter does for theology, causing me to distance myself from their brands of “evangelical.”
The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell affirms Bachmann’s candidacy as a woman because she finds gender mutuality in Scripture. Brown Campbell filters Scripture through God’s love and directs all action toward the Last Judgment in which each will give an account for how they treated the least of “God’s children.” While I would agree with Brown Campbell’s egalitarian view of women in church and society, I would also question her Biblical interpretation, which seems to presuppose much of liberal humanism. But, if I had to choose between Brown Campbell and Einwechter, I would find myself much closer to Brown Campbell, and, to my surprise, allies, in this instance, with Bachmann – and other female leaders in society.
Acknowledging the Failures as well as Successes of Mission in the Cape Town Commitments
In section 7 of the Cape Town Commitments*, entitled “We love God’s world,” it states: “We love the world of nations and cultures.” Although much could be critiqued about the contemporary understanding of “nation” in light of Enlightenment philosophy in comparison with the biblical concept of ethnic group, a major problem with the draft version of this section was its purely positive evaluation of the effect of Christian mission on indigenous cultures. The draft of the Cape Town Commitments affirmed, “Historically, Christian mission has been instrumental in protecting and preserving indigenous cultures and their languages.” While we can affirm the respect of a culture by translating the Bible into its language and by learning its customs, Christian mission has also been destructive. We can think of those killed in Latin America and North America in the name of the church or “manifest destiny.” We can also look at the imposition of western culture in non-western cultures by missionaries. We should certainly name this and repent of it in this document.
While the final version of the Cape Town Commitments did not call for repentance, it does incorporate my suggestion of acknowledging the church’s failures, while also recognizing positive influences. It states, “Historically, Christian mission, though flawed by destructive failures, has been instrumental in protecting and preserving indigenous cultures and their languages.”
* This is my third post on the Cape Town Commitments. Please refer to the first post on Mary for background.
From a Moldovan Bus Station
I was visiting our young Word Made Flesh community in the Republic of Moldova last week. As we were getting ready to catch our bus back to Galați, I stopped for a few minutes to observe the old communist mosaic that stretched across the wall of the central bus station. Every society is supported by its myths, and every government propagates them. When I look at the communist art that is still hanging on, I can hear the stories and identify some of their beliefs.
The ideology promised civilization and industry, represented by the high-rise buildings and steel construction. Against the oppression of labor in capitalist societies, communism promoted the well-being of the citizen. A woman stands above from her steely balcony rather than under its weight. A worker reads as he welds, suggesting his work serves the higher purpose of cultivating through education. There is celebration and song. And families come together and grow, achieving a happier future generation.
Interestingly, there is no church, as in communism it is superfluous. Yet, the art itself is patterned after Orthodox mosaic iconography. And, like Orthodox icons, the people do not smile, although their demeanor gives an impression of happiness.
Like much of communist art, the shapes are geometric and controlled. And in this depiction of utopia, there is little nature. The sun, stars and moon appear to be ordered by man to function along with the planning of the society. The flowers are not rooted. There is much industry but little life. And this and images like this are what inspired the citizens of the Soviet era.
Visitors
fragments and reflections 