Some crises today are arguably just as urgent and pressing as Hitler’s forces, with less ethical/religious fog obscuring the view. Even with massive increases in global economic output over the last century, millions of people still can’t obtain enough of the simplest human need - food. Every 5 seconds that I ponder how to spend my economic stimulus check, another child will perish to some hunger-related cause. And although humanity has made huge strides in reducing hunger, poverty seems to be pushing back with a vengeance.

Just over the last couple years, prices of the world’s major grains have increased dramatically, touching off protests around the world. This might push American groceries up a notch quicker than inflation, but for a Bangladeshi shelling out 40% of his daily income for his daily rice, it’s catastrophic. With gas prices pushing Americans to cut their daily vehicle trips, food prices are pushing the global poor to cut their daily meals. Some say this crisis alone could wipe out a decade or more of economic gains in materially poor countries.

When I say that “prices” are pushing the global poor, I’m taking about the prices that I, a ravenous North American, help boost. While the dynamic, unpredictable machine of global supply and demand cannot be so easily simplified, there are a variety of ways in which I consume plenty of grain and demand more and more land for my lifestyle.

If only the invisible hand of the market weren’t such a fist.

If we’ve been making gains in the war on hunger, then this crisis is the Battle of the Bulge, and it’s time to fight back. I know the boom-bust cycles of the global economy are matched by the boom-bust roller coasters of the social justice overdrive. I know this is not the first time we’ve freaked out about food supply. But I don’t think real human suffering should be dismissed by cynicism or privileged, academic optimism.

The first step is knowing where the grain goes. In the U.S. and especially the Midwest, corn is king. Here are a few pathways:

*5% of our corn harvest sweetens teeth with no nutritional benefit - high fructose corn syrup, found in just about every sweet bite and slurp.

*10% (and rapidly soaring) goes to corn-based ethanol, which has recently nabbed the title of “worst biofuel pathway on the planet,” based on what most scientists, energy analysts, economist, and environmentalists have been saying. A 25-gallon corn ethanol fill up consumes as much grain as a person could eat in a year.

*A full one-half of our corn goes to feed livestock, taking a circuitous and energy-wasting trip to our bellies. One pound of grain can make one pound of bread, but it takes some 5-15 pounds of grain to make a pound of meat, depending on the animal. This is, in addition to the extra water and energy resources used in maintaining, slaughtering, and shipping these herds. While industrial meat has certainly proven cheap, there are some undeniable health and environmental concerns with this food production. In this way, an American uses twice as much grain as an Italian and four times as much as the average Indian. Interestingly, the Mediterranean diet seems to produce great health, instead of the starving and swelling extremes on each side.

And so…

…to share in the earth’s provision of food,

…to feel just a bit the suffering of millions,

…and to claim some semblance of solidarity with the world’s poor,

… I encourage you to leave a comment below, committing yourself to a time of change - a week, a month, a year - of making some different choices: chicken instead of beef, a 4 oz. instead of 12, beans and rice instead of hamburgers, local slow food instead of prefabricated fast food, water instead of corn syrup, and a few less car trips.

If societies can unite for so long, so severely to bend economies towards war, surely bending it towards satisfying the most modest of humans needs is possible. So let’s bomb with bread, let’s beat plowshares into forks, and instead of fighting Nazism, fight hunger.

Author Bio:: Adam & his wife Becky live year-to-year in Marion, IN. He works at a community center somewhere between the church and the 501(c)3 code. He babbles on about community development, poverty, and environmental issues at All the Small Things (www.athada.blogspot.com).

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It is not the television itself, but some (or most) of the programs that broadcast into our homes through this device. It is not the television itself that leads to apathetic lifestyles but the addiction to the ritualistic watching of programs by our population. It is not the television itself that leads to the over consumption that drives competition with the Jones’, but the advertisements and lifestyles of those that we watch and emulate.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m no Jonathan Green, I watch television now and then, (though for 3 years during Graduate School my television was neatly tucked away in my closet… mainly so I could tell people years later this very fact.) But seriously… I laugh when Michael Scott embarrasses himself, I tense up when a giant black cloud engulfs those bad men on that one island that everyone is lost on, and I cry when Ty introduces a family to their new home… but it is not something that is a regular part of my day, it is not something I schedule my life around nor do I set my DVR more religiously than my alarm clock. I bring this up because I am frustrated… I’m disappointed at the crass jokes and sex driven themes in many of the programs, I’m distracted by the rampant consumerism forced upon us in the endless minutes of advertisements, I’m irritated that roommates would rather come home and turn on the television than show any semblance of interest in each other’s day.

This addiction to television is a contributing factor to the demoralizing apathy found in many Americans. Seen in the child who watches, on average, 4.5 hours of television a day; the adult who diligently watches a show each evening of the week, with football on Saturday and Sunday; the ability of children to identify over 500 logos but have trouble learning the history of our great nation. The capacity of many who can recount the latest Lost episode (in relation to the previous 3 seasons), the tangled web of relationships in Grey’s Anatomy, or the latest sex-capade on The Bachelor… but who are ignorant to the issues facing the world today (Aids Epidemic, Global Hunger, Environmental Issues, War on Terror, Oil Dependency, et cetera). It is endemic to our native land and, if we aren’t careful, it will become an epidemic on foreign soil. The U.S. is already seen as a gluttonous hog in the farrowing house, and many will continue to be raised in jealous admiration of our lifestyles… or rather the lifestyles portrayed on television.

Unfortunately the shows we watch are also being zipped across the globe via satellite and broadband Internet to those with little direct knowledge of our lifestyle. The image being portrayed in commercials and sitcoms are stereotypes upon which the outside world sees as a reality. And in this misunderstanding they begin to compare their lives to ours, which fuels envy, hate and judgment. The ironic thing is that we also compare and envy, judge and hate. The same motivations drive us all into delusional lives where hopes and dreams for our community, morph into hopes and dreams for our own self. Individualistic attitudes, getting what I deserve, working for my benefit: instead of the community rule of working for the benefit of others, getting them what they deserve, and magnanimous attitudes upholding the rights of others. The scare of an epidemic is real, but the vaccine is simple… though complicated to propagate.

It starts with you, in your home, and in your mind. If many would just unplug from entertainment for a second and delve into some of the issues of the day they would see the solutions are staring them in their faces. We have the technology to reduce the impact of humans on this earth by 90%. We have the money to feed the starving, give water to the thirsty, and give basic health care to millions. We have the influence in America to take a stand and change the direction of the world! But many of us don’t realize this… and sit staring at somebody else’s life (fictional or not), envying their success, wishing our life was like theirs, but yet doing nothing to change our own situation… there is a remedy, it is within grasp and accessible with your thumb.

Unfortunately, television is the numbing agent to the suicide machine we are living in; so keep flipping those channels and find something good, because you deserve great programming as the soundtrack to our demise.

photo by jek in the box

Author Bio:: Sam Duregger is constantly wading through the gray areas of life, looking for the crayons, with which to scribble the beauty of God’s love.

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a) censorship and suppression of scientists who voice support for Intelligent Design (ID)

or

b) undermining Darwinian evolutionary thought in an attempt to favour ID.

The first topic sounds worthwhile, until some basic research is done into the cases of claimed censorship or suppression. Expelled Exposed goes into depth on each of the cases to show the fallaciousness of the arguments (to pick a favorite: you can’t be fired by someone you never worked for).

In addition, the recent trial in Dover was debating whether or not ID is within the bounds of science or whether it falls into the territory of philosophy or theology. When even ID supporters admit (as was done in the Dover trial) that expanding the bounds of science to incorporate ID means that other disciplines (such as horoscopes & astrology and other pseudosciences) would then fit the definition of ’science’ as well, it draws an untenable situation. Few parents who are hell-bent on having their children learn creationism ID would want them learning alchemy, kabbalist magic or astrology, but those would all fit under the purview of the new ’science’. With that understanding, it is no surprise then that many scientists, including some who personally believe in a creator God, see the introduction of ID as a threat to their discipline.

Expelled turns the issue, which could be covered gracefully, into a religious war of sorts. Scientific American asked the assistant producer of Expelled, Mark Mathis, why every scientist advocating evolution was an atheist: there are plenty of examples of Christians or other believers who work within and advocate evolutionary biology - why were none in the movie? The response was that this would have confused viewers. Confused meaning the straw man that only atheists believe in evolution would fall apart, exposing a major flaw in the thoughts proposed in the film. To hear a different perspective, here is a lecture from evolutionary biologist and Roman Catholic Ken Miller discussing ID, evolution and the Dover trial.

Finally, Mark C. Chu-Carroll from the Good Math, Bad Math blog writes a devastating critique of the association the film makes between Darwinism and horrors such as the holocaust:

Suppose that it was true that Darwin’s writings about evolution were the primary thing that motivated the Nazi’s genocide against the Jews, the Romany, and all the other “undesirables” that they killed. Forget, for a moment, that the linkage is a crock. Pretend that it’s the truth.

What difference does it make?

Does the truth become less true because some idiot used it to justify something awful?

Science isn’t morality. Science describes what is. Morality defines our understanding of right and wrong. Science doesn’t tell us what’s morally right and wrong. It tells us what is. It can allows us to reason from what we know, to determine the effect of an action, which can allow us to decide whether that action is morally right or wrong. But the science doesn’t tell us what’s moral.

What Stein and friends are doing is trying to say that it’s appropriate to judge science based on what kinds of moral judgements a lunatic can derive from it - and further, they’re basically trying to argue for suppressing the truth when they don’t like the results of trying to infer morality from that truth.

He goes on to describe that you can draw some fairly bizarre ethics from the laws of thermodynamics, but that doesn’t invalidate physics. There may be an argument against evolution, but this isn’t one of them.

In my humble opinion, having followed the making and the build up to this film for some months now, I am disappointed; not so much that it appears to be a crock on par with a Michael Moore pseudo-documentary, but rather because it could have been so much better. A balanced, open discussion over the naturalistic assumptions that the field of science works with and whether there are merits to broadening the discussion of the discipline to exploring other phenomena is a worthwhile discussion. Rather than pulling soundbytes from interviews that people were conned into allowing, a real discussion from bright people on all sides of the issue, arguing pros, cons, and the evidence involved would be a fantastic work that would stimulate discussion and open ears on all sides to hearing that ‘yes, they may disagree with me but they’re not all crazy’.

In the end, I simply do not see anything of merit with the way the film was made; from lying straight out to get interviewees off guard, to stacking ’student’ audiences with extras, to using classic propaganda poses, music and cuts in order to demonize one position and extol another: none of it comes off as loving, Christlike or worthy of attention.

May we learn from this mistake, and rather than playing into the world’s win/lose dichotomy, let us draw people by our willingness to listen to those who disagree with us, even as we hold firm to those things that form our foundations.

Peace to you and yours.

PS: Just for fun, here is a parody of the Expelled trailer, entitled Sexpelled: No Intercourse Allowed.

Author Bio:: Jordan Peacock lives and works in Minnesota with his beautiful wife and daughter. When not playing with technology or music, he’s writing comic books and wrapping up a university education.

image by Esthr

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My friend and fellow Missio Dei community member Josh invited me, my housemate Chad, and our new friend Orin to have a couple beers at the Acadia Cafe. Afterwards we smoked the cigars (which were actually Cuban) to ceremonially celebrate my fatherhood.

Meanwhile, a couple blocks away, a young Somali man was shot and killed. Abdillahi Abdi was 18. He was shot in his car.

Somali youth violence has been increasing in the neighborhood. It made my celebration feel a little hollow. Josh and Chad realized that some of the young men involved in the incident were around last Saturday when we did our weekly “Hospitality Train“outing. There has been a rise of Somali youth violence in the area. The Somali community blames the police for not doing more to curb violence…and at the same time tend to repeatedly deny their young are involved in gangs.

This is all to familiar in our nation’s history; the rise in 2nd generation immigrant violence is a story that has been told in this country before. The parents come here for a better life for their family. They lived enough in their homeland to retain their ethnic identity. But their kids…that’s another story. They are usually cut-off from the homeland. And they don’t quite fit in in this new land. This lack of social identity and its accompanying frustration is the natural breeding ground for the formation of young gangs. Gangs offer social identity and empowerment in a new land where you’re in the margins. This was the story of Italian and Irish youth. And it is the story among 2nd generation immigrants today.

Police don’t seem to be in a hurry to help address the problem of increased violence. They are being reactive rather than proactive. Meanwhile, the parents tend to act like their kids can’t possibly be doing anything wrong. The one youth program geared towards East African youth in the neighborhood is crammed into the same space that everyone has to share…a handful of classrooms and an under-resourced community center.

Many homeowners and business owners in Cedar Riverside assume that the best way to address this problem it to spread things around. If we could tear down the “crack stacks” (the image shown here), then Somali folks won’t be living in a ghetto. They’ll be forced to relocate around the Twin Cities and get absorbed into the larger culture. Meanwhile, new housing and new businesses geared towards hip city-dwellers can come in and revitalize the neighborhood. This is a gospel of gentrification. And the best it can do is push the misery around.

But for us it is a deeply spiritual issue. Missio Dei is grappling with how to embody Christ here in the midst of this neighborhood. Following Christ means that we engage the brokenness and attempt to show a better way. Somali youth violence is just one among a host of issues facing the Cedar Riverside neighborhood. But for us this isn’t an easy task. We’re trying to raise funds for a building that, among other things, could be shared (for free) with local area organizations, like the youth program mentioned earlier. We try to connect with folks through hospitality (and this season we’re launching a neighborhood garden). But with a budget of about $20,000 a year, we’re stretched thin and we’re a long way off from getting a building.

And so, we are a marginal group in a marginal place following a marginal Jesus. And we’re trying to see transformation, one person at a time, as we build relationships…as we try to become a spiritual family with broken people. For us, change happens, at least primarily, across the table. Over bowls of vegan chili. As people become adopted into a family.

And so, I have a new son. Jonas is a delight to his papa. God has entrusted him to his mother and me. He is family. But we also believe God has entrusted us to the Cedar Riverside neighborhood because he wants to see a family grow there. A new shared identity where there was once fragmentation and frustration.

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As a general rule, I am opposed to oppression of any kind. I can sympathize with the protestors around the world crying out against China’s oppression of the Tibetan people. I certainly prefer unanimous vocal outrage and creative interruptions to the alternatives of brute force. The voices ringing out now, the cameras focused on the situation, the stories being documented – this mass outcry against oppression was not around when Europeans were stealing the homeland of the native Americans, or shipping African slaves over to forcibly cultivate that land. “Tibet is not free! Tibet is not free!” It is a cry that can not, in good conscience, be ignored.

Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:37-40 (NIV)

There’s something about the plight of Tibetan Buddhists that tugs at the hearts and souls of people worldwide. The Dalai Lama is a highly regarded spiritual leader, the reincarnation of the Buddha of Compassion come to serve the Tibetan people. He promotes peace, compassion, non-violence, tolerance and mutual respect, and he appears to live his life in this sphere. It is no wonder people are drawn to him, his religion, his politics and his people.

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Mark 10:45 (NIV)

However, there is a flip-side to Tibetan Buddhism. There is work involved, and peace comes with a price. The Tibetan people serve multiple deities, some of whom are full of vengeance. Their religious practices are in part, to appease the deities en route to obtaining enlightenment. Monks create intricately detailed mandalas to house deities and guide meditation. Followers walk the streets of Tibet endlessly spinning prayer wheels in an effort to gain the attention of the Buddha of Compassion. Tibetans perform physical rituals, such as stopping to bow every few steps, in an effort to relieve personal suffering. Street children, widows and crippled men line the streets

Every person whose heart is moved by love and compassion, who deeply and sincerely acts for the benefit of others without concern for fame, profit, social position, or recognition expresses the activity of Chenrezig. (Bokar Rinpoche)

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 1 John 4:7-8 (NIV)

Tibetans are enslaved in a religion where deities are feared and atonement comes through repetitive actions. “Tibet is not free! Tibet is not free!” Followers of Christ, on the other hand, were set free through acceptance of his sacrificial atonement on our behalf and granted the gifts of grace and peace and hope. Tibetans strive for alleviation of suffering. Christians learn to rejoice in their sufferings, or so we are told.

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:1-11 (NIV)

Here’s where I get stuck.

Christians have been given the gift of true peace through a relationship with the Son of God. We do not have to do good works to earn our salvation, but through Christ’s sacrifice and the gift of the Holy Spirit, we are empowered to love other people with God’s love. When we fail to live up to the standard Christ demonstrated for our life, or when those around us mess up, there is still grace… grace that reminds us we are human… grace that reminds us we are loved… grace that picks us up, dusts us off, and encourages us to keep going. It truly is a wondrous faith.

Why, then, is it that the world is not enamored with faith in Christ?

Why is it that the world seems so taken by Tibetan Buddhism?

Why isn’t Christianity the religion of peace?

In the geopolitical sphere, the United States is the most powerful nation in the world. At 85% reported adherents, we have the largest national Christian population in the world. Yet our global reputation of arrogance greed and selfishness proceeds us. The United States represents herself as a Christian nation, and she is judged accordingly.

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. Ezekiel 16:49 (NIV)

Now, those of us who live in the United States know that many good and giving actions are undertaken by US Americans, and our government, both here and around the world. However, all of these good things are overshadowed in the eyes of many by negative actions and attitudes. We live in the most influential nation in the world, and 85% of us adhere to the teachings of Christ, yet we are unable to live out his principles on a local, national or global level.

“Tibet is not free! Tibet is not free!” I’m afraid, my friends, that neither are we. Our commitment to our national culture supersedes our commitment to our faith. We do not live in an oppressed nation. We do not serve an oppressive God. Yet we allow ourselves to complacently exist in a culture that focuses on self and satisfaction of personal desires.

We have to find ways to stop pursuing a cultural faith and start living the way of Christ.

The world is watching and, so far they are unimpressed.

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I’ve got my car all packed
With cassette tapes
And sweaters and loose change
And cheap cigarettes
I’m gonna drive through the hills
With my hand out the window
And sing ’til I run out of words
~ Rosie Thomas

Gas prices are on the rise and with them my guilt.

What is it that drives us to “get away”? Why is it that we assume “there” will be so much better than “here”? A change of scenery, an alternate perspective, a difference of opinion – all lie just beyond the next horizon… or so we’ve convinced ourselves.

This weekend I skipped town. Up all night on Thursday watching for tornadoes, I tossed random items of clothing into my backseat on Friday morning and spent my workday looking forward to the open road. Granted, this was a planned trip to visit a college friend, but after an intense week of unexpected events, a road trip felt like a spontaneous escape.

Two hours into the drive I pulled off for my first pit stop, and filled up my tank as it had only been half full when I left the office. Click… click… click… hmm… that amount use to get me an entire tank. “Oh well,” I reasoned, “this is so worth it!”

The weekend was a wonderful opportunity to relax and catch up with a friend, but at what expense? The distance between Little Rock and Dallas is over five hours… that’s ten plus hours of driving to spend a day and a half with a friend. There was a time when I would not have thought twice about this situation – roadtrips, visiting friends, reconnecting - these are the memorable moments of life.

Unfortunately, Sunday morning, the busyness of my week came crashing down on me, and left me in a melancholy state for the long drive home. Perhaps it was the (un)fortunate decision to pop in a CD on poverty and the role of the church. Perhaps it was too much self-inflicted exposure to the De-Motorize Your Soul campaign prior to take off on my little adventure. As I traversed the vast expanse of the I-30 freeway, I felt the presence of the rich young ruler riding shotgun beside me, and he was content.

I tried to scoff at the enormous RVs, hauling compact SUVs for the necessary Wal-Mart runs from the KOA campground. At the very least, I wanted to applaud myself for driving a small, fuel-efficient car. It was to no avail, as all I could dwell on was all of the ways my gas money could have been put to better use while my thumbprint on the Texas landscape could have been lighter (or, I suppose, nonexistent). My passenger looked over at me and smiled – he was pleased we hadn’t surrendered any pleasures.

Perhaps I’m overanalyzing, as I have quite the tendency to do, but I could not shake the feeling that there is something to the idea of opting out of our assumed inalienable right to mobility. How do we weigh, in a society looming on the brink of a recession and drowning under the rising price of fuel, the competing values of relationships and responsibility?

True, with all of our technological advances, it has become possible to maintain relationships across the miles with little time, effort or cost. However, at the same time, we are beginning to question the impact of exchanging face to face conversations for internet chats and online journals. We are poised to know so much more about each other these days, and yet to not truly know each other at all.

In May I fly to Austria to visit a dear friend I haven’t seen in two years. The ticket is bought and paid for, and my anticipation is growing. I wept when she moved out of the country, and I have longed to spend time laughing, chatting and dreaming out loud with her. As I approach the trip, however, I have to wonder if this will be my last. Should I really be traveling across oceans, or even across state lines, at the sacrifice of the dwindling resources of money and gasoline? Would I do better to rest at home, pay down debt, and resign myself to exchanging letters with my friends (a skill I’ve yet to develop on a regular basis)?

How do we submit ourselves to staying home for the sake of the kingdom of God?

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The land for my mountain was taken from Native Americans–like the Ojibwe and Sioux. The foundation was laid, in part, by the sweat and blood of African slaves. And every week a Latino gardener comes to tend the shrubs and flowers at my home on the pinnacle of my mountain.

I was born on this mountain…so in a certain way of thinking, its existence isn’t my fault. But I notice that the decedents of those entombed in my mountain tend to be much worse off than me. When White America was being created on the backs of African, Native, and Latin Americans, it left fewer resources for them to pass onto their children. So when my ancestors sailed across from Europe and were able to cheaply and easily buy farm land to start their towns and farms, there were entire dispossessed and struggling ethnic groups already here who couldn’t buy that land–for a variety of reasons. Not my fault, I suppose. But I live on the mountain. And I can’t help but think that its wrong that Natives and African Americans and Latin Americans and others live at the foot of my mountain.

I am a follower of Jesus Christ, but many of my brothers and sisters live below. In fact, most of the biggest churches with the largest budgets and the highest honors are build on top of this mountain. They think they are entitled to the view, while the churches at the base of the mountain struggle for resources and respect.

Some say that my place on this mountain is a birthright that I cannot sell. Nevertheless, I’m trying to climb down this mountain to live at the lower heights. In all things I must place my spiritual kinship above ethnic ties and racial ties and even family ties. I don’t do this out of guilt, but because I honestly believe that I can experience more of the Kingdom this way, and experience more of Jesus this way.

And so, I live at the top of a mountain of bones. A white-washed mountain of bones and blood and oppression. As I sit on my back porch, taking in the view of the valley below, I whisper to myself:

Every valley shall be filled in,
every mountain and hill made low.
The crooked roads shall become straight,
the rough ways smooth.
And all people will see God’s salvation.

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“It’s back in style: the political fashion of issuing official “apologies” for wrongs committed by others — especially long-dead others — in order to cash-in on the compassion sweepstakes and dutch rub the opposition in the process. Australia’s Labour Government apologized to the aboriginals last month, and now Canada appears ready to follow suit. Perhaps the following Mea Culpa, first offered in response to the initial wave of vicarious mortification, might bear repeating:

“Bless me, Father, for my ancestors have sinned. It has been two episodes of 60 Minutes since my last confession.

“– My parents were unwelcoming of government mandated integration in their working class neighborhood. At least, I’m not absolutely sure they were unwelcoming, but they had a statue of the Sacred Heart in the parlor, and that was typical of the kind of people that put property values before justice in those days. For these and all their other sins of bigotry I ask pardon and penance.”

I think it’s safe to say that someone is doing a really, really bad teaching the flock how God wants us to deal with the sins of our ancestors. The gap between what God calls us to do and how many Christians, even good faithful Christians, think about what is the right way to deal with the sins of our for-bearers could hardly be greater. A commentator on the Catholic World News sight where the item was put up had this to say:

“Unfortunately the ‘apology game’ has been a temptation that the Church has yielded to. The spirit of the world is too much with us. It’s one thing to acknowledge with regret unsavory things and human sinfulness in the course of history. It’s quite another to apologize for them as if there were collective guilt to be atoned for by Church or government. Good intentions do not make this work. Bad intentions like political expediency make this odious.”

Hmmm . . . Now, compare that attitude with scriptures:

“Those of you who are left will waste away in the lands of their enemies because of their sins; also because of their fathers’ sins they will waste away. . . But if they will confess their sins and the sins of their fathers - their treachery against Me and their hostility towards me which made me hostile towards them. . . I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham” Leviticus 26:39, 41-43

On the twenty fourth day of the same month, the Israelites gathered together, fasting and wearing sackcloth and having dust on their head. Those of Israelite decent had separated themselves from all foreigners. They stood in their places and confessed their sins and the wickedness of their fathers. . . for a forth [of the day] they confessed. Nehemiah 9:1-3

“See, it stands written before me: I will not keep silent, but will pay back in full; I will pay it back into their laps - both your sins and the sins of your fathers,” says the Lord. Isaiah 65:6-7

O Lord, in accordance with your righteous acts, let now your anger and your wrath turn away from you city of Jerusalem, your holy mountain; for because of our sins and the inequities of our fathers, Jerusalem and your people have become a reproach to all those around us. Daniel 9:16

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous and say, ‘If we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of the guilt of your fathers. . . how will you escape the sentence of Geehenna? . . Upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.” Matthew 23:29-32, 35

Ouch. How can we modern Christians be so totally off track in our thinking about the need to ask for forgiveness for the sins of our forefathers?

No doubt the radical independence which is the bread and butter of our culture has a lot to do with it. We like to think that we are self-contained entities who will be dealt with solely on the basis of our own actions. To a certain extent, there is some truth to this. After all, the bible also says, “Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sins.” Deuteronomy 24:16

I think the second reason the righteousness of confessing our father’s sins is anathema to us is human pride. Quite often we indulge in our human pride by looking at those around us who are falling short. We reassure ourselves that we are good people, not only for not falling short in those particular ways, but for being brave and honest enough to see the mess around us and call it what it is.

Yet scripturally, God seems to expect that we will confess the sins committed by those who went before us, who we may have had nothing to do with. Why? Two reasons really.

The first and easiest to understand is because sins have consequences. And those consequences don’t go away just because the people who committed them are no longer here. And while we may not have committed the sin, we do have a duty to deal with and try to set right the consequences of the sin of our ancestors.

The second reason is because repentance is the best cure for the curse of human pride and inculcates the heart with a sense of compassion and grace. It is the cure for what ails us. As anyone who has had to go through a genuine confession of sin before God and man knows, it is not enough to simply say, “sorry I did that” and move on. True repentance requires us to fully acknowledge exactly what it is we did and the pain and suffering it caused. When we know, somewhere in our hearts that our fathers’ sins had a pivotal hand in helping to create the very things we take some measure of pride in condemning, it is so much harder to continue in our righteous condemnation.

Here in America, we know of many of the sins of our fathers. We can see the consequences of those sins all around us. Yet there is a real resistance to acknowledging and seeking forgiveness for the sins of our fathers. We think those who suffered from those sins should heal themselves and we should be free to continue to occupy our thrones of judgment - or even deny the sin as a reality to begin with.

Perhaps we ought to take another look at how God would have us deal with our forefather’s sins and do it His way for a change. After all, if you look at all of those verses above, we find that whether we realize it or not, until we confess the sins of our fathers, God’s judgement for those sins remains upon our heads. Yet those same verses tell us that when God’s people seek forgiveness not only for their own sins, but the sins of their fathers, God is waiting eagerly to rain affection and blessings down upon us. And I think we’re in need of some affection and blessings right now - don’t you?

Author Bio:: Rebecca Trotter is a writer living in Western Wisconsin where she lives with her husband Keith and their four children. She is a regular contributing writer for Hope Today Magazine. She also blogs at www.theupsidedownworld.wordpress.com

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While sleepy workers know they’re not performing as well as they could during the day, work is what’s keeping them up nights, according to the survey, which found workdays are getting longer and time spent working from home averages close to four-and-a-half hours each week.

It seems people are also trying to squeeze in more time for themselves and their families, even if it means less sleep. According to the survey, the average time to wake up is at 5:35 a.m. and it’s followed by about two hours and 15 minutes at home before heading out to work.

The study that this comes from was done by the National Sleep Foundation. There were only 1,000 people surveyed, though, so it may not be completely accurate or comprehensive. Nevertheless, it raises some tough questions.

Like this: in our greed and insecurity, are we addicted as a culture to productivity, and it’s evil twin sister consumption? Do we consistently compromise our quality of life, are we forced to do so, because we have to work for money instead of money working for us? And is it really that essential to keep up with the Joneses, or with JonesCorp?

Side note: There are historical and philosophical reasons the “Dow-Jones” Industrial Average is called that… and since right-wing Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch is now the one gleefully pulling the strings at the Wall-Street Journal, he’s kind of in a position to set the pace for the Dows and Joneses, isn’t he?

But let’s get back to the sleep issue. That average waking time, 5:35, is what really caught my attention most. It’s a bit later than 5:10, which is the time my wife, a public high school departmental administrator, gets up. Now, one might ask why a teacher or department head at a school which starts classes at 8:10 has to get up so early? I know I’ve asked–for years now. So here’s some hints: it’s not the commute, which for her is only 20 minutes; it’s not the actual start time of school, even though “Early Bird” classes, sports, and extra-curriculars now routinely start at 7:20am; and it’s not the “family time” in the morning, as she’s pretty much getting up, making coffee, cleaning herself up, and driving to work by 6:10.

What I think is happening, for my wife and millions of other Americans, is that the expectation of productivity for the middle class within a given workday (or schoolday) has steadily gone up in the post-agricultural, post-industrial era. And a school is nothing if not a rehearsal for life in corporate America. Historically that’s what school was meant to convey: a work ethic, a set of economic (not academic) values, and a regimented way of organizing one’s life. It’s true, we don’t go to school to learn information or gain knowledge in the classical sense. We go to school to learn and practice culture — especially industrious, productive behaviors, individually and in groups. We go to school to learn how to assimilate. Any educator, historian or philosopher will tell you this (if they’ve done their homework). That’s not an altogether bad thing, either –the role of school in socialization. But it is definitely a thing that many students and parents fail to fully comprehend, especially if they are first-generation Americans.

Now, I’m not proposing that we slow down so much that we fall behind, or that we re-format every classroom so that it is tri-lingual all day, or that it only lasts until 1pm. Convenience is always a major factor in middle-America, and that is acceptable. What I’m saying is that we need to re-think schools, and the workplace in general, so that we work smarter and healthier. If not, then our compulsive need to constantly make everything better, stronger, faster, and more cheaply (like they did for the Six Million Dollar Man, who’s now worth just $550,000) has the potential to send our children’s physical and mental health into a downward spiral that will only ensure their failure in a changing global marketplace. Witness the immense growth in childhood obesity alone for strong evidence that our kids’ leisure lives (and our own, by implication), need a major overhaul.

Back to our example: my wife. What that drive to pack more work into a workday translates to for her is that she has to get about half of her individual paperwork and class preparations done between 6:30 and 8:10, because she knows that the flurry of new school-wide or departmental needs will begin in earnest as soon as the actual school day begins. At that point, large time blocks for concentrated work sessions become very difficult to create — what with having to deal with various meetings, phonecalls, and semi-urgent on-the-fly situations. Thus in helping everyone else do their work more effectively– which is the role of most “middle managers”or department heads– she has very little time to write reports or do her own work during the standard workday.

And unless I’m mistaken, that 8:10am start-time for my wife’s high school is at least a half-hour to fifty minutes later than school started when our parents went to high school. In an informal poll I took of some teachers over 50, they all said their school day was typically from 9am to about 2:30. So what has happened to the world in 50 years, that we now need to pack two or more extra hours of schooling into a day? I know, I know… for one thing, more mothers have gone to work, which is mostly a good thing. But it’s more complicated than that. Why, for example, haven’t more fathers stayed home, or downshifted to part-time jobs? Why has our culture gotten so caffeinated in such a short time? What does the violence that coca growers and little militias in Colombia perpetrated last weekend have to do with me or my tax dollars?

It’s the economy, stupid. And the values of the specific culture where a family lives. In China, for example, it’s worse: a full 9am to 5pm day for school kids (sometimes more), with very few breaks and little or no physical activity or creative outlets. (Sound familiar to you parents of urban students caught in the No Child Left Behind, teach-to-the-test trap?) But at least in China they have some nap/free time scheduled in the middle of the day, not unlike in Europe.

And as for adult workdays, the U.S. is not even the worst offender. It’s common knowledge that in Japan, 10-12 hour workdays are common. This is not unlike the length of workdays in the 19th century, when the agrarian economy and it’s dawn to dusk schedule ruled the day. But at least in that case, work time often coincided with family time, and few people traveled very far–if at all–to get to where they worked. In modern Japan, Dad commutes home, arriving after 9pm, and often has little interaction with his family (unless he’s a very energetic saint). Poet, priest and men’s movement guru Richard Rohr, OFM talks about this phenomenon creating a huge “father hunger” within the youth of Japan’s middle class. These “Hello Kitty kids” often end up alienated and angry, filling the void with the consumption of pop culture “candy” like manga and computer games.

Once upon a time, labor unions and well-intentioned civic and religious leaders helped to abolish child labor and establish the eight hour workday as the humane standard worldwide. But we seem to be losing ground in that struggle again. What so-called pragmatists might say is that we can’t afford to work less, nor to pay 1.5 workers to do the job that a single worker now does. That’s a specious argument, though, as it assumes that everything that is presently being accomplished absolutely must be done. But time is a limited resource, as is individual human potential. Who is to say what we can back off on? If there are losses in certain fields (and there probably will be), won’t those be offset by job gains in new, heretofore unrecognized fields? I think so. It just takes some outside-the-box thinking.

So why can’t we employ twenty teachers for every soldier? Or maybe we do now, but if so… why do so many of my poorer or less-educated students end up joining the military, or taking crappy service sector jobs, as the only alternatives they can see ahead of them? Looked at another way, why can’t we employ twenty factory workers (with good working conditions, to cut healthcare, turnover, and company overhead costs) for every middle manager, … and do it without making that middle manager have to do too much of the work of those supposedly well-trained employees on any given day?

Most importantly, in an era where the only growth in employment is the increase of McJobs, why can’t we move toward training and employing five hundred skilled professionals (like an X-Ray technician, or a CAD expert to work with an architect) for every hundred counter-workers at Starbucks? Why are we dumbing down or kids, or sitting idly by while the consumerist marketing moguls who run this culture dumb them down?

The bottom line is this: can we really afford NOT to adjust our lifestyles and economies to the realities of the globalized, post-modern world? We need not agree to be cogs in a machine that only seeks to grind up our individual dreams. We need not continue to be the victims of chaos, circumstance, and the obvious population explosion. It is our own human history, our own story to write or change as we see fit. Let’s take it back.

Maybe then we’ll stop losing so much sleep over the disintegration of our civilized way of life.

Author Bio:: Mark Nielsen is a “once-and-future Catholic”, presently a square-peg Mennonite/evangelical at Reba Place Church, Evanston, IL.

A founding member of Generation X (b. 1965) , he’s “younger than that now”. Married, one young son. Currently working as a grade school teacher, though with a background in video/multimedia, and with aspirations to publish both fiction & nonfiction.

White. Italian-American/Mutt. See blog/website for further details. Offer not valid in the U.S. Virgin Islands or Guam.

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…In essence, we listen to all the new political speeches and new political options given the electorate and we know nothing will really change. Yet we participate in it anyway, because in essence subconsciously this is what we really want: we wish to protect our own specific pieces of the economic social pie yet feel good about doing it (there’s the classic Freudian split in the subjective consciousness). Political ideology serves a cynical function now, giving us a Big Other to participate in, making us feel better about ourselves (morally), all the while we hope for keeping the status quo in place protecting our own personal pieces of the pie.

And here’s more Fitchy goodness:

When it comes to Christians of my evangelical tradition, I would suggest this “ideological cynicism” could work another way. We participate in National politics, its political ideologies of a more just society, even though we deeply suspect the corporate national machine insures nothing will change. We do this because it is much harder to think of the church itself as a legitimate social political force for God’s justice in the world. It is simply a lot less work to support Barak Obama for president than it is to lead our churches into being living communities of righteousness, justice and God’s Mission in the world.

And still more…

I know some expect me to get on the Obama bandwagon, especially those who know of my criticisms of the current president. Yet I continue to want to press for the church to be the primary political instrument of true justice in the world. The church must be FIRST as initiator for social justice, from which we can then push for governmental cooperation. I have always been concerned about the marginal status given the church as the foundational center for justice in society by my various spokesmen/women/friends of the Emerging Church (I hope to review Brian McLaren’s Everything Must Change in this light). I know many fear fundamentalist sectarianism. I fear the democratic capitalist Symbolic Order (ala Foucault) shall subsume us all. More and more however, people like Jim Wallis are seeing the insights of a tempered vision of what is possible in national politics (see The Great Awakening). More and more, people are understanding a new possibility for a Hauerwas radical politics (see for example Mark Van Steenwyk here and here). SO GO AHEAD AND BY ALL MEANS VOTE FOR OBAMA, but do not allow false ideology to sap our energy or distract us from the task of being God’s people, his embodied Kingdom in submission to His Lordship, birthing forth His justice amidst the world that was made possible in His death and resurrection until He comes.

There is a lot more in the article…and I’ve got to say that I’m tracking with him on this stuff. We see a rising Christian Left that is likely to fall into all the same traps of the Christian Right. And in the midst of this shift among Evangelicals, is the Church learning to be the Church? Maybe my hope in the Church as the primary location for Christian political action is misplaced? After all, Tony Jones, in his reasonable response to David’s article writes:

David and Mark: You accuse any of us who have hope that a US president might actually be an ally in overcoming the disparities in society of being blinded by our love for him. But I wonder: Is your ecclesiophila blinding you to the fact that the church has rarely been the counter-cultural force that you want it to be? I hope you’ll see in my book, David, that I think the church’s role in society is unique and important, but I’m also a realist that it’s always going to be just as screwed up as it is now. The church is great. I love it. But it’s just not the end-all-be-all. We also have to be engaged in society in myriad other ways: jobs, politics, hospitals, volunteerism, athletics, etc. All sphere’s are God’s.

This is dialog is what blogging is all about! Here we have two men that I know and respect–both very thoughtful people–pinpointing a clear area of disagreement. I am clearly with David on this stuff, but I appreciate Tony’s perspective.

I could say more here, but I will instead chime in on the conversation over there, and I encourage you to jump into the fray! And, if you want to add more fuel to the fire, check out the conversation brewing over an email Tony recently posted on his blog.

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