Editor’s Note: Below is the first place winner in the culture category for the Stepping into a Violent Wind Writing Competition:

The sacred drum stays out of sight, behind skins and blankets until the old woman has need to travel.  She lives among the reindeer herdsman of Northern Mongolia.  Inside her oortz (a type of teepee), the Mongolian Shaman begins to beat her sacred drum, and chant.  These are the vehicles of her travel as she enters a spirit realm on behalf of those who seek her help.  Sometime during her spirit travels she enters a trance, the spirits enter her body, and the old woman dances like a child.

In the changing culture of Mongolia, a country once isolated from the modernization of the rest of the world, the ancient practices of the Shaman are returning to prominence.  Once driven underground by the alignment of Mongolia’s communist government with the Soviet Union the Shamans faded into obscurity until Mongolia’s peaceful democratic revolution in 1990.

Like the old woman in the North who lives among the remote reindeer herders, Shamans are now beginning to ply their trade in the cities of Mongolia.

Today this once isolated country is being invaded by the hordes of capitalism and western progress.  Yet the way of the Shaman is regaining popularity and is increasingly being sought out by the slowly transitioning people of this slowly developing nation.

It may be, that as the way of the west invades Mongolia, that the way of the Shaman, considered by some anthropologists to be a vestige of the world’s oldest religious expression, is invading our own culture with the swift force of Genghis Kahn.

The Mongolian title Shaman is now a household word, and has become synonymous with the healers, the spirit walkers, spiritual protectors, storytellers, and the tribal historians across the times and the lands of humanity’s earliest religious expressions.  It has also become a reference for a type of spiritual leader many people appear to be searching for today.

In my little world of Salem, MA, I have come to know a unique, and growing tribal group called Neo-Pagans.  These are the Witches, the Druids, the Wiccans, and the Pagans whose religious preferences have been at a stage of revival in Western Culture for almost 50 years. Among them, Shamans of a new kind are emerging, just as the way of the ancient Shaman is re-emerging in Mongolia today.

My friend Mike from London is a Neo-Shaman.  He describes walking in the spirit world seeking the broken pieces of people’s souls to help put them together and bring healing.  Witches and Druids I’ve met seek to enter the unseen realm of spirits to bring messages from beyond, and are increasingly identifying with the ancient ways of the Shaman.

I sometimes wonder how different my own spiritual leadership is from that of the Shaman.

I am a pursuer of the ways of Pentecost.  I call on that ancient baptism of fire described by the first apostles of my faith.  I seek to have my soul catch the elusive winds of the Spirit of God, and blow me wildly in the direction of His choosing.

Through Pentecost I walk on the other side of the veil, which hides the unseen realm from my physical eyes.  I speak the language of angels, and pursue the voice of God in the winds of His Spirit.  I seek to lead others into the mystical experiences of the way of the Christ.  I pray for the sick.  I speak words of blessing trusting in some divinely empowered value to those words.  I attempt to bring peace to brokenness of people’s souls.  I hear their dreams, and their prayers, and I hope to lead them to Spirit encounters, which answer the cries of their hearts.

As I consider what it is I do as a pursuer of Pentecost I find myself wondering if the experience of Pentecost is in some degree similar to the way of the Shaman.  Could it be that the ancient Mongolian Shaman prefigured the dynamic work of God’s Spirit moving in wind and fire on that first Pentecost two millennia ago?  And, could it be that the Neo-Pagan revival, which appears to be the quintessential expression of postmodern religious experience2 - at once tribal and searching for the ancient, yet elusive and purposely short on doctrinal definition is calling out for religious teachers who can lead by mystical example?  Is this postmodern/post-Christian world looking for those who walk in the winds, speak the language of angels, and call for healing from beyond the veil of this physical experience, which traps our souls?

I tend to think this is what many people are looking for, and I find myself wondering if the Shaman might in some way be a positive typology for spiritual Christian leadership in these postmodern times.  Might there be a place among the Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, and Teachers for Christians who become Wind-Walkers – like the ancient Shamans?

Author Bio: Phil Wyman pastors The Gathering, a unique missional community in Salem, MA.  Phil has been married to Beverly since 1983, and thinks that she’s a real babe, and the most interesting person living.  He plays the guitar and a few other instruments, writes music, writes theological blatherings, and feels bad about being a monoglot American, so he’s learning Welsh.

Image: “Shaman” by M & G

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With Senator Barack Obama’s Tuesday securing of the Democratic Party nomination, America is scheduled for an important and interesting election season this fall. Senator Obama’s elusive (if also encouraging) calls for change are pitted against Senator John McCain’s pseudo-maverick tom-hawkery.

The media is bursting into a full-force campaign-tracking frenzy, eager to report the latest candidate-related uproar or swing-vote niche, and so has continued zeroing in on young evangelicals as the topic du jour. Reports swirl that conservative Christian stalwarts like James Dobson are frustrated with John McCain, and the younger ‘emerging’ crowd are starry-eyed toward Obama. The media has spun these reports toward the conclusion that the evangelical community is going to significantly shift toward the Democratic ticket this November. While I endorse the accuracy of this analysis, I also feel compelled to report an under-discussed danger lurking behind each of these headlines.

The danger is this: the media is framing Christian identity according to how we vote, and many Christian progressives are just fine with that. Our election in Christ is, to the media, a matter of how we behave on Election Day. But our election is a 365-days-a-year thing. Our election in Christ is, to the candidates, a means toward securing their own election. But our election is God’s means towards our own resurrection. Our election in Christ, to the political machine, centers on a candidate. But our election is centered on King Jesus, whose primary victory was also a cruciform one.

Our election in Jesus Christ is a call and admission and equipping for service into God’s alternative political community, the church. That jive is old hat for many in the Anabaptist traditions and Ellul-ebullient circles, but still feels lost on many in the American church. To them the church is a religious body, a spiritual gathering, a social club, an activist meeting, or a therapy/self-help group. While each of those glance off the broader shape of the church, and some even pierce true, any one of them can exist without placing Jesus as Lord and King. That allegiance, after all, is what makes the church the church. Yet if Jesus is somehow sovereign (as the New Testament insists), then we as his body (politic) must somehow be his alternative community, his peaceable insurgency of the Way. This counter-culture of love and reconciliation, according to Ephesians 3:10, announces God’s wise rule to the gawking powers of the world. When the media says our whole political identity in Christ boils down to a vote for Barack Obama, or John McCain, any vote for any person anywhere, they are denying the church’s foundational identity as those whose primary, enduring allegiance and hope is in the risen and regnant Jesus Christ.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I am excited to see this shift in the voting habits of so many American Christians! That they are now expanding “pro-life” to also be “pro-circle-of-life”, for example, is an immense step in the right direction. I am elated to hear story after story of evangelicals letting their spending, praying, and voting habits be messed up by issues like human rights, fair trade, nonviolent responses to extreme Islam, global warming, Darfur, globalization, mountaintop removal, world and domestic poverty, and sex trafficking. I hope that the next administration and Congress in America does something about all of the above crises. But that’s not where my hope rests. If it is, then I am committing the same failure as the Religious Right. Dobson, Hagee, Falwell, and the rest all behaved as if the primary solution to their moral outrages laid on the other side of the next Election Day. Somehow the hope of their election is about elections. If today’s fledglingly leftward evangelicals begin to put their hope and action and prayer toward Senator Obama in the same ways that the Moral Majority did for Ronald Reagan, then that keeps the American church on shaky ground indeed. They will have left their first hope – the Son of God whose love ate death – for another gospel.

I’m not saying that voting is bad. It can be, but usually it is not. Some would say that we need to stop voting entirely, lest any vote toward someone wielding state power be a vote of confidence in a sovereign other than Jesus. While I admire the seeming nobility of such a position, it seems like too convenient a halfway-house for sidestepping the real gospel possibilities of civic action (consider Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement…). The gospel is imminently political, but never partisan. Donald Miller rightly says that Jesus won’t be any party’s flag: the word for the American church is that no party or candidate will be Jesus’ flag.

The way forward between the twin conveniences of electoral hope-banking and a smug evasion of our duty to one another is indeed narrow. It is entirely too tempting to fall off either side: to one side, landing headlong in the idolatrous hope of a mere candidate, and on the other landing waist-deep in avoidance and fear, unwilling in the name of righteousness to have compassion on their brother-man in a way known otherwise to the scribes and Pharisees. Yet our righteousness must exceed that of such Pharisees.

Our hope lies in a bigger politic, an embodied politic. We’ll vote, but that’s not the apex of our political life and essence. Worship and liturgy are our foremost acts of civil disobedience and political allegiance. God exposes the devilry of capitalism, militarism, and racism foremost in our life together: by sharing, by forgiving, and by including.

Our election is about living now according to Jesus’ coming administration, living out the campaign promises of the Beatitudes today. No matter what the media tries to simplify it to, our identity and hope is in Christ Jesus alone. In the light of His kingdom, all other executives are just lame ducks.

Don’t let the media or James Dobson or Jim Wallis tell you that your election is about elections. It includes them, but is far far bigger. The gospel lays claim to those in political office and the church itself. Your election, my election, our election is a matter of allegiance and hope in Jesus, expressed in daily missional lives of worship and loving resistance together.

My hope will continue to be in King Jesus, the one through whom God has dealt with all evils and will one day set the world aright. He is a change we can believe in.

photo by nshepard

Author Bio:: Brandon Rhodes is still wondering how a dispensational seminary gave him a degree while thinking these things, much less what he was doing there in the first place! He lives and worships in the Old Growth Community in Portland, OR.

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Jim Wallis can draw a pretty nice crowd for 4:00 p.m. on a Wednesday. Most guest speakers at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service can squeeze their audience into the school’s great hall, but if the ticket requests exceed capacity, more popular speakers are relocated to a room in Little Rock’s Statehouse Convention Center. Mr. Wallis was popular… demonstrably less popular than Richard Dawkins, with a less diverse audience, but enticing nonetheless.

I attended the lecture, promoting Wallis’ The Great Awakening, as both an admirer and a skeptic.

As a sociology and philosophy major at a Baptist university over ten years ago, I was introduced to the scandalous writings of John Perkins, Tony Campolo, Ron Sider and Jim Wallis. Their words helped to mold my social conscience. I had always been drawn to social activism but, when I became a Christian in high school, a wall was subtly built up between embracing Christ and engaging culture. These men took sledgehammers to that wall.

In 2006, I participated in the Emerging Leaders Track (just shy of the age limit) of the annual Sojourner’s Pentecost conference, lobbying congress for a budget that reflected a moral obligation to the poor. Already disenchanted with Washington and the political process in general, and despite the great speakers and new experiences, I left the conference feeling powerless.

In 2007, I chose instead to attend the Christian Community Development Association’s annual conference, and get a feel for the change agents at the grassroots level. I came home from that gathering with a head full of ideas and optimism, followed closely by attendance at LeadNow and a condition I have recently read described as “spiritual bulimia“.

2008 has been a year of allowing my soul to digest.

Unfortunately, 2008 is also an election year… a year for change… a year for action, and I am spent.

So it was with this spirit that I attended last night’s lecture, hoping to be refreshed or, at the very least, not overwhelmed by what I would hear.

I heard people think Christians ought to stand for the same things Jesus did (very weird).

I heard when politics fails to resolve, or even address, big issues in society, social movements rise up to change things.

I heard history suggests grassroots social movements change politicians more than politicians change history.

I heard politics is broken in America.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

In The Great Awakening, Jim Wallis is trying to make U.S. Americans aware that our political candidates can not bring about the changes needed in our world, that only movements pressing in from the outside can make an impact. Change is going to require revival and it is going to require commitment. Our revival can not be merely on the individual spiritual level, it must lead to change in society - or else it is not true revival. Getting past the individual transformation to societal transformation is going to require commitments on the personal, communal and public policy levels. All three commitments are necessary, and Mr. Wallis even went as far as to declare that if we can not make the changes on a personal level, then we need not dare lobby congress for changes on the policy level.

During the Compassion Forum last month, Senator Clinton was asked the following question:

Americans of all faiths and no faith at all genuinely believe in compassion and want to apply that in addressing global poverty and climate change. Can we do that without changing our standard of living?

She answered as any politician worthy of the title would:

Well, I believe there is so much we can do that we’re not doing that would not change our standard of living as an imposition from the outside, but which would inspire us to take action that would impact how we live. And I don’t think we would notice it demonstrably undermining our standard of living, but it would give us the opportunity to set an example and to be a model.

When the floor was opened up for questions, I took the opportunity to get Wallis’ take on the “lifestyle change” issue, asking him to expound upon what personal level commitments would look like. He reiterated that politicians respond to shifts in culture, rather than the belief that policy changes can create change in culture. He talked about changing people’s minds and hearts on a local level, and then went on to talk about many of the things we toss around here, like slow food and the monstrosity that is the Hummer. He recognized emerging generations as focusing on what impact our lifestyles will have on the world.

Finally, in response to an audience question about influences, Jim Wallis repeated something I heard him speak of back in 2006. A social activist can not be sustained for long unless they are also working to be a contemplative. He reminded us to take care of our faith, that if God wasn’t real to us personally, none of this would matter.

He laughed at me when I handed him my book for the book signing: Revive Us Again: A Sojourner’s Story, saying he hadn’t seen a copy of the book in a long time and was sure it was out-of-print. He asked me where I got it, and I explained that I’ve had it for ten years. Every now and then, I need a refresher in the lessons I have learned through it:

Those who pursue radical discipleship, however, face another problem. It is the tendency to seek justification in our life-style, our work, our protest, our causes, our movements, our actions, our prophetic identity, and our radical self image. It becomes an easy temptation to place our security in the things we stand for and in the things we do, instead of in what God has done. It is a temptation to depend on things other than God’s grace.

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Just a few generations ago, the United States carried out one of the most massive industrial production shifts in human history in order to defeat the Axis powers. Women filled the factories as men fled to the front lines. Victory gardens were planted in every backyard. Sunday drives became illegal, every last metal can got recycled, and luxuries were curtailed to near nothing.

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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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, and again, and again… A major factor in encouraging the apathy in American Political, Religious, Environmental, and Social arenas is the television. A major factor in the decline of family interaction, community involvement, and bonding of friendships, is the television. A major factor in the acceleration of America’s debt problem, economic hardship, and consummate consumption… is the television.

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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The blogosphere has erupted following the first viewings of the new Ben Stein documentary “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed“. Depending on who you talk to, it is either about:

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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Friday night I celebrated the birth of my son with a few friends with the traditional smoking of cigars.

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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There has been a cry ringing in my heart over the past few weeks, “Tibet is not free! Tibet is not free!” I hear it on the television, look at the faces in the newspaper, read the stories on the blogs. “Tibet is not free! Tibet is not free!” And I know this much is true.

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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I live at the pinnacle of a great mountain of the bones of the oppressed. Native Americans and African Americans and Latino Americans and others died to give their bones to my mountain. As a white man in the Americas, I was born profoundly privileged…even though I grew up in the lower class or at least lower-middle class. My place in the world (and in the Church) is lofty.

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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