Iraqi Civilian Death Count

The debate is raging about how many Iraqi civilians have actually died during this war. The New England Journal of Medicine just published their findings, which is different from John Hopkins University’s findings.

The New England Journal of Medicine estimates deaths of civilians to be around 104,000 to 223,000.

John Hopkins University has done two national surveys in Iraq and have estimated the deaths at approximately 600,000 .

So those who want to make political hay out of this will say that those liberals at Johns Hopkins are inflating the numbers to make things look worse than they actually are.

But the question remains:
If our invasion of Iraq has cost at least 100,000 civilian deaths, how good can we, as a nation or as Christians who follow the Prince of Peace, feel about this?

Evangelical Christians have been the most supportive of this war. I believe we have some repenting to do.

Now we're talkin' !

John McCain was just on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and revealed that his running mate will be Dwight Schrute.
Whatever you think of his politics, you've gotta admit that John McCain has a great sense of humor.

Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright, and the Problem with Race in America

In last Wednesday’s editorial, The New York Times wrote, “It took more time than it should have, but on Tuesday Barack Obama firmly rejected the racism and paranoia of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., and he made it clear that the preacher does not represent him, his politics or his campaign. Senator Obama has had to struggle to explain this relationship ever since a video surfaced of Mr. Wright damning the United States from his pulpit.”

Here’s how I see this issue:

Most of what Jeremiah Wright says is actually not that crazy. I thought this after watching the sermons in question in their full context (here and here). I also thought this when I took the time to read the manuscripts from all three of his appearances this past week: On Bill Moyers Journal, at the National Press Club, and at the NAACP Dinner.

However, to read the words of those three appearances and to watch the videos of those same words are two different things. Wright’s style of delivery is over-the-top; Wright is the consummate showman. He is dramatic and bombastic. While his style may do well in the context of an African-American church, it does not do well in the context of C-Span, You Tube, and Fox News.

It certainly is not an appropriate rhetorical style for civil discourse. Barack Obama knows this. But Jeremiah Wright does not know this. He doesn’t have a clue. In fact, he purposely speaks in a manner that almost becomes a caricature of being “black,” purposely thumbing his nose at civility in the name of “cultural difference.”

I thought that the speech that Wright presented at the National Press Club was pretty insightful. He said that “the prophetic theology of the black church is a theology of liberation; it is a theology of transformation; and it is ultimately a theology of reconciliation.” As a Christian, I can say “Amen!” to all of these things.

However, at that same event, he began to lose us when he began to answer questions. That’s when he began being belligerent to the moderator and to all who were watching that are not familiar with him and his rhetorical style. The theatrical angry black preacher arrived, and it was inappropriate to the moment.

Wright’s dramatic, bombastic style is the polar opposite of the calm and purposeful style of Barack Obama.

No doubt, both men have the desire to talk about race and move the nation toward dealing with the issue. Wright comes at it from the angle of “Here I am, a black man with a chip on my shoulder! Blacks have been done wrong in the United States and the country must repent for this!”

Obama comes at it from a very different angle, one that says, “I am the product of mixed-race. I seek to think that we can progress past the sins of the past and change the future. While I honor the history of black culture and frustrations, I represent a new way to solutions.”

Some on the Right are wondering how Obama could have stayed in Wright’s church for 20 years. Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, both Roman Catholic, are making the case that if a person has a problem with their church leaders, then they should leave their church. Yet, both remain Roman Catholic, in spite of the tremendous sexual scandals of the past few years in this church. I state this not to recommend that O'Reilly and Hannity leave their church, but to point out that one's choice of a religious community is a much more complex thing than simply liking or not liking the idiosyncrasies of the leadership of that community.

Is the political enterprise a result of the Fall?

I know this may not sit well with some of my dear anabaptist friends. The line of thinking that they carry into discussions about the Christian's role in politics is usually that

• If it weren’t for sin there would be no need for government.
  
• It is sin that creates the need for law and order.
• Government itself is part of the Fallen order - the kingdoms of this world are set against the kingdom of God

However, as I see it, the human race was created as relational beings, made in the image of the Trinitarian God, who exists in mutual, loving fellowship among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As the imago Dei, the human race was made for mutual interdependence. Even without sin and the Fall, the developing human community would have needed cooperative efforts and leaders to organize our endeavors so that Shalom (universal flourishing) would always be the state of existence. Our first command was the Cultural Mandate of Genesis 1, and in order to exercise dominion and stewardship, in order to create culture and civilization, we would have needed governmental organization.

In other words, I think that the role of government is not simply the negative task of restraining evil (which is true because of the Fall), but also the positive task of working for the common good (which would have been the case with or without the Fall).

Revelation says that kings will “bring their splendor” and “the glory and honor of the nations” into the New Jerusalem, which should inform us that the political enterprise has intrinsic merit apart from the effects of sin (see Revelation 21:24-26)

See Jeremiah Wright on Bill Moyers Journal

Bill Moyers Journal to air first television interview with Rev. Jeremiah Wright since controversy.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright will be interviewed on PBS this week by Bill Moyers in his first broadcast interview with a journalist since he became embroiled in a controversy for his remarks and his relationship with Barack Obama. Wright, who retired in early 2008 as pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where Senator Obama is a member, has been at the center of controversy for comments he made during sermons, which surfaced in the press in March.

The interview with Bill Moyers will air on Bill Moyers Journal on Friday, April 25, at 9:00 PM (EDT) on PBS.

UPDATE:
Watch the interview online here: Reverend Jeremiah Wright on Bill Moyers Journal

Great coffeehouses, great conversations, and the college experience

My very good friend, Larry Bourgeois, along with Brandon Dawson, have written a helpful article on how coffee houses foster deep conversation of consequence in the college culture. It is published in COMMENT Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

Great coffeehouses embody four elements. First is Creation, a relationship more about the earth, stewardship, and accountability than about "products." Great coffeehouses are places of Calling, where, as Frederick Buechner said, "your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." As individual callings meet, they develop Community, where divisive issues become shared concerns, and through which we find Communion, the celebration of the mystery and majesty of the cosmos in each other and the world. This is the cultural potential of the third place...

...Coffeehouses at various times have been incubators of some of the world's great ideas, and we betray a core contribution of the coffeehouse tradition when we don't foster creative conversations—conversations with the potential of transforming society.

College life presents two parallel tracks: the work your teacher is supposed to make you do, and the things you explore to honour your heart and soul in your own parallel quest. Countless times I've heard teachers and students say the most fulfilling parts of the college experience are the extended conversations, the relationships that develop and expand on the assignments. If you're just taking classes, you're wasting much of what is most valuable about the college experience. And a great coffeehouse might just be the environment not only to bring your deepest desires and longings to life, but to allow you to do so for others.

We live in a world where simple consumer choices can birth or destroy authentic community and self-fulfillment. When you vote with your dollars in an independent coffeehouse dedicated to free thought, then conversations of consequence, newer forms of what I call "Habitat for Community" are nurtured. You invest in creativity and transforming wisdom that produces true "commonwealth." Simple choices, like where to buy your coffee, become paths toward freedom and friendship. They develop social capital, and likely sustain someone's entrepreneurial dream and means of serving others.

Read the entire article here.


technorati: spiritual formation, missional community, coffee

"Heaven is important, but it's not the end of the world!"

I laughed out loud when I heard N.T. Wright say this in one of his audio lectures I was listening to a few months ago.

It's a perfect play on words. Not only is this a great figure of speech, but it is also the biblical teaching. Sure, heaven is nice. But it is not the telos, the culmination of our existence as Christians.

Modern evangelicalism has adopted a neo-gnostic paradigm about heaven and earth. Our gospel message has warped into this:

• This world is an evil place. Your body is an evil thing.
• What you need is to escape this depraved place and this body of sin.
• Accept Jesus and when you die, you will be with God in heaven.
• .... ummm ...
  
• End of gospel presentation.

But our destiny is not heaven - some disembodied spiritual existence for all eternity. As Paul Marshall's excellent book states, "Heaven is Not My Home."

Many of us have redefined our destiny as "Heaven" (especially those of us with dispensationalist heritage), with little to be said of our destiny on earth in resurrected, physical bodies. But as Michael Wittmer's book states, a biblical eschatology proclaims that "Heaven Is a Place on Earth."

Now, N.T. Wright, one of the world's most renowned biblical scholars, has written a book that confirms all this with his incredible gift of blending deep scholarship with readable prose that will keep every reader turning the pages.

His new book, Surprised by Hope, helps us to do exactly what the subtitle says: "Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church."

The April 2008 issue of Christianity Today offers an excerpt from the book that I implore you to read. Here's a snippet:

"The traditional picture of people going to either heaven or hell as a one-stage, postmortem journey represents a serious distortion and diminution of the Christian hope. Bodily resurrection is not just one odd bit of that hope. It is the element that gives shape and meaning to the rest of the story of God's ultimate purposes. If we squeeze it to the margins, as many have done by implication, or indeed, if we leave it out altogether, as some have done quite explicitly, we don't just lose an extra feature, like buying a car that happens not to have electrically operated mirrors. We lose the central engine, which drives it and gives every other component its reason for working."

Read the article online here:
"Heaven Is Not Our Home: The bodily resurrection is the good news of the gospel—and thus our social and political mandate" by N.T. Wright

technorati: emerging church, missional, spiritual formation, theology, heaven

Individualism - The Strength and Weakness of Evangelicalism

I deeply believe that each person needs to make a personal decision to be a follower of Jesus Christ. I am an evangelist at heart, and I want to see each person experience the transformation that begins at conversion.

But, too often, my evangelical zeal to see individuals come to faith is divorced from the biblical reality of community. God's gospel work is the creation of the New Humanity - beginning with a new community called "The Church."

When we forget that the goal of the gospel is not simply individuals coming into right relationship with God but also in right relationship with others and with God's Creation, we truncate the gospel and it loses its power to truly transform.

Tony Jones writes,

"Millions of Individuals 'inviting Jesus Christ into their hearts as their personal savior' at megachurches and Billy Graham crusades has done little to stem the moral dissolution in America. And ironically, it's the very individualism engendered by evangelicalism that has resulted in this predicament. The primary emphasis of evangelicalism is the conversion of the individual, but that emphasis has also handicapped evangelicals in their attempts to tackle systemic issues like racism and poverty and thus has left them open to manipulation by political forces." (The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier, p. 13)


technorati: emerging church, missional, missional community

Keys to the Kingdom

Scot McKnight just did a series on the relationship of the Kingdom of God to the Church.

He asked me to create a pdf file of the series. This way, we can have it in printed form for more in-depth study.

Here it is:

"Keys to the Kingdom" by Scot McKnight



technorati: theology, spiritual formation

Evangelicals a Liberal Can Love

Nicholas Kristof, columnist for The New York Times wrote an opinion piece recently that takes liberals to task about their attitude toward evangelicals.

He writes,

"Liberals believe deeply in tolerance and over the last century have led the battles against prejudices of all kinds, but we have a blind spot about Christian evangelicals. They constitute one of the few minorities that, on the American coasts or university campuses, it remains fashionable to mock."

Citing evangelical pastor Rick Warren as an example, Kristof says,

"Today, many evangelicals are powerful internationalists and humanitarians — and liberals haven’t awakened to the transformation."

In a great statement about how liberals and conservatives need to get beyond entrenched politics, Kristof admonishes,

"Bleeding-heart liberals could accomplish far more if they reached out to build common cause with bleeding-heart conservatives."

Amen.

Read the column here: "Evangelicals a Liberal Can Love" by Nicholas D. Kristof
Also, read Kristof's responses to readers of his column at his blog.


technorati: social action, politics