I noticed in today's paper that Warren Jeffs was convicted and sentenced to two terms of 5 to life for his rape of teenage cousins a few years ago. Anyone who doubts the severity of this issue in the Mormon church must read Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven, your views will be changed.

How ironic is it that if you look at my archives on the bottom right you noticed that I have had the exact same number of entries in the years 2006 and 2005. I have a long way to go, however, to catch up for this year. You don't want to hear that much from me!

Earlier this week my friend Christina sent me an emailing saying that the best song in the whole wide world right now was "When the Saints" by Sarah Groves and that I had to download it RIGHT NOW! Yeah, Yeah, settle down Christina, I'll get to it when I have time...well I had time on Thursday night and I haven't been the same since. This song is doing crazy things to me! Check out some of the lyrics:

Lord I have a heavy burden of all I've seen and know
It's more than I can handle
But your word is burning like a fire shut up in my bonesand
I can’t let it go

I think of Paul and Silas in the prison yard
I hear their song of freedom rising to the stars

I see the shepherd Moses in the Pharaohs court
I hear his call for freedom for the people of the Lord

I see the long quiet walk along the Underground Railroad
I see the slave awakening to the value of her soul

I see the young missionary at the angry spear
I see his family returning with no trace of fear

I see the long hard shadows of Calcutta nights
I see the sisters standing by the dying mans side

I see the young girl huddled on the brothel floor
I see the man with a passion come and kicking down that door

I see the man of sorrow and his long troubled road
I see the world on his shoulders and my easy load

And when the Saints go marching in
I want to be one of them

Fling wide you heavenly gates
Prepare the way of the risen Lord
- "Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble
Delirious

Lift up your heads, O you gates;
be lifted up, you ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.

Who is this King of glory?
The LORD strong and mighty,
the LORD mighty in battle.

Lift up your heads, O you gates;
lift them up, you ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.

Who is he, this King of glory?
The LORD Almighty—
he is the King of glory.
- Psalm 24:7-9

(DISCLAIMER: I've been working on this post for about a week, and it's still not what I want, but I have chosen to publish it anyway. I plan to work on it further and hope to submit it to the Ooze for publication...your editing and revision suggestions are more than welcome.)

I just finished reading a book called Sold by Patricia McCormick, one that some of my students are reading independently. It's a fascinating book about a young girl from Nepal who is trafficked into the sex slavery business in India after she and her family were promised she would go to the city to work as a maid for a rich family. It's a fictional story but as is usual, the author followed in the footsteps of hundreds, thousands of young girls like Lakshmi, and based this book on their stories. (She adds that this story is too true for over 12,000 girls from Nepal each year.)

One part in particular stood out and reminded me of the story of the Prodigal Son. One of the ladies in the brothel, Monica, finally works her way out of debt and is free to go. She returns to her village, where supposedly she has a daughter, only to be met there by the elders and relatives and is soundly beaten and told never to come back. Her daughter has been told that she is dead. She shamefully returns to the brothel, the only place that will accept her. (I can only imagine how Lakshmi will be welcomed back to the family that sold her off.)

Over the past few months I've read a few books that detailed the practices of different cultures, books such as Infidel, The Places In-Between, and OnThe Road to Kandahar, just to name a few (I'd highly recommend the first and last, The Places In-Between was not that good). I was reminded of the backward way of living that still permeates these cultures, the patriarchal methods entrenched in the lives of the people and the atrocious treatment of women that is common, even expected, even by the women. And this paradigm has invaded not just Somalia, not just Afghanistan, not just India and Nepal, but most of the non-Western world. I go to visit my friend in Kenya and notice that the women are treated as slaves. When I confront someone on this, I am told it is "the culture." When I hear about a young girl being raped by her uncle or a neighbor and then banished from her family and village, forced to a life of beggary on the streets, I am told that this is cultural. This is not good enough for me.

Of course, I mean not to be caucocentric. We in the West are not immune to this issue. The very people Jesus dined with, the very people that He came to save are no longer welcome in our churches. “Go and clean yourself up,” they are told, “And then maybe we’ll let you in…conditionally.” We say we are protecting the flock, that we are protecting the Name and the house of the Lord…I don’t buy it, it’s not good enough for me!

Have we forgotten how the Kingdom of God works?

It’s been years since I’ve read Crime and Punishment and though I’ve reflected on the text quite a bit since that time, I’ve never quite understood or agreed with Dostoevsky’s message about the Lord, but he emits a great deal of truth about the Kingdom of God:

…but He will pity us Who has had pity on all men, Who has understood all men and all things…He will come in that day and He will ask…Where is the daughter who had pity upon the filthy drunkard, her earthly father, undismayed by his beastliness? And he will say, “Come to me! I have already forgiven thee once…I have forgiven thee once…Thy sins which are many are forgiven thee for thou hast loved much”…And when He has done with all of them, then He will summon us. “You too come forth,” He will say, “Come ye children of shame!” And we shall come forth, without shame and shall stand before him…” And He will hold out His hands to us and we shall fall down before him…and we shall weep…and we shall understand all things! Then we shall understand all!…and all will understand…”

Philip Yancey wrote a modern Prodigal story in his book What's So Amazing About Grace, I'll summarize:

A young girl grows up on a cherry orchard just above Traverse City, Michigan. Her parents, a bit old- fashioned, tend to overreact to her nose ring, the music she listens to, and the length of her skirts. They ground her a few times, and she seethes inside. "I hate you!" she screams at her father when he knocks on the door of her room after an argument, and that night she acts on a plan she has mentally rehearsed scores of times. She runs away...

Her second day there she meets a man who drives the biggest car she's ever seen. He offers her a ride, buys her lunch, arranges a place for her to stay. He gives her some pills that make her feel better than she's ever felt before. She was right all along, she decides: her parents were keeping her from all the fun...

After a year the first shallow signs of illness appear, and it amazes her how fast the boss turns mean. "These days, we can't mess around," he growls, and before she knows it she's out on the street without a penny to her name. When winter blows in she finds herself sleeping on metal grates outside the big department stores. "Sleeping" is the wrong word--a teenage girl at night in down town Detroit can never relax her guard. Dark bands circle her eyes. Her cough worsens.God, why did I leave, she says to herself, and pain stabs at her heart. My dog back home eats better than I do now. She's sobbing, and she knows in a flash that more than anything else in the world she wants to go home...

Three straight phone calls, three straight connections with the answering machine. She hangs up without leaving a message the first two times, but the third time she says, "Dad, Mom, it's me. I was wondering about maybe coming home. I'm catching a bus up your way, and it'll get there about midnight tomorrow. If you're not there, well, I guess I'll just stay on the bus until it hits Canada."...

When the bus finally rolls into the station, its air brakes hissing in protest, the driver announces in a crackly voice over the microphone, "Fifteen minutes, folks. That's all we have here." Fifteen minutes to decide her life. She checks herself in a compact mirror, smoothes her hair, and licks the lipstick off her teeth. She looks at the tobacco stains on her fingertips, and wonders if her parents will notice. If they're there...

She walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect. Not one of the thousand scenes that have played out in her mind prepare her for what she sees. There, in the concrete-walls-and-plastic-chairs bus terminal in Traverse City, Michigan, stands a group of forty brothers and sisters and great-aunts and uncles and cousins and a grandmother and great-grandmother to boot. They're all wearing goofy party hats and blowing noise-makers, and taped across the entire wall of the terminal is a computer-generated banner that reads "Welcome home!"

Out of the crowd of well-wishers breaks her dad. She stares out through the tears quivering in her eyes like hot mercury and begins the memorized speech, "Dad, I'm sorry. I know..."

He interrupts her. "Hush, child. We've got no time for that. No time for apologies. You'll be late for the party. A banquet's waiting for you at home."

Have we in our fallen world forgotten the characteristics of the Kingdom of God? Have we forgotten the story of the Prodigal Son? In Luke 15 the story is told of a younger son who sought to get away from it all, asking for and receiving his father's inheritance. He journeyed to the city for a life of debauchery, intemperance, licentiousness, etc. Like the young girl in Yancey's story, like Monica, as the young girls like Lashmi, he desired to return home, uncertain of the reception he would receive. He was ready for anything, what he obtained was far from what he ever could have imagined.

At the outset, these stories do not seem to be connected, but here is my point. God provides for us a model of how His Kingdom works, and we told to work the same. So many of our cultures today, Western included, are directly antithetical to the Kingdom of God, and somehow we miss that. We accept these as cultural differences and in the name of cultural sensitivity, we allow it to go on without questioning how this fits into our Kingdom theology. We can do that no longer. As followers of the Way, we need to stand up and be counted, to live as ambassadors for Christ, in this world but not of it. We need to act as my friend who as I write is spending a month in India teaching pastors how to lead the flock and is spending a great deal of time changing the pattern of how men treat women in that society. He understands this Kingdom theology and is challenging them to change their culture. Another colleague of mine, a brother from Nigeria who came to the US, went to college and felt a burden for refugees in Eastern Kenya. Right now he is raising up a new generation of Somalis who will understand the proper way to treat women, the proper way to settle disputes, the proper way to live as a member of the Kingdom of God. There are countless others…but the paradigm is the same, the focus is spreading the message of the Kingdom and acting as its citizens.

I just this week finished Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson's book Blinded by Might. Solid book, nothing extraordinary and nothing new or enlightening, but they put good information forth, and to me it carried more weight as they had been a part of the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition in its heyday. In their chapter entitled "Better Weapons," however, they hit a home run when they quote Lewis' Screwtape Letters:

Let him begin by treating patriotism...as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which religion becomes merely a part of the "cause," in which Christianity is valued chiefly becaues of the excellent arguments it can produce...once you have made the world an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end his is pursuing.

Of course, they are using this quote to point a finger at the religious right for their wrongful ways over the past twenty five years. And they are right. But the religious left has learned that faith can put you in office and they have begun to put their faith forward and are succeeding, with their main argument focusing on the social justice movement. As I've said before, I'm all about helping the poor and needy, in many ways I've dedicated my life to it and wish I could do more, but I also understand that we do live in a fallen world and true, cosmic justice will only come with the reign of Christ. I interpret Lewis' statment, "the world an end, and faith a means" as what the religious left is engaging in now, and it sickens me as much as the binding of religion and politics used by the right. This world is not the end, and faith is not a means, God's Kingdom is among us, the Father is at work, and the faithful are humbly pressing into the work of God in their lives and in this world. Nothing more, nothing less.

I've got two problems with the Economist's recent report on faith and politics:

The first is obvious:

Rick Warren, American's favourite preacher, likens his "purpose-driven formula" to an Intel operating chip that can be inserted into the motherboard of any church; there are now more than 100,000 "purpose-driven" churches in 160 countries.

Forgive me, I just threw up in my mouth.

The second is not much better:

Second, the latest form of modernity-globalisation-has propelled religion forward. For traditionalists, faith has acted as a barrier against change. For properous suburbanites, faith has become something of a lifestyle coach...

Both provide perfect examples with the problems of faith, I want neither of these!

According to a recent email I received:

The U.S. Senate Finance Committee this week sent a "please explain" to six major televangelist organizations, questioning whether they really are non-profits in light of the extravagant and lavish lifestyles of some of the leaders who use private jets and Rolls Royce motorcars.

This is too unbelievable not to be true!

When I ask this question, I'm not being sarcastic, it's not loaded...

Sojourners writes a review today of Michael Gerson's new book Heroic Conservatism, and of course, since he is a disgruntled former member of the Bush regime, they love him to death.

But they also cite and quote from an article he wrote today in the Washington Post. I'll pick up their lead in to his quote:

He says there are two competing belief systems in the Republican Party – libertarianism and Catholic social teaching - and writes,

The difference between these visions is considerable. Various forms of libertarianism and anti-government conservatism share a belief that justice is defined by the imposition of impartial rules - free markets and the rule of law. If everyone is treated fairly and equally, the state has done its job. But Catholic social thought takes a large step beyond that view. While it affirms the principle of limited government - asserting the existence of a world of families, congregations and community institutions where government should rarely tread - it also asserts that the justice of society is measured by its treatment of the helpless and poor. And this creates a positive obligation to order society in a way that protects and benefits the powerless and suffering.

Of course, I agre with the first view. But the second is what leads to my question. He cites this as "Catholic social thought," but it goes beyond that as it is very common in the evangelical church today. But was that truly the message of Christ? Yes, he did mention that "whatever you did to the least of these you did to me," but wasn't that more of a personal message? Was that to society as a whole? My initial and superficial exegesis notes that he was talking to the disciples, which leads me to the latter interpretation, but this is something that I am seriously in conflict with.

On one hand I no-doubt see the social ramifications of this behavior and message (and if they politicians are claiming to be Christians then they need to follow) but on the other hand I know that we live in a fallen world and the world is not just. We can of course do our part, but there will always be poor among us and while it is important to share what we have, the most important thing is that we and they enter into the Kingdom of God, where true justice will one day be served.

To conclude, I enjoy a lot of the new ideas out there now on the Kingdom of God and Its Presence here on earth. I totally buy into that. How it plays out in the goverment is another question entirely, I need some more thought and reading and teaching and prayer on that.

I know that I haven't blogged in forever, but I couldn't resist a response to this article as I perused the web this morning.

A little background before I comment. If you followed this blog over the past two years or so, you will remember that last August I attended the International Aids Conference in Toronto and came away amazed at what I listened to. In a nutshell, I found the presenters and attenders radically petitioning for two things: more money (from government and big business) to go to prevention techniques (such as microbicides, as mentioned in the article) and to distribute clean needles and condoms around the world, particularly in Russia and China, where this disease is going to spread.

Having said that, if you skim the article you can see the irony in it and my cynicism as the time with these policies. A few comments:

1) This fall, pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. halted study of one of the most promising possibilities, a genetically engineered vaccine being tested on four continents, because it simply did not work. Can you believe they allowed this to be published? I'd love to see the response from the International AIDS Society (I wish I had time to look at their site for any response or to see how they could spin this).

2) The news has been nearly as bad for other technological solutions, including vaginal microbicides, one-a-day prevention pills and diaphragms. You could not even imagine the radical rhetoric that permeated the conference, I actually left at one point, I couldn't take it any more. The theme seemed to be, "We are going to continue with the behaviors that led to us getting this disease (drug injections and unsafe sexual practices), so you find a prevention measure (drug) or a cure, and then distribute it to use for free with taxpayer dollars." Makes sense to me.

3) Who would have thought those crazy Christians may actually have been right in the first place? They favor devoting more of the world's $10 billion annual AIDS spending to proven, lower-tech strategies against HIV, such as circumcising men, promoting sexual monogamy and making birth control more easily available to infected women.

4) I like and agree with the final quote: "If we're defeated in one area, we pull our troops back and attack somewhere else. That's what we're failing to do," he said. "We need a military response, and we have a bureaucratic response."

It's a good article, take a look and let me know what you think.