here's a fascinating paper on the christian roots of abolitionism.

See also two source documents...

"Somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and faith started being used to drive us apart....  Faith got hijacked, partly because of the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, all too eager to exploit what divides us.... At every opportunity, they've told evangelical Christians that Democrats disrespect their values and dislike their church, while suggesting to the rest of the country that religious Americans care only about issues like abortion and gay marriage, school prayer and intelligent design....  I don't know what Bible they're reading, but it doesn't jibe with my version."

Who's the real 'hijacker' here?      This deserves more commentary...  though I'm too busy at the moment.  Later perhaps.  What are your thoughts?

SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa...

Shikwati: ... for God's sake, please just stop.

SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

Fascinating article...

Ought your beliefs about God and morality to affect the way you vote?   Ought your beliefs to affect the way you govern, if you're a politician?   Thought-provoking question...

Here's a fascinating dialogue between a Jew, a Catholic, and some biblical Christians.  It's only a five-minute read and very well worth it in my opinion.

Here's an excerpt:

DONAHUE: Thank you. Do these 16 million people believe Jews can go to heaven?

MOHLER: Well, the gospel is not just for the worst of us. The gospel is for all of us. And the scripture tells us the hard truth, that all have sinned. And that Nazi guard is going to be punished for his sin, and it will be judged as sin. His only hope would be the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. And the profound truth of the gospel is that the salvation that can come to any person who comes to faith in Christ-can come to that Jew who was killed and to that guard who does the killing. That’s the radical nature of the gospel.

I was listening last night to a debate between Messianic Jew Michael Brown and Rabbi David Blumofe.  It's a wonderful debate to listen to and ponder.  During the Q/A at the end, the concept was presented (in 'question form') of a Nazi mowing down innocent and pious Jews with a laugh and then praying to Jesus for salvation right before the Allies shoot him.  The emotional question (posed also by Donohue) is: how could such a person go to heaven, when the pious Jews he killed go to hell?  How could such extremely bad people go to a good destination, while the good people go to a bad destination?

Michael Brown answered the question very well - listen to the mp3 to hear his answer.   I have a slightly different thought in reply (and why the hypothetical story is deeply flawed in its presented form).  Actually two thoughts.

First, as Brown also mentioned, it is not enough to simply say that one believes in Jesus God's Messiah; one must actually believe (in one's heart or inner being).  True repentance is necessary, not just the saying of a magic saving formula.   This involves seeing oneself as God sees - i.e. agreeing with the Bible's portrayal of oneself as (not abstractly but personally) very very wicked and sinful, unable to please God, unable to ever earn one's salvation; in a word, doomed.  And it involves true heart belief (inevitably producing action as fire produces heat and smoke) that Jesus' death-on-my-behalf is my only hope.

Second, the story overlooks the fact that "ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."  When the Jew is said to be "innocent" and "pious" compared to the Nazi, that is a human comparison looking at outward appearances.  Compare the two next to each other, and sure - one is 'worse' than the other, outwardly speaking.  The Holocaust Jew has never killed someone, etc.

But has the Jew ever told a lie?  Has the Jew ever had an angry-without-cause or covetous thought toward someone?  Has the Jew ever felt lust?  Our sinfulness (and I am obviously including myself here) is usually buried beneath layers of piousness and outward showy good works... self-woven layers that everyone without exception enshrouds themselves with.

In response to the question of the Nazi and the Jew, the Bible says, "Hold on a second -  every single person on earth has performed despicable acts of abominable evil against God and his/her fellow man, every day.  Some people's acts are worse than others, but all have performed these acts.  All, moreover, are 'sinners by nature', 'unable to please God' even if they wanted to... even our best deeds are soaked with pride and a refusal to honor God as He deserves."

Once the Nazi and the Jew are seen as two wicked sinners who are both deserving of hell, the flaws of the emotional argument above become evident. A more accurate picture might be a homeowner peeling up his floor and finding two termites, one of whom is abusing the other, but both of whom are destroying his house.

And it so happens that the same emotional picture is often asked with respect to other religions - Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, etc.  The Christian answer is: "Although there are moral distinctions that can be made on a relative scale, we need to look at the absolute scale.  The truth is that both (and indeed every person on earth) deserve eternal destruction.  But the good news is that God has provided a way - belief in Jesus God's Messiah - by which whoever believes can be saved!  Jesus Christ underwent the eternal destruction that I deserved."

Wow.  You'll never hear this type of story from a New York Times reporter ensconced safely in 'the green zone.'  Or from a BBC reporter traveling with terrorists.   Because this report portrays the coalition fighters as skillful, gentle, and very courageous.

Is freedom worth fighting for?  For others, and for ourselves?

I came across this very interesting thought in my readings today, from this article.

Now I want to relate a story. Some years ago I viewed the 1993 Academy Award movie of the year, Schindler's List, the Steven Spielberg story of Oskar Schindler, the Nazi war profiteer, who shortly after the German invasion of Poland in 1939 began to use the Jews of the Krakow ghetto as workers in his pots and pans factory. At first he saw them only as chattel to be used to line his own pockets, which he did quite successfully, becoming exceedingly rich. But as the war dragged on, and as he increasingly witnessed Nazi atrocities being inflicted against the Jews of Poland, increasingly did he begin to use his own wealth to bribe Nazi officials and army officers to give him more and more Jews for his factory that the Nazis had turned toward the end of the war into a munitions factory and that, by Schindler's personal instructions, became a model of non-productivity in the Nazi war effort. Though it virtually bankrupted him personally, he saved over twelve hundred Jews from certain death in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

I recount this story line only to say that I was struck by some statements put in his mouth toward the end of the movie. The war has just ended, and having worked for the Third Reich, both he and his Jewish factory workers realize that the Allied authorities might search for him. As he bids farewell to them, they present him with a letter signed by each of them that they hope will help him before the Allied authorities.

At this moment Schindler suddenly becomes very sober and quietly says: "I could have done more. I could have done more!" He begins to sob. "I could have done more. I didn't do enough. This car-why did I keep the car? Ten people right there. Ten people. Ten more people." Pulling off his lapel pin, he exclaims, "The pin. Two people. This is gold. Two more people! One more. I could have bought more people! But I didn't." His knees crumble and he sobs heavily.

As his words - "I could have done more! Why did I keep the car? Ten people right there. The pin. This is gold. Two more people. One more. I could have bought more people. But I didn't." - seared themselves into my mind as I sat in the darkness of that theater, I suddenly became convicted that many Christians-I among them-are going to be asking similar questions at the Great White Throne Judgment: "Why did I not do more to reach the lost for Christ? Why did I think I had to have that more expensive house, that more expensive car, that snowmobile, that ten-speed bicycle that hangs most of the time in my garage? Why did I not use more of my resources for the cause of Christ?" More poignantly, "Why was I not more committed to Christ's cause? Why did I esteem my own self-preservation so highly? Why was I not willing to go myself?" In that Great Day I fear that many of us will have no answers to salve our smitten consciences.

May God raise up in our day, while divine patience still grants us time, a multitude of men and women who will boldly dare to go into this lost and dying world where no man has ever gone before with the liberating law-free gospel of God!

I was thinking today about Thomas Kinkade and the fact that I don't seem to despise him nearly as much as many of my friends do, and about art in general, about which we've discussed some thoughts before in the past.

And I was pondering one of my favorite paintings, by Norman Rockwell:

Here is a blurb about this painting:

Some of Rockwell’s most powerful creations came out of his years with "Look." One such piece was inspired by the unjust murders of three civil rights workers near Philadelphia, Mississippi. The painting, “Southern Justice,” was done in 1965 and depicts the horror endured by three young men, two white and one black [James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwermer], who had come to Mississippi in the fight for equality. One man is seen lying dead in the foreground; the next is standing in the glow of the attacker’s torch while defending the third man, who appears near death.

Though this painting is not very "Kinkadian", the question for me is whether the sentiment it expresses is Biblical, and whether it's a skillful work, worth thinking about.   I think so, for two reasons.

First, its goal (as a work of art) is to promote racial equality (Rockwell left the Saturday Evening Post after working for them for 47 years, because they told him "never to show coloured people except as servants".  Rockwell's decision fits with the Bible's portrayal as all the world of ONE race and endowed by the Creator with unalienable human rights, contrary to the racism inherent from the theory of evolution.  And it fits with the mission of "seeking justice" and "defending the fatherless" that God has commissioned His people to engage in.  Our primary task is "making disciples" of Jesus - fishing for men in light of the extremely high stakes of eternity.  But meanwhile we are the salt of the earth, and without a doubt this influence cannot ignore our host country's political structure.

Second, I find so much beauty in the portrayal of the standing man holding up the other man.  I remember standing in front of this painting in the Norman Rockwell museum being literally stunned by the force of the standing man's gaze (he has piercing blue eyes, which are hard to see in the online pictures).  The look in his eye says, "Go ahead.  Shoot me.  But I will not run away - I will not cease from helping this black man who is my friend."  This "rugged individualism" is not really "American" in origin, although it is one of the most beautiful things that the American culture has preserved for the world.  (...though particular strengths are often tied to related excesses/sins...)   Instead, this insistence on doing what is right even when it is unpopular or "goes against what society considers right" is Biblical  (contrast with the atheist/agnostic's relativistic/cultural view of morality if you have some time).

I find myself empathizing strongly with the standing guy.  Of all ways to die, how wonderful it would be to die while helping someone else, seeking justice and the glory of God and others' salvation, in an ending which the world might consider "tragic" but which God remembers with approval.  (Indeed God Himself experienced this... He died on our behalf while saving us from our sins...  He voluntarily submitted to death at our hands, so that He could save those of us who believe in Him...)  Truly "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."

Yet it is amazing to realize that I can glorify God even in the mundane, everyday moments of life... choosing to die to self and obey God's direction...  and amazing that God will not forget even the slightest act.  Not just the moment of our death, but literally everything is significant and will be scrutinized on that Day.

Soli Deo Gloria - To God alone be glory.   May God be exalted in my life.

"If Satan troubles us, Jesus Christ
You who are the lion of the grasslands
You whose claws are sharp
Will tear out his entrails
And leave them on the ground
For the flies to eat."

-- Afua Kuma, Christian songwriter and poet from Ghana

There may be some humor in the reading of that song, by Christians more used to a different type of CCM... (and maybe more used to thinking of Jesus as a "tame lion" or a velvet stuffed lion)...  but there is also a lot of truth behind the metaphor...

stereotypes and prejudice are hard to get rid of...   especially when you think you've grown past your own prejudice enough to provide "sensitivity training" to others...

...and once certain stereotypes become ensconced in society, be careful about questioning them... you could lose your job.

...or your life.