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| Abandoning the Gospel for ChristianityThis is a link to the full text of the speech by Achmadinejad http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2009/04/21/full-text-of-president-ahmadinejads-remarks-at-un-conference-on-racism/. Here is an interesting experiment that can be performed with it. Reverse the names of the parties (Eastern exchanged for Western and vise verse), and replace bona fide examples of improprieties used as proofs of point with bona fide examples from the other side. Rewritten this way, it is easy imagine THE SAME SPEECH (sans cultural nuances) being delivered by a notable Evangelical authority (choose one), and received by a conservative audience with standing ovation. Everyone wants justice! And if we all got it, we would all be sentenced by God to eternal damnation. That's why I think that in a strong sense the Western world has abandoned the Gospel for Christianity, and in doing so replaced advocacy in Christ (our mission) with mutual vilification under a "rule of law".
So in the grand scheme of things I wonder which is worse, the absence of the Gospel or the perversion of it. I am all the more so thus inclined to implore God for His mercy rather than depend on the "rightness" of my race, religion or country - starting with my understanding of the cross. The only distinctive division between races is that between the sinful human race, deserving of justice, and the sinless Son of God, Who was not. We are justified to God not because we are "right", but because He taken our sins upon Himself. Those who claim to have received forgiveness, then, must live this way. We justify our "enemies" to ourselves not by dismissing injustices, but by want for their good (like God to us). It is the opposite of mutual vilification, and it requires self sacrifice.
That's why in my last post I said that Achmadinejad could have and should have started his address by advocating for Jews first, and genuinely understanding their suffering. Only then could he expose the abject treachery of those who would manipulate genuine expressions of sympathy for cruel advantage in the reversal of power. But that would have required that he abandon his "edge", and it would require a repentance from his world and life view. It is too much to ask, and he may even be misinterpreted by his own people as treasonous. Notwithstanding, the same repentance is necessary in the Western world. How many Christians would vote for a man who publicly proclaimed the want of free and full forgiveness for Bin Laden? (No. We want him "brought to justice"). It would be political suicide!
I don't think practically addressing our role in this is particularly intellectual. I am sure that reading "Tales of Persia" to my children doesn't rank very highly in terms power and influence, but at the time I didn't appreciate the extent that the testimony of a simple loving life could have. The Gospel drives me to love and understand in the same manner that I am loved and understood by God. That's why I think the Gospel is the simple solution to a complex problem, for ourselves and for the world.
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| The Politics of RacismOur president wisely avoided the UN conference against racism held the day before yesterday, though I am sure that he would have had much to contribute in that area. As far as I could tell, the conference deteriorated into a sham as a strong contingent of "diplomats" walked out during Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's, address. Obviously premeditated, they paraded themselves in front of him on their way out the door. Just before that, someone making a ruckus wearing a clown's wig was escorted out. Perhaps he was their leader.
Now Ahmadinejad was not lacking in negative diplomacy, and without deviating even a tiny bit from his political position he could have led into his speech differently. He could have started by defining "racism" as political bias against families of people and their beliefs. He could have denounced Christian abuses against Jewry in Russia under the Czar, and explained how that, combined with the atheistic revolution, forced an impoverished population of Jews to migrate from their homeland to Germany prior to WW II. He could have explained how a strong sense of family, coupled with the necessity for self preservation, contributed to Jewish prosperity in Germany, and how they eventually fell prey to the emerging science of propaganda in the mass media as the German population suffered under the Great Depression. Then he could have denounced the resulting deterioration the political process, and demonstrated how it generated the extreme abuses of the Holocaust that the conference was being held to avoid. Ahmadinejad knows all these things! Why didn't he explain them?
That would have surprised everybody, and his opponents would have been very hard pressed to walk out while he was speaking this way. Then and only then he could have introduced his position that historical travesties such as this can be misused to exploit public sympathy with the intent of gaining reverse political advantage. Then the door would have been opened to explain how the word "Jewish" in "right to exist as a Jewish state" racially and religiously excludes Gentiles from the political process, and then and only then he could have explained (his position) how deporting political opponents from Israel to refugee camps in surrounding countries defeats the democratic process that was supposed to protect them.
He could have turned the accusation against him of being a "Holocaust denier" upside down. The real "Holocaust deniers", he could have said, are ignorant of the history that led up to the Holocaust and are thus likely to repeat it, such as in the recent conflict in Gaza. The real "Holocoaust deniers", he could have said, refuse to address the forces that contribute to racism.
Yes, he could have said that, but didn't. Instead he opened his address by chanting literally gracious but openly polarizing "God words". Then he launched into blanket condemnation of Israel using "racism" more as an insult than a word that deserves explanation. Hatred is blind, and predictable. His opponents knew what was coming, and used it to score a diplomatic victory as they walked out. So I applaud our president for not participating with Ahmadinejad nor with his opponents at this conference, as he explained in his address to Summit of the Americas yesterday in Trinadad.
In the mean time, in a public address leading up to the Summit of the Americas, Hugo Chavez ranted that our president would be insensitive to the needs of smaller nations because "he doesn't read". It was one of the most patronizing, insulting and provocative remarks that I have ever heard in a public address. Now at the summit, Chavez handed our president a book. "Thank you", said our honorable president, "I'm a reader". This morning I heard Dick Cheney criticize Obama for the "weakness" that shaking Chevez' hand and receiving the book displayed to the world. No, Mr. Cheney (how thankful I am that you are gone), THAT was a political victory - on a major scale. | | |
| Visiting the Sins of the Fathers on the ChildrenDoes God punish (curse) children because of their fathers' sin? This misconception existed almost from the beginning of time. I think its time to look at it again.
Neither Job nor Abraham needed the first commandment to tell them not to worship other gods. Worshiping the one true God was written on their hearts, received by faith and accounted to them as righteousness (Gal 3:6). After several generations in Egypt, however, the sons of Israel became more like the Egyptians than the Egyptians. They were especially not being delivered from Egypt because of their inclination to serve the one and only God, as Moses tells us in Deut 9:4-6 and Deut 29:4. They were "children of disobedience", taught by their fathers (not Abraham, Isaac nor Jacob) to worship other gods, and so they needed to be told not to. In the phrase following the commandment about God "visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me" (Ex 20:5b), the antecedent of "those who hate me" applies conjointly to the fathers and the children, not to the the fathers exclusive of the children, and it applies especially to those who had been taught by their fathers to turn from the one true God to worship other gods. Moses makes this specifically clear in Deut 24:16, "Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers; everyone shall be put to death for his own sin". So with regard to the just penalty for this (worshiping other gods) or any sin, I conclude from these passages that God specifically does NOT punish children for the sins of their fathers, deliverance from Egypt was entirely an extension of God's mercy to unbelieving sons of Israel, and the Law was given only to provide a vehicle for repentance leading to the forgiveness of sins.
One might think that Moses put this issue to rest, but during the moral decline leading up to the exile to Babylon the prevailing thought was that it was the natural order of things for God to curse children - exemplified by the horrific proverb going around at the time, "the fathers ate the sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge" (Ezk 18:2). Even the prophet, Jonah, would have rather died than see the Ninevites forgiven. Ezekiel answered this reprehensible proverb with the passage that follows in Ezk 18, explaining again that each is responsible for his own sin, that God takes no pleasure in judgment and that repentance leads to life.
One might think that Ezekiel put this issue to rest, but when Jesus' disciples asked Him about the man who was born blind, "Who sinned, this man or his parents?" (Jn 9:1), clearly the misconception prevailed. God answered by sacrificing His blood line (Jesus, Who was not worthy of death), for our blood line. This was the EXACT OPPOSITE of bringing judgment upon a child for his father's sins. It was bringing forgiveness to guilty children of guilty fathers by means of guiltless, and familial love loss, Father of Son. The character of God, living Love, answered once and for all how we were created to reflect His image, but it also defined our advocacy for each others' children.
One might think that God in Christ put this issue to rest, but the Church invented a "covenantal nature of sin", and misinterpreted God as being predisposed against Jews in honor of the angry mob at Christ's crucifixion who yelled "His blood be upon us and our children" (Matt 27:25), over and against the prayer of His Son to forgive them (Lk 23:34). Hitler would never have gotten others to participate in genocide if he didn't have this as a "theological" basis for persecuting the Jews.
One might think the historical conclusion to this line of thinking in WW II would put this issue to rest, but Bible believing churches, in varying degrees, justified discrimination against African Americans based on a notion that judgment for the sin of Noah's son, Ham, was being executed on his dark skinned blood line today. (The account in Gen 9:25 only shows Noah, not God, cursing Ham while praying for the other two sons). To be sure, other churches didn't especially preach this bigotry, but didn't make it an issue to speak out against it either. African American churches, of course, didn't buy it - but some abandoned their trust in the Bible as God's Word in part because it was being misused in this way against them.
Now that we have an African American president there seems to be a consensus that God isn't cursing Ham's children, but when Jesse Jackson appears in the media talking about "the curse of Ham", I don't think most people know what he's talking about. So called "evangelical" churches still preach that God dispenses favor, and executes judgment, along blood lines. How else could we turn a blind eye to media video of phosphorous (chemical) bombs exploding over populated areas in Gaza, and scorched earth warfare followed by a blockade of food and medicine. Main stream evangelical "authorities" are still calling Palestinians "Philistines", and bible-believing Christians are accepting this in conjunction with prophetic distortions as justification for violence, without checking it out in the Bible-that-they-believe!
I have found ample evidence in Scripture of man cursing himself, and its effects. But from God I find only opportunity for repentance leading to life. He was always ready to sacrifice His Son, should it have to come to that (and it did). I suggest everyone look to His Word and rethink the things that we have been told about love and grace. Sure as sure can be, He will judge the living and the dead. "But when the Son of Man comes", Jesus asked, "will He find faith on earth?" (Lk 18:8). By embracing the One True God, and by faith accepting Who He has revealed Himself to be, today we don't have to wait around to find out.
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| You Are Not Forgotten"Palestinian men bear trauma of war, be strong and be good. Of all people, you too, should know that you would not be foresaken (sic). By the Words of the Lord, "There are times you may have to long-suffer and persevere." Jesus Christ, on the cross, dying, yelled out, "Father, Father,why have you foresaken (sic) me?!" Was Jesus forsaken? He was not foresaken (sic). Some may say that was the "man" in Jesus speaking. Jesus Christ lived in these cities and these towns. I'm still upset that Hamas doesn't deal right with PA President Abbas. Don't be used, be men."
Some may say that it was the "man" in Jesus talking. They were wrong. Jesus taught His disciples exactly where and how He would suffer and die, and He sweat blood knowing beforehand the extent of His pain and humiliation - so it did not come to Him as a surprise. Instead, and within the context of Psalm 22 from which He quoted, "why" is a rhetorical question that is answered in the very same Psalm, and with the more obvious answer pending His resurrection, "THAT ALL the families of the nations may believe" (Psalm 22:27). Racism reversed.
The author of the excerpt I quoted didn't believe that Jesus spoke these words out of human frailty either, and I am thankful to read a word of encouragement coming from a sound interpretation of Scripture. The author's conclusion, "God had not forsaken Jesus, and following His testimony in Christ He has not, nor will not, forsake you either". Desperate circumstances prove the point that God has not abandoned His loved ones to prosperity and its attendant unbelief. Instead He honors with opportunities for faith, some more than others. So from the relative comfort of my workplace today, and its uncertainties, I will listen to the Watoto Childrens' Choir as I work. My favorite song: "I Am Not Forgotten". I will remember to honor and pray for those suffering in Gaza, and I will try not to let the deafening silence in our land interfere with my trust in God's infinitely wise plan. Where did I find this encouraging comment, you might ask? Al Jazeera.
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| A Secret Weapon"Violence is never the right way. My daughters and I were armed with nothing but love and hope." , said Dr. Izeldeen Abuelaish yesterday according to a report by the BBC. Dr. Abuelaish was well known to the community in Beersheba for bringing his medical experience to bear in the assistance of Jewish mothers. As such, he was described by the head of Soroka University Hospital as a "magical, secret bridge between Israelis and Palestinians". Yesterday Dr. Abuelaish's two daughters were blown to bits before his eyes. Now we pray.
We pray that God may give Dr. Abuelaish extraordinary comfort. We pray that God grant Dr. Abuelaish an extraordinary spirit of forgiveness. And if God should attend to our desire, granting the good doctor both comfort and grace, we pray that his continued life of racial reconciliation may not be misinterpreted as a capitulation to violence - but if it is, we pray that God may give Dr. Abuelaish wings to rise above it, his own secret weapon, grace upon grace. | | |
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