by Jeremy Daggett
Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
Three cheers for Scoopertino's hilarious rendition of yesterday's Apple event, complete with illustrations and analysis:
I’m just taking my seat as Tim Cook is coming on stage. Not sure why, but he’s wearing a pope hat and he’s being followed by a column of priests.
If you're looking for a more straightforward, less satyrical presentation of the relevant information from Apple's keynote, The Wirecutter has it all in one place.
The key to unlocking Facebook's self-fulfilling potential, according to Craig Mod:
Just hide the noise.
I'm pretty sure I have the analogy right.
Brian McLaren:
Let me make this specific: Too many of our lyrics are embarrassingly personalistic, as if the whole gospel revolved around “Jesus and me.” Personal intimacy with God is a priceless gift indeed, and such a wonderful step above a cold, abstract, wooden recitation of dogma. But it isn’t the whole story. In fact – this might shock some – it isn’t necessarily the main point of the story. A popular worship song I’ve heard in many venues says that worship is “all about You, Jesus.” But apart from that line, it really feels like worship and Christianity in general have become “all about me, me, me,” or maybe “us, us, us” (where us = privileged spiritual consumers in the Western religious industrial complex).
His point is that the gospel is about more than just my personal relationship with God, and the songs we sing should reflect that—even drive us toward that belief.
He makes a number of good suggestions to both diversify the theme of worship and make it more intelligible. Here's one of my favorites:
Second, may I suggest that we be careful about using gratuitous Biblical language – Zion, Israel, go forth, on high, etc., etc.? If there is a good reason to use such language – in other words, if we are using it intentionally, not just for a “spiritual feel,” then fine. Otherwise, if we can find contemporary language and imagery that would communicate more crisply, poignantly, immediately, and deeply to people who don’t already have a lot of pew time … then let’s use it, in the spirit of I Corinthians 14, where intelligibility to the spiritual seeker is a gospel virtue.
Kevin Hargaden, writing from Ireland for Seattle's The Other Journal, on how talking about human rights can so easily turn into a selfish endeavor:
Yet what are we to do when such rights language itself becomes hypocritical? How do we respond when rights language serves as a mantra for politicians who merely use it to wriggle out of tight situations? What would a careful and critical Christian appropriation of rights language look like? Marx may be able to help.
John Mark Hicks explains why the “land” motif in the Bible is so important:
Consequently, the new heaven and new earth as the renewed (new) creation is integral to the plot line of the story of God from Abraham to the [end times]. The earth is the inheritance of God’s people and one day the reign of God will fill it from the east to the west, from the north to the south. The whole earth, unlike its present condition, will be “Holy to the Lord.”
Here's an example of the type of humble, informed response I was hoping for from evangelical Christians. The response doesn't come from an adoption expert per se, but its author has adopted two children through foster care and one from overseas. In this guest post for Mere Orthodoxy, one adoptive mother both interacts with Kathryn Joyce's critique of foreign adoption and offers constructive suggestions for responsible adoption practices. The whole post is worth reading, but here are her suggestions in rapid fire:
James:
Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you (NLT)
Christians love this verse because it's straightforward. Apparently though, evangelical Christians have royally dropped the ball on part I of the pure religion initiative—orphan care. Christian overseas adoption practices have recently been accused of taking advantage of lax regulations in developing countries to promote its stateside political agenda. Furthermore, adoption was criticized for being an ideological and agenda-driven obsession, given to corruption, and analogous to human trafficking.
I'll leave it to the adoption experts to continue to battle this one out. My hope is, as always, that the collective Christian response will be humble, informed, and not given to the same unfair tactics often used against Christians.
I would like to offer an alternative to the defensive, knee-jerk reaction to such a critique.
Biblical commands that appear straightforward are complicated by our globalized 21st century reality. Until recently (say, the last couple centuries), generosity was usually a local undertaking. Long-term benefit was readily observed. Now that we can catapult our generosity to the other side of the world, our long-term impact is not as easily discerned and is often misunderstood. Giving responsibly across the world takes a lot more effort.
Giving to a literal neighbor is one thing; giving to a global neighbor, who we may never see, is another thing entirely. And it's when we assume we're entitled to give to whomever we wish that we run into problems.
Tara Livesay has written about some of the cultural issues at play with the adoption of children from Haiti that many from the U.S. overlook. For example: Haitian law requires that adoptive parents have no biological children. Why?
The plausible reason for the law stating no biological children is because we have a culture that presupposes that you won't be able to treat your biological kids and your adopted kids the same. If you have no biological kids you are more likely to fully provide for and love your adopted child.
Our immediate tendency is to assume a law is flawed. We need to fight our ethnocentric instinct and instead ask what cultural or historical dynamics might be at play in the given situation.
I can't offer a comprehensive solution to the ongoing adoption debate, but here are two constructive suggestions for those who still want to help:
Adopt local. It may not be as glamorous as an overseas adoption, but give local foster care and foster-to-adopt opportunities a fair shot. By helping locally, you can be involved in the entire process and should be better equipped to understand the cultural dynamic that caused the need that requires your help. You may even be able to encourage others in your community to get involved.
Dream global. There is a tremendous, worldwide need for adoptive parents. Instead of assuming that U.S. dollars and U.S. presence are the only viable solutions, we need to leverage our creativity and imagination to empower Christians in the developing world to follow the same command that has captured our attention.
Dan Barry, on the author of a book everyone should read:
And he is still teaching at 90, holding one-on-one counseling sessions for accomplished and aspiring writers at a round wooden table close to those bookshelves. The only difference is that he can no longer see.
So he listens.
From Malibu:
The mobile application for the Pepperdine University Bible Lectures to be held April 30-May 3, 2013.
Look for the live stream of Dave Clayton's talk on Wednesday, May 1.
Peter Greer, president and CEO of HOPE International, reacting to other organizations' (mis)use of HOPE's branding and intellectual property:
But if we prioritize impact above organizational fame and identity, I have to celebrate that some of the pieces we’ve developed are being used by others. Nonprofit accountability isn’t tied to shareholder return, but to lives impacted. We should be most generous in supporting others eager to impact our broader mission. When we share information, causes win.
Greer pinpoints the orgazational difference between for-profit and non-profit companies. Non-profits should prioritize impact over return on investment; this is harder for a for-profit company. As CEO, Greer's response eximplifies the culture of his organization in a powerful way.
That said, what these companies have done is inexcusable. Plagiarism is wrong whether or not you or the company you are copying are seeking profit. Which is why Greer's postscript is crucial:
But in the future, if you’d like to use something we’ve developed, please ask. We’ll be happy to share!
Stunning.
John Mark Hicks on lament:
The word “hate” stands for all the frustration, agitation, disgust, exasperation, and bewilderment we experience in the seeming absence of God as we live in a suffering, painful and hurting world. “Hate” is a fightin’ word—a representation of the inexplicable pain in our lives; a word that is used as a weapon to inflict pain on the one whom we judge to be the source of the pain. Sometimes, perhaps, we are too polite with God. Sometimes we are not “real” with the Creator. Sometimes, like Jacob in Genesis 32, we need to wrestle with God.
That God remains in the picture, as the recipient of both our praise and lament, is critical.
A bunch of really intelligent people in the UK want to make religious philosophy more relevant by comparing faith communities and religious research. Steven Shakespeare, a member of the steering committee for the new Philosophy and Religious Practices network, explains what this sort of dialogue could look like:
My interest, then, is in how, in the encounter between philosophy and lived religion, we aren’t just seeing how two well-defined fields can link up (or not). We’re intervening, mutating the way each field is understood, hopefully in a more self-critical, more attentive way. This will involve being aware of imposing Christian (or Christianised secular) universal ideas of religion on actual practices, whilst also avoiding any romanticisation of the religious other as ‘exotic’ and beyond critique.
The intended outcome:
My hope is that the result will be new possibilities for life and thought which break down the tired divisions between practice and theory.
Shane Claiborne, in a Q & A hosted on Rachel Held Evans's blog, is asked by a stay-at-home mom how best to start engaging the needs of the city. He responds:
This is an invitation—a call—to re-imagine who we are and how we are to live in light of Jesus. And I get excited because I see folks who are doing that everywhere, in all kinds of different ways.
Now, while there are a million different ways to respond to this invitation, we do see compelling patterns in the gospel. So even if we don’t all respond in the exact same way, we can all, for example, see the suffering of this world as something we are called to enter into instead of flee from. We can reject the patterns of, for example, suburban sprawl that are often built around moving away from pain, or away from neighborhoods of high crime, or away from people who don’t look like us, and respond instead to the gospel inertia that invites us to enter into that pain. So this means we also have to challenge some of those patterns of consumerism and insulation, and sprawl, and homogeneity.
Matthew Lee Anderson, head writer over at Mere Orthodoxy, wrote the cover story for the March issue of Christianity Today. The cover image caricatures Shane Claiborne, David Platt, and Francis Chan leading an army of “ordinary radicals” with fists raised.
It's worth reading. Anderson identifies some key tensions in the Radical Christian movement and helpfully points out deficiencies in American Christianity's language that lead to the overuse of intensifiers such as “really” and “truly.” The story has generated a good bit of conversation, both in the comments section and on other sites, to which Anderson has responded here and here.
The negative feedback that Anderson has gotten hinges on a misunderstanding of the point of his post. According to Anderson, many have mislabeled his post as a critique, while his goal was “to explore what the popularity of these books indicates about ourselves and our world.” The problem isn't that Anderson critiques the movement. The problem is the critical subtext evident throughout the piece. It takes him over 2,000 words to get to the real meat of his exploration.
Two correctives would help reach Anderson's stated goal.
The first is more of a surface-level observation regarding the piece's slant imbued by the title and cover art. The radicals aren't “new;” they've been around for centuries. The radicals aren't “coming;” they're already here. D.L. Mayfield writes:
For centuries we have always had teachers, thinkers and prophets asking Christians to flee the sinking ship of society, to come back to a place of simplicity and service to Christ (which in fact makes the New Radicals sound like the Desert Fathers and Mothers of our modern age). It’s a call to reject the societal norms that keep us from following Jesus with everything that is within us.
The people listening to the modern-day desert mothers and fathers are all around us, responding to the truth that the American dream is not synonymous with the kingdom of God. Most of them aren’t writing books, or living grandiose lives. They are just simply taking the next step of obedience, day after day.
The New Radicals aren’t coming. They are already here.
Second, Anderson lumps Shane Claiborne in with the others, but never addresses the term “ordinary radicals.” A constant refrain in his piece is the overemphasis of the spectacular by the radicals. One example:
The heroes of the radical movement are martyrs and missionaries whose stories truly inspire, along with families who make sacrifices to adopt children. Yet the radicals' repeated portrait of faith underemphasizes the less spectacular, frequently boring, and overwhelmingly anonymous elements that make up much of the Christian life.
Anderson is right; there must be a place for the ordinary and mundane in the conversation about what it means to follow Jesus. And that's exactly what Claiborne did when he coined the term “ordinary radicals,” and what he's been dedicating himself to since writing Irresistible Revolution.
In a terrific response, Ed Cyzewski points out the simplicity of ordinary Christian discipleship lived out by Claiborne and others that form a part of the new monastic movement. He pinpoints a significant disconnect in Anderson's piece:
So while we should be thoughtful about radical rhetoric and the ways the wealthy will try to address poverty and injustice, let’s remember that the new monasticism of Claiborne and many of my friends around the country has more to do with downward mobility. It’s spurred by a commitment to love others and is far from a hip new rhetorical challenge from Christian authors and pastors.
And:
One of Claiborne’s constant themes in interviews and speaking engagements is providing simple ideas for living the radical lifestyle. No one has done more than Claiborne to provide practical ideas for Christians at any income level to live as a radical.
Critiques are a good thing. Critiques of a movement are especially good, inasmuch as they force rearticulating our reason for being. And this sort of rearticulation can sustain a movement.
Thoughts on community from an aid-worker, travel photographer, and self-described “global nomad”:
Ultimately, though, I suppose what I would be looking for from the idyllic community would be a community that adds value and meaning to life. It creates enjoyable, peaceful and grace-filled interactions. It contributes to making our physical environment better and reducing social injustice. It celebrates spiritually. It adds satisfaction and fulfillment to the completion of the daily tasks of survival. It creates a millieu in which children are loved, supported, encouraged and enabled. It shares tasks and resources in a sustainable way that facilitates the creation of free space and time to be able to watch the sky, to pursue dreams, and simply to dream.
Greg McKinzie, in a series of posts on development for the Christian Urban Development Association:
What we need is transformation at the level of worldview, not just at the level of expression. While thinking new thoughts is a part of worldview transformation, it is not sufficient. In order to see the world anew, it is necessary to live a different story, to act according to the assumptions of the Christian worldview.
Our vocabulary is dualistic (that is, it separates physical and spiritual). So even when we try to express holism or holistic ministry, we fail because our worldview is dualistic.
So here is the holistic axiom of a Christian worldview: there is not a spiritual realm and a material realm; there is only God's creation, his realm, his reign. The physical is spiritual all the way down. How then are we to act?
Looking forward to Part 2.
Powerful and concise eight minute talk on a Christian's role in culture. Anthony Bradley asserts that God is the creator of all things and that Christ is sovereign over all of it.
If Christians are not involved in every aspect of culture, how is God going to reconcile it to himself?
He has chosen to use people.
Love the ending.
Don Miller walks us through his thinking behind the new pricing model for his Storyline conference:
Give it away now. God said to me.
I knew instinctively what God meant. He meant why wait till you have a foundation, till you have security to start giving your life away. Give it away while you are in need.
In making life plans and dreaming up ideas for the future, it's easier to set goals that prioritize security. Miller proposes that generosity and living by faith should take the front seat.
There’s no better story than the one that travels through risk and adventure and trust and faith.
