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Thursday, May 11, 2006
Taking Back the Street
I've just come back from lunch with my pastor, John Algera, left. John has been a leading
figure this year in a campaign against gun violence in Paterson -- and in the neighborhood surrounding our church in particular.
Last year three young men were murdered along 12th Avenue in separate incidents. The avenue was quickly dubbed "Murder
Row." Just last week another young man was wounded by gunfire on 10th Avenue.
Each Tuesday evening John leads members of our church in prayer walks along 10th, 11th
and 12th Avenues and their cross streets. They stop at street corners to pray, chat and share the gospel with those
who are attracted to the sight. Last month, a gun buy-back program took 215 guns off the street. The program has
been extended through May.
A Paterson news columnist opines that prayer walks may be a necessary but insufficient
ingredient to the anti-gun violence campaign's success. Pastor John says the next step is to create a "cease fire zone"
by focusing intensive law enforcement and social services attention on each and every gun incident. He has written to
our County Prosecutor about this, but so far the prosecutor and other local politicos have been reluctant to take charge.
Monday, May 8, 2006
Ascension Sunday
Ascension Sunday falls within the Memorial
Day weekend this year. Many of us will be down at the shore, up in the mountains, out on the lake, or barbequeing in our
back yards that weekend. We might let Ascension slip right by us. So let me share this thought with you ahead
of time. It comes from David Dark, author of The Gospel According to America.
"There are people, from time to time, who try
to live, from time to time, as if Jesus is risen. There is a grace-informed consciousness at work in the world, and
it infects the way people think about and talk about rednecks, racists, terrorists, primitives, liberals, and conservatives.
"This consciousness of the gospel of the coming
kingdom is simultaneously no respecter of persons and perhaps the only respecter of persons. This gospel is never at
our command, under our copyright, or effectively contained within an -ism, an ideology, or any well-intentioned human construction.
"Or, to put it another way, no one has successfully
gotten this Jesus. The question is always whether or not Jesus' rare ethos has gotten hold of us."
Saturday, May 6, 2006
Forgiving
Mrs. Julie Nicholson, left, is an Anglican
priest, formerly at St. Aidan's in Bristol, England. Earlier this year, so Alan Crowell reports, she resigned her post.
Why? She had been confronted with an event that "shook her world to its foundations," namely, the death of her daughter,
Jenny, in a terrorist suicide bombing last summer in London.
"I did not feel there was any integrity
in my standing in front of a group of people week by week leading them through words of peace, reconciliation and forgiveness,
when I felt so distanced from those things myself," she explains.
For she cannot forgive. "I think
forgiveness is cheap grace," she says. "I don't think it is incumbent on me to offer it; it's not mine to give."
As for her anger, "I feel consumed by rage and bitterness. But we should be outraged at what is going on in the world.
Anger is not negative."
I am certain that anyone perusing this
blog will feel Mrs. Nicholson's pain and will empathize with her anger and inability to forgive. I personally have gone
through such an experience. There is such a thing as cheap grace. We should be outraged at what
is going on in the world. Not all anger is negative.
Yet as fellow Christians, we may question
the validity of her present conviction that forgiveness is not incumbent on her, that it is not her's to give. I hope
that as time goes on, her pain and anger will abate, and that she will be enabled to "forgive, as the Lord has forgiven us"
(Colossians 3:13).
Thursday, May 4, 2006
Why Do They Hate Us?
Is regime change by force as American
as apple pie? So opines Stephen Kinzer, author of Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change.
Starting with the brutal 1893 coup in Hawaii, Kinzer documents 14 instances
in 110 years where the United States has directly and forcibly overthrown established governments. This doesn't count
numerous other times in which the US government has been involved indirectly, or played a subsidiary role, in coup de etats.
Motives have varied, but a primary one certainly has been greed. Just the
mention of names like Aramco, United Fruit, ITT and Haliburton bear this out.
It was during my first Navigators missionary assignment, to Cyprus in 1952, that
I became aware of this American propensity. I was living in the seafront town of Larnaca at the time. While I
was there, I learned later, Donald Wilbur, outwardly an expert in Persian architecture but serving secretly as a CIA agent,
met in Larnaca with Kim Philby, his British counterpart, to plan the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Moussadegh, whom
the British and Americans presumed to be pro-communist.
Arguably, this coup set in motion a series of moves in subsequent decades which led inevitably
to the Al Qa'ida attacks of 9/11.
Tuesday, May 2, 2006
Islam's Billy Graham
Amr Khaled (left) is Islam's most famous and influential evangelist. According to the
New York Times Magazine, his web site, where his disciples can chat with one another and download his sermons, received 26
million hits last year.
The Egyptian Khaled's fame and influence rests on his appeal to Arab and other Muslim young
people, and follows his deliberate decision to imitate American TV evangelists. According to a profile
in Al-Ahram, a leading Egyptian newspaper, young girls don the veil after hearing his lectures; young men drop their partying,
grow beards (which Khaled himself doesn't sport) and become active in their local mosques.
Amr Khaled sees himself as offering a moderate alternative between secular liberalism, on the
one hand, and radical Islamism on the other. "My message contributes to an increase in coexistence, development and
moderation," he says.
But some believe he is secretly allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest opposition
political party. And of late, his message has becoming more holistic, with emphasis on economic development projects.
Some suspect that his faith-based development program is simply a political party in waiting.
Whatever the case, he appears to be a force to be reckoned with, particularly with respect to
the restless Muslim population in Europe.
* *
*
On a lighter note, this bit of humor from Banner (the Christian Reformed Church's
house organ) caught my fancy. It's an updated version of an old joke:
An elderly Arab living the New York City metro area decided he wanted to plant a
garden. But he knew he was too old and frail to do so. He wrote his son, who was studying at a distant college,
"Beloved son, I am very sad that I cannot plant my potatoes. I am sure if you were here, you would dig
up my garden for me. I love you, Father."
The son replied, "Beloved father, please don't touch the garden. That
is where I have hidden 'the THING.' I love you, too, Ahmed."
At 4 pm the FBi visited the home of the old man and took the whole garden apart,
searching every inch. But they couldn't find anything and left the house disappointed.
The next day the old man received another message from his son. "Beloved father.
I hope the garden is dug up by now and you can plant your potatoes. That is all I could do for you from here.
Your loving son, Ahmed."
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