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Thursday, August 30, 2007
Second Comings
Christians are not
the only ones who expect a Second Coming. For the past two days Shi'a Muslims in Iran, Iraq and elsewhere have been
celebrating the birthday of Muhammad al-Mahdi (the Guided One), the 12th Imam descended directly from the Prophet Muhammad.
Al-Mahdi was born in the 9th century after Christ. Shortly after his installation as Imam (the supreme religious leader
in Islam, as distinct from the Sunni Caliphs) al-Mahdi disappeared. Shi'a Muslims believe God took him into hiding where
he remains alive until his Second Coming. His reappearance will occur only when humankind has reached the
end of its rope, when poverty, corruption, and injustice have reached their zenith. He will establish God's justice
in the earth.
This expectation
is not unlike that of Christians, who expect Jesus' Second Coming, an event described in some detail in St. Paul's two letters
to the Thessalonians. Our Pastor, Dr. John Algera, has been preaching from these letters all this summer. According
to St. Paul, in the End Time a worldwide spiritual rebellion will occur, and "the man of lawlessness" will be revealed.
He will proclaim himself to be God. At that point Jesus will come and overthrow him "with the breath of his mouth."
During most of Israel's
history, as recorded in the Hebrew Bible, prophets, however critical they might be of "the system," tended to work within
it. They aimed to reform it. But after their forced exile to Babylon in the 6th century before Christ, a new prophetic
vision emerged, called Apocalyptic. This vision saw no hope in human systems. Rather than expecting reform, the
new prophets anticipated the world getting worse and worse until God himself would destroy the worldly systems and usher in
a new Messianic Age of justice and peace. The prophet Daniel was apocalyptic, as was John the Baptist, as was the apostle
Paul -- and Shi'a Muslims.
10:56 am edt
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
An Indian widow mourns her suicide husband
I am enjoying the "golden years" of my life. My children and grandchildren
are doing well. I support Georgia in her ministry at Loving Care Center. I have a modest but rewarding ministry
at our local church. My latest book, the fruit of a couple of years of intense research, is ready for
publication. My health is reasonably good. I have many friends with whom I stay in touch through the Internet.
Why then am I sometimes so troubled in spirit? My spiritual waters are roiled when I think of how many people in
our world endure lives of penury and suffering. In India, every eight hours on average, a desperately poor cotton farmer
commits suicide, unable to pay his debts or feed his family. Three a day, a thousand a year, in just one area half the
size of New Jersey. Here in the USA, one out of every eight persons lives in poverty. Here in Paterson the average
annual income of the top 20% is more than fifteen times greater than the lowest 20%. How can this be, and why should
it be, in one of the richest nations of the world? It continues to trouble me, as it has most of my life. My own
theology affords a satisfying intellectual answer. But nothing can alleviate the emotional distress I often
feel.
10:28 am edt
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Robbing Peter
In one of the poorer
neighborhoods of Paterson is our Lady of Lourdes (left), a 125-year-old Roman Catholic church that has successively served
German, Belgian, Irish, and Italian immigrants. In more recent years it has catered to Hispanic immigrants: Peruvian,
Dominican, Puerto Rican, Honduran, etc. -- virtually every Spanish-speaking nation, including Spain, according to Kevin Coyne,
who visited the church's pastor this past week. The church offers six Masses a week in Spanish and one in English.
But this is Paterson,
and four times in recent months the church has been burglarized by petty thieves, most likely drug addicts. The thieves
keep returning, in spite of the fact that the church is desperately poor and their maximum haul was less than $35. An
adequate security system would cost the parish $3,000, which it simply doesn't have. "If they would just call me," Pastor
Sella says, "I would leave an envelope with $35 on the door. It would be a lot cheaper than fixing everything."
2:30 pm edt
Friday, August 24, 2007
Doubts
Mother Teresa
is one of the most recognized religious figures of the 20th century, inevitably destined for Roman Catholic sainthood
and revered by Protestants, Orthodox and even athesists as well. Her work on behalf of the poor in India, especially
Kolkata (modern Calcutta) earned her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. She died in 1997 at the age of 87.
Many were
shocked, therefore, when CNN reported yesterday that Mother Teresa suffered painful conflicts in her faith. She frequently
had doubts about God and sometimes felt utterly abandoned by God (the experience medieval theologians identified as "the dark
night of the soul"). These doubts and inner conflicts showed up in the letters she wrote to friends "In my soul,
I cannot tell you how dark it is," she penned on one occasion. "I feel like refusing God."
Reports of
her doubts and darkness did not surprise me, however. More than once in my lifetime I have experienced extended periods
of such pain and affliction. The most recent was was about a decade ago. On that occasion I was visited by Ken,
a campus minister for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. As he listened to my anxieties he interrupted to ask, "Yes,
but what about the Cross?" -- meaning "Doesn't the Cross of Christ console you in this situation?"
My immediate
answer was, "No, not at all." But I didn't forget the question. I pondered it frequently over the next ten years,
made occasional notes, then sat down to write at some length. The result was What About the Cross? Exploring
Models of the Atonement, soon to be published. This book is my answer to Ken's question. Awaiting publication,
it is available on www.waldronscott.net/atonement.
1:20 pm edt
Thursday, August 23, 2007
How to Treat Your Enemies
Dr. Dorian Paskowitz,
left, is 86 years old and still an avid surfboarder. But he made good news this weeks when he, a Jew, personally delivered
15 new surfboards to Palestinian surfboard enthusiasts in the Gaza strip. "To be able to go to your enemies and give
them something that makes them happy is a most fulfilling adventure," writer Isabel Kersner reports Paskowitz as saying.
11:08 am edt
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Readers, Religion, and War
Christian Classics Ethereal Library at Calvin College (www.ccel.org)
27 percent
of adult Americans surveyed admitted to having read no books at all this past year. Of those who had read books this
past year, the average was seven, or about one every seven weeks. I grew up on books and love them. For a
great part of my adult life, even during my busiest years as a globe-trotter, I managed to read at least one book a week,
often two. Today I have slowed down a lot. So far this year I've read about a dozen, or one book every three weeks. Nowadays
I tend to read more journals, such as the New York Review of Books and the (London) Times Literary Supplement.
Later on
tonight CNN TV will air the first of three programs on "God's Warriors." Tonight's program will be on Israel's Warriors;
tomorrow night, Islam's Warriors; and Thursday night, "Christian Warriors." Although 91 percent of all Americans say
it is wrong to kill for religious reasons, the truth is that for many centuries warfare was endemic to Christianity.
We were either fighting the barbarians, or Islam, or one another. In fact, the Christian wars of religion in Europe
in the 16th and 17th centuries lasted nearly a century and a half. Weariness with relgious wars is credited with ushering
in the era of secularism in the West.
Today we
tend to think of religious warfare as being confined to Islam. But this is a misreading. Americans are engaged
in a war on terrorism which has its roots in our desire to defend -- and expand -- our civil religion, the American
Dream. Our president believes it is God's will that we export freedom, democracy and capitalism to all parts of the
world. To date this effort has cost thousand of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan lives,
to say nothing of four million people uprooted from their homes and neighborhood and displaced, often in poverty, to foreign
places. Today, as in the past, religion and war, are partners in crime.
8:43 pm edt
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Paterson's Peruvians
The annual Peruvian parade in Paterson
The terrible earthquake in Peru this week calls attention to the sizeable Peruvian population in Paterson. While
the majority of Paterson's peoples are Hispanic, nearly five percent of them claim Peruvian ancestry. We even have
a Peruvian consulate on Market Street in downtown Paterson. One of my former colleagues in the Leadership Paterson program,
Daniel Jara, has won national acclaim for his success in developing a statewide Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. The first
Peruvian-American soldier killed in Iraq, Lt. Ricardo Torres, was from Passaic, a neighboring town.
Devastating
earthquakes in Peru are not infrequent. Back in 1970 at least 60,000 people were killed, 20,000 missing, and 500,000
were made homeless in the Huarez earthquake and accompanying landslide.
Such catastrophes
always raise the issue of God's role in the event. While few people today accuse God of actually causing such death
and destruction as a form of judgment on sinners, many wonder why God would even allow it to happen. My answer is that,
in a decision of great humility and generosity, God created the universe in radical freedom. The
universe not only has the freedom to be itself, it has the freedom to continually make itself. Every atom, every quark,
is endowed with this freedom. Our world and the human race are the God-ordained product of this free process which, in
human beings, we recognize as free will, although in in the world around us it often appears as randomness.
God's ultimate
purpose in creating a free-process universe was to materialize the human race, and from the human race to call out an eternal
community of mutual love and partnership, in which we love God, our fellow human beings, and even our enviornment with
radical love, without coercion of any kind -- not even that "kindly" coercion that would forcefully prevent evil in nature
or society. How God achieves his purpose without compromising freedom is the secret of the Gospel, revealed in life,
execution, resurrecton and ascension of Jesus.
11:05 am edt
Friday, August 17, 2007
Global Cooperation
During my tenure
as general secretary of the World Evangelical Fellowship (now Alliance), I worked hard to try to convince my colleagues that
we should cooperate with the World Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church to promote the common good. I discovered
that evangelical Christians from the then-called "third world" and some evangelicals from Europe were receptive. Most
of the opposition to my proposed policy, and it was formidable, came from North American evangelicals. At that time
(1975-80) North American evangelicals were more interested in projecting our special identity than in working together with
other Christians in common cause.
So it is with some
gratification that I read in the New York Times that the World Evangelical Alliance, under the leadership of its present
general secretary, the Canadian Geoff Tunnicliffe, has joined with Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and mainline Protestant
denominations to create a common code of conduct to advance the cause of religious freedom throughout the world.
Muslims, Hindus,
Buddhists and others are naturally adverse to proselytizing by Christians. Increasingly, Christian missionaries are
being imprisoned or executed. The new code will establish what rightfully needs to be banned when it comes to Christian
mission. At the same time it will establish guidelines for dealing with interreligious marriage and will vigorously
promote religious freedom. I regard this new cooperative venture as a mark of growing maturity in the evangelical community.
10:20 am edt
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Monitoring Air Quality
The area around
west Louisville in Jefferson County, Kentucky ranks 23rd in the nation in terms of the amount of toxic pollutants -- between
15 and 20 tons -- spewed out each day from the area's smokestacks and automobiles. This significantly increases, according
to the federal Environmental Agency, the likelihood of the county's residents acquiring cance over the course of a lifetime.
It is my friend
John Metaxas' job (I wrote about John in an earlier blog) to continuously monitor the air quality in west Louisville.
Every 12 days he logs 100 miles collecting and replacing the cannisters that contain collected air samples. (This is
what he is doing in the snapshot above.) Later, back in his laboratory, he analyzes his collectons. The state-of-the-art
air quality laboratory he heads up is the only university lab in the eastern U.S. set up to assess air toxins. As a
boy growing up on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, John would never have imagined such a vocation.
But as a Christian, he feels good about the opportunity to serve his neighbors in Jefferson County this way.
10:11 am edt
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Good Decision, Great Nations
Yesterday I had
lunch with a young lady, a member of our church and recent graduate of an Ivy League university. She is an aspiring
writer-producer. But as a Christian she wants her writing to have depth and make a positive difference in the lives
of those who watch her movies and plays. So, after working for a year in the Big Apple, she has decided to enroll in
a prominent East Coast seminary, focusing on biblical studies. It seems to me she has made an unusually mature decision,
for the next three years will afford her opportunity to explore the Bible's portrayal of human nature in its alienation
from God, and God's own work to overcome that alienation. I know she will do well.
* *
*
Bangalore: India's Silicon Valley
Today
marks the 60th anniversary of the creation of three great nations in South Asia: India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Together
their peoples constitute nearly one-quarter of the world's population. Actually, 60 years ago two nations -- India and
Pakistan -- achieved their independence from British rule. Some years later West and East Pakistan separated, becoming
Pakistan and Bangladesh, respectively. Pakistan and Bangladesh are Muslim nations. India is predominantly Hindu.
On the
three states, India is the most successful. Bangladesh, where Mother Teresa labored, is desperately poor and subject
to disasterous floods and famines virtually every year. Pakistan has been subject to alternating civilian and military
rule, and is now faced with the challenge of rising Islamic fundamentalism. India, by contrast, with more than a billion
people, has been consistently democratic (with the usual share of corruption). In recent years it has developed its
own "Silicon Valley" in and around Bangalore. In spite of the fact that India actully has as many Muslim citizens as
either Bangladesh or Pakistan, religious tensions have been relatively restrained in India, with only occasional outbursts
of violence.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Muslim Inventors
Zheng He, famous 15th century Chinese Muslim explorer, displaying
a mariner's compass. The Chinese invented the compass.
"Islamic
Science Rediscovered" is an exhibition being held now at the Liberty Science Center at Liberty State Park in Jersey City,
New Jersey. It explores the wide spectrum of Muslim scientific accomplishment between the years 700 A.D. and 1700 A.D.
It covers nine scientific disciplines, including medicine, engineering, and astronomy. Many of the displays, according
to reporter Anahad O'Connor, revolve around individual scientists and explorers such as Ibn al-Jazari, a 12th century scholar
and engineer rival those of Thomas Edison; Al-Khwarizmi, the Persian astronomer and mathematician whose name gives us the
word "algorithm;" and Abbas bin Firmas, a Muslim inventor who in 875 A.D. strapped himself into a glider and stayed aloft
for some time. This was more than a thousand years before the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
8:34 pm edt
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Weather
Unusual weather
here yesterday. While most of the country was sweltering in temperatures approaching 100 degrees or more, we in the
New York metro area experienced near-record lows. The temperature fell to 58 degrees Fahrenheit, just three degrees
higher than the all-time low of 55 degrees set way back in 1879! Today the thermometer readings will be normal again,
meaning in the low to mid-80s for this time of year.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Taxing
More than 100 citizens
crowded into the Council Room at Paterson's City Hall last night to protest shocking increases in homeowners property taxes
which have skyrocketed in recent years. If these assessments are sustained it will be very difficult, if not impossible,
for the typical homeowner to afford to live in Paterson. Georgia and I pay approximately $150 a week for the privilege
of living and ministering in this city -- a rate we are unlikely to be able to keep up for long. Paterson's tax
policy seems out of touch with reality. Ultimately it will be self-defeating as more and more families will decide to
pull up stakes and move South, where many of Paterson's families came from in the first place.
I'm not apt to spend
much time discussing national politics on this blog. But with the Iowa Republican straw poll set for tomorrow, and Mitt
Romney more or less conceded to win it, perhaps I can say a word or two about him. He's a Mormon, and for a lot of people,
this is a turn-off. Personally, I don't think it's relevant. It seems to me that Jack Kennedy settled that question
once for all back in 1960. I can't see myself voting for any Republican candidate, but of the bunch that are contesting
the primaries now, Romney appears attractive, primarily because of his strong center of the road record and his proven competence
in developing the Bain Capital investment firm, turning around the Salt Lake City Olympics, and passing health care reform
while serving as governer of Massachusetts.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Connections
One of the benefits
of a personal web site is the way it churns up long-lost friends. John Metaxas, the young man standing next to his father,
was a student at the American Academy in Larnaca, Cyprus, where I taught back in 1952-54. He stumbled across my web
site while browsing the Internet and emailed me. He brought me up to date on his life story (nearing retirement, he
heads up an environmental lab at the University of Louisville, Kentucky) and shared a couple of dozen old photos. We
have a number of mutual friends, one whom I was able to reconnect John with almost immediately. The photo above was
taken as John, newly converted to Christ, was about to leave for a summer's missionary work with Operation Mobilization.
The Greek steamer that would take him there is in the background. During the Cypriot Civil War John's family was held
hostage by Turkish soldiers for many days before providentially being released.
10:27 am edt
Monday, August 6, 2007
Interesting Miscellany
Cardinal (Aaron)
Jean-Marie Lustiger, left, died yesterday. He was 80 years old. Cardinal Lustiger was born Jewish, in Poland.
His mother perished in a Nazi concentraton camp; his father lived to see him consecrated as archbishop of Paris.
Lutsiger converted to Christianity when he was 13 years old. He saw himself as Jewish Christian, like the earliest
apostles. "For me," he said, "the vocation of Israel is beinging light to the goyim (the Gentile nations). That
is my hope, and I believe that Christianity is the means for achieving it."
William
Kamkwamba, a Malawi, Africa teenager has built a windmill from scrap parts that supplies his family's electrical
needs, changing their lifestyle forever. William has no formal education, but funds generated by news of his accomplishment
have been set aside to ensure an engineering education for him.
Rachida Dati, a Muslim woman from a Moroccan background who grew
up in public housing in France, has become France's Minister of Justice of France. Her's is the first Muslim appointment
to the French cabinet. She had written a letter to France's new president, Nicholas Sarkozy, saying, "You need me!"
Sir Tom Hunter is a British
billionaire who has become a major philathopist. Recently he donated one billion pounds -- roughly worth two billion
American dollars -- to charity, saying, "My wife and I are going to leave this world as we came into it, pretty much with
nothing." When questioned about the increasing gap between rich and poor in Britain (and in America) Hunter pointed
out that 30 years ago most of the richest families in Britain had inherited their wealth. Today the majority of the
richest percentile had created their wealth by new enterprises. That is a significant change, he indicated.
10:31 am edt
Friday, August 3, 2007
Appointments
Newspapers and TVs
are filled with photos and stories of the horrific bridge collapse in Minneapolis. For this and another reason, which
will appear shortly, I was reminded of Thorton Wilder's famous book, The Bridge of San Luis Rey. The bridge
was built by Peruvian Incas back in the 1600s. It was, as Wilder notes, a mere ladder of thin slats with handrails of
dried vine suspended over a deep gorge and was, at the time, the finest bridge in all Peru. Everyone assumed it would
last forever. But on Friday, July 20th, 1714, it collapsed and plummeted five travelers into the gulf below.
Brother Juniper,
a Franciscan missionary from northern Italy, witnessed the event. He asked himself, "Why did this happen to those
five? Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan." At that moment
Brother Juniper resolved to enquire into the secret lives of those five persons, and that sets the novel on its way.
Earlier this week
a close friend suffered an unexpected death in the family. The victim, a firefighter, was only 36 years old. My
friend's brother concluded, "It was an accident. These things happen. Doctors make mistakes." In contrast,
my friend could only find comfort in the thought that God had, for wise reasons of His own, planned the death. "It is
appointed to men to die" (Hebrews 9:27), she reasoned. She phoned me to ask my opinion: was she right, or was her brother?
I offered a third
option. The death was indeed an accident, as her brother had surmised. The doctors had misdiagnosed the condition,
failing to give the appropriate treatment. God did not plan his death. God is the author of life, not death.
God did not plan the firefighter's death because the man was evil, or because he was too good for this world. The verse
in Hebrews is a generic statement, applicable to the human race as a whole, not directed toward particular individuals.
That said, God surely foresaw the entire sequence and was immediately present, to share in the grief and to comfort and console.
Much of the world's
tragedies, public and private, from birth defects to mosquito bites leading to fatal Nile disease to bridge collapses are
no part of God's plan. "I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord, "plans for good and not for evil, to give you
a future and a hope." They are the result of the world's defects, natural evil and human error. But God is always
with us, and with the deceased as well, to lead us into his eternal presence.
9:11 am edt
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Attack Dogs
David Aikman
is an award winning journalist for Time Magazine who now teaches at Patrick Henry College in Virginia and writes a regular
column in Christianity Today. In the latest issue of the journal, Aikman writes about the "Attack Dogs of Christendom."
These are men (and the occasional woman) who "seem determined to savage not only opponents of Christianity [e.g. Muslims],
but also fellow believers whose doctrinal positions they disapprove of."
I'm glad someone
with a national readership is writing about this. The apostle Peter's first epistle tells us that a gentle and quiet
spirit is of great worth in God's sight. These Christian attack dogs display the very opposite. Under the aegis
of "defending the faith," they malign, disparage and defame members of other religions as well as brothers and sisters in
Christ who hold beliefs different than their own. All too often -- as any visit to the Internet will confirm -- these
zealots are as much or more concerned about defending America and the American way of life than the faith. In many instances
they appear to identify defending the faith with ensuring American security.
Peter's first epistle
plainly exhorts us to "show proper respect to everyone" -- repeat, everyone -- "love your fellow believers." "Do not
repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called."
Aikman plaintively
notes that "No attribute of civilized life seems more under attack than civility," and asks, "If Christians blast each other
from here to eternity with characterizations that differ little from the coarse vulgarity of cable TV, where on earth is the
witness that brings grace and savor to our crumbling civilization?" He concludes his article with his own exhortation:
"By all means criticize fellow Christians if necessary, but do so with grace."
10:28 am edt
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Dog Days
The dog days of August have begun Last night I was sitting on our back deck about ten p.m. The air was so humid
that only one star was visible. My daughter Melody tells me it was Jupiter. I followed it for about 45 minutes
until it disappeared behind our neighbor's rooftop. This morning I got up very early, while it was still relatively
cool, to mow our lawn. But within minutes I was drenched with sweat.
It is good news
that the U.N. Security Council has approved a force of up to 26,000 peacekeepers for Darfur. The United States has limited
national interests in Darfur -- only humanitarian ones -- so it was unlikely the U.S. would ever step in to stop the genocide
there.
Here in Paterson
another young lady has been shot and killed in a drive-by shooting. There is no indication that she was the intended
target. Drive-by shootings these days seem to be the work of rival gangs, and are often drug-related. .
Both the Crips and the Bloods are active in Paterson. Speaking of drugs, Paterson has been approved to begin giving
out clean needles free of charge to intravenous drug users. This is a first for New Jersey, the only state in the union
without a government-sanctioned way to for addicts to exchage dirty syringes for clean ones.
Unbelieveably, Paterson
public schools will remain under State control for at least another year. (Most public school systems in America are
under local control.) Ours has been under State control since 1991, yet no discernable progress has been made.
(That being the case, one wonders why State control is any better than local control.) Paterson's students are among
the poorest in the state. 75 per cent qualify for free lunches. 57 percent are Hispanic and 35 per cent are African-Ameircan.
Many are immigrants. In fact, Paterson students speak 37 different languages. Ours is a very diverse community.
Georgia and I count it a privilege to share the gospel by deed as well as word to such a disfunctional but vibrant community.
10:49 am edt
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