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Monday, July 28, 2008
Back Home
 Navigators Pioneer Missionaries 1948 - 1968,
Georgia and I arrived home 30 hours behind scedule after a disastrous (time-wise) second leg of our trip from Denver to Paterson
by Amtrak. We had reserved a sleeper compartment for the Chicago-Pittsburg leg, but our train was so late
that we missed the connection and, after being put up in a hotel overnight, had to sit up all night in Coach.
Forty years ago this would not have been a problem, but nearing 80, I was unable to get any rest, what with all
the rockin' and jostlin' implicit in a train ride, especially sitting in the very last row of the train where
the rockin' and jostlin' is the very worst.
But here we are, safe and sound back home, and thankful to God for his many blessings which, for me, were many.
Reuniting with colleagues dating back to 1948 (photo above); visiting with my eldest daughter, Melody, and her children
in Boulder, Colorado; completing work on the Scott Missions Library at the Navigators International Office; making some new
friends, etc. The trip was expensive, and it will take us a few years to save up for another one like it,
but it was well worth it, apart from the difficult return trek.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Time Off
For the first time in my long
life I am experiencing an alergic reaction. To what, I don't know, though I assume it has something
to do with summer pollens. In any event, I am hoping that a higher altitude and drier climate will relive it.
This will be my last post this month. Georgia and I will be Colorado for most of the rest of this month, so I will not
resume blogging until the first of August.
In case you missed
it, we are going out to Glen Eyrie, headquarters of The Navigators, for a 60th anniversary celebration of the Nav's missionary
outreach, which formally began in 1948 with the dispatch of Roy Robertson to Shanghai, China. Four years later I was
assigned to the island of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
Once the celebration is over, Georgia will relax, and I will be spending time in the Nav archives and library, seeing if I
can be of any help in sorting things out. Naturally, we will also get some valued time with daughter Melody and her children,
who live in Boulder, Colorado and one of whom, Gillian (who goes by the name of Canary) shares my birthdate, July 14th.
I'll be 79. Gillian will be 17.
9:38 am edt
Monday, July 7, 2008
Transforming Mission
 One
of the most influential books on Christian mission in the last quarter of the 20th century was David Bosch's Transforming
Mission. David, a South African, and I worked together during my tenure as general secretary of the World
Evangelical Fellowship (now Alliance). He was killed in an auto accident in 1994, a severe loss to the ecumenical mission
community. His widow, Annemie (photo), who maintains a very busy schedule, and I have been corresponding of
late, prompted by an article of social justice she has been asked to write. She recalled that her husband had thought
highly of my Bring Forth Justice and this prompted her to email me. I wasn't able to be of help to her
on her article, but in passing I mentioned that I was writing on the subject of universal salvation. Her response: Universal
salvation? How wonderful! I have come to the insight that our God is so much greater than Christianity, and I
believe that God speaks to people where ever they are, and through the faith they grew up in. The Holy Spirit is busy
with each of us, whatever our background." It's encouraging to know that I am not alone in thinking along these
lines.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Messiah
 This is a poor photo, I admit, but it pictures an exiting event -- exciting to anyone interested in the Jesus of
history -- the discovery of a stone tablet dating back to the years of King Herod, that is, the generation just before the
birth of Jesus. Discovered in the Jordan Valley, it is a Dead Sea Scroll on stone. The tablet is important because it
speaks of messianic redeemer who will suffer and then rise from the dead after three days. Previously it has been
thought that this idea was unique to Jesus, who taught it to his disciples as something predicted in Old Testament scripture.
Now it appears that the idea was already present in Jewish religious life -- perhaps only at the fringes of Jewish religious
life, as with a Qumran sect such as the one John the Baptist is thought to have been associated with -- when Jesus appropriated
it. Such an idea bothers some Christians, but it makes sense to me.
We know that Jesus was an early associate of John the Baptist; it is reasonable to think that John may have pointed Jesus
to the relevant Old Testament passages, which Jesus then used to discern his own destiny as God's Son. The fact
that the twelve apostles were slow to pick up on this is evidence that it was a fringe concept, not part of mainstream Jewish
teaching in the first century.
9:45 am edt
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Public Financing
Prospective President Barack
Obama took one step forward and one step backward this week -- both on the same issue: public financing for faith-based groups
engaged in social services. Taking a step forward, he pledged to provide increased public financing for such groups.
The step backward: he pledged that federal grant money could not be used by such groups to discriminate against people they
employ. The second pledge would in actual practice secularize the faith-based groups and destroy their religious identity,
their very raison d'etre. A Jewish group forced to employ Catholic nuns would in short order no longer be Jewish;
a Catholic group forced to hire Baptists, the same.
There
is no easy answer to this dilemma. It is important in America to maintain separation of church and state. It is
equally important to sustain freedom of religion. And the fact of the matter is that faith-based group consistently
outperform secular bureaucracies when it come to providing social services at the community level. Furthermore, they
do it mure economically. Tax payers get more bang for their buck. Obama reasonably wants to guard against proselytism.
But that can be ensured by proper oversight, not by forbidding particular religious groups from employing people who
share their particular values,
10:18 am edt
Friday, July 4, 2008
Independence Day
Today is overcast, with an occasional shower -- rather unusual for the Fourth of July. A lazy day, perfect for just
laying about and doing nothing, or at the very least, just reading. I subscribe to the [London] Times Literary Supplement
(TLS), so that's what I've been doing the past hour. I subscribe to the TLS because it always has
at least one good article on some aspect of religious life or thought. This week's piece is a book review of Richard
Burridge's Imitating Jesus (Eerdmans, 2007). The review is generally negative. The reviewer, himself
the author of Companion to the New Testament, opines:
"Jesus had no family, no wife: how are Christians to imitate him when they are confronted by family or marital problems?
Jesus had no possessions: short of total renunciation and asceticism (a response open only to a tiny proportion of his follwers),
how can we take him as our model of social and economic behaviour?. Jesus renounced all worldly power and any form of
forceful coercion: how, then, are those who assume responsibility for order and justice in the state to go about imitating
Jesus?"
I tend to agree with the reviewer that it is the
precepts and principles contained in the New Testament, many of them traceable back to the teachings of Jesus, which down
the centuries have provided the material for the contours of a distinctively Christian way of life, rather than the more problematice
ideal of "What Would Jesus Do?'
4:33 pm edt
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Obama Evangelicals
The New York Times reports
that between now and the November elections Senator Obama's organization is planning as many as one thousand house parties
and dozens of Christian rock concerts, gatherings of religious leaders, campus visits, and telephone conference calls to bring
together self-identified evangelicals who are motivated by their faith to engage in political action. In the past,
most of these have adhered to the Republican party, but Barack Obama has captured the interest of many of them this year,
particularly younger evangelicals who do not agree with Obama's stance on abortion and same-sex marriage, but do agree
with him on other issues such as health care, education, ecology, race, the economy, and the war in Iraq. They also respond
to his call to transcent political divisions and to address human suffering around the world. To facilitate his dialogue
with evangelicals, Obama can draw on his own adult conversion to Christ and his relative ease, compared to his opponent John
McCain, in talking about his spiritual convictions and how they influence his public policy positions. Personally, I
think this is a healthy development since, in my judgment, evangelicals have been captive to the Republic party too long.
Although the Republican party upholds personal morality issues important to evangelicals, in other areas of life its agenda
reflects positions contrary to biblical emphases.
10:15 am edt
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