Years ago I used to fly fairly frequently between San Francisco or Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia or Auckland, New Zealand. It's a long flight, and always I broke it up by laying over in Pago Pago (pronounced Pango Pango), American Samoa -- a beautiful little town with white sandy beaches. So was dismayed to hear last night that an undersea earthquake had created a tsunami that swept over Samoa and nearby American Samoa. Early reports say 100 or more islanders lost their lives.
          Health care: Two "public option" proposals for health care reform presented yesterday in the Senate were voted down. It looks like this favorite of President Obama has bit the dust. I have the feeling that whatever bill finally geets passed will be emasculated and unlikely to produce real reform.
          Afghan war: General Chrystal is reported to be asking for 40,000 more ground troops. President Obama is re-thinking his strategy for Afghanistan and has not yet responded. As readers know, I think he is on the wrong track at present. I would hate to see him get bogged down as happened to President Johnson did during the Viet Nam war. As a consequence Johnson lost his domestic "war on poverty" as well as the one on the battlefield.

          My friend Wency Dela Vina writes from Manila that 80 percent of the city is under water from the typhoon that poured more rain than the city has seen for years. As of now 240 people -- most of them in the poorer areas -- have perished. Wency and his co-workers are busy ministering to their families and others.
         In vastly different, but still difficult circumstances, Georgia and I have been cooped up for a month now in one room of a motel while waiting on the "closing" of our purchase of a small retirement condominium here in Lynchburg. It looks like this will be happening within the next few days now, for which we are thankful.
          As you might imagine, in this situation I have more than the usual time for reading. And there is a book warehouse nearby where really good books are available for one or two dollars each. Yesterday I purchased five biographies -- Stendahl, Oppenheimer, Wollstronecraft, Eger -- and Abraham.
          Yes, Abraham, by David Rosenberg, the poet and literary critic whose new translations of the Hebrew Bible are said to be the best in the past century. Certainly they are nothing like the King James Version! I've got a good start on the book and am profiting from new insights.

     The following is an excerpt from a letter a chaplain currently serving in Afghanistan wrote in response to a recent blog. It will be of interest to any of you who are concerned about the post traumatic stress syndrome. 

          If you could add one more thing to your prayer requests out there, I would ask that you have your people pray for our soldiers – but not as you may think.
          One of the tragic difficulties of war is the post-traumatic stress experience and the hatred it can imprint on the heart. I recall my grandfather telling me several years ago, as a WWII veteran, that he could never bring himself to forgive the Japanese for what they did – and this was 60 years after the war!
          In my counseling of soldiers here, I have heard much the same sentiment several times. Soldiers see and experience things from which the average person is sheltered, and it lives with them in nightmares, recurring flashbacks and emotional turmoil. When they experience something too horrific to bear, at times it can burn as an anger that becomes unfocused – it lashes out at a people, rather than at a specific person.
          The recognition that the enemy also fights back gives way to a battered sense of justice, and a desire for revenge and a hatred for all people of the race or ethnicity of that enemy. Some soldiers struggle with that hatred toward even friendly Afghans because of their experiences in the field.
          Of course, my counsel is always that they must learn to forgive even their enemies that God may heal their hearts and give them perspective, and even love, for both the enemy and the people of this land who have suffered so greatly for so many centuries under war after war.
          The American people are no less damaged by the images they have seen of terrorism, and American Christians need to recall this lesson of forgiveness, as well. The only alternative is to be at war with the Muslim world, rather than winning them, one by one, to Christ. We cannot sit down and love an entire people at our dinner tables, but we can entertain and share Christ with them one person, one family, at a time. I suppose we should stop trying to eat the entire elephant in a single bite, and deal with it where we are able, one bite at a time.

         
          In response to a recent blog, a reader writes, “I for one would like to see President Obama find a different strategy in Afghanistan if he can, but not to take too long doing it. For every hour and day we lose more of our young men because they don't have enough ground support….If we are not serious about wiping out al-Qaida and bin Ladin [photo] and wiping out terrorism, then let our men keep their lives and come home.” 
          
          The final sentence above sums up my problem with Mr. Obama's strategy. I see little evidence that it aims at eliminating bin Ladin and al-Qa'ida. Instead, the USA is engaging in another futile effort at "democratic nation building" in the vain hope that doing so will eventually keep the Taliban at bay and thereby deprive al-Qa'ida of an Afghan base for terrorism. 
          But bin Ladin and al-Qa'ida are not in Afghanistan. They are in Pakistan, and can remain there indefinitely even if Afghanistan is free of the Taliban -- though in truth Afghanistan will never be free of the Taliban because there will always be a significant percentage of Muslims in Afghanistan who genuinely prefer an Islamic state to a Western-style secular state.          
          The administration's hope is that if Afghanistan can be freed of the Taliban, the USA can then convince Pakistan to root out al-Qa'ida. This is highly improbable. Pakistan too is a Muslim society and there is a high percentage of Pakistanis who will always be sympathetic to the ideals of the Taliban and al-Qa'ida.          
          I am no military strategist, just a simple Christian who believes that peacemaking is better than warmongering. What is required, in my opinion, is not so much the “hands-on” ground knowledge the military vaunts, but an America willing to learn how other nations think and feel and see the world – a "hands off" strategy, if you will. We need to abandon our compulsion to make the rest of the world into our image. 
          America tried to establish a democratic regime in Viet Nam and failed. Tried again in Iraq at a cost in lives greater than 9/11. Is trying now in Afghanistan, with democracy still on the far horizon. Americans would do better to bring the troops back home and let the Vietnamese, the Iraqis, the Afghans, and whoever else create the kind of societies they wish. But in that case, what about security from terrorism? 
          The one thing the USA has proven it can do since 9/11 – under both Republican and Democrat administrations -- is defend itself locally against specific terrorist plots. This was demonstrated anew as recently as this week. And there have been scores -- perhaps hundreds -- of similar plots foiled over the past eight years.
          Why not concentrate on this and deploy much of our vast military-industrial expenditure to eliminate poverty, famine and disease worldwide? That's a more noble target than either the Taliban or Al Qa'ida, in my judgment. 

           
          CNN's talk show host Larry King tried his best to get Iran’s President Ahmadinejad to deny or acknowledge the reality of the Jewish Holocaust last night, but failed. Instead, Ahmadinejad calmly insisted, much to King’s visible frustration, on reciting the reasons why he, as a former academic, would raise a certain set of questions about the Holocaust.
          On another TV network, Libya’s President Qaddhafi, who the previous day had put on quite a show, hectoring the U.N. General Assembly for 90 minutes, quietly and intelligently conversed with an anchorman on a variety of topics, presenting at least one Arab’s “take” on world affairs.  Afterward commentators expressed surprise.
          Why is it that Americans have such difficulty taking the worldviews of other nations seriously? Why do we find it so hard to really listen? Why do we feel that the way we see the world is the only reality?
          In truth, this failure is not unique to Americans. Most peoples of the world share it. As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, it is ingrained in us to see the “other” as truly alien. President Obama correctly sees that in the complex but integrated world of the 21^st century we are going to have to talk – meaning we are also going to have to listen – to each other. We can’t rely on war to solve all our problems.

Mr. Obama has his work cut out for himself. It’s going to be an uphill battle. Given our built-in attitudes, he may fail. Many of our political leaders, not only in America but around the world, promote their careers by propagating prejudice and fear. The recent disclosure of three homegrown terrorist plots will surely exacerbate this.
          I hope that during his presidency Obama will be able to effect some change in our mindsets, if not in others. It was Jesus who proclaimed, "Blessed are the peacemakers -- the shalom builders -- for they shall inherit the earth."

           We are one world. The great challenge of the 21^st century is learning how to live as a family. This does not imply homogeneity; diversity will be this family’s glory. But it does mean that inclusiveness must replace national exclusiveness.
           Families care for each other, and take care of each other. No longer should any people attempt to “go it alone,” however tempting that may be for a nation as rich and powerful as the United States.
           As the G-20 group on international leaders meet in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, we are nine years into the United Nations’ New Millennium Development project, the goals of which are as follows:
 
          1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
          2: Achieve universal primary education
          3: Promote gender equality and empower women
          4: Reduce child mortality
          5: Improve maternal health
          6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
          7: Ensure environmental sustainability
          8: Develop a global partnership for development
 
          How are we doing? A progress report by the United Nations warns that, despite some notable successes, overall progress has been too slow for most of the targets to be met by 2015, the project’s deadline. No doubt progress has been slowed by the global economic crisis. But we can’t let that thwart the project.
          St. Paul wrote about one first-century messianic community that did not let “its extreme poverty” prevent it from enthusiastically sharing with suffering churches elsewhere. How much more should Americans and other blessed nations increase our efforts to achieve the 2015 goals on schedule. 

          The United Nations is in session, so we are offered an endless series of speeches by Heads of State. Yesterday President Obama laid out his four invitations for international cooperation. The first is to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, and with this I heartily agree. I don’t regard Iran and North Korea as the major threat, however. Rather, it is the thousands of nuclear weapons still laying around unguarded in the former Soviet Union. To resolve that issue, relations between Russia and the U.S. need to kept amicable.
          Obama’s second invitation is to pursue peace, which strikes me as a mere platitude, something any head of state would say. Yet Mr. Obama was very specific in his remarks on Israel and the Palestinians, and that is encouraging. Obama’s third invitation relates to climate change. I’m ambivalent about this. For some reason I am not as convinced as the experts seem to be that this is a serious crisis.
          The President’s final invitation is for all nations to work together to revive the global economy with a special focus on the poorest countries of the world. Again, I heartily agree. Actually, I thought George W. Bush’s focus on Africa was the best part of his administration. I hope Barack Obama will sustain this effort.         
           In the New York Times Great Britain’s prime minister, Gordon Brown, laid out five goals for the immediate future. Four of them parallel Obama’s. Brown’s fifth challenge calls for a policy he labels “Afghanization” – another Iraq-like effort at nation-building. I think this is pie in the sky. President Obama is being pressed to pursue this line, which involves sending more troops into Afghanistan, and it appears he may do so. Big mistake. I believe that Vice President Joe Biden’s strategy is the better one: focus on rooting out al-Qa’edi in Pakistan.         

          



          It is well known that Americans do not live as long as Western Europeans or Japanese. Life expectancy for an American is about 78 years. It’s about 80 years for the British, 81 years for Canadians and the French, and about 83 years for Japanese.         
          Why this difference? It is commonplace today to blame it on the current health system in the USA. But, surprisingly, this may not be the case.         
          Dr. Samuel Preston, a demographer, is a leading expert on mortality rates. His studies show that the longevity gap between Americans and people in other industrialized countries is due primarily to higher rates of sickness and death in middle-aged Americans. And these middle-age deaths are not attributable to failure in the American health system.         
          Reporting on Dr. Preston’s finding, journalist John Tierney notes that there are several other factors involved: Americans are more ethnically diverse than most countries; they eat different foods; they are fatter. But most importantly, until recently they were exceptionally heavy smokers.         
          If deaths due to smoking were excluded from the research data, the United States would rise to the top half of longevity rankings for developed countries, says Tierney. And if Americans keep shunning cigarettes, as they have been since 1985, “the longevity gap could shrink no matter what happens to the health system.”                   

                        

(Continued from yesterday…) 

          One way to avoid “the goal is equality,” even a relative equality, is to assert that the apostle Paul’s directive is pertinent only to the Church, only to Christians. But this will not do. Jesus commanded us to pray “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” God’s will on earth is not limited to the Church.
          But suppose, for sake of argument, that God’s will is meant to be done only by Christians. Is that occurring? Obviously not. The same disparities that exist in the American economic system exist also in the churches. (Similarly, the same disparities that exist in Third World economic systems exist also in Third World churches.) We are content to dispense charity to those less fortunate than us, but I see no evidence at all that Christians, functioning within the context of the Church, are aiming at the goal of equality.
          We appear to have uncritically accepted the world’s economic “truths,” viz, “this is the way things are;” “the poor will be with you always;” “to those who have will more be given, and to those who have not, even what they have will be taken away” – words of Jesus, glibly read but rarely pondered in context.
          In context Jesus is indeed describing the way things are in the world. That does not mean he approves of the way things are and would not have them done differently. If the latter were the case, the Good News, is severely diminished.
          One of the most provocative passages in Matthew’s Gospel is Chapter 12. Matthew, acting as his own interpreter, says that Jesus’ actions recorded here are based on his role as God’s Servant to “bring forth justice.”

In this chapter Jesus aims at some level of equality, insisting that hungry men have the same right to food as rich men; that disabled persons have the same rights (or should have the same rights) as a rich man’s disabled sheep. In other words, people are as important as propertyf -- more important, in fact. 
          Professing Christians are a majority in the USA. We should be taking the initiative in protesting the growing gap between the “haves” and the “have nots” and moving both the Church and our larger society in the direction of relative equality.

             

 

(Continued from yesterday…) 
         
            Using figures taken from the April 2009 CIA Factbook (CIA being the abbreviation for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency) and other reliable sources, we find that the average income for people living in the ten wealthiest nations of the world equals that of persons living in the poorest 125 nations combined. A mere 40 nations rank between these two extremes.
          Expressed in terms of percentages, the wealth of the top 5 % of nations equals the bottom 73 %. The middle group constitutes 22 %. At present the United States by itself has average per capital wealth equal to the poorest 40 nations of the world combined. This is indeed a relative situation, but an exceedingly disparate one. The playing field obviously is not level.
          Even in the USA the relative equality achieved is open to question, for during the past generation, beginning with the “Reagan Revolution,” household income among those in the top 1% averaged $325,000 per year (in 2005 dollars). By 2005 that had increased to nearly $1.1 million, nearly ten percent per year!
          At the other end is stagnation at the bottom and bare growth in the middle. Among the poorest 19% of households, average income was $14,500 in 1979 (in 2005 dollars) and $15,500 in 2005. Among the middle 60% of households, which includes most of my readers, average income rose from $42,000 to $51,000 (again, in 2005 dollars). That’s less than one-tenth of one percent per year.
          Quite obviously the economic system the United States currently maintains does not begin to achieve even a relative level of equality.

                    (To be continued…)

          “…that there may be equality…The goal is equality” (2 Corinthians 8:13-14).  

          The context has to do with sharing wealth. And the apostle Paul’s words appear to fly in the face of the accepted conventions of the free market system that most of us subscribe to. So the matter is worth exploring.         
          What troubles Christians and other people of good will is not the idea of sharing our wealth. We do that. We regularly contribute tithes and offerings, sometimes to the point of sacrifice. We also contribute to the general good by way of the taxes we pay – though some of us resent the amount of taxes levied, and some of us reject the idea of taxes altogether.
          No, what troubles us is Paul’s notion that the goal should be equality. Equality of wealth thus becomes a matter of high priority for Christians. How can this be? Isn’t this a Communist notion? The fact that Paul’s stated objective appears in the Bible without qualification further troubles us as Christians, for that lends a certain authority that goes beyond what we might assume to be Paul’s subjective opinion. Equality is no longer to be considered solely in the context of secular economic theory, but in the context of God’s will.         
          Where did Paul get such an idea? He answers this question himself by citing a text from the Hebrew Bible (the Christian’s Old Testament, Exodus 16:18). “…as it is written, ‘The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.’”         
          This helps a bit, for the phrases “too much” and “too little” suggest relativity. Apparently Paul, and Moses, are not suggesting absolute equality of wealth, but some level of relative equality.         
          (To be continued tomorrow.)

          Paterson (where we lived for 25 years) and Lynchburg are quite dissimilar. Paterson is very compact, the third-most densely populated city in the USA. Lynchburg, by contrast, sprawls out over many square miles. Or take the matter of churches. I always thought that Paterson, with 300 churches serving 150,000 people, was over-churched. But Lynchburg, with barely half the population of Paterson, appears to be even more over-churched. In the Yellow Pages I counted 520 churches -- 240 Baptist churches alone!           
          In Paterson, Roman Catholic churches predominate. In Lynchburg there are only two Catholic churches. Paterson, with its various Hispanic peoples, has many Pentecostal and Charismatic churches. Lynchburg has few. In Lynchburg, Methodists run second to Baptists, but with only one-fifth the number of Baptist churches. Presbyterians are third with 15 churches. There is one Baha’i congregation and one Jewish synagogue, but no evidence of other non-Christian religions, at least in the Yellow Pages.          
          In Paterson we spent 25 happy years with the Madison Avenue Christian Reformed Church. In Lynchburg there are no Christian Reformed churches. So what church will we transfer our Paterson membership to? Unless the two of us can find a truly multi-racial church somewhere in the vicinity – and these seem to be few and far between – Georgia may end up worshipping with her siblings, most of whom attend St. Paul’s Baptist Church. Frankly, at this moment I tend to be turned off by such an over-churched but still largely segregated-church environment.

           

          American Muslims are rallying to an Islam-on-Capitol-Hill event scheduled for September 25 (the end of Ramadan, the annual Muslim period of fasting.) And some American Christians are up in arms about it, circulating warnings on the Internet about the threat of Islam taking over the country, and protesting the very effrontery of Muslims praying on the steps of the Capitol. (See for example, www.snopes.com).
          This is so sad, so misguided – both from the perspective of an American citizen and from the perspective of a Christian.         
          From the perspective of a Christian I say, “Let’s keep our priorities straight.” We are not called to combat Islam per se, nor is the defense of our nation our highest priority. Nations come and go; that is the nature of the historical process. We Christians are called first of all to share the Good News with Muslims. 
          Muslims have every right to be skeptical of Christian evangelism. They have long memories, which include the evils of the Christian Crusades and, later, the persecution and expulsion of Muslims from Christian Europe. If we are to share the Gospel with them, we have to earn the right to a hearing. That right can be earned only through love – thoughts of love, words of love, and deeds of love.
          Fear-mongering and scare-tactics will be utterly unavailing. You can’t act lovingly to someone you have been taught to fear and hate!         
          From the perspective of an American citizen I say, “We should celebrate, not castigate, this demonstration before the whole world of the nature of true democracy.”  American Christians regularly receive permits to pray on the steps of the Capitol. Why should American Muslims, or American Buddhists, or American atheists, for that matter, not avail themselves of the same privilege?
          We should rejoice in this, not resist it. America is the only country in the world where men and women of every nation, color, and religion have been welcomed to our shores to pursue “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
          It is perhaps superfluous for me to point out that happiness is premised in part on the freedom to practice one’s religion in peace and security, even on the steps of the Capitol.                     

         



          I’m not sure how many of my readers are aware that New York City has been celebrating its 400^th anniversary – that is, the 400^th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s arrival in the Half Moon at what is now New York Harbor and the subsequent founding of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam – New York’s original name.
          The celebration centered in New Amsterdam Village in Lower Manhattan (photo). The Netherlands’ Crown Prince Wellem-Alexander was present for the gala, declaring New York “the greatest city in the world.”         
          When I first moved to New Jersey 28 years ago one of my surprises was learning how strong the Dutch influence was in the region. Not just in New Amsterdam, but all over northern New Jersey the Dutch founded little farming and trading settlements. Today Dutch names still prevail in the area and the Dutch Reformed Church in its various forms is still highly visible.
          Georgia and I, consequently, have been members of the Christian Reformed Church for the past three decades. When we first joined the church, its membership was predominantly of Dutch heritage. Today it is predominantly African-American. Those of Dutch heritage have either moved to the suburbs or retired to Grand Rapids, Michigan.         
          But back to New Amsterdam. Henry Hudson, an Englishman, was working for the Dutch East India Company, which financed his voyage. At that time Holland was a mighty commercial power, doing business all over the world. But they weren’t spreading the Gospel. In fact, virtually no Protestants were. That mission was being fulfilled by Roman Catholics.
          In any case, the Dutch connection to New Amsterdam didn’t last long. After about 50 years they transferred control over to the British who, predictably, renamed the village at the lower end of Manhattan Island, New York.
 

          A good friend of mine, an attorney, says my blogs about unions drive him nuts. He despises unions (as did my own father). But I’m a great supporter of the labor movement in general and unions in particular – so here goes another.          
          Crystal Lee Sutton, the feisty union organizer, died last Friday of a brain tumor. Sutton was working at the J. P. Stevens plan in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina when low pay and intolerable working conditions compelled her to take a leading role in unionizing the textile plant, at that time the second-largest in the nation.. For this she was fired.
          A year later the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union won the right to represent 3,000 employees at seven plants in Roanoke Rapids; and in 1977 a court ordered J. P. Stevens to re-hire her and pay her back wages. The Oscar-winning movie “Norma Rae” was based on this incident, with the actress Sally Field (photo above) playing the part of Crystal Lee.
          I believe in free enterprise. But it is the nature of free enterprise to produce large and powerful companies that not infrequently take advantage of their power to oppress “the little guy” (see Ecclesiastes 4:1). At that point a counterweight is needed to protect workers’ legitimate interests. Unions do this.
          When unions become large they, too, can be abusive (hence my friend’s aversion) – but this is true of any large organization, including businesses. The answer, in my opinion, is not to destroy either businesses or unions, but to regulate both to the advantage of the general public.
          As President Obama correctly noted yesterday in his speech to Wall Street executives, “it is neither right nor responsible, after you’ve recovered with the help of your government, to shirk your obligation to the goal of wider [public] recovery, a more stable system, and a more broadly shared prosperity.”

            

          
         
           We should give credit to whom credit is due. Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug (photo) died a few days ago, aged 95. Borlaug is credited for saving hundreds of millions of lives from 1960 onward. His scientific advances in plant breeding increased food production spectacularly in Asia and Latin America. Countries like India, Mexico, and the Philippines on the verse of famine in the 1960, are now self-sufficient in cereal grains. According to reporter Justin Gillis (New York Times), the Nobel Prize committee, said, “More than any other single person of this age, he has helped provide bread for a hungry world.”         
          Matters are rarely so clear-cut, however. Critics of the Green Revolution said it displaced smaller farmers, encouraged overreliance on chemicals, and paved the way for greater corporate control of agriculture. Borlaug acknowledged some environmental concerns but insisted that the root problem was “the population monster.” He believed governments should do more to lower birth rates, and in fact, China did so for several decades.
          I too believe that exploding population is the potential crisis of our time – more so than global warming, for example. (During my lifetime the world’s population has grown from two billion to nearly seven billion; at no other time in recorded history has this happened.) I don’t believe reducing birth rates by government fiat is a permanent solution, however. Rather, Western history indicates that as quality of life improves, families voluntarily reduce their size. Hence my insistence that convert swords to ploughshares and concentrate on alleviating poverty, not people.
 

            Forty years ago, as he was leaving office, President Eisenhower (photo), himself a five-star general, warned Americans about the increasing influence of the “military-industrial complex.” The rise of the “complex” coincided with the beginnings of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the U.S.A. The Cold War lasted another 40 years after the Eisenhower caution, up to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Twenty years later, in 2009, we still labor under the near-unbearable cost, in money and lives -- not just American lives -- that the military-industrial complex foists upon the world.         
          One of the main promoters of the rise of high-tech militarism in the United States was Paul Nitze. He was what Professor Mark Atwood Lawrence has labeled a “liberal internationalist,” in this case one who believes that America has the power to impose its will on the world, for the better, of course.         
         Opposing him much of the time was George Kennan whom the same Professor Lawrence (University of Texas at Austin) terms a “realist,” that is, in this case one who is wary of military options and pessimistic both about the capacity of technology to solve human problems and the ability of Americans to exercise power wisely. Keenan was the author of the Cold War doctrine of containment. The story of their rivalry has been told recently by Nicolas Thompson in The Hawk and the Dove.         
          I have long sided with the Kennan-style “realists.” I profoundly doubted the wisdom – and the morality – of America’s attempt to overthrow a dictatorial regime in Iraq and impose a Western-style democracy in that country in the hope of “spreading freedom” and, not incidentally, ensuring American access to Middle Eastern oil. Currently I doubt the wisdom of trying to impose a Western style of government in a feudalistic tribal region such as Afghanistan by relying on Western military dominance in the area.         
          The military-industrial complex has a vested interest in keeping the United States embroiled in an unending series of wars. Likewise is has a vested interest in supplying high-tech guns and tanks and planes to scores of petty dictators around the world. How much better it would be to appropriate and direct the time and energy and money required to maintain the military-industrial complex toward conquering the diseases of humankind and alleviating the poverty of millions of suffering peoples. As Isaiah once counseled, we need to beat our swords into plowshares.

It’s a fascinating world we live in.
         A storeroom clerk from Tajikistan (photo) wins fame in Russia by crooning Hindu ballads; a Korean lady launches a crusade to globalize Hangul, the 28-character Korean alphabet; the former president of Taiwan is sentenced to life in prison on corruption charges; meanwhile Zimbabwe releases 1,500 prisoners back into public life because its prisons are so overcrowded (as are California’s); and a year after the gravest financial crisis in recent history, virtually nothing has changed on Wall Street: banks still sell and trade the very unregulated derivatives that played a major role in the crisis.
          A 115-year-old lady from Georgia (USA) succeeds a lady from Portugal as the world’s oldest living person; she dies yesterday, and is in turn succeeded by a 114-year-old lady from Japan. And I’m pondering the admittedly improbability that I may yet live another 35 years. I don’t know whether I could handle that! “All I enjoy is eating and sleeping,” the record-holder from Georgia had said.
          This morning I re-read the Book of Ecclesiastes, reputed to have been written by a studious, self-indulgent, powerful, but ultimately cynical, king. In his senior years he thinks of himself as Preacher, one who exhorts and admonishes. I found a number of keen insights, but very few nuggets of real wisdom, and many more platitudes and ambiguities. I suppose that in my own senior years I think of myself as a kind of Preacher – or more accurately, mentor, counselor, commentator – but I thank God I have arrived at more optimistic and less depressing conclusions than Solomon.

         


          I’ve been here in central Virginia only two weeks, but I’m beginning to feel comfortable. One reason is that, for a relatively small city, Lynchburg is certainly education-oriented. It has three colleges and two universities. The oldest, Virginia University of Lynchburg, is a predominantly African-American institution founded in 1886 as a Baptist seminary. The newest is Central Virginia Community College, founded 80 years later.         
          Randolph-Macon Women’s College is famous for its Nobel Prize-winning novelist Pearl Buck (photo above, with King Gustav V of Sweden). Her The Good Earth, set in pre-communist China, impressed me greatly as a teenager. When the college decided to admit men a couple of years ago, it changed its name to Randolph College. It is the best integrated of the institutions. 12% of its students are internationals, and 22% are African-American. Randolph is related to the United Methodist Church. Its residence halls are said to be “palaces.”         
          Lynchburg College has the best reputation. Founded in 1903, it has been twice selected as one of 100 colleges nation-wide for the John Templeton Foundation’s Honor Roll of Character-Building Colleges. It has about 2,500 students and appears to be much like my own alma mater, Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.         
          And then there is Liberty University, founded in 1991 by the notorious radio preacher Jerry Falwell. Falwell died not long ago and the university is now headed by his son. (Another son inherited his father’s megachurch, Thomas Road Baptist Church.) Liberty U. has quickly become the largest and wealthiest of the graduate institutions of Lynchburg. Everywhere you go in this city you meet proud Liberty alumni – including our banker, our mortgage lender, etc. The school has nearly 12,000 resident students (at $20,000 per year) and twice that many extension (on-line) students.

          Most Americans remember where they were and what they were doing when TVs started flashing images of the twin towers of the World Trade Center burning, and then collapsing to the ground. Eight years later, amid contentious bickering, the work of rebuilding the site has hardly begun.
          The three-fold attack by a handful of Muslim terrorists that day has left a permanent scar on the American psyche. Suspicion and even hatred toward Muslims has increased, not least among avowed Christians who all too easily seem to dispense with everything Jesus did and said that might bear on the subject.
          Blessed are the peacemakers, Jesus announced. One such peacemaker, whom I admire, is Nabeel Jabbour, Fifty years ago he was a student at the Near East School of Theology in Beirut, Lebanon and part of small but enthusiastic team of disciplemakers I was leading. Today Dr. Jabbour circulates among churches and college campuses trying to help American Christians adopt a Jesus-attitude toward Muslims. This past week at a single church 300 people bought his book, The Crescent through the Eyes of the Cross.  It's available at Amazon.com.

          You can order my book at a 20 percent discount by going directly to the publisher's web site: www.wipfandstock.com  Click on "new books." New books are listed by month, alphabetically, so you will find Renewal toward the bottom of "August."          
 
 
          About my book, the publisher says, "Universal salvation is a hotly debated doctrine today among Christians. In The Renewal of All Things Waldron Scott argues that it rovides a more relevat and more effective basis for Christian mission in a globalized, religiously pluralistic, and postmodern world than does the contemporary model.

                    About my new book, noted theologian Gregory MacDonald says, "Scott rightly perceives that Christian theology needs to integrate the truths of the biblical metanarrative wth the insights of both classical theology and contemporary science in seeking to address the missional issues facing the church today. In this readable book he offers a theologically adventurous and bold attempt to do just that. Even if readers disaagree with some of his conclusions, as I myself do, all will find Scott's vision to be both generous and thought provoking."

          You may purchase a copy directly from the web site: www.wipfandstock.com  Click on "new books." The Renewal of All Things is listed alphabetically, toward the end of the "August" list.

          You can order a copy directly from the publisher’s web site, WipfandStock.com for $20.80. Click on “new books.” It’s listed alphabetically toward the end of “August.”

          About The Renewal of All Things, Colin Watson, Sr., President of Christian Reformed World Missions, comments, “Provocative and insightful…a fascinating read. It will challenge what you think you know about God’s plan for salvation and expose His love for us all in graphic detail. Whether you are a biblical scholar or a layperson, whether you believe in Scott’s conclusions or not, this book will have you delving deeper into God’s word to uncover its truth.”

          I wrote my paean to Labor yesterday, so today I'll share a little more about Lynchburg, with which I myself am just getting acquainted. The steps at left lead up to the city's Court House. (I told you earlier it is a hilly town.) Georgia tells me she used to run up and down these steps regularly to keep in shape.
          The village grew slowly at first but by 1800 tobacco farming was thriving and numerous warehouses shipped tobacco downriver to Richmond, the capital. By 1830 the population had grown to 6,000. Methodism predominated at first. Today, of course, it is the Southern Baptists. The mother of founder John Lynch was a Quaker, but by 1830 most Quakers had left the town because of their opposition to slavery.
          By the 1850s three railroads were serving Lynchburg. The Battle of Lynchburg was fought during the Civil War; some 3,000 Confederate dead are buried in one of the city's cemeteries. Following Reconstruction, Lynchburg prospered and by 1900 the city had become a major manufacturing center. At one point it was the largest shoe manufacturer in the South. (As a teen-ager Georgia worked after school in the Craddock-Terry plant.)
          Lynchburg's factories ran 24-hour-a-day shifts during World Wars I and II. After World War II manufacturing diversified qne the population multiplied, even as the city's borders continued to expand. Today Lynchburg sprawls out over 50 square miles (130 sq. km.). Georgia and I will be living at the southern edge of the city.        

 


         

         “And we beseech you, brethren, to know the  m which labor among you…and esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake” (St. Paul).
          Here in America we are celebrating a long Labor Day weekend. This country has become so identified with high technology and unbridled capitalism that it is easy to overlook the fact that much of our well-being depends on hard-working, underpaid physical laborers: waitresses, sanitation workers, cab drivers, et al.
           Abraham Lincoln sagely noted that “labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
          Although spoken a generation before Karl Marx, Lincoln’s words presaged the main social phenomenon of the 20^th century – the rise and ultimate fall of communism. Today capitalism reigns supreme. Yet throughout the world millions of rice growers in Asia, dry bean farmers in Africa, and tin miners in South America labor from dawn to dusk for less than $2 a day.And in the United States we tolerate the brutal fact that upwards of 50 million of our fellow citizens cannot afford health insurance because they work at poorly paid jobs.
           Compare this reality to the blog I wrote a few days back about the outrageous pay Wall Street awards itself. For that reason, and in spite of well-publicized abuses, I continue to support the organized labor movement.Only about 20 percent of American workers belong to unions, but that 20 percent sets the standards nationally for salaries, benefits and working conditions.
            As the late columnist Molly Ivins wrote, “If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts.”                          
          (Personally, I know of at least one exception to Molly’s last sentence. Atlantic Stewardship Bank, a mid-sized bank in northern New Jersey tithes its pre-tax earnings. But most corporations allocate tiny percentages of their earnings to community involvement, and this primarily for public relations reasons.)

          In response to my blog a couple of days ago about corporate executive pay, a friend writes, “I agree with your blog as it relates to our culture in general, but even in this culture there are the good ones…Within these [corporate] institutions there are many people doing and influencing good work, honestly, and with some sense of rightness. Most often these people are not the ones seen or who get publicly recognized. Also, at the top there are those who need to be recognized for their ‘good work’ and not their earnings.”         
           My friend is right, of course. I couldn’t agree more. And I believe God recognizes and rewards them in his own way and time.          
           But as the English philosopher Edmund Burke famously said, “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” That is, Doing good is not enough; evil must be combatted – which is why Jesus overturned the commercial enterprises that were compromising true worship in the Temple at Jerusalem.

          When the free market capitalist system reaches the point where corporate executives pay themselves unconscionable salaries while laying off thousands of their employees, some correction is called for – whether by boards of directors, shareholders, government regulators or citizens en masse. The question my blog posed, and which seems appropriate for a Labor Day weekend is: Why are we allowing this?

           Although I never could have predicted it, it appears that Lynchburg, Virginia is where the final chapter of my life will be written. So I may as well tell you a little bit about the city and its history.         
          By American standards it is an old city, founded in 1757 by a certain John Lynch two decades before the Revolutionary War. It is a tree-filled city with many hills. It sits on the banks of the James River (at the mouth of which was 1amestown, the first European settlement in North America -- Pocahantas and all that). Lynchburg is located at the foot of the gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains near the geographical center of Virginia, about 165 miles (265 km) inland from the Atlantic Ocean.          
          The metropolitan statistical area of which Lynchburg is the center numbers a quarter of a million. The city itself has only 80,000 people, for most of the folks who think of themselves as Lynchburgers are scattered throughout the suburbs surrounding the city.
          Georgia and I are as yet undecided about where we will live – whether in the suburbs or within the city limits – probably the latter. We are currently living in an extended stay motel.         
          Thomas Jefferson, chief author of America’s Declaration of Independence, designed and built a home on the southern edge of Lynchburg as his personal retreat (photo above) and named it Poplar Forest.

         


          A generation ago major corporate executives earned 30-40 times what their workers took home. One would think that was more than adequate pay. Yet today, the shift having begun with the “Reagan Revolution” of the 1980s, these corporate executives average 320 times more than the average U.S. worker!  By contrast, the president of the United States, who manages what is arguably the most complex organization in the world, earns just under 13 times the gross pay of a typical American worker.

            Quoting the lead author of the Institute for Policy Studies’ “Executive Excess” annual report, business columnist Lita Epstein writes, “America’s executive pay bubble remains unpopped; and these outrageous rewards give executives an incentive to behave outrageously, putting the rest of us at risk.”

            While the top bank executives pulled in millions upon millions in personal pay over the past 20 months, they have laid off 160,000 employees! And banking is only one sector of the financial industry. Layoffs have occurred in all the other sectors as well. I focus on banks here only because of the huge bailouts they have received from taxpayers.

            Why America permits this in the wake of the greatest financial crisis in 80 years mystifies me. Why no outrage was voiced on this issue at the raucous town meetings held during August equally mystifies me. From where I stand, this is capitalism run amok, and sooner of later it will bring America to ruin.

          In a decidedly "down" market Georgia and I had the advantage of knowing Alec Anderson personally. Alec is one of northern New Jersey's outstanding real estate agents. He held an "open house" that attracted eight or nine viewers, then negotiated with one for the highest bid. There were many complications on the prospective buyer's end, but Alec persevered and eventually we closed on the sale. If any reader lives in northern New Jersey and is looking to buy or sell a house, we heartily recommend Alec. Contact me for his phone number -- or check his profile on Facebook.