The U.S.A. celebrates its 233rd birthday today. Many Americans will spend the day at the beach, or host cookouts in their back yards. This evening they will watch giant fireworks displays, the biggest being the one on the Hudson River, viewable by both New Jerseyans and New Yorkers. Our own family plans are still vague. One of Georgia's brothers, and his wife, are visiting us from Virginia. So like others, we'll probably have a cookout.
          Having lived much of my life abroad, I have a little different perspective on America than many of our friends and neighbors. For me the most impressive thing about this country is its amazing diversity. No other country in the world has the incredible mixture of races, ethnicities, religions and languages that America has. Of course, this would be an impossible mixture were it not for the freedoms we enjoy, and which we must be diligent to preserve. And of course it will not continue without some serious immigration reforms.
          It dismays me on this 4th of July that despite the highly publicized recent withdrawal of American soldiers from Iraqi cities, we are still mired down in that country, and probably will be for years to come. And it now appears we face a similar future in Afghanistan. President Obama has initiated a new military strategy in Afghanistan, but to my mind it is not focused correctly. It appears to be another likely futile exercise in "nation-building." We should have learned better by now.

          Sarah Palin is resigning her governorship of Alaska in order not to have to serve as a "lame duck" governor. There is an old adage: When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Mrs. Palin has given new meaning to the adage. The going has got tough, so she has got going -- she's abandoning the post to which she was elected. She has announced no immediate plans, but most observers seem to think that she will use to next few years to prepare to run for the presidency of the United States. Mrs. Palin is a "populist," someone who has few policy credentials but who does have the ability to connect to the common man, and woman. Or perhaps I should speak of the common man and woman within a certain segment of the American mosaic. I doubt if her populism is enough to take her to the White House -- unless she uses the next few years to "bone up" on policy and mature politically.  A good example of this comes to mind: the Rev. Al Sharpton who, in his early career, seemed to want only to be at the center of the stage, but who gradually accumulated genuine "heft" and has won the respect of many.

          Dr. Brad Braxton, left, has unexpectedly resigned from his position as senior pastor at Riverside Memorial Church, the best-known church in Manhattan. His resignation came after having been at the church for less than a year. Dr. Braxton said that "pre-existing tensions" in the congregation had overwhelmed his freshman year. The tensions derive from the fact that from the church's founding (by famed pastor Harry Emerson Fosdick) the congregation has been an icon of liberal theology, with heavy emphasis on social involvement. Dr. Braxton, an ordained Baptist minister, by contrast, appeared to many to focus on a more evangelical and invididualistic approach.

           Who says Muslims and Christians can't work together? Aleppo, Syria (photo) is a city of four and a half million people -- about the size of Los Angeles. Within this city are two low-income neighborhoods -- Sheikh Khodr and Hadariyah -- with 80,000 residents. Fifty percent are less than 18 years old. Only two percent have a regular income. Child labor is growing alarmingly. Into this breach steps Questscope, a Christian organization whose motto is "Putting the Last First." Questscope was founded by Curt Rhodes, a friend of mine whose wife was at one time my administrative assistant.
          The City Council of Aleppo recently launched a partnership with Questscope to establish urban development centers in Sheikh Khodr and Hadariyah, after having utilized Questscope's "participatory rapid appraisal" methodology. The study recommended a special focus on restorative education and vocational training skills for youth. The Aleppo City Council hopes to create a national team for urban planning, based on this pilot project. Although Questscope is headquartered in Amman, Jordan, you can participate in this project by making a donation to their U. S. office: Questscope, P. O. Box 88572, Carol Stream, IL 60188.
         

          My college years were spent in Minnesota, the land of 10,000 lakes pioneered by Scandinavians. But America's increasing religious pluralism is exemplified by the fact that 25,000 Hindus live and work in Minnesota today. Yesterday they dedicated a huge new temple (left), 42,000 square feet with a 65-foot tower. It cost the Hindu community 9.5 million dollars. The new temple presently has a membership of four thousand families but expects to eventually serve seven thousand. Hindus come from every part of India and in turn favor a variety of dieties. A unique feature of the new temple is that it actually incorporates into its architecture 21 mini-temples that replicate their originals in India.

          I want to briefly follow up on yesterday's blog about the Kentucky gun-toting pastor and the Iranian ayatollah, both of whom operate on the assumption that God is committed to violence as a solution for societal problems. Unfortunately, many Christians make the same assumption. God's justice, they believe, is centered on punishment -- the deliberate infliction of pain for wrongdoing -- and this in spite of the fact that Jesus rarely if ever spoke of punishing people, but centered his relationships with others in compassion and mercy and forgiveness and healing. This is because his knowledge of God's character differed radically from those of his contemporaries.
          Today many of our pastors share the ayatollah's belief, and therefore preach about God in ways that justify violence (though not many go so far as to advocate bringing guns into the sanctuary as a way of celebrating freedom). Not only foreign lands, but Christian lands, are filled with violence, and the history of Christianity from Constantine onward has been replete with Christians inflicting pain on others. The idea of punishing people for wrong-doing is based largely on the misguided concept of "desert." He or she deserves to suffer pain or enjoy well-being, we say. But this idea is contrary to New Testament teaching. According to the Apostle Paul, none of us deserves, or merits, what we have gained or suffered: "What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?"
          The idea of justice exemplified by Jesus and exegeted by St. Paul is not based on desert but on restoring broken fellowship. God's justice is revealed not in his determination to punish but in his readiness to forgive sinners and make them at-one with himself. This is restorative justice, and this is what we Christians -- and indeed peoples of all religious commitments -- should be aiming at.
          All this has immediate and practical consequences. A young boy, just entering adolescence and fired by testosterone, touches a girl inappropriately. The girl's parents, both devout Christians, say they will forgive the boy -- but only after he has been punished severely. Where did they get such an idea? Not from Jesus! The parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15) and the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 8) refutes this notion decisively. 
         

          Ayatollah Khatami, in his Friday sermon in Tehran, declared that the leaders of the protest movement should be cruelly punished and then executed. Here in the United States, we have Pastor Ken Pagano (photo) inviting his congregation to bring their firearms into the sanctuary tomorrow to "celebrate our rights as Americans." "God and guns were part of the foundation of this country," he declaimed.
          Both the ayatollah and the pastor badly comingle religion with nationalism, in my opinion. Worse, they do so because of their perverted perception of God. Both understand violence as integral to God's character. Therefore it permissible, even necessary, to employ violence to maintain cohesion in society. Hence the persistance of the death penalty in the U.S. From this angle, Islam and Christianity have much in common.
         

          Alec Anderson points out that I was mistaken in describing Thriller, the Michael Jackson album, as being the largest-selling of all time. True, 28 million-plus have been sold. But The Eagles: Their Greatest Hits 1971-75 has sold 29 million.

     ...or so they say. I've never been into American pop culture -- probably because of having lived so much of my life overseas --but it's not often that two celebraties die within hours of each other. Of the two, Jackson is undoubtedly the most important, as evidenced by the amount of media coverage devoted to him last night. But Fawcett had her own claim to fame as well. Michael Jackson's Thiller album was the greatest of all time, while Farrah Fawcett's cover photo was the most reproduced ever. Farrah's death at age 62, after a three year battle with cancer, conveyed nobility. Michael's death at age 50 was totally unexpected. Michael's life was wildly successful, but far from noble. It was rather sad, actually, as he himself confessed. How and why he re-scultured his face mystified many. In the final resurrection of the dead that Christians believe in, Michael's body will be restored to its prime, and Farrah's body will no longer bear the ravages of disease.