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This piece was originally published at Patheos on February 14, 2013.

Today is the birthday of my niece, Hannah, who passed away from leukemia several years ago. I wrote about Hannah in my book, The Gospel of John: When Love Comes to Town. There I quote from Karl Barth, who said:

“God shows Himself to be the great and true God in the fact that He can and will let His grace bear this cost, that He is capable and willing and ready for this condescension, this act of extravagance, this far journey. What marks out God above all false gods is that they are not capable and ready for this. In their otherworldliness and supernaturalness and otherness, etc., the gods are a reflection of the human pride which will not unbend, which will not stoop to that which is beneath it. God is not proud. In His high majesty He is humble. It is in this high humility that He speaks and acts as the God who reconciles the world to Himself.” (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of Reconciliation 4/1, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance {Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1956}, p. 159.)

I go on to say,

“It’s not only extraordinary theologians who get at this act of extravagance. Ordinary people living extraordinary lives get at it as well, living out the far journey close to home: sick kids caring for others, single moms working for their kids rather than partying to get their kicks, stay-at home dads staying home for their kids and corporate people choosing corporate solidarity with the people rather than the corporate climb. They do this because they see themselves as participants in God’s far journey through his Son.” (The Gospel of John: When Love Comes to Town {Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2010}, p. 222).

Even when battling with cancer, Hannah continued to care for others in their sickness, bearing witness to God’s light in dark places. The memory of her life brings the light of witness home to me today. May we all experience and bear witness to God’s far journey of humble love today.

 

 

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This piece was originally published at Patheos on February 12, 2013.

Last week I wrote a post requesting prayer for Richard Twiss. Now that he has passed into the presence of his Lord and needs no further prayer, all of us mourn a great loss. Now, I am requesting prayer for us. Of course, in Christ, Richard wins. “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55) He has gone on to his eternal reward. Death and the grave hold no power over this warrior, for his Lord is victor.

Still, the battle here below rages on. As Wiconi International’s website reads, “Historically, Native people have been underrepresented and underserved in mainstream America. Economic, cultural and social barriers continually limit access to viable resources, thus hindering many healthy community change efforts.” Wiconi International, the organization Richard co-founded with his wife Katherine, is a prophetic movement that aims in Christ to reverse the curse in Native communities:

Wiconi’s primary mission is to empower and serve Native people to experience a desired quality of life and a hope-filled future through authentic relationships and culturally supportive programs. We seek to live and walk among all people in a good way, as we follow the ways of Jesus—affirming, respecting and embracing the God-given cultural realities of Native American and Indigenous people, not rejecting or demonizing these sacred cultural ways.”

It is an uphill battle, but Jesus is victor. We can bear witness to Christ’s victory by partnering with Richard’s people at Wiconi International, his friends at the North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies, and related ventures.

Be warned: the more we get involved, the more risk there will be for our hearts to break over the pain and injustices committed against indigenous peoples here and abroad in the past and in the present. Our hearts may very well explode with joy as we see Native peoples celebrate Jesus in their indigenous cultural forms.

Many conservative Christians in the mainstream Anglo culture will be quick to reveal fears of syncretism, but will totally miss our own vivid syncretism with materialism in its various forms. Richard’s people have patiently taught me how to approach life in a more open-handed and holistic way. I have a long way to go. As Richard pointed out years ago, the God mammon in the form of consumerism weighs oppressively on mainstream Christian culture. Moreover, we are often blind to the victims of the ever-evolving consequences of our historic evils of cultural genocide. We even have the audacity to blame the victims of our injustices by placing them on reservations rather than go to jail ourselves. I have heard people say that the devil has those people, when the mainstream culture as we know it put them there. So, what does that make us? Demons?

While Richard endured our blindness to the structures that so heavily weigh upon his people, he never ceased working with us in long-suffering love to open our eyes so that we could truly see. His humor and wit could sting, but for those whose eyes and ears and hearts were opened, they served as healing balm to enter into an ongoing state of repentance and clarifying vision to partner with Richard and his people. Richard said, “The reason why they call it the land of the free is because they never paid us for it” and it still rings true today. So, too, does his statement that good white people have washed his feet, but the only thing that’s changed when it’s all said and done is that his feet are clean. The structures that oppress his people remain the same. Reconciliation without justice and full integration into a community of equals is no reconciliation at all.

I need to get my own feet dirty a whole lot more so that I can have a clean heart. The trail of tears is a bloody and dirty road that leads us to Golgotha and finally to the tomb, from which Jesus rose, and in his time, Richard will, too. For the rest of us, as we join Richard’s people on the march to justice, we will find that it’s a good day to die by living with them day by day, if they will have us. To our indigenous friends, please pray for us who have not gotten our feet dirty that God will cleanse our hearts and lead us on the Jesus path with you. Pray that we will have the passion, strength, courage, humility, and teachable spirit to join that justice march, not a sprint. Be assured that our hands and feet will get dirty and there will be pain, but victory awaits us all, if we stay on that justice path that Jesus made and which Richard walked so well.

This piece was originally published at Patheos on February 8, 2013.

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Please pray for Richard Twiss, Co-Founder and President of Wiconi International. Wiconi (“we-cho-nee”) means “Life” in the Lakota/Sioux language. Richard had a heart attack on Wednesday. Pray for his heartbeat, which beats for Wiconi—life. An update on Wiconi International’s Facebook page last night read: “Richard is on full life support for his heart and lungs. Right now the doctors are neither optimistic nor pessimistic about the situation, but they agree it is a serious situation. They are going to keep him sedated for a couple of days, at which time [they] will be able to determine the extent of any damage.”

Richard is loved by countless people for his love for life, the ways of Jesus, and justice for Native peoples. His heart breaks for the damage done to Native peoples in our country and longs for a hope-filled future for them. Here is the heartbeat or aim of Wiconi International, the work Richard co-founded:

“Our aim is to provide education, encouragement and offer practical support to Native American families and communities in creating a preferred future. Historically, Native people have been underrepresented and underserved in mainstream America. Economic, cultural and social barriers continually limit access to viable resources, thus hindering many healthy community change efforts. Wiconi’s primary mission is to empower and serve Native people to experience a desired quality of life and a hope-filled future through authentic relationships and culturally supportive programs. We seek to live and walk among all people in a good way, as we follow the ways of Jesus—affirming, respecting and embracing the God-given cultural realities of Native American and Indigenous people, not rejecting or demonizing these sacred cultural ways.”

Richard has touched my heart and life over the years. As a result of his own love of God’s distinctive handiwork in native cultures, I have come to love Jesus’ ways more. Richard has helped to teach me that Jesus is by no means homogeneous or generic. He speaks life into every culture through the Spirit—reversing the curse at Babel by bearing witness through diverse tongues at Pentecost. May God grant Richard life and may our own lives beat for life for Native peoples. Perhaps you will find what I have found—that one’s heart comes alive, as God destroys our idolatrous towers of cultural imperialism reaching to the heavens and builds his kingdom on the cornerstone, Jesus, with the bricks and mortar and living stones of many tribes and tongues.

This piece was originally published at Patheos on February 7, 2013.

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You may have watched the third presidential debate a few months back in which Governor Romney confronted President Obama on his dealings with Israel. Governor Romney argued strongly that the President had failed to sustain and strengthen strategic connections with Israel. Such negligence would impact negatively and dramatically America’s foreign policy in the Middle East.

I wonder what the six men charged with overseeing Shin Bet—Israel’s intelligence agency focused on protecting Israel from terrorism—would say of Governor Romney’s charge. I look forward to watching the new documentary, The Gatekeepers, which interviews all those who led Shin Bet the past thirty years.

Here’s what Richard Cohen of the The Washington Post has to say about the documentary:

“The film is a tough indictment of Israeli policy, particularly the continued occupation of the West Bank and the expansion of Jewish settlements there. All of the former officials are traditional Israeli secularists, and they show a commendable loathing for the religious militants that Israeli governments continuously pandered to. Above all, though, they are critical of government after government that lacks a strategy to somehow withdraw from the West Bank and instead relies on oppression. “You can’t make peace using military means,” says Ami Ayalon, head of the Shin Bet from 1996 to 2000 and a former navy commando.”

One doesn’t have to be an American or Israeli secularist to see that there is a problem with trying to make peace using military means. While many Israelis may be more concerned for making safety, not peace, can there ever really be safety without peace? Religious centrists can see there is a problem with using military means to make peace or safety without peace. Religious centrists also understand that religious militancy only leads to hate and more bloodshed. Evangelicals need to guard against religious militancy. African American Evangelical civil rights leader John M. Perkins said something to the effect of, “Why do we as Evangelicals have to love one kind of people and hate another kind of people? I don’t get it. I can love the Jew and the Palestinian at the same time.” Perkins knows how painful hate can be and how difficult it is to center on love. Perkins was the ‘beneficiary’ of religious and/or secular militancy over the years in the form of white supremacy. White militants beat him within an inch of his life in 1970 in Mississippi. While it has been a difficult and challenging road for him, the only thing Dr. Perkins is militant about is God’s centrist love revealed in Jesus that makes enemies out of friends. He did not respond in kind to his oppressors, but has worked to build peace between whites and blacks and other divided people groups here and abroad over the years. For him, love is the final fight.

We fellow Evangelicals need to take up Dr. Perkins’ charge to love Israelis and Palestinians, not to love one and hate the other, but to make love the final fight. While I think President Obama needs to be challenged on his Middle East strategy, I disagree with Governor Romney about who it is that the President has neglected. President Obama has been neglectful in his handling of the Israeli-Palestinian issue. He has failed to consider the well-being and fate of a people about whom our country cares, or should care. The President, like many American Evangelicals, has not shown adequate care and concern for the Palestinians. The President has not advocated nearly enough in support of the Palestinians, to the dismay of the Arabs. Of course, the President faces daunting challenges in advocating for a peaceful and just resolution to the conflict and other calls for freedom in the region (See for example these articles addressing Middle East problems). Of course, there is blame for all sides to bear. Still, in the ongoing conflict involving the Israelis and Palestinians, if the President does not challenge Israel more and advocate on behalf of both sides, it may not only be the Muslim and Christian Palestinians and other Arabs who are filled with dismay. Israel will never experience lasting rest, safety and peace, which I hope they too will find.

This piece was originally published at Patheos on February 4, 2013.

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I often see bumper stickers with a Jesus fish and a Darwin fish devouring one another. But I have never seen a bumper sticker depicting a Jesus fish fighting for its life with a Donald Trump fish. Regardless of how Charles Darwin or Donald Trump view(ed) Jesus or the Bible, they represent dominant systems of thought and life respectively: evolution-survival of the fittest; and market economics-survival of the economic fittest.

The Scopes Monkey trial in Dayton, Tennessee back in 1925 served as a key symbol of the fight between creation and evolution in America. If the results of the trial in American society were indicative of reality, the creationists lost, even though they won the court case. While Darwin has gone on trial repeatedly in Evangelical circles over the years, I am not sure the same thing could be said regarding free market economics. And yet, if Gordon Bigelow is correct, it is not religion or the biblical narrative, but economics that offers the dominant creation narrative in our day. Here is what Bigelow claims:

Economics, as channeled by its popular avatars in media and politics, is the cosmology and the theodicy of our contemporary culture. More than religion itself, more than literature, more than cable television, it is economics that offers the dominant creation narrative of our society, depicting the relation of each of us to the universe we inhabit, the relation of human beings to God. And the story it tells is a marvelous one. In it an enormous multitude of strangers, all individuals, all striving alone, are nevertheless all bound together in a beautiful and natural pattern of existence: the market. This understanding of markets-not as artifacts of human civilization but as phenomena of nature-now serves as the unquestioned foundation of nearly all political and social debate. (Gordon Bigelow, “Let There Be Markets: The Evangelical Roots of Economics,” in Harper’s Magazine v. 310, n. 1860, May 1, 2005).

If Bigelow is correct in asserting that economics (in particular, the model generated by the “neoclassical” school of economics) is the cosmology and theodicy of our contemporary culture, wouldn’t Evangelicals consider challenging it with the same kind of passion that went into the fight with Darwinian evolution? Perhaps the reason why Evangelicalism as a movement has not been outspoken on the issue is because it often assumes the free market economics narrative as gospel truth. According to Bigelow, Evangelicals don’t simply assume the market’s gospel truthfulness but also promote it. In his estimation, Evangelicals have been responsible for cultivating the sense of scientific certainty around markets. If he is accurate, the movement has been far more successful in generating support for the evolutionary supremacy of the market system than it has in challenging Darwin’s Origin of Species. Why? We’ll reflect on this and related questions in future posts on the subject.