A Hole In Our Gospel: Chapter 8 (1 of many)

I read A Hole In Our Gospel by Richard Stearns earlier this year. I found it insightful, challenging and thought-provoking. Even before I finished, I realized that it wasn't sinking in, and I really wanted it to. So now I'm re-reading it. I will be posting here some of my favorite quotes and other related thoughts as I journey through again. Unfortunately, I'm getting to blogging about it a bit late in the game (at Chapter 8), so that's what you get first.

In Chapter 8, Stearns references a speech made by Jimmy Carter, which serves for us as a late introduction of the problem that is the primary focus of A Hole In Our Gospel. President Jimmy Carter was bestowed the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. His acceptance speech, made just a little more than a year after the events of 9/11, concluded with a striking statement:

At the beginning of this new millennium I was asked to discuss, here in Oslo, the greatest challenge that the world faces. Among all the possible choices, I decided that the most serious and universal problem is the growing chasm between the richest and poorest people on earth. Citizens of the ten wealthiest countries are now seventy-five times richer than those who live in the ten poorest ones, and the separation is increasing every year, not only between nations but also within them. The results of this disparity are root causes of most of the world's unresolved problems, including starvation, illiteracy, environmental degradation, violent conflict, and unnecessary illnesses that range from Guinea worm to HIV/AIDS.

Stearns notes from Jeffrey Sachs' book The End Of Poverty: Economic Possibilities For Our Time that the per-capita income gap between the richest and the poorest regions in the world has grown from a four to one ratio in 1820 to the seventy-five to one ratio quoted by Carter.

Until the latter 1900's ordinary peoples' awareness of global poverty was limited, but Stearns asserts: "Lack of awareness is no longer an issue. And yet only about four percent of all U.S. charitable giving goes to international causes of any kind."

Stearns goes on to quote Bono, from the foreword to the same book:

...fifteen thousand Africans dying each and every day of preventable, treatable diseases - AIDS, malaria, TB - for lack of drugs that we take for granted.

This statistic alone makes a fool of the idea many of us hold on to very tightly: the idea of equality. What is happening in Africa mocks our pieties, doubts our concern, and questions our commitment to that whole concept. Because if we're honest there's no way we could conclude that such mass death day after day would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else. Certainly not in North America, or Europe, or Japan. An entire continent bursting into flames? Deep down, if we really accept that their lives - African lives - are equal to ours, we would all be doing more to put the fire out. It's an uncomfortable truth. 

For Bono, the key question is (emphases are his):

We can be the generation that no longer accepts that an accident of latitude determines whether a child lives or dies - but will we be that generation? Will we in the West realize our potential or will we sleep in the comfort of our affluence with apathy and indifference murmuring softly in our ears? ...

Future generations flipping through these pages will know whether we answered the key question. The evidence will be the world around them. History will be our judge, but what's written is up to us. Who we are, who we've been, what we want to be remembered for. We can't say our generation didn't know how to do it. We can't say our generation couldn't afford to do it. And we can't say our generation didn't have reason to do it. It's up to us.

I don't know about you all, but these challenges cut straight to my heart. If they don't do the same to you, I suggest you go back and digest those two Bono quotes again. Am I doing everything I can to fight poverty, its causes, and its effects? That's what this book is about. That's the journey I'm on. You're welcome to join me.

Thoughts on "Going Back To Our Christian Roots"

There is an unwavering assertion coming from the Christian Right, arguing that the U.S. should "go back to its Christian roots." A YouTube video came by my inbox today that depicts a Christian tour guide enumerating various religious acts performed by early U.S. presidents. I can't debate the historical veracity of the claims in the video, but I think they completely miss the point.

Many of the actions cited by the tour guide in fact do appear to be clear violations of the First Amendment. To pick one example, a president held church services in the Capitol rotunda, using the Marine Corps Band as worship leaders. Just because it's the president's executive order, and not a law passed by Congress, does that make it legal? A president violated the Constitution (admittedly in a way that didn't seem offend anybody at the time), and just because he was Christian, we Christians are supposed to aspire to that "ideal"?

I think not. Like it or not, the U.S. is not, and never was, a Christian nation. Yes, the vast majority of the founding fathers were Christian. I buy that - though they still held some shockingly different beliefs than their Christian Right boosters of today. Yes, Christian morality and ideals are pervasive in our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. I buy that - though they are by no means completely reflected (never forget the need for the 13th amendment, fixing a gross violation of the ideal that "all men are created equal").

But thank God that the founding fathers also saw the need for religious pluralism, even in a day when the competing religions in America were all basically Christian. They had much clearer memories of the many gross acts of violence that Christians had done to each other when the government did establish Christianity as its religion. (Note that the last of those links describes persecution performed against other Christians by those favorite American Christian ancestors of ours, the Puritans.)

So it is that arguments by folks in the Christian Right that our government should return to its glorious Christian roots always smell to me like "historical snobbery" (one of my favorite C.S. Lewis-isms). History has shown Christian after Christian in power committing acts similarly heinous to those committed by those of any other religious leaning. Who do these people in the Religious Right think they are that they're better Christians than those that have gone down that road before?

Does this mean that Christians shouldn't be in government? Certainly not. But it does mean that we'd be foolish to expect Christians in positions of political power (Bush and Obama) to be any more perfect than anyone else. Does this mean that Christians shouldn't vote as their faith convicts them? Certainly not. But I strongly believe that it does mean that Christians should never seek the establishment of their religion in any government in this fallen world.

God's approved governmental structure is clearly theocracy. He demands unwavering devotion from (and lavishes scandalous grace on) those who choose to be his disciples. And yet he doesn't force himself on us. He woos us, by his truth and goodness that is so fundamental to this world around us. He draws us by the shocking goodness of his own sacrificial exposé of the vulgar baseness of our own human religiosity (yes, we need to identify ourselves with the religious establishment of Jesus' time). Shouldn't we worry more about loving God above all else (including our money, our entertainment, our jobs, and "our America") and loving our neighbor (including the ones on the opposite site of the globe)? Those are the roots that Jesus told us to get back to. I've a lot of work to do myself.

Global Citizen, Good Neighbor (WIL, 1)

What I learned this week:

I'm overwhelmed with pressure to engage globally and underwhelmed by non-existent pressure to know my neighbors.

Recently I was reading the magazine put out by Habitat for Humanity, featuring articles that update readers on ongoing projects internationally. "It's not just the Destination" article (Habitat World, Dec 2009) highlights the Global Village program, which assembles volunteer teams for 1 to 2 week trips. From all over the world, people commit to building or refurbishing dilapidated houses for people in sometimes awful housing.

I completely agree that going on a trip to a different place, country, continent, alters my point of view. Engaging people of other cultures reveals their humanity. When we fellowship, we realize that fundamentally we are the same - ordinary people trying to find love and raise our children in an increasingly better world.

However, from magazines to newspapers to novels to Facebook, I am hit over the head, consistently, constantly to connect with people. But only with people across the world, impersonally.

I've lived in this house for a year and I can count - on one hand - the conversations I've had with people across my backyard fences. We wave, when we can't avoid admitting that we've seen each other. I try to appear open to more, but I fear invading their privacy, interrupting their busy lives. They must have something more interesting to do than talk to me...

Yet, Jesus got his hands dirty. He not only related to people verbally, he touched, healed, knew them intimately. Certainly that kind of interaction cannot be forced; but how do I change my priorities, my outlook, my schedule, my eyes to see others as they are, where they are?



(WIL, 1)