One Pastor's Journey

A thought on American political discourse

2012-01-21T10:55:00.003-06:00

I just finished the book, Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Tea Bagging of America. It was an easy and entertaining read. With an empire worth 32 million dollars a year, one can't argue with the fact that Glenn Beck is an amazing entertainer. The problem, however is when people take what he says as reality. But according to the author, it's been a regular occurance of American politics. Here's a great quote from the book.

"This is what Richard Hofstadter described in his classic 1960's study, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics."
American political life, he wrote, 'has served again and again as an arena for uncommonly angry minds... Behind such movements there is a style of mind, not always right wing in its affiliations, that has a long and varied history. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the qualities of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind.'
Hofstadter saw this style in the anti-Masonic movement of the 1820's, the Populist Party of the 1890's, and the McCarthy era of the 1950's. 'In the 1930's, the chief vehicle of right-wing discontent was Father Coughlin's Social Justice movement, a depression phenomenon drawing the bulk of its support from those who suffered most from bad times - the working class and the unemployed, farmers and some of the lower middle class,' he wrote. 'It played on Old Populist themes, attacked international bankers, demanded free silver and other changes in the money and credit system, and restored to an anti-Semitic rhetoric far more virulent than anything the Populists would have dreamed of.'
Times change, but the demagogue's tools are forever."

And I'll admit that I've often fallen prey to that paranoid rhetoric.

And here's another thought I had when reading that book:

A major problem, but also major genius, of Beck’s approach is that he claims his vision for American is the same vision held by the Founding Fathers. What he fails to communicate, or understand, is that the Founding Fathers disagreed on their vision for America. The Fathers were split between the Federalists, which Washington leading the way, and the Republicans, lead by Jefferson.
In “The 5,000 Year Leap,” Skouson uses the same sort of half-quoting, out-of-context references to the Founding Fathers as does Beck. Skouson quotes Jefferson as if Jefferson is stating something that could happen to the country in the future but must be avoided, when in reality that quote was directed at one of the Federalists, who had a completely different view of the country than did Jefferson. That difference in opinion lead to the Burr-Hamilton dual. But Beck acts as the Founding Fathers were in complete unity and that he’s the personification of the Founding Fathers.
Skouson also quotes Ben Franklin’s admonition to a friend to not take a young mistress as proof that Franklin was not a womanizer and that he valued the family. Of course, Skouson leaves out the rest of Franklin’s quote, which was telling his friend to instead take an older mistress, because an older mistress was less likely to get emotionally attached and that in the dark, women are pretty much the same.
But hey, why let the truth interfere with strongly held opinions?

The Old Testament Roots of Nonviolence Part II

2012-01-17T12:49:00.000-06:00

Here are some more quotes from Philip Friesen's book.

[At the arrest of Jesus] The commander of heaven’s armies had forbid his disciples the use of the sword at the very moment when it was needed to protect him from capture. Victory would be achieved by dying rather than by killing.

In the Kingdom of Christ, the rules of engagement for spiritual warfare demand that we confront the enemy and be willing to die – to accept violence, but not to commit violence. When we seek to use civil authorities to enforce morality and justice for which the world is not ready, we deny the power of the gospel to bring needed change, and the strongholds of the human mind remain under enemy control.
In the New Testament, social change came first inside the church. In modern times, this is how apartheid was defeated in South Africa without civil war, to the amazement of the world around. It is true that apartheid was strong inside the institutional church, but strong voices of opposition within the church were also raised, and the impetus for social change come initially from the seeds of the gospel inside the church, nonetheless. In South Africa there were martyrs, but the martyrs won. That should not surprise us who claim to follow Jesus! It is the New Testament pattern.
Over the past 2,000 years we have seen that the systems of monarchy, patriarchy, and slavery have proved incapable of justice and unworthy of trust. If the Gospel is what has brought this about, which is the burden of this book, then it should be expected that one day the Gospel will also succeed in destabilizing the institutions of warfare, proving them nonviable, and unworthy of the faith we have placed in them.
The Jesus who made no compromise with evil is the Jesus we offer to the nations, and to offer a lesser Jesus is to sell Jesus short.

If we trust the institutional violence of a national defense system, a system that first Moses and then Jesus rejected, then we deny the incarnation its power on earth, making Jesus Lord of heaven but not of earth, and reveal whom we actually trust.

Christendom had reproduced a version of the Old Testament religion whereby the ritual sacrifice was repeated again and again in the mass, and the king enforced God’s laws, punishing idolaters with the sword. The reformation abolished the sacrifice of the mass, but failed to address the underlying violence of the system.

[Anabaptist Reformers] sought to make the cross of Christ their way of life on earth rather than merely an icon of future life in heaven.

Whenever the world divides into armed camps the church on both sides of conflict must come together, not split apart. If followers of Jesus allow themselves to be divided over the things that divide the world, then the unity of the one God will not be seen. To hide behind the deception of ‘just war’ obscures the reality of who we are in Christ.
Following Jesus inevitably leads to conflict with the rulers of this world, and may lead to charges of treason. No war was ever more just than the Jewish war against Rome; but instead of going to war, Jesus found a way to bring Jew and Roman together for those who practiced forgiveness. Even though conflict is painful, such is our calling in Christ, and Paul is the greatest apostolic example. He accepted the abuse and rejection of his own people in order to bring the good news to the Greeks and the Romans, the Jew’s enemies, both culturally and militarily. For Paul, his precious Jewish culture and religious values were given up as rubbish in order to gain Christ (Philippians 3:8). Nothing could have been more unpatriotic.

I suggest that an appropriate metaphor for the true church of our Lord would be that of a ping-pong game being played in the middle of a football field while the football game is going on. Again and again the ping-pong table is demolished and the players carried off the field with serious injuries, but again and again the ping-pong table reappears and the ping-pong game continues, to the consternation of the football teams and crowd. The followers of Jesus are playing a different game with different rules on the world’s field. Heaven’s citizens act as though the game has already changed and play by new rules. Their persistence and endurance will triumph. Jesus said, ‘The one who endures to the end will be saved’ (Matthew 24:13 and Mark 13:13).

The reason for being a pacifist is that the practice of warfare defiles the soul. It violates the new nature Christ has given us.

If my readers will agree that both slavery and war fall short of the righteousness God requires (i.e. they are sinful), then we should also agree that military systems and preparations for warfare are equally as abhorrent as slavery. We noted earlier that once Charles Finney had recognized slavery to be sin, he opposed it. Once we recognize warfare to be sin, we must oppose it also.
When should one be a pacifist and refuse military service? The answer is that we must oppose military service as soon as we recognize it to fall short of God’s glory. One must be a pacifist when the conviction of the Holy Spirit within the soul allows no other option; and as the Spirit of God continues to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8), we should expect that a growing mass of believers in the world will be called to bear witness against this evil system in which the nations have placed their trust, and because of that witness, accept the possibility of martyrdom. This way the deception of the snake will be exposed and his power destroyed.
Revelation 20:3 describes the future. ‘And [they] cast him [the dragon, the old serpent] into the bottomless pit and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled.’ To believe in the necessity of armaments and war preparations is to believe the dragon’s deception. In war Revelation 20:7, as soon as the dragon is released from confinement, he gathers the nations once again for war. Here the writer of Revelation draws a strong connection between warfare and Satan’s deception of the nations. This is in stark contrast to the triumph of the Lamb who conducts warfare by the sword of his mouth and the word of his servants’ testimony.

The Just War Theory of Christians theologians offers nothing substantive that Islam (and also Judaism) does not offer. If the birth announcement in Luke is true – that Jesus’ arrival signaled peace on earth – then this issue belongs to the gospel, it is imperative upon the followers of Jesus to demonstrate the truth of it visibly in a way that Islam and Judaism do not. After all, Muhammad showed commendable graciousness to his defeated enemies in Mecca; and his ethics of warfare compare favorably with the ethics of Augustine or any other Christian theologian. The reality is that when our Christian faith is not centrally informed by the power of the cross in praxis, we deny Jesus just as surely as do the non-Christian religions.
All accommodating structures exist in the world as a demonstration of unbelief, and all rely upon violence. When we understand the historic process by which God has been weaning his people from faith in the violence of the accommodating structures of patriarchy, monarchy, and slavery, then we should be able also to see by faith where God is leading us in terms of our relationship to all institutions of violence, including the military. We must demonstrate within the social order the truth of Jesus as Messiah who brings peace on earth. This peace, incarnate in the fabric of fellowship of our faith around the world, bridging the boundaries of ethnic, racial, and nationalistic violence, is what will convince the world of who Jesus is. This is why we need to take pacifism seriously today.

Whenever Christians make either family, national identity, or even a religious institution their primary point of orientation, they deny their Lord and confuse the world about who they are. When this is understood, military service for the sake of preserving national boundaries and maintaining national identity becomes difficult to defend. Peace must be a missiological concern.

The battles between Christians and Muslims have really been battles over the control of earthly resources. When Christians put on the military uniform to fight for the power of an earthly government, the gospel message is sadly obfuscated in the eyes of the world. When the church becomes a cheerleader for some military effort, it denies its Lord. When Jesus called his disciples to put up the sword and follow him unarmed to death, he established Moses’ vision for a nation of priests rather than warriors. This is the legacy we must be prepared to follow to make our message believable.

I suggest that when Christians no longer kill each other on the basis of national identity, that then the invisible Kingdom of our Lord will become visible to those outside, because they will see another government in control of our loyalties.

The Old Testament Roots of Nonviolence Part I

2012-01-16T12:45:00.001-06:00

While sipping hot tea during sick day from work and trying to regain my voice (by not using it), I finished another great book, The Old Testament Roots of Nonviolence. It was a fascinating book and worth reading just for the explanation of Hagar and Sarah. As I'm prone to do, I took a collection of quotes from the book so as to be able to share some insights I gained from the book.

---------------------------------

Just as scientists must have the proper tools to study genetics, so the Biblical student needs the proper tools of hermeneutical analysis. I follow a praxis-oriented Anabaptist hermeneutic that begins with Jesus and his disciples in the New Testament and seeks to interpret the Old Testament according to what Jesus and his apostles saw there.

The [Genesis 14] story also sets a pattern for Moses and Joshua who sent the Hebrews into battle with nothing but their farm tools, shepherd staffs, and their faith in Yahweh. This proved that, at least, so far as Israel was concerned the snake (Genesis 3) had been wrong about Yahweh’s trustworthiness, and the superior military organization provided under monarchy was not essential for national defense.

One wonders whether the rest of the Pentateuch, beginning with Exodus 21 would ever have been written had the people agreed to be God’s priests and deal directly with him without an intermediary. Later Paul said that the law was added because of transgression. Mt. Sinai is the place where it was added.
There is a somewhat universal understanding that holy men do not fight. Except in the case where the priest assumes the role of monarch, normally the priestly class is exempt from military service. As we look at the Mosaic vision further, we will discover that Moses envisioned a nation without any kind of military defense system, one that came under the protection of Yahweh, and whose God other nations would learn to respect. Even if Moses was not a pacifist as the word is used today, he did oppose living in an armed, military state.

First one needs to recognize that during this early period, Israel typically fought as a band of shepherds and farmers using the tools of their trade against armies better equipped than they were, and room needs to be allowed for some rhetoric of encouragement by those in leadership who sent the peasants into battle. Secondly, these murderous commands were given always after a period of disobedience and unbelief. When hearts are hard in unbelief, then violent structures of coercion come into play, but God still may take an active role in determining the outcomes. Thirdly, there were no documents of human rights, rules of war, and or just war theories at that time. All these should be seen as effects of the gospel yeast at work in the loaf of humanity since Jesus came. What was normative then cannot be used as a model for our behavior now, even if a Divine command was given.
The kernel of a pacifistic idea that we find in the Mosaic tradition appears to be an ethic that says something like this: It’s okay to go to war, but it’s not okay to maintain an army, to stockpile weapons, or to take any kind of threatening posture towards people around you. If you really have to fight, cry out to God and he will send a savior, but you must trust him rather than depend upon the usual, accepted means of self-defense. A nation cannot be an armed camp and at the same time represent God to the other nations.
The effect of Moses’ kingship regulations was to outlaw the regular standing army so that when the need arose, God’s power could be displayed instead.

In Moses’ vision the ultimate realpolitik is the politic that takes God’s promise as a sure thing, and risks everything on the assumption that God is trustworthy, while the accommodating structures are for those without faith in Moses’ God. Both Ahaz and Hezekiah were judged by Isaiah, on the basis of whether they relied on Yahweh, even when obedience defied normal, good, human political judgment.

In the kingdom of heaven, it would be the winners, not the losers, who die in order to bring about the real change of government.

More quotes from Ellul's "Violence"

2012-01-15T12:43:00.001-06:00

[Christians] declare their readiness to participate in violence in order to attain socially just objectives. The ‘socially just objectives’ of course, were those determined by the Hitler party; and we must not forget that, for the conscientious German of 1933, they were in fact quite as clearly just as the objectives set up by the Communist party are for the communist (and even for a Christian of the extreme left), or as the objectives fixed by the American way of life are for the average American (and for the average Christian American). The acquiescence in violence of the ‘deutsche Christen’ was one of Hitler’s victories, the fruits of which we are still reaping. There can be no doubt that it was the Hitler movement that loosed the reign of violence in the world. Concentration camps, racism (and black racism is no more excusable than white racism), torture of enemies, extermination of whole populations – these are used by all regimes today, whether of the right or the left, whether capitalist or socialist. And this is the result of the upheaval that befell the world through Hitler. That violence is so generally condoned today shows that Hitler won his war after all: his enemies imitate him.

But let us keep in mind that if these heresies are rife – as they are – the fault lies with those who call themselves Christians but keep for their own the treasure the Lord has entrusted them.

Christians who participate in violence are generally of a distressingly simplistic cast of mind. Invariably, they judge socio-political problems on the basis of stereotyped formulas which take no account of reality.
The simplicism of these people reminds me of a Nazi’s statement: ‘When I come up against intellectuals who pose a problem, I kill the intellectuals; then there is no more problem.’

The Bible does frequently condemn violence, but it defends violence just as frequently – even in the New Testament.

(referring to the riots of the 1960s)
After two centuries of optimistic idealism, violence arose in the USA. That is to say, during those two centuries the nationrefused to face reality and piously threw a veil over the facts. I shall not point to Negro slavery, as most critics of America do. I refer rather to the slow, sanctimonious extermination of the Indians, the system of occupying the land (Faustrecht), the competitive methods of the leading capitalist groups, the annexation of California along with the retrieval of Texas – all this and much besides show that the United States has always been ridden by violence, though the truth was covered over by a legalistic ideology and a moralistic Christianity. Americans have it that the Civil War was an accidental interruption of what was practically an idyllic state of affairs; actually, that way simply tore the veil off reality for a moment. Tocqueville saw the facts clearly. He indicated all the factors showing that the United States was in a situation of violence which, he predicted, would worsen. As a matter of fact, a tradition of violence is discernible throughout the United States history – perhaps because it is a young nation, perhaps because it plunged into the industrial age without preparation. (This tradition, incidentally, explains the popularity of violence in the movies.) And it seems that the harsher and more violent the reality was, the more forcefully were moralism and idealism affirmed. Today, Americans are stunned when the world rewards their good will and their sense of responsibility with revilement. But that is because they have never looked reality in the face and have based their international policies on a superficial idealism. They are stunned at Negro violence, etc. The truth is that the United States is an explosive situation – a complex situation whose elements are racialism, poverty (as the Americans understand it), and urban growth involving the disintegration of communities(the phenomenon of the metropolis). But for decades, Americans have had the idea that every problem could be solved by law and good will. So in this case, too, idealism, refusing to recoginize the latent violence, paved the way for the violence that has now broken out.
In writing this I certainly do not mean to indict the United States. I merely want to point out that even so moralized and Christianized a society, a society that holds to an admirable ideology of law and justice, and conducts psychological research on adaptation, etc. – even such a society is basically violent, like very other.

Either we accept the order of necessity, acquiesce in and obey it – and this has nothing at all to do with the work of God or obedience to God, however serious and compelling the reasons that move us – or else we accept the order of Christ, but then we must reject violence root and branch. If we are free in Jesus Christ, we shall reject violence precisely because violence is necessary!

The only thing he can do is to admit that he is acting so out of his own fears and emotions (not to defend oneself in battle is difficult, more difficult than to accept a death sentence calmly); or else he can say that he is fighting for others, not to save his own life. To say that, however, is to recognize that violence is a necessity. In a revolution or a resistance movement, for instance, there are things that cannot be evaded, that have to be done; violence must be used – it is a necessity. But in such a situation the Christian must realize that he has fallen back into the realm of necessity; that is, he is no longer the free man God wills and redeemed at great cost. He is no longer a man conformed to God, no longer a witness to truth. To fight even the worst of men is still to fight a man, a potential image of God.

Thus violence can never be justified or acceptable before God. The Christian can only admit humbly that he could not do otherwise, that he took the easy way and yielded to necessity and the pressures of the world. That is why the Christian, even when he permits himself to use violence in what he considers the best of causes, cannot either feel or say that the is justified; he can only confess that he is a sinner, submit to God’s judgment, and hope for God’s grace and forgiveness.

So, if a Christian feels that he must participate in a violent movement (or in a war!) let him do so discerningly. He ought to be the one who, even as he acts with the others, proclaims the injustice and the unacceptability of what he and they are doing. He ought to be the mirror of truth in which his comrades perceive the horror of their action. He ought to be the conscience of ht emovement; the one who, in behalf of his unbelieving comrades, repents, bears humiliation, and prays to the Lord; the one who restrains from glorifying himself for the evil he does… Almost always, it is the conviction that ‘I am right’ or ‘my cause is the cause of justice’ that triggers violence…. For when a man is not quite sure of the reality of the virtue of his cause, he hesitates to kill.

‘Thou shalt not kill’ expresses the true being of man. All the demands implied in these words – faith in Jesus Christ, love of enemy, the overcoming of evil by love – must be affirmed, taught and lived with the most absolute intransigence. There can be no accommodation. The Christiantiy that accommodates itself ot the culture in the beliefe that it will thus make itself more acceptable and better understood, and more authentically in touch with humanity – this is not a half-Christianity; it is a total denial of Christianity. Once Christianity gives way to accommodation or humanistic interpretation, the revelation is gone. Christian faith is radical, decisive like the very word of God, or else it is nothing.

The Christian is necessarily on the side of the poor – not to incite them to revolution, hatred and violence, but to plead their cause before the powerful and the authorities.

So, instead of listening to the fomenters of violence, Christians ought to repent for having been too late. For if the time comes when despair sees violence as the only possible way, it is because Christians were not what they should have been. If violence is unleashed anywhere at all, the Christians are always to blame. This is the criterion, as it were, of our confession of sin. Always, it is because Christians have not been concerned for the poor, have not defended the cause of the poor before the powerful, have not unswervingly fought the fight for justice that violence breaks out. Once violence is there, it is too late. And then Christians cannot try to redeem themselves and soothe their conscience by participating in violence.

The Christian’s first act of nonviolence is that he refrain from asking others to live as if they were Christians. When violence is in question, it is not our business to lecture them and urge them to be nonviolent. Of course – as I have said again and again – we cannot participate in violence, an more than we can participate in oppression and injustice.

If the Christian cannot demand, cannot even suggest, that non-Christians should act as though they were inspired by the Christian faith, he must take the same attitude toward the revolutionaries and toward the state. To demand that a non-Christian state should refrain fromusing violence is hypocrisy of the worst sort; for the Christian’s position derives from the faith, and moreover he exercises no responsible political function. To ask a government not to use the police when revolutionary trouble is afoot, or not to use ht earmy when the international situation is dangerous, is to ask the state to commit harakari. A state responsible for maintaining order and defending the nation cannot accede to such a request.

On the other hand, if a statesman, the president of the republic, openly declares himself a Christian, then – on the basis of his own faith – the total demands of the Christian faith can be set before him… The important thing is to make him see that he has to draw the consequences of his faith; and perhaps he will verify the fact that it is impossible to be a Christian and at the same time to conduct a successful politics, which necessarily requires the use of some kind of violence.

But what would be the use of the Incarnation, the Cross, the Resurrection, if Christians were meant to be and to act just like the others?

This is the spiritual battle that is to be fought alongside the human battle against material phenomena. We cannot evade it. We are in fact those men’s comrades in the struggle, though they do not know it. And Christian humility, patience, and nonviolence require us to bear with their derision and their accusations.

It is not by sequestering ourselves in our churches to say little prayers that we fight, but by changing human lives. And it is truly a FIGHT – not only against our own passions and interests and desires, but against a power that can be changed only by means which are the opposite of its own. Jesus overcame the powers – of the state, the authorities, the rulers, the law, etc. – not by being more powerful than they but by surrendering himself even unto death.

Choosing different means, seeking another kind of victory, renouncing the marks of victory – this is the only possible way of breaking the chain of violence, of rupturing the circle of fear nad hate. I would have all Christians take to heard this word of Gandhi’s: Do not fear. He who fears, hates; he who hates, kills. Break your sword and throw it away, and fear will not touch you. I have been delivered from desire and from fear so that I know the power of God. These words show that the way Christ appointed is open to all, that the victory of good over evil benefits not only Christians but non-Christians also. In other words, that if the Christian knows that the fight of faith promises this victory, it is not only his victory but others’ too.

Violence and revolution – let them continue! But without the presence and justification of Christians. This does not mean, however, that Christians are permitted to execrate or judge those who do take part in violence and revolution.

The Law of Violence

2012-01-13T12:37:00.001-06:00

I just finished the classic ethical book by French theologian Jacques Ellul, Violence. It was a powerful read, to say the least. I really appreciated his honest approach of acknowledging that the world will use violence, Christians will succumb to the temptation but in order to stay faithful to the message of Jesus, Christians must refuse to use violence.

Here is Ellul's realistic approach to the violence that exists in our world.

The Law of Violence
I am not saying that violence is an expression of human nature. I am saying, for one thing, that violence is the general rule for the existence of societies – including the societies that call themselves civilized but have only camouflaged violence by explaining and justifying it and putting a good face on it.
All of this amounts to an acknowledgment of violence as necessity. And indeed violence is not only the means the poor use to claim their rights; it is also the sole means available to those in places of power. Jesus Christ told us what the order of this world is like: ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them’ (Matthew 20:25). And Jesus did not protest against this situation. Let us be clear about this: the text from Matthew refers not only to the chiefs of a legally established government or the controllers of wealth but to all who come into positions of leadership. And there is no way for them to keep their power except by violence. All of them are subject to the same necessity: to tyrannize over and use others; that is, they are subject to the order of violence, which is a necessity. But ‘necessity’ means ‘law.’ There is a law of violence.

1) The first law of violence is continuity. Once you start using violence, you cannot get away from it. Violence expresses the habit of simplification of situations; political, social, or human. And a habit cannot quickly be broken. Once a man has begun to use violence he will never stop using it, for it is so much easier and more practical than any other method. It simplifies relations with the other completely by denying that the other exists.

2) The second law of violence is reciprocity. It is stated in Jesus’ famous word, ‘ALL who take the sword will perish by the sword’ (Matthew 26:52). Let me stress two points in connection with this passage. There is the insistence on ‘all.’ There is no distinction between a good and a bad use of the sword. The sheer fact of using the sword entails this result. The law of the sword is a total law. Then, Jesus is in no sense making a moral valuation or announcing a divine intervention or a coming judgment; he simply describes the reality of what is happening. He states one of the laws of violence. Violence creates violence, begets and procreates violence.
The man who in whatever way uses violence should realize that he is entering in to a reciprocal kind of relation capable of being renewed indefinitely.

3) The third law of violence is sameness. Here I shall only say that it is impossible to distinguish between justified and unjustified violence, between violence that liberates and violence that enslaves. The psychological violence all countries employ is absolutely the worst of violence, because it lays hold of the whole man, and, without his knowing it, gelds him.
When a nation – as all European nations do – trains its young men in the most extreme kinds of violence in order to prepare them for battle (parachutists, etc.), the result is bound to be that the whole nation imitates this violence.

4) Violence begets violence – nothing else. This is the fourth law of violence. Violence is par excellence the method of falsehood. ‘We have in view admirable ends and objectives. Unfortunately, to attain them we have to use a bit of violence. But once we are the government, you will see how society develops, how the living standard rises and cultural values improve. If we revolutionaries are only allowed to use a little violence (you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs), you’ll see the reign of justice, liberty, and equality.’ That kind of thing is repeated again and again, and it sounds logical enough. But it is a lie. I am not making a moral judgment here, but a factual experimental judgment based on experience. Whenever a violent movement has seized power, it has made violence the law of power. The only thing that has changed is the person who exercises violence. No government established by violence has given the people either liberty or justice – only a show of liberty (for those who supported the government) and a show of justice (which consists in plundering the erstwhile ‘haves’).

Violence can never realize a nobale aim, can never create liberty or justice. I repeat once more that the end does not justify the means, that, on the contrary, evil means corrupt good ends. But I repeat also: ‘Let the man who wants to use violence, do so; let the man who thinks there is no other way, use it; but let him know what he is doing.’ That is all the Christian can ask of this man – that he be aware that violence will never establish a just society…. ‘Violence never attains the objectives it sets up.’

5) Finally, the fifth law of violence is this: the man who uses violence always tries to justify both it and himself. Violence is so unappealing that every user of it has produced lengthy apologies to demonstrate to the people that it is just and morally warranted. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Nasser, the guerillas, the French ‘paras’ of the Algerian war – all tried to vindicate themselves. The plain fact is that violence is never ‘pure.’ Always violence and hatred go together. I spoke above of the rather useless piece of advice once given Christians: that they should make war without hatred. Today it is utterly clear that violence is an expression of hatred, has its source in hatred and signifies hatred. It is absolutely essential for us to realize that there is an unbreakable link between violence and hatred.
The head of the government can keep on declaring his good will, his objectivity, his freedom from hate, for he is not directly engaged in the military action. He can keep on pretending to pray and professing to love humanity. He can praise nonviolence, as President Johnson did when Martin Luther King was assassinated. But all that is façade. A ruler has to save face and show that he is a well-disposed man; he has to justify himself! But this means becoming part of the system characteristic of violence, which tries to justify itself.

These are the laws of violence, unchanging and inescapable. We must understand them clearly if we are to know what we are doing when we damn violence.

Another Confirmation

2012-01-12T12:10:00.002-06:00

I just finished James Dobson's book Bringing Up Boys. About half the book was comprised of political rants in which Dr. Dobson is trying to scare the reader regarding the "liberal elite" or the "radical gay agenda." During those times in which he deviated from the political rants, there was, as one would expect from someone with Dr. Dobson's background in family counseling, wonderful advice for a guy trying to raise a son to love Jesus.

Although clearly over the top and despite the fact that they were the only two people in my life (including other TFA directors) who believed I was wrong for putting my family first, some of the guilt laid upon me during that last desperate attempt from two directors of Kansas City Teach For America still follows me around. Maybe someday I'll publicly share all the things of which they accused me and the creative ways they tried to leverage guilt to coerce me to stay in my teaching role, but for now I'll just share one of their tactics. That tactic was to explain to me how my son would never respect me were I to walk away from TFA's mission in KCMSD. That one was saved for the end of our meeting. I guess it was a final Hail Mary of sorts.

I knew however, that the act of neglecting my own son while trying to save a group of other father-less boys was not worth it. I can't save the world at the cost of my own family. I can still remember my former Pastor, Dan Arnold, talking about that in his sermons. About that same time in my life, I was at a Promise Keepers event with my dad and made a life-long commitment to never sacrifice my family for "ministry." I had been thinking however, that two years of my son's life wasn't that much; he'd only be 2.5 - 4.5 during this teaching gig, surely we could reconnect afterwards. That rationalization, thankfully, was countered by a good friend Noel Forester, who informed me that those years are some of the most important for father-son bonding. This timely piece of wisdom was backed up in Dobson's book.

"A father holds awesome power in the lives of his children, for good or ill. Families have understood that fact for centuries.... When asked who their heroes are, the majority of boys who are fortunate enough to have a father will say, 'It's my dad.' On the other hand, when a father is uninvolved - when he doesn't love or care for his kids - it creates an ache, a longing, that will linger for decades... boys are constructed emotionally to be dependent on dad in ways that were not understood until recently.

We now know that there are two critical periods during childhood when boys are particularly vulnerable. The most obvious occurs at the onset of puberty, when members of both sexes experience an emotional and hormonal upheaval. Boys and girls at that time desperately need their father's supervision, guidance and love. Divorce at that time, more than at others, is typically devastating to boys. But according to Dr Carol Gilligan, professor at Harvard University, there is another critical period earlier in life - one not shared by girls. Very young boys bask in their mother's femininity and womanliness during infancy and toddlerhood. Fathers are important then, but mothers are primary. At about three t0 five years of age, however a lad gradually pulls away from him mom and sisters in an effort to formulate a masculine identity. It is a process known as a 'disconnection and differentiation,' when, as Don Elium writes, 'the inner urge of the male plan of development nudges him out of the nest of the mother over a precarious bridge to the world of the father.' It is typical for boys during those years, and even earlier, to crave the attention and involvement of their dad and try to emulate his behavior and mannerisms."

"While you're climbing the ladder of success, don't forget your own family. Those years with your children at home will be gone in a heartbeat. Do whatever is necessary to grab those precious moments, whether it requires changing jobs, getting a smaller house, or turning down lucrative and exciting opportunities. Nothing is worth losing your kids. Nothing!"

Of course, ministry and family are in no way mutually exclusive. Here's a great article that explores that tension, Before Saving the World, Go See Your Family.

Bittersweet reunion

2012-01-08T21:47:00.000-06:00

E. was one of my angriest students and that's saying something. According to other teachers, his brother was even angrier. E. fought me on everything while also fighting other students. Somewhere along the line however, E. started to trust me a little bit. He came to do what I asked about 50% of the time, which was simply amazing.

My last week of teaching, E. was serving a 5 day suspension for violently punching another student. The day before my last day, I used a sick day but came in after school to clear out some of my stuff. I saw E. walking home and he told me that on his first day back from suspension, he'd been suspended for another 5 days for again viciously punching another student. Since I knew that E would be gone on my last day, I told him that I couldn't be the teacher I needed to be while also being the dad I needed to be, so I was leaving the classroom. To my complete surprise, this angry kid who hated me at least half the time, gave me a hug while trying to hold back a tear. It made me a bit sick to my stomach, I'll admit.

Fast forward to last Friday night, Erin and I are at Crown Center, eating in the food court after we'd taken Dawson to the Holiday Lights Train. A few minutes earlier, in the Crayola playroom, we noticed the black kids in school uniforms being followed by some tired looking parents. I probably wouldn't have noticed that tired look before my days in inner-city KC, MO. While we were eating, E. came walking among a group of about 5 siblings being herded by his tired looking (most likely single) mother.

When he saw me, E.'s face lit up and he ran over to give me a hug. His mom had a "who is this guy" look on her face until E. told her that I had been his teacher. At this news, E.'s mom smiled. I didn't notice the smile however, because I couldn't look her in the eye. I was filled with so much shame for walking out on her son. Erin told me about the smile and said that I seemed to shrink with guilt before E.'s mom. I will say, however, that in the midst of all the guilt and awkwardness of seeing a former student, it sure felt good to see the smile on his face. E told me that the kids are totally disrespecting the teacher who replaced me, which is no different than how they treat all the teachers at that school.

Adding even more strange thoughts and feelings to that situation was the fact that a few minutes later, Erin was approached by one of her students and family. This family was your typical wealthy suburban family; two kids, two parents and one grandma along for the ride. The contrast was jarring. It's almost incomprehensible that two different worlds exist within the KC metro area and that the inhabitants of these two worlds are almost completely ignorant of the realities of each other's worlds. It's also amazing that, when you consider the individual school's performance records and the records of their districts, Erin and I were simultaneously teaching in one of the nation's worst schools and one of the nation's worst schools. If I had made it a whole year, I think we could've written a book.

I'm not the only one still sorting through the emotions of walking away from Teach For America's dream that "one day, every child in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education." In fact, as of early December, 28 of the 152 KC Corps Members had quit. When you consider the qualifications TFA Corps Members have to demonstrate to get chosen, including the demonstration of persevering through difficult circumstances, that's an incredible rate of attrition. When you also consider the success TFA has had in many other districts across the nation, those 28 people are making a huge statement about how dysfunctional the KCMSD really is. I wonder whether the loss of their accreditation and federal funding could result in the shutting down of the entire screwed up system.

A good friend who quit a few weeks after me was called by one of her parents after her resignation and the parent expressed thanks for what this teacher had done and frustration at having to send her child to such a terrible school.

While it sure seems to me that there is no way I could have made any impact in just 7 weeks, E.'s smile and that bittersweet reunion makes me think otherwise.

A Car Wreck

2012-01-06T21:12:00.004-06:00

I'm now working as an auto insurance adjuster. I do all of my work from the office,so if there are any injuries resulting from the accident, the claim automatically gets reassigned to an adjuster in the field. There are some serious injuries, obviously, but even if there is the possibility of a minor injury, the claim still gets sent to a field adjuster. If a person has just a small pain in their neck, there still needs to be an investigation because while that pain could end up going away in a day it could also turn into a chronic neck injury. So no matter the extent of the injury, an investigation is always required. We also keep a record of where each person is sitting in the vehicle. A curious reality of car accidents is that one person may walk away from an accident relatively unscathed while another person sitting in different part of the vehicle could suffer a serious injury. As long as the injuries and passengers are put in the file at the time the claim is filed, future treatments may be covered by the insurance company. Another curious thing about injuries is that they may not present themselves until months after the accident.

A few days ago, I had the privilege of having breakfast with one of my college mentors, Dr. Sondra Cave. In addition to being a mentor, she was also my "mom" while I was in college; letting me cry in her office after Erin dumped me (thankfully she eventually wised up) and later serving as Erin's wedding coordinator. Despite all she had done for our university and even despite being named alumnus of the year, a year ago Sondra was laid off from our alma matter. To put it mildly, it was a painful experience for her and she's still working through some of the effects of that betrayal. On the positive side, however her consulting business has taken off now that she's been forced to market her incredible gifts.

That morning, Sondra and I swapped stories about the hellish despair we've both gone through lately. I told Sondra some of the emotional breakdowns my short stint in the Kansas City Missouri School District had caused me, some of which I'm still not comfortable sharing on this blog. We also talked about how we've both come a long way in our recovery Physically, I'm back to normal but I'm pretty sure I'm not yet fully recovered emotionally.

While I've been given some great opportunities to use some of my teaching and leadership gifts withing Indian Creek Gardner, I'm intentionally holding back somewhat; being hesitant to commit to some things that I know I could do and working to protect my time with my family and my time to myself. I've also had some discussions about potential full-time ministry opportunities but I'm very hesitant about those, too. Right now, it's wonderful to work my 40 hours, leaving the job at the office and to come home to a night of playing with Dawson, jogging on the treadmill, reading a book or working on a sermon for Indian Creek.

I know this place I'm in isn't long term but it's a really nice place to be; a fact that actually scares me. I'm scared of being complacent and missing something great God may have for me because I'm too busy enjoying my comfort to sense his nudge. Which makes that conversation with Sondra so timely.

Sondra expressed my 15 weeks of Teach for America/ KCMSD as a car crash; a short but intense experience that launched with huge hopes and dreams before violently crashing into a reality of guilt and shattered dreams. The grief and guilt of which is compounded by the grief of Trinity Family Gardner ending the day before I was accepted into TFA. The thing about a car crash, Sondra reminded me, is that it may take months for all the injuries to appear and even years for those injuries to recover.

So just take it slow, she advised, allow yourself time to recover and trust that God won't let you fall asleep in complacency.

War Crimes and the American Conscience Part III

2012-01-06T13:34:00.000-06:00

During downtimes for my training with Farmers, I was able to read an interesting book from 1970 entitled “War Crimes and the American Conscience.” The book was an analysis of US war crimes committed in Vietnam in the light of the principles of the Nuremburg conference; the recorded notes of the 1970 Congressional Conference on War and National Responsibility. Below are some excerpts.

“Yet [most Americans] should recognize that vigorous objections to policies which the individual regards as unwise is the very stuff of which democracy is made. The true patriot follows the whole of Carl Schurz’s admonition, ‘My country right o wrong; if right to be kept right, if wrong to be put right.’ – Senator George C. McGoveren Pg. 167

“There is a strong emotional argument for supporting our soldiers on the line with everything they need. But they are best supported by actions designed to bring them home and to limit the power of the Executive to demand their sacrifice in an ignoble venture. I have stopped voting for Vietnam war appropriations, and I shall not do so again. – Senator George C. McGoveren Pg. 168

“But a new idea for the United States – a central one for empire – developed after WWII: The matter of winning any particular war, or of losing it, became secondary to the quest for constant military engagement and the display of American power. War became a continuous way of life. War is no longer attached to interests, purposes, or objectives. It became an end in itself, prepared and conducted at the pleasure of national security institutions.
“Since WWII, indeed, the primary activity of national security institutions has been to police the world. Law is subservient to the club, to napalm, to the bribe, to the rolling thunder of the B-52. The United States has executed scores of agreements, assigned hundreds of thousands of troops around the world, placed tactical and strategic nuclear weapons hither and yon, bought and sold governments. National security activity has become a criminal enterprise without political accountability or human motive.
– Senator George C. McGoveren Pg. 172

“As the administration pursues its doctrine of ‘low profile’ involvement around the world, using the CIA or foreign troops rather than American soldiers for intervention, the need for close and continuing public scrutiny becomes more urgent. There is a need, for example, for development of a new standard of bureaucratic responsibility. Would it change the decisional process and the causal view of war if Government officials were personally responsible in a LEGAL sense for their policy actions?
If such questions are to be answered in a positive manner, the Congress and the people must redefine legitimacy, put another way, rather than the internal and national security institutions spying on the people, it is now time for the process to be reversed. – Marcus Raskin Pg. 170

“This is to say that the imminent danger to a democratic society is not the specter of overt military control of national policy, but the more subtle one of a military isolated from the general citizenry, allowing for greater international irresponsibility by its civilian leaders. It is only when the consequences of such irresponsibility are uniformly felt throughout the body politic that we can begin to hope constraints will develop on the use of violence to implement national policy. – Charles C. Markos, JR.
Pg. 181

War Crimes and the American Conscience Part II

2012-01-02T13:30:00.000-06:00

“The American tradition is to locate the source of evil deeds in evil men. We have yet to learn that the greatest evils occur when social systems give average men the task of routinizing evil. - Edward M. Opton Jr. Pg. 113

“As the satirist Art Hoppe put it, ‘The best way [to kill civilians], it’s generally agreed, is to kill them with bombs, rockets, artillery shells, and napalm. Those who kill women and children in these ways are called heroes...’ How is it, the foot soldier must wonder, that ‘to kill women and children at less than 500 paces is an atrocity; at more than 500 paces, it’s an act of heroism.’ – Edward M. Opton Jr. Pg. 115

“We should pay tribute to that small but courageous number of the American armed forces who have refused over the years to follow orders when it came to the indiscriminate killing of civilians… These are heroes whom we ought to remember and honor – not only for their own sake, but because they provide us with an example of what individual conscience can do against the immortality of an act of Government.” Pg 148, Hans Morgenthau

“The free and responsible man will support and refine man-made laws wherever possible, but he will not permit his conscience to be limited by statute or its application. If he is a religious man, he will appeal to transcendent authority and join St. Peter in saying, ‘We must obey God rather than man.’ He will ‘seek first’ God’s kingdom, insisting that every other loyalty is a lesser loyalty. Or, lacking the authority of revelation, he may join Thoreau in refusing to pay taxes, in denouncing legalized racism and an unjust war, appealing to the ‘general right and obligation of men to disobey commands of a government’ which they consider morally wrong.
Flag-waving chauvinism must be recognized for exactly what it is. If Auschwitz was inhumane, so was Hiroshima. – James Armstrong Pg. 152

“The ultimate crime is war itself, and trying to assign degrees of criminality to certain of its forms is like trying to disguise the stench of rotting carcass by pouring perfume on it. – Jerome Frank Pg. 162

“Public officials should, therefore, be made to answer such legitimate questions as whether we have a real interest in the outcome of a conflict and, more importantly, whether we have a RIGHT to interfere. A refusal to answer on the basis of such considerations as ‘You’d support me if you knew what I know,’ is an abuse of power that a democratic society can never tolerate. – Senator George C. McGoveren
Pg. 166

War Crimes and the American Conscience Part I

2011-12-30T13:26:00.000-06:00

“If we work up to the level of our technology in terms of the wars we are prepared to fight, the sky is the limit; There will be absolutely no control over what the United States can do, because it is the most powerful nation in the world and has the most advanced military technology. We will use other tactics, we will fight ‘clean’ Vietnams, where our hands don’t get dirty, where we fly in the stratosphere, not seeing what we are hitting and killing. - Hans Morgenthau Pg 27

“It is also a reality, I think, that no American President will look upon himself as a possible perpetrator of war crimes. It could not occur to him, it could not occur to the American people – except to the young – that war crimes are something that can be charged to Americans. – Daniel Ellisberg Pg 31

“The blind destruction of whole villages with artillery or from the air, on the grounds that one had drawn fire from somewhere in these villages, would seem on this basis [Nuremberg Conference Definitions of War Crimes] to be a war crime. - George Wald Pg 75

“As a nation, we have abdicated our responsibility to differentiate between means and ends in the execution of our foreign policy. We turned this responsibility over to an Executive who is not bound in the conduct of foreign policy by much more than his own perception of the world and the consciences of those who surround and advise him. – William R. Corson Pg. 91

“Can any country such as the United States, with its predominant military and economic power, with a position so commanding in the world, carry out warfare against a weaker state, without in fact pressing its advantage to the limit of its own assessment of its own security? When the United States has exercises restraint, it has done so only in response to perceived threats from a stronger or equally strong power.
The basic issues is the permissibility of basing a foreign policy on our unilateral determination to use violence whenever and whenever we see fit, to achieve ends as we determine them. This basic notion of how we use our military power really has to be attacked before we can work out ground rules for managing the violence on the battlefields. – Richard Barnet Pg 98

“Turning now to the rest of the American population and its response to My Lai, we can identify at least three psychological mechanisms called forth to avoid facing such unpleasant truths. The first is denial, ‘The massacres didn’t really happen or have been exaggerated.’ The second is rationalization, ‘War is hell.’ And the third, in a way more politically dangerous, is the mobilization of self-righteous anger; ‘Stop picking on our boys. The Vietnamese had it coming to them. You [the bearer of the news] ought to be sent to Vietnam to fight.’ - Robert Jay Lifton Pg. 106

“When we go into a village, we classify all the people into different categories. But these categories do not depend on something we perceive about them; they depend on what we do to them. If we kill them, they are Vietcong. If we capture them and tie them up, they are Vietcong suspects. If we grab them and move them to a camp, they are hostile civilians. Having don this to many people who are in fact innocent, the definitions we have imposed become real. The men who have been tied up or tortured actually become our enemies and shoot real bullets at us, but still we are facing the shadow of our own actions. – Robert Jay Lifton Pg. 111

Red Pill, Blue Pill

2011-12-27T19:03:00.000-06:00

"[It is a shock] to learn that in every nation where we now have terrorism, the USA had first done terrible things. We've overthrown their governments, installed dictators, undermined their economies - all to strengthen our business interests. The terror attacks are retaliation for what we've done to their countries.
Chomsky [an author] shows how our corporate media have created an image of fiendish terrorists who 'hate us for our freedom.' But they really hate us for dominating them. Since we started the aggression, the attacks, detestable as they are, son't end until we change our policies.

The most pathetic thing is that we Americans still believe it's 'our' country, when it and both political parties are firmly in the hands of the corporations.
This view went against everything [we] have been raised to believe. We've all been subjected as children to patriotic rituals that caused us to connect the nation we live in with our family and then with God - the founding fathers, our own father, and the Heavenly Father all joined in patriarchy. Because of this emotional identification, we react to criticism of the country as an attack on our family. This hurts our feelings on a deep personal level, so we reject it, convinced it can't be true. It's too threatening to us. We tune it out and often resent the people making it."

"Western propaganda uses this to whip up war fever. The media in Europe and North America have seared all sorts of atrocity stories- some of them true, some of them not - into people's minds to justify invading the country and bombing the people.
The Taliban are bad guys, no doubt about it. I'm not fond of them at all. They killed hundreds of people, including friends of mine. They would've killed me if I had stayed.
But the USA has killed fifty thousand Afghans just in this current war... and more every day. They're devastating the country. They make the Taliban look like boy scouts."

- two excerpts from Radical Peace: People Refusing War

It's when you've learned enough to "take the red pill" that the above comments make sense.

I think what finally put me over the edge was Walter Wink's The Powers that Be. While reading that book, all the other biblical and extra-biblical study I'd been doing all came together.

Here are some other red pill-esque quotes.

"One of the most persistent ambiguities that we face is that everybody talks about peace as a goal. However, it does not take sharpest-eyed sophistication to discern that while everybody talks about peace, peace has become practically nobody's business among the power-wielders. Many men cry Peace! Peace! but they refuse to do the things that make for peace." - MLK Jr.

"Naturally the common people don't want war... That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or not voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." - Hermann Goering

A Radically Patriotic 2011

2011-12-27T09:51:00.000-06:00

Last night, Erin and I watched the movie The Help. It was a great movie! Without giving too much away, I'll share that the basic premise of the movie involves some of the characters intentionally breaking a law of the State of Mississippi (1950's Mississippi) in order to work to bring racial equality to the nation. Watching that movie made me thankful for those patriots who love our country enough to engage in the civil disobedience necessary to create a more just and right society.

I'm also reading another book that is challenging me to help make this nation a more just place, though more on that later.

But here's to a more radically patriotic 2011. More to come...

Loving Our Kids on Purpose

2011-12-26T09:48:00.004-06:00

I just finished a powerful book on parenting, Loving Our Kids in Purpose by Danny Silk. It's very much in the Love and Logic thought framework of empowering kids with choices and letting them live with the consequences of bad decisions. Erin and I are able to implement some of the stuff proposed by the book, though we've still got a lot of learning to do. When I find myself wanting to yell at Dawson to make him do what he "needs" to do, I'm reminded that controlling my son through fear will become less and less effective the closer to my size he becomes.
I'd certainly recommend the book.

Here's a great quote from page 166:
"The right answer can only come with the right question, which is 'What are you going to do?' IF your child is truly sorry, she'll clean up her mess. But she can only get there is you have a paradigm in which you expect her to be able to find the problem and take responsibility for it. So many people don't expect that from others. They expect that when you make a mess, it is theirs to clean up, and they have to order you through the steps to clean up the mess. They need control of you in the problem. Your job is to comply or rebel. But nothing on the inside ever changes. It's a paradigm of external control."

War and Peace

2011-12-23T22:34:00.003-06:00

In the spring of 2006, as Erin and I were preparing for a trip to Europe, I thought it would be fitting to start reading a great novel from European history, "War and Peace". Tonight, Dec. 23, 2011, I have FINALLY finished the book.

Overall, I felt it was a pretty mediocre read, not even close to as gripping as Hugo’s “Les Miserables” nor as powerful as Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov. It was better however, than Dostoevsky's “Crime and Punishment.”

I did enjoy the character development of Pierre as well as Tolstoy’s musings about why Napoleon was the product of dumb luck or fortunate circumstances rather than genius or great leadership. Tolstoy liked to point out that the people who first declared Napoleon a glorious hero for France and Europe later declared him an insane criminal who was a danger to civilization, therefore exiling him. Not surprisingly, this opinion of Napoleon differed from the opinion Hugo expressed in “Les Miserables.” The last 50 pages or so was a whole bunch of historical philosophy of which I had trouble understanding. I did find a few quotes toward the end of the book that are worth sharing.

“In the first place the historian describes the conduct of separate persons who, in his opinion, lead humanity (one regards as such only monarchs, military generals and ministers of state’ another includes besides, monarchs, orators, scientific men, reformers, philosophers and poets). Secondly, the goal towards which humanity is being lead is known to the historian. To one this goal is the greatness of Rome, or the Spanish, or the French state, for another, it is freedom, equality, a certain sort of civilization in a little corner of the world called Europe.
In 1789 there was a ferment in Paris: it grew and spread, and found expression in the movement of peoples from west to east. Several times that movement is made to the east, and comes into collion with a counter movement from east westwards. In the year 1812 it reaches its furthest limit, Moscow, and then, with a remarkable symmetry, the counter movement follows from east to west; drawing with it, like the first movement, the peoples of Central Europe. The counter-movement reaches the starting-point of the first movement – Paris – and subsides.
During this period of twenty years an immense number of fields are not tilled; houses are burned; trade changes its direction; millions of men grow poor and grow rich, and change the habitations; and millions of Christians, professing the law of love, murder one another.
What does this all mean? What did all this proceed from? What induced these people to burn houses and to murder their fellow creatures? What were the causes of these events? What force compelled men to act in this fashion? These are the involuntary and most legitimate questions that, in all good faith, humanity puts to itself when it stumbles on memorials and traditions of that past age of restlessness.
To answer these questions the common-sense of humanity turns to the science of history, the object of which is the self-knowledge of nationals and of humanity.” – Pg. 1112

“For causes, known or unknown to us, the French begin to chop and hack at each other. And to match the event, it is accompanied by its justification in the expressed wills of certain men, who declare it essential for the good of France, for the cause of freedom, for equality. Men cease slaughtering one another, and that event is accompanied by the justification of the necessity of centralization of power, of resistance to Europe, and so on. Men march from west to east, killing their fellow-creatures, and this event is accompanied by phrases about the glory of France, the baseness of England, and so on. History teaches us that those justifications for the event are devoid of all common-sense, that they are inconsistent with one another, as, for instance, the murder of a man as a result of the declaration of his rights, and the murder of millions in Russia for the abasement of England. But those justifications have an incontestable value in their own day.
They remove moral responsibility from those men who produce the events. At the time they do the work of brooms, that go in front to clear the rails for the train: they clear the path of men’s moral responsibility. Apart from those justifications, no solution could be found for the most obvious question that occurs to one at once on examining any historical event; that is, How did millions of men come to combine to commit crimes, murders, wars and so on?” – Pg. 1130

Just FYI, “War and Peace” is split up into 15 different parts each containing around 50 – 70 chapters that are from one to four pages long. This allows the book to be read in tiny little snippets over a long period of time. Long as in almost 6 years. So if you’d like to broaden your cultural and historical horizons, I’d recommend you change your bathroom reading from the newspaper to some Tolstoy. If only for about six years.

Dang, it feels good to be a .... Preacha'

2011-12-20T07:37:00.003-06:00

After almost half a year away, a couple of weeks ago I finally got back into the rhythm of preaching; the reflection, study, preparation and delivery. And what better way to get back into the swing of it than with the tension, history, despair and hope of an OT prophet.

Here is my message at Indian Creek - Gardner from a few weeks ago. The passage is Isaiah 7 and the message is entitled, "The Wonder of Hope."

Also, I talk about my TFA experience in the last 1/3 of the message.

The Wonder of Hope - Gardner Campus from Indian Creek Community Church on Vimeo.

A Lingering Legacy - Part IV

2011-12-04T15:43:00.005-06:00

So I thought I'd end with three posts, but here's another good one I needed to share.

Last Thursday night, I went to an open house for Trinity Family Midtown. The open house was a chance for this missional community to share about their new initiatives and to share testimonies of people who have come to Christ through this ministry. It was an incredible evening. While listening to one of the stories, I had a tear or two come to my eye, thinking about how just over 7 years ago, we started TFC in order to reach people far from the church and God. While a ministry to reach the LGBT community centered in midtown KC wasn't on my radar in 2004, a single-minded focus to do whatever it takes to reach people turned off to God and the church was certainly in the forefront of my mind. So while TFC is no longer in Gardner and I'm no longer the pastor, the church is still reaching people for Christ. And they're doing it in a way that almost no other church in the denomination is doing.

My old DS, Jeren Rowell was at the open house and I got to enjoy the moment with him. I told him of a story I'd just heard the day before about a Nazarene pastor who tried to start a similar ministry in the urban center of a city but because he couldn't make it fit into the Nazarene box that his DS wanted, he was forced to start it as a non-denominational church. After that decision, the DS stripped him of his credentials (the pastor regained them through the Methodist Church) and the church began to do great things and reach people for Jesus. I thanked Jeren for having a Kingdom vision that is much broader than just a single denomination and being the type of leader who supports new and unique ministries.

I also told Jeren that TFC Midtown is set up the way I was trying to move TFC Gardner toward, but just wasn't able to do so. The church is lead by several volunteer pastors, is very low on programming and very high on community and is finding new ways to serve the poor of the surrounding area. While I'm really proud that TFC became what I was hoping it would be, I feel a bit disappointed that I wasn't the one able to take it there. But as Jeren said, "that's just the way it goes sometimes."

Finally, I kept giving props to Brian Hupe that entire evening. Brian, Sara Armstrong and Bill Melvold (TFC Gardner's last church board) all deserve some serious recognition for having the boldness and foresight to vote to start the Midtown campus. It was a bold move because 1) TFC Gardner was losing people fairly quickly and 2) It was a unique ministry that no other church was doing. It was so unique that we had some people leave TFC because they couldn't reconcile a ministry that reached the LGBT community through love and compassion and not judgment and condemnation. I honestly believe that the leadership decisions of that church board will continue to have a Kingdom impact in ways that won't be fully known in this life.

And the legacy continues...

A Lingering Legacy - Part III

2011-11-26T14:58:00.001-06:00

This is the final edition in a three part series on how the unique ministry of Trinity Family Church is still having a kingdom impact.

This post doesn't need much writing from me. In fact, all we need is the writing of my good friend Michael Palmer who is quickly becoming a better writer and blogger than yours truly.

Strippers and Saints

Update: The above link is now correct.

A Lingering Legacy - Part II

2011-11-22T14:41:00.001-06:00

This is part two of a tree part series on some of the lasting legacies of Trinity Family Church in Gardner. Of course, TFC still lives on in midtown Kansas City.

Last week, a group of ladies from Indian Creek Gardner helped Erin create and deliver the gift bags for this month's Love Wins ministry outreach. It's been great to see the Love Wins ministry find a new home and a new life with ICG. What's maybe even better was the conversation I had with our old pal, Guido who was impacted by our Love Wins ministry back when working at one of the clubs.

Guido called me the other night excited to share a story with me. After playing phone tag for awhile, I finally got to hear his story.

Guido is now working with a club in Topeka. There just so happens to be a large church near that club. That church has taken the relational approach of most Conservative Evangelical church in interacting with groups who don't share their morals; they don't have a relationship and try to use power overcome that group. Guido says despite his offer to get together with the pastor, the church refuses to talk with them and have used the Christ-like approach of picketing the club.

While the employees of this club have been complaining about the judgmental Christians, Guido has been passionately assuring his co-workers that not all Christians are like that. He then went on to tell them about how much TFC and Love Wins changed some of his views on Christians and even on God. "You guys had a really big impact on me, more than you know." A ministry like Love Wins, however was not just in Guido's past, but soon to be in his present.

A little while later, some timid looking ladies knocked on the door of their club and nervously explained they were from a church in town and wanted to pass out gifts to the dancers in their club. Guido burst out laughing, instantly shattering the confidence of the ladies at the front door. Guido quickly built their confidence back up, though by telling them all about his experience with the ladies from TFC. He shared the positive impact we'd had on them, shared with them the address to this blog, how the TFC ladies had become comfortable in the club and even how they'd thrown us a baby shower.

It looks like there's about to be another positive relationship developing between some church ladies and some workers in the adult entertainment industry. And because this pastor and wife are adopting, there might even be another baby shower.

A Lingering Legacy - Part I

2011-11-20T14:17:00.004-06:00

I'm going to be posting a short series of some ways that the legacy of Trinity Family Church's unique ministry is still having a Kingdom-sized impact.

A few weeks ago, I had dinner with Scott Sidusky. Scott and I had a tough final few months of ministry together. Mostly because I was living with fear and guilt (fear of the church failing and guilt over burning people out) and Scott was had stretched himself really thin and was feeling that pressure (something I became all too familiar with during my short stint with TFA and KCMSD).

So while we had about three great years, the last few months left us both feeling a bit apologetic toward and frustrated with each other. As a side note, it's sad that the system creates guilt, fear and burn-out. But during our dinner the other night, it was clear that all the bad memories had faded into the appropriate position of a distant second to the all the good experiences we shared together.

Scott is now helping with worship and leading the teen ministry at Faith Journey Church of the Nazarene in Olathe and during our dinner, he told me all the ways that his time with TFC is positively impacting his current ministry.

Scott also let me know how much he misses TFC. A couple of lines that stuck with me were, "We had a really good thing going" and "we reached a lot of people." We were having such a good time reminiscing that for a few minutes I considered doing it all over again.

But it's TFC's uniqueness that made it unsustainable, at least in the small-town context we were in and the in the traditional model of a full-time pastor.

But as I like to say, "we did more in 7 years than most churches will do in 70."

I Swear my Unquestioning, Unthinking and Blind Allegiance

2011-11-14T12:31:00.011-06:00

I went to the Chiefs-Broncos game this past Sunday and had a great time. During the day, however, I was struck by how many ways we are manipulated by the Empire in which we live. There are so many different ways we are either brainwashed by ritual, emotional manipulation, displays of power or group-think.

As at all public gatherings, we started with the National Anthem. Just think of how many times you have sung that song. It's a ritual meant to burn the anthem into our minds. Immediately after the the anthem, a Stealth Bomber flew over the stadium in order to remind us of the awesome power of our Empire. We then had a stadium card stunt in which "thank you veterans" was spelled out across the stadium in red, white and blue. There were many different soldiers celebrated during the game, causing the crowd to both applaud and cry. A pilot who flew missions over Iraq was introduced. Among all the applause, there was no mention of the international illegality of the US' preemptive strike on Iraq nor any mention of the Iraqi children who undoubtedly died as "collateral damage" during the air strikes. Of course, were I to even suggest that those two omitted realites get mentioned, I would've been called all kinds of terrible things.

While it was, obviously Veterans Day weekend, this isn't going to slow down anytime soon. During Thanksgiving football games, we'll be shown messages from soldiers posted overseas. Christmas commercials will show soldiers coming home to the surprise of their families. The Superbowl will highlight veterans as will Memorial Day, Independence Day, Patriot's Day. We're never too far away from another holiday in which Facebook will be full of posts about soldiers to whom we basically owe our very existence.

Before going on, I'd like to state that a couple of my closest friends are veterans. I'd like to validate the self-sacrifice of people who leave their families and put their lives on the line for a cause in which they believe.

But there is a reason that soldiers are almost always the ones who carry out the flag for the national anthems preceding sporting events, instead of firemen, teachers, Peace Corps Members, Red Cross aid workers; people who also put their lives on the line in service of their country. The reason these other national servants are omitted is simple; they are not actively expanding the economic interests of our Empire. All throughout history, Empires have relied upon their military might to funnel the world's resources into their own economy and the American Empire is no different.

So if the Empire can create an automatic emotional response of gratitude to the (mostly) good intentioned but misguided service men and women who carry out its wars of expansion, then the Empire is freed from teh need to be accountable for the waging of unjust wars.

If a person dares to even question the Iraq war, the common response will be "support our troops" or "freedom isn't free." We're a bunch of Pavlonian dogs. There is absolutely no room for a citizen of the Empire to critique the way government's military policies while still caring for our soldiers. It's either one extreme or another.

And that's not by accident.

The Empire knows what it is doing.

And it's nothing new to our history.

By now, most Americans know that Vietnam was our nation's most heinous atrocity of the 20th century (though likely not worse than the 19th century atrocities of the Indian Wars and the Mexican War). But the phrase "love it or leave it" started during that era in response to those calling for an end to that evil war.

I’m current reading a book entitled War Crimes and the American Conscience, which is an analysis of US war crimes during the Vietnam War (particularly the My Lai Massacre) in light of the principles of the Nuremburg Conference. This book is a collection of the notes from the 1970 Congressional Conference on War and National Responsibility.

“There is ample evidence that high officials in our government have participated fully in the practice of portraying the ‘other side’ as an aggregate of evil demons. This imagery has become so prominent and routine in official pronouncements and in the media that only people with some determination to think for themselves can resist adopting it as a matter of course. Among high officials, as among the general public, the dehumanization of ‘the enemy’ tends to spread, so that now those who dare to demonstrate against our Vietnam policy are called by the Vice President ‘parasites,’ ‘goats,’ and ‘creeps.’

The implications of public utterances like those of the Vice President are not far to seek. ‘I think,’ a nineteen year-old infantryman told a reporter, ‘someone ought to kill those long-haired, qeer bastards back in the world. Anyone who demonstrates against the war ought to be lined up and killed, just like any gook here.’ I know from personal experience that this is not an uncommon sentiment.” - Dr. Edward Opton, reprinted in War Crimes and the American Conscience from a 1970 issue of The New Republic.

The Iraqi war is my generation's Vietnam but to say Bush mislead his nation and broke international laws by invading Iraq is heard by many as "you hate America/ soldiers/ freedom/ etc." But would we be any less free if we hadn't invaded Iraq? Not likely. What is clear, however is that Vice President Dick Cheney's companies profited greatly from the Iraqi war.

While most of our nation's wars have been offensive rather than defensive, we are taught to see our military's actions as a "defense of freedom." While we may have the legal right to offer dissent, critiquing our nation's war is social suicide.

And it all starts with the National Anthem we'll sing this Friday night before the Trailblazer's playoff game.

"Hail Caesar! The Son of God, the Prince of Peace!" - citizens of the Roman Empire

"You shall have no other gods before me." - Exodus 20:3

A Celebration and Reunion 96 years in the Making

2011-10-28T15:00:00.006-05:00

Yesterday morning, I had the incredible privilege of preaching my Grandma's funeral. Grandma lived a long and godly life. She was the physical matriarch to a clan of about 100 and a spiritual matriarch to, well, a number that will be revealed in the next life.

As usually happens with funerals, this one was a great reunion. For the first time in years, all of my cousins were in the same place. And as we all recognized with a melancholy acceptance, it was probably also the last time that will ever happen. There were some great pictures taken and great pictures shared from my Grandma's long life and if I ever get access to them, I will share them.

Below is the message I shared.

If I were somehow able to talk with Grandma after the service today, she would say, “you did a great job, Tim. I mean… Dean. No, Eric. Danny. No, Donnie.” Even though she couldn’t get my name right, there were some things she always got right for me. When I was little, whenever I sat in a pew with her, usually right around there, she always had saltine crackers for me and a blue motorcycle. Sometimes they were a bit stale from being in her purse for a long time, but she always had them for me. When I got older, she saved the Sunday comics for me. She always had a stack for me to read. And from the time I was little, up till the last couple of years, if Grandma knew I was coming over she always made me mashed potatoes and gravy and had a peanut butter cookie with a Hershey kiss in the center.
She was there when I preached my first sermon. Dad said she cried through the whole thing. It was pretty bad. She endured one Ft. Madison football game and several Denmark Elementary Christmas concerts. We hadn’t been married long when my wife, Erin got in a wreck and totaled the car. A few days later, Grandma sent me a letter. In addition to the usual update on the weather and Uncle Henry’s activity in the garden, was a check for $100. Dad about fell over from shock when I told him. “Your Grandma is tighter than bark on a tree.” Grandma just wrote, “I felt like I should send this to you.”
All of those things, especially the cookie, were ways Grandma let me know she loved me. We could all tell stories of the ways she let us know she loved each one of us. Knowing that, think of how big her heart must’ve been – to be able to share so much love with so many of us. No wonder she couldn’t remember my name. I was one of a jillion. A group of kids. Bunch of Grandkids. Platoon of great and great-great grandkids. And for good measure, add the stepkids, step grandkids and step great-grandkids. Oh yea, two husbands that she loved. And we loved her back. Especially both husbands. Those who visited Mildred at the Hospice House know of all the loving ways Henry took care of her. Patting her arm, holding her hand. Being with her till 3 AM. Henry, we offer you our deepest sympathy. Grandma had such a big heart. A huge love. An incredible legacy.
Legacy is one of the two words we could use today, in our celebration of Mildred’s life. Is there a much better word than legacy? All 5 of her children-in-laws are still married to her children. Think of all the different things her grandchildren have done. All the different ways we have served God, other people, our families. I couldn’t remember the exact year of all my cousin’s weddings. But my best estimates are that we have collectively been married for 225 years. Those 225 years of marriage have produced a lot of great grandchildren. Mostly from the Ortons.
There is a passage of scripture that thoroughly summarizes Mildred’s life and her legacy. She lived this out. Proverbs 31:10-31. Vs 28 – we could all rise and call Mildred blessed
Grandma ran a tight ship. The hard-working farm wife and mother. Took care of Roy. While helping on the farm. While taking care of her other kids. While cooking for the farm-hands, paid and unpaid. She was a multi-tasker way before that term was in use.
Her kids remember her working in the basement, sorting and casing eggs, doing laundry and praying all at the same time. She would share at church that the time in the basement was her opportunity to talk with God. Pray for her kids. Grandma wanted other people to know God’s love.
One day she was talking with me about the church I was pastoring at the time. She asked, “are people being saved?” When I told her yes, she smiled and tears welled up in her eyes. In that tearful smile, I could see years of prayer. Layers and layers of love for her family. And an incredible desire to help other people know the love of Jesus. Grandma didn’t have to talk a lot about a God-honoring life. She just lived it. For decades. It was her legacy.
It’s her relationship with God that brings about the other word that is appropriate for today. It’s the word “reunion.” When Grandma was in the hospice house, she went back and forth between the present and the past. During visits with her, eventually she would have a moment in which she looked at you and really knew you. You could see the recognition in her eyes. “You are my son. You are my granddaughter.” Recognizing her living legacy.
At other times she would ask, “Who is taking care of Roy? Grandma knew that Danny was too young to take care of Roy. But when she was told that Jesus is taking care of Roy, she was calmed.
Mildred would also say, “I want to see Levi.”
On Monday morning, for the first time in decades, she got to see Roy. She got to hug Levi. And the past Grandma had been slipping into actually became her present reality. Her present reality right now.
But it wasn’t the only reunion Mildred had on Monday morning. She also got to see, face-to-face, the Savior that she and Levi first met years ago. Years ago, when Levi and Mildred were living down the lane in the house at the other place, Levi’s brother Wes invited them to a Sunday night service at this church. They attended several Sunday nights. Even attended a revival. One Sunday morning, when they got to the end of the lane, Levi and Mildred asked their kids whether they should turn right to their usual church on Sunday morning or left to the church of the Nazarene. The kids stated, “left.”
And here at the Fort Madison Church of the Nazarene, my Grandma and Grandpa came to know Jesus Christ in a personal way. They came to know for themselves, in a real and life-transforming way, these two verses. John 3:16 and 1 John 1:9
Levi and Mildred came to know that it isn’t just about living a decent life and attending a good church. But that the life God wants for us, created us for, involves a turning. A 180 turn from a life that is going in our own direction, to a life that is lived in God’s direction. A life in which sin and self-centeredness are exchanged for a life dedicated to the pursuit of God. What the Apostle Paul called being a “new creation” in Christ Jesus.
Grandma and Grandpa made that decision to live for Jesus, in this church, years and years ago. And then they lived it out – the rest of their lives.

In the gospel of Matthew, there is a record of a parable Jesus told to his followers. The story of a rich man, a venture-capitalist, who entrusted some of his money to various servants and then left for a long journey. When the rich man got back, he called a meeting with his servants to find out what they’d done with the money he’d loaned them. One servant wimped out, just buried the bag of silver. No return on the money. This rich man was not happy. But the other two servants were able to give their boss more bags of silver than they had originally been given. They were faithful with what their boss had given them. The boss responded by saying, Matthew 25:23.
Imagine Mildred standing before Jesus on Monday morning. Surrounded, in heaven and on earth, by people who came to know Jesus because of missionaries Mildred supported. Or Vacation Bible Schools she helped with. Or kids and grandkids she prayed for. And imagine, because we can know it happened, Jesus saying to Grandma Matthew 25:23
And imagine Mildred, her son, the father of her children, and her sister all celebrating before the throne of God in their now perfect and eternal bodies. No dementia. No heart problems. No mental handicap. Healthy. Whole. Beyond the curse of death. Forever.
Last Monday, Mildred and Henry celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary. After everyone else left, my mom and Aunt Karen were taking care of Grandma. Grandma asked mom, “will I get better in this life?” To which my mom answered, “no.” Mom then asked whether Grandma was ready to see Jesus. She just answered, “yes.” Then fell asleep.
The next Monday, Grandma fell asleep for the final time in this life. The day that Mildred went home to be with Jesus, Uncle Pete summed it up pretty well. He said, “Now, we can celebrate.”
And that’s exactly what we get to do today. We get to celebrate a reunion. We get to celebrate a legacy. A legacy that will bring about more heavenly reunions, when someday we get to stand in the same place Grandma is standing right now.

(Un)Luck of the Draw

2011-10-20T13:09:00.001-05:00

There is so much more I could add about my experience in the KC,MO School District. I do, however feel as if I've given a good summary of what it was like. I do have one more thing I want to share, though.

There was a group of KC Corps Members who taught in the same "LA summer school" (actually a TFA training school) during institute. A group of us had the amazing benefit of being placed in KCMO schools that are somewhat functional. One guy, a big guy who wrestled in college and also earned a high school teaching degree, is in one of the few elementary schools who are proficient in their tests scores. This guy has 15 kids in his classroom. And if that isn't amazing enough, his kids actually listen to him. And to top it off, his principal is even effective at her job. Seriously, that is just mind-blowing compared to what I experienced. Another friend says her biggest challenge is that the kids (16 of them) in her classroom is getting her kids to raise their hands and not just call out. She told this problem to another friend who continually had fights breaking out in her classroom and even had a student molest another student in the hallway. That teacher, who is an incredibly sharp and talented person who became a close friend of mine, also quit last week. She just couldn't handle it the emotional and physical deterioration brought about by the stress of being in charge of wild kids she couldn't manage.

One of the TFA directors, who herself taught in an elementary school in Harlem, said that of the 30 some regions TFA is in, classroom management is the worst in Detroit and Kansas City. Think about that, it's worse in KC than in Harlem and Compton. A combination of corrupt politics, insufficient public transportation, school boundaries breaking up neighborhoods and a School District with a nationally known reputation for dysfunction and ineptitude work together to create a hell-hole for the poor kids of the Kansas City. An entire city ignoring (at best) and exploiting (at worst) their own poor.

Even with the insane environment of the KC schools, this director told me that the elementary schools in KC tend to be somewhat functional. She then added, "there are two exceptions, though." Guess which two schools in which the bulk of the TFA Corps Members whom are quitting were placed?

So why did this happen? Why was I assigned middle school and then pressure into signing an elementary contract that was thrust under my nose in front of the entire KC Corps and the KCMSD School Board? I'm not sure. I could've been put in a functional school with at least a chance of survival or even success but I was placed in one of the worst schools in one of the worst districts in the US. It's possible that it was just an unfortunate event, that I got the raw deal in a random process of placement, just bad luck. It's also possible that this was the answer to my two year prayer of, "if you don't want me to go into teaching, please stop me." It's possible that I wasn't able to fulfill the calling God gave me or that the calling changed in response to human decisions. Wherever God's hand is to be seen in this unfolding of events, I know that this isn't the end. That failure (if it really is a failure) isn't final with God and that faithfully answering God's calling isn't a one-shot deal.

So while working the new job that I start tomorrow, I'll have plenty of time to sort stuff out. I'm glad I'll be able to do the sorting-out while also earning a paycheck.

On that note...

I've been pleasantly surprised by all the support and affirmation I've received since leaving that terrible situation. I was at my parents' last weekend and a friend of my mom said, "I'm so glad you're not working there anymore, for your health's sake." A friend who is a principal at a rural school with 54% reduced lunch was even shocked at my stories and could understand my reasoning. He said that he actually works less as a principal than as a teacher and coach. To all of those affirming comments, however I always add that I hate that I was compelled to walk away from those kids. There is always some response meant to take away some false guilt and to affirm my commitment to my family.

Maybe the best affirmation however, is that I start a new job tomorrow morning. I'll be a Claims Rep for Farmer's Insurance. Basically, I'll be sitting at a cubicle and working the phones to determine fault in car accidents and the amount of insurance pay-outs. I'll be working - get this - 40 hours a week. While getting paid exactly the same as the teaching job! The fear that I was also hurting my family by quitting a job during a recession turned out to be over-dramatic as I spent only three weeks in the ranks of the unemployed. And what a great three weeks it was!

America = Needs Farmers

2011-10-18T13:03:00.000-05:00

Check out this great video from Kinnick Stadium last Saturday night. Most of the video is during the national anthem, but after the anthem, the cards are reversed displaying "America Needs Farmers" spelled out on one sideline and "Go Hawks" on the other side. There is a round ANF symbol in the endzone, too.

Ever since Hayden Fry put the ANF on the helmets in the 80's, that sticker has been my dad's favorite part of Hawkeye football.

And due to the fact that the 2011 Iowa Football Team is in the midst of a mediocre season, no shot at an undefeated season or Big Ten Title, they actually beat Northwestern. Imagine that...

I Saw What I Saw

2011-10-12T13:04:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine who is also a teacher and shares a similar heart for the oppressed our our country, sent me this song after reading my recent blog posts. I think it's a pretty accurate summary of what I experienced. In that message, this friend wrote this to me, "You have had the opportunity to see what many pretend does not exist. I will pray that you heal, but I hope you never "get over" this experience--I hope we will all be haunted by these children until the Church does something."

7 Weeks and an Apology - Part II

2011-10-04T12:46:00.000-05:00

Friday was an amazing day for me. My last day teaching in KC,MO brought the return of some things I had taken for granted. During lunch, I found that I was actually hungry. The stress of my job robbed me of my appetite, causing me to lose 20 pounds. On Friday night, I hung out with some friends and felt like a normal human being. I was told by said friends that it is good to have Donnie back with us. Finally, on Friday night, I laughed for the first time in a long time. I watched Dumb and Dumber and laughed almost as hard as the first time I watched the movie. My job was literally taking away my life.

Dawson's biological Grandma, Kim, told me that she was watching me whither away. I was whithering away not only physically but emotionally as well. She said that she was watching helplessly as I was emotionally withdrawn from my family. I didn't do so on purpose, but I had nothing to give my family during the few hours each week I was able to be with them. For that reason, I had to break my commitment and walk away from the mission I had joined.

Really though, I had made that decision years ago at a Promise Keepers convention I attended just before leaving for college. At that convention in Indianapolis, I made the commitment to never put ministry before my family. A former pastor would often share his own similar commitment, asking us "what is the point if I save everyone else's kids but lose my own?" And that is where I finally came down in this most agonizing decision I've ever faced.

I have been miserable since I left for training on June 26th. My heart was torn apart as I watched Erin and Dawson walk away at the airport. While the two free days and the single week of normal working hours that I enjoyed upon returning home were wonderful, they weren't enough. With the exception of that one weekend, I have been emotionally and physically detached from my family since June 26th. And while I'm not working now, I'm still pretty detached. I've got to work through the depression and PTSD while rebuilding a healthy and balanced relationship with my wife and son. I have a counseling appointment on Friday to start the healing and rebuilding process.

I spent the past three weeks seeking guidance from a large number of friends and family members. The overwhelming consensus was "this is too much and you need to put your family first." One notable exception however, were my superiors at Teach For America although I'm not sure whether I'll share the ways they tried to influence my decision. So I did it. I walked out on my classroom because I couldn't be the teacher I was expected to be while also being the father my son needs me to be. With that said, Teach for America is a wonderful organization that is working to keep our nation from becoming an apartheid state. But I have learned the hard way that there is a reason TFA recruits young and single people. The demands of TFA are not sustainable for a parent living in the suburbs. I greatly regret that I wasn't aware of that before I signed up.

The haunting question though, is whether or not putting family first is really biblical. Yes, it's very Focus on the Family-esque and North American Christianity-esque but is it biblical? The call to the gospel put forth by Jesus and Paul is much more radical than what our North American Christian culture would lead us to believe. Sure we find ways to explain it away or ignore it, but Jesus did say "“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple."

And Paul was always letting the churches know about the trials he was facing. From 2 Corinthians 11, "24 Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, 26 I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. 27 I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. 28 Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. 29 Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?"

And Philippians 3, "10 I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead."

But what about the boy I chose to adopt? What about being able to have friends, laugh and serve in my local church?

It is quite possible I made a bad decision and put my own desires above God's plan to use me up and break me for his Kingdom's sake. It's also possible that this is finally God's answer to my almost 3 year long prayer of, "if you don't want me to leave full-time pastoral ministry, please stop me."

I don't have a lot of answers right now. I know that while I have some leads and some savings, I really need a job. I'm quite sure that 10 years from now I will have some regret for all of this but that I won't regret stopping the 14 weeks I missed out on being a dad from turning into 2 years. I also know that if I am walking away from what God has for me right now that doesn't mean he won't open up another door in the future. I also know that having my family taken away from me has awakened me to the need to love them in a better way.

7 weeks and an Apology - Part I

2011-10-03T12:15:00.006-05:00

I have an apology to share with everyone who reads this. I'm not apologizing for the fact that I haven't blogged in 5 weeks. Nope. I'm apologizing for the fact that I'm done. Last Friday was my final day at George Melcher Elementary.

I'm not exactly sure how to go about sharing the pressure all the teachers are under. In my last post, I shared the emotional pressure of trying to manage kids with so many issues. But what broke me was all the other expectations placed upon us by the school district. The collapse of the KCMSD has been all over the news lately. First the Superintendent bails, then the state of Missouri strips KCMSD of its accreditation. All of this just adds to the air of desperation around the district, though "desperation" doesn't begin to describe the atmosphere.

The veteran teachers at Melcher said that teaching was always difficult, but the last few years the district has piled more and more work upon the teachers in the hope that the district could climb out of their hole. These teachers, teachers who work 12-14 hour days, stated it is simply impossible to do everything that is asked of them. Two or three times a week, we would get emails from our principal with long lists of things we were supposed to do; things that we were given very little, if any, training on, things that would take a lot of work to complete and that sometimes contradicted what we had just been doing.

Some examples: 1) The schedule changed about every two weeks. Even Kindergartners would have to figure out their new rooms, teachers and schedule. On my last day it was also the last day I would've been with the group with which I started the school year.
2) We were expected to do a six hour online training module for FEMA. Seriously. In order to pass the training, we had to take a detailed test regarding the organization of the National Incident Management System.
3) Due to student violence, we were expected to have a minute-by-minute behavior plan for about half of our students. Before we could send a student to the office, we had to go through a 5 step, several day long process that concluded with a parent's meeting. I often didn't even have the phone numbers for student's parents.
4) One of the other TFA teachers had 3 fights in his room last Friday. He worked until 12:15 that night, was back at school the next morning at 5:15 and still didn't get all of his work done. He was greeted that morning by a lecture from the principal for not getting enough work done and a chewing out by a parent for having an unsafe classroom. Seriously.

It's rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, but at a life-destroying pace.

It seems like there are people sitting in office chairs in the KCMSD central office making impossible demands of over-worked teachers and getting paid quite well to do it. And how suffers? Of course, it's the kids. The kids who are doomed to a life of poverty simply because they were born into a school district vacated by the rich who could change things but can also afford private school and run by people who find ways to sneak an extra $20 million into a contract to help out a friend (allegedly).

What finally broke me was the requirements for Master's Degree I was expected to finish by the end of these two years. When I saw my first syllabus, I had a nervous breakdown. I've never had anything happen to me like what happened to me the past two weeks. I'm a bit too proud to share all the details but my wife was quite worried for my health. And last Sunday afternoon, while planning for the next week, we came to the conclusion that while it might be physically possible to continue the cost to our family's health would be too great. So last Friday, Sept. 30th was my last day.

Every single teacher at my school who had kids advised me to put my family first. Some of them stated, "if I could afford to do something else, I would, because I only see my kids one hour a day."

Most of my students were pretty upset. As I shared in my last blog post, I was determined not to be "that guy", yet another male walking out on them. I wish they all had dads who would put them first, but it simply isn't the case. When talking with a group of 5 students, here is what I learned about their dads: 1) My dad was shot in the head 2) My dad is in prison 3) My dad just got out of prison after 8 years 4) My dad is in Mexico. Ultimately, I had to shut of my emotions, let go of those kids and do what I believed to be the best thing for my family and my overall health. Which is why I was able to read through a heart-felt letter from a girl who asked why I had to leave like all the other teachers. Of course, Friday was my last day having her in class anyway, since the administration changed up our classes for the 4th time since the start of the school year.

While I'm certainly not responsible for creating this terrible system, I am responsible for breaking my commitment. I'll have to work through that guilt but I know it is possible. This was not the most noble moment in my life but the decision might have been the lesser of two evils.

I wanted to confront the powers but the powers ended up destroying me. I wanted to be a part of the solution but I was only a part of the problem. There will however, be other problems I can address and other solutions I can embody. This was a terrible and frustrating chapter in my life but it's not the end of the story. Neither is it the end of my blog posts on this subject. I've got a lot more to share and now that I'm unemployed, I've got the time to do so.

Two Weeks

2011-08-26T21:56:00.003-05:00

It's Friday night and I'm finally going to get a full night's sleep. All I can really say about these past two weeks is that I've survived. That's all. I have simply survived. Everything inside of me wants to quit and walk away. When kids are mocking me or fighting in the hallways, I think, "I don't need this _____" and I want to just walk out the door. I want to leave WITH ALL THAT IS INSIDE OF ME. However, there is Someone else inside of me, spurring me on. I can't walk out on what God has called me to do. And as one of just three male teacher in this school, I don't want to be like almost every other male in almost every student's life and just walk out. Honestly, the desire to not walk out on these kids is the ONLY thing keeping me here. I have NO IDEA how I'll EVER teach anything.

I have seen things these past two weeks that I can't even begin to explain. I can't believe that the richest nation in the history of the world can allow their kids to be in a system like what I'm seeing. Dear God, how can we treat our poor in this way?

Of the past 14 days, I have only NOT cried for two of them, tonight being the second. I don't mean just a few tears, I mean pounding the table and sobbing. I just can't explain what I've experienced. Last Saturday, it took everything I had to just get off the couch, make breakfast and take Dawson to the park.

To try to summarize a few things, I've got some categories that might give a tiny glimpse of what I've experienced.

Funny
One of the other male teachers, a TFA teacher, has an interesting group of 6th grade girls. These girls enjoy calling him a "dumb cracker."

I had a kid turn and flash me a half cute, half devilish smile and try to sprint out of the school building. He got caught at the door, though.

On Thursday, as I stood in the midst of the swirling hurricane that is my classroom at the end of the day, I had the thought, "no one would ever believe what I'm seeing if I told them." So, I decided to get out my camera and record it. I just stood there, video recording my classroom. Of course, kids freak out because I could show their parents the video, so the kids started crawling back out from under their desks, releasing their classmates from headlocks and actually doing part of what they were supposed to be doing. Due to liability issues, I can't post the video online.

After spending two weeks with one group of kids, I will now begin teaching the kids that are at a 4th grade reading and math level. I have a classroom full of 5th grade textbooks and nothing for 4th grade. I don't know who is in my class or where my 5th grade kids will be going. It all starts Monday. I wish I could also video the mass chaos, and I mean mass chaos, that will be happening in the halls of our school on Monday. Sometimes the only way to deal with the stress and anxiety is to just laugh.

Scary
My fellow 5th grade teacher had a nervous breakdown. She got two days off and went to the doctor. She tried to quit, but TFA wouldn't let her. She's back and looking better. After school today, I said, "you usually look like you've been hit by a MAC truck, today you look like it was just a pickup that hit you. So it's getting better."

Two days ago, as about 200 kids were squeezing through a tiny opening in a chain link fence to get onto the bus, the older kids literally trampled the kindergartners. Seriously, ran OVER them.

Last week, while I was having a breakdown and sobbing in the office, I saw a girl try to attack our principal. It took about four people to restrain her.

I'm not eating much because of the stress. I'm losing a lot of weight and looking pretty sick. But I'm just not hungry because of the tension that is always in my body. I REALLY need some anti-anxiety medicine. I have trouble breathing when picking my class up in the morning.

Sad
The Superintendent of the KCMO School District, who had been working very hard to bring about reform, resigned on Tuesday night. And the poor continue to be forgotten and ignored.

The kids have no playground equipment. I did however, thanks to some money that one of Erin's coworkers gave to us, buy them some playground balls.

There are roaches and rats in my classroom.

Kids have to walk across major intersections, along busy streets with no sidewalks and through parks full of drug dealers to get to school. Seriously. How can that be okay?

Two kids who are way behind and really need to learn are about to get suspended for fighting in my classroom, putting them even further behind.

During worship last Sunday a line from one of our songs made me sit down and begin weeping. It was the line, "break my heart with what breaks yours." If I hurt to see how these kids are treated by our system, how must the God of justice, mercy and compassion feel? Who will have to answer for how we've treated our nation's poor?

Inspirational
My wife. Seriously, I would not still be standing if it wasn't for her. She's running the entire house, planning all kinds of things for my lessons, packing my lunches and ironing my clothes while also propping me up emotionally. Erin has always been a great ministry partner, but she has gone beyond even what I knew she could do. She is also supporting and encouraging the other 3 TFA teachers on my hall, too. She is simply amazing.

Just kissing Dawson's blond head and hugging his little body keeps me going. I've been home by 7 amost every night to spend an hour with him. I need to be with my boy.

Just little things here and there. Last Friday, I got them all to walk in a line without talking, for about 2 minutes. Also last Friday, when I said, "I have an announcement to make" (regarding reading to a Kindergarten class) one student blurted out, "Mr. Miller, are you quitting?" I was so shocked by the question, I just laughed. I just can't be another male who walks out on them.

I greet the kids at the door, have them look me in the eye and shake my hand. One boy refused to do it. "I don't touch other guys' hands." I told him that in my classroom we shake the teachers hand and until he's ready to do that, he needs to sit in the back of the room. About a half hour later he came up and shook my hand. I almost cried. I then had a big classroom celebration to "welcome" him to our class for the day.

As the two kids about to be suspended stormed past me leaving school today, I gave them the candy I had just given to the rest of the class. They were so angry and wouldn't look at me. I had them stop, gave them the candy and said, "this is for no reason other than you're my students and I care about you. I'll be back on Monday." I saw a tiny crack in that hard exterior.

People whom I haven't heard from in a long time (and close friends and family) call or text me to reassure me they're praying for me. Honestly, I feel almost forgotten by God sometimes. But things like the financial gifts, prayers and other really simple acts of kindness are the tiny shreds of hope onto which I cling for strength. God has NOT abandoned me, nor these kids and I'm where I'm supposed to be.

The speech teacher across the hall who watched 5 different teachers rotate through my classroom last year keeps reassuring me that I'm doing a good job and that she's seeing progress. When she saw me break down and cry the other day, she slipped note in my door that said, "you're doing a good job and I wouldn't say that if it weren't true."

I watch a few of the veteran teachers who can really do it. I sit in their classrooms during my plan time. It's so amazing to watch.

At art class, I watched my 17 boys act like little angels. The art teacher assured me, "I've been doing this for 20 years, you've been doing it for 7 days. Just keep going."

Most of the teachers there are Christ-followers. The other day, as I broke down and cried as soon as my students left, a veteran teacher put her arms around me and prayed for me. These "vets" are always praying for us "newbies." They are amazing to watch. They pray for us, give us advice and mostly just refuse to let us quit. One teacher told me I not only need to pray before and after school (and I do pray during my 50 minute drive, I pray to have the strength to just walk through the doors of the school) but to pray during the day. To ask God to give me wisdom and strength. Today, I was staring at some kids who were "acting the fool" and thinking some not nice thoughts about them. I started praying, "Jesus, show me how you see them." And my brow softened, I stopped glaring at them and I saw hurting little kids who are loved by Jesus. Then someone did something stupid and I got pissed again. But I saw them with the right eyes, for just a moment.

I could write all night, but I've got to go to bed. I am finally going to take a Sabbath rest tomorrow. I must do it. Sabbath is a reminder that even when I stop working (and I have SO MUCH to do) God continues to run the world. Of course, very few of my plans ever work anyway.

So tomorrow is cleaining the house, taking Dawson to the park and spending the evening with my wife. Last weekend showed me how much strength I can get from just sleeping, eating and talking with some friends.

Not sure when I'll be able to post again...

My Last First Day

2011-08-15T23:45:00.002-05:00

It is 11:15 and I've FINALLY finished planning for tomorrow. Even though I have to get up at 5:15, I wanted to take the time to journal about today.

Today was my last ever first day of teaching. Thank goodness.

I cried a bit on my way to class, out of the excitement and vision for my kids. I cried on the way home out of sheer frustration, exhaustion and sense of being overwhelmed.
Since last Monday, I've probably only had about 5 hours that I wasn't sleeping or working. I'm NOT exaggerating.

This is insane.

And today was insane. We started the day with an incomprehensible crash course in how the day would work. The day ended with me releasing my students at the wrong time to the wrong places. In between we had cockroaches coming from the ceiling, indoor recess because of rain, a flooded boys bathroom, a boy punching the chalkboard, several kids sleeping on their desk and a terrible feedback (due to Friday's lighting strike) from the PA every time the Principal spoke, hurting the kids' ears and preventing us from knowing when and where to release the students.

But a bit of good / funny news. 1) I got asked twice if I was the Principal. Both times I laughed. One mom said, "you just look like a Principal."
2)In the one stretch in which all kids were paying attention, I got to give a speech about the importance of succeeding academically so one can graduate from college.
3) The SPED teacher across the hall told me that compared to last year's first day, I had GREAT first day. Of course, the classroom I'm currently in had 5 different teachers last year.

I can't promise I'll ever get my students to behave or even learn something. But I can promise I'm not going anywhere.

My Boy is Reading!

2011-08-09T20:58:00.002-05:00

Dawson is reading!

I wrote down this great memory of which I wanted to hold on to on Dawson's blog. Link

Still Lifting

2011-08-09T18:52:00.000-05:00

Over the past year or so, the intensity of my weight-lifting has dropped significantly. I still lift but not as frequent and not as intense as before.

About two months ago, my sister showed me this article from the Hy-Vee corporate magazine. I was glad to read that my former work-out partner is still going strong. Interesting read.

I Dreamed a Dream of Comfort

2011-08-06T22:19:00.001-05:00

My first week working in the KCMSD has been a difficult week. We are being trained to teach in a way that is going to require, to quote a TFA teacher about to begin her second year, "A TON of work." Without going into a bunch of details, I'm going to be overseeing the academic growth of about 100 students and spending crazy amounts of hours developing projects and recording student performance in various tracking devices while writing my lesson plans from nearly scratch. Just one of those three challenges would be difficult, but all three will be... Well, I'm still in denial.
Add to that a salary that will barely allow me to pay our mortgage and a 50 minute commute to and from work. Well, it's going to be a VERY difficult year.

This rather stark reality reminded me of some daydreaming I was doing about 3 or 4 years ago. I can vividly remember taking a first-time guest coffee mug to a family who lived in a large house just south of town. Their house and the others around, were nestled into some clearings in a beautiful wooded area. At that time, Erin and I were a DINKS couple (Dual Income No Kids). And while neither of us were earning a very large salary, we were being very intentional about saving and investing every possible dollar. While visiting that house, I remember thinking, "if Erin and I continue on our current financial path (at that time we were both working full time - not making a lot but being very careful with our money and making some serious financial headway) we could eventually buy a house like this." Pre-parenthood vacations and Dave Ramsey-inspired attempts to pay extra on our house was getting me in the mindset of "live like on one else now, so that later you can live like no one else." A Dave Ramsey line that basically means scrimp now and live-it-up later. At that time, we were definitely on the "like no one else" path toward the American Dream. Honestly, I was quite blinded by that dream.

But while I was busy dreaming about the future, God was using our "years of plenty" to prepare us (like Joseph and Egypt in Genesis) for "years of want."

In the book Crazy Love, a book which has impacted me greatly, author Francis Chan observed that when travelling, Christians often pray for a "safe travel." And while Chan didn't write that there is anything wrong with a safe journey, he did point out that many Christians are concerned with taking the safe path. But if you look at Jesus' teaching, his examples and the examples of the early Christians - a life of following Jesus is to be anything but safe. I was getting too focused on safe and comfortable and God needed to bluntly remind me of the type of life he's called me to. A life that will do the crazy, risky, outside-the-comfort-zone type of things that will reach the people no one else is reaching. Things like starting a new church with no money and no people because I knew it was the best way to reach those not yet in a church.

The reality I need to continue to accept is that God never intended for my life to be simple and comfortable. I am to be living in such a way that I can sense his guidance toward the next Kingdom adventure. I am to be sensitive enough that when he re-directs me, a re-direction like this teaching gig, I obey. I am to be selfless enough that I follow his guidance, no matter the personal cost.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer stated, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."

In Matthew 16:24 we read Jesus' statement, "If anyone wants to be my disciple, he must deny himself, pick up his cross and follow me."

These thoughts had been going on in my head but it all became clear for me last night while watching the Les Mis 25th anniversary concert, I had a bit of an epiphany. I had a bit of an epiphany while watching "I Dreamed a Dream." This song is sung by Fantine, one of the many tragic characters in Victor Hugo's novel.

To say that Fantine's life was neither easy nor comfortable would be an understatement. And while Fantine was a fictional person, her character is based upon many of Miserable Ones who lived in extreme poverty during the European revolutions of 1848. I've been reading the book 1848: Year of Revolutions about this time period and it's hard to imagine the gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots" and the desperate poverty that caused the Miserable Ones (English for Les Miserables) to revolt.

Not only was a I reminded that my life is not to be comfortable. I was also reminded that even with our current financial situation, I am still among the "haves" of the world. I am tempted to feel sorry for myself only when I compare myself to the few in our world who are more comfortable than myself.

I didn't have to fight for survival in a 19th century Parisian slum. I don't have to eek out a miserable existence as one of the underclass in modern-day India. Most relevant to my current situation, I wasn't born into the inner cities that are forgotten by (at best) and oppressed (at worst) by the "haves" of our society. I wasn't born into the financial, educational and social situations into which most of my soon-to-be students were born. I wasn't born as the subset social group of the richest nation in the world destined to be ignored and trampled on by the rest of society. I've heard it said that if the gap continues to widen, our nation is headed toward an apartheid existence. No matter what my paycheck may read, I was born into privilege.

I was also born again into the Kingdom of God. And for that reason, I must continually reject comfort and move toward the cross. The life of following Jesus is not a life turned in on itself. Rather, it is a life lived with an outward-focus. A life lived in the footsteps of the crucified Savior.

I'm glad God woke me up from that dream before it was too late. I'm glad to move out of my comfort zone and into a life that matters.

Just for kicks, here is the
Glee version of "I Dreamed a Dream."

A letter I sent to my congressmen

2011-08-06T18:46:00.005-05:00

In response to this blog post, I printed out the letter below and sent it to my 2 senators and 1 congressman.

Aug 6, 2011

Representative Kevin Yoder
Cannon House Office Building, Room 214
Independence Avenue and 1st Street, SE
Washington, DC 20515-1603

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Representative Yoder,

As people of faith, we are committed to fiscal responsibility and
shared sacrifice. We are also committed to resist budget cuts that
undermine the lives, dignity, and rights of poor and vulnerable people.
Therefore, we join with others to form a Circle of Protection around
programs that meet the essential needs of hungry and poor people at
home and abroad.

1. The nation needs to substantially reduce future deficits, but not at
the expense of hungry and poor people.

2. Programs focused on reducing poverty should not be cut. They should
be made as effective as possible, but not cut.

3. We urge our leaders to protect and improve poverty-focused
development and humanitarian assistance to promote a better, safer
world.

4. National leaders must review and consider tax revenues, military
spending, and entitlements in the search for ways to share sacrifice
and cut deficits.

5. A fundamental task is to create jobs and spur economic growth.
Decent jobs at decent wages are the best path out of poverty, and
restoring growth is a powerful way to reduce deficits.

6. The budget debate has a central moral dimension. Christians are
asking how we protect "the least of these." "What would
Jesus cut?" "How do we share sacrifice?"

7. As believers, we turn to God with prayer and fasting, to ask for
guidance as our nation makes decisions about our priorities as a
people.

8. God continues to shower our nation and the world with blessings. As
Christians, we are rooted in the love of God in Jesus.

Affirmed and signed by,

Mr. Donald Miller
31310 W 172nd Ter
Gardner, KS 66030-9202

I'm awake

2011-08-01T12:58:00.003-05:00

Saturday afternoon, as I was driving home from the Kansas City airport with my wife beside me and my son in the car seat behind me, I experienced a somewhat familiar sensation. I experienced the sensation you get when you wake up from a terrible dream and slowly come to the realization that it was only a nightmare and that you are laying in the warmth and comfort of your own bed. I had that sensation Saturday afternoon.

It's as if I fell into a nightmare filled sleep on Sunday afternoon, June 26th as I watched my wife and son walk away from me at the Kansas City airport. I was awoken from that nightmare in almost the same spot in the aiport, staring at a mom and boy for a couple seconds before realings, "that's Erin and Dawson" and then holding them and crying with joy. In between those two events was a five week long nightmarish blur of insanely difficult, confusing, frustrating and exhausting days broken only by naps in the middle of the night (rather than a full-night's sleep) and a few hours of light and rest on Saturday afternoons. The common thread of all those days however, being the variation of dull ache to all-out heartache of missing my family. But while driving home my car, with my family, to my house, I awoke to the safety and warmth of the real world again. I turned to Erin and told her everything I just posted above. While I know that my time at the LA institute was more than a terrible dream, I'm glad it's all in the past now. I've survived and I'll NEVER do that again.

On Tuesday begins my actual job as a 5th grade teacher for Goerge Melcher Elementary. I'm about to experience the agonizing ordeal of being a first-year teacher. But I'm ready. Bring it on. I just read a line from War and Peace that fits this new challenge. It was stated by Pierre while recounting his terrible but life-altering experience as a prisoner of war in Napoleon's army. "They say: 'sufferings are misfortunes.' said Pierre. 'But if at once, this minute, I was asked, would I remain what I was before I was taken prisoner, or go through it all again, I should say, for God's sake let me rather be a prisoner and eat horseflesh again. We imagine that as soon as we are torn out of our habitual path all is over, but it is only the beginning of something new and good. As long as there is life, there is happiness. There is a great deal, a great deal before us. That I say to you,' he said, turning to Natasha."

Those who can...

2011-07-22T19:00:00.002-05:00

Whoever coined the phrase, "those who can, do and those who can't, teach" has never tried to teach fractions to fourth graders.

It's been a challenging week. I hope I've accomplished some good.

Here is some inspiration.

Happy TFA Day!

2011-07-15T19:03:00.000-05:00

Thursday was a much better day than Wednesday. I re-taught the writing lesson that bombed on Wednesday, And since that first assignment was foundational for rest of the writing unit, I’m getting my students back on track for their summer objectives. While I was glad to have had a better lesson, it was still difficult to make that quick switch from teaching to learning how to teach ELL. In that 10:00-11:15 session, I was struggling to hang on and wondered how I’d make it through the afternoon ELL session that was still to come (according to our daily schedule).

But the workload is still relentless. At 12:45, we started trying to grade assessments so as to enter the tracking data that was due to our adviser by 2:00. But we were starting a 90 minute session on read-aloud strategies, so I had to prepare myself for the bright orange slip my adviser would give me for turning in an assignment past the deadline. Multi-tasking doesn’t begin to describe what we’re trying to do here.

The read-aloud instructor was modeling for us by reading his favorite book, The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. Two pages in, he asked us to check out the notes up on the power-point. Point #1 read “I’m not really going to read The Lorax to you for 90 minutes.” Point #2 read, “All Friday deadlines have been pushed back to Monday. Afternoon sessions are canceled. Enjoy our free afternoon. Happy TFA Day!”

The fact that Point #2 was met by wild cheers, spontaneous hugs and tears of joy (I’m serious) shows just how hard we’ve been pushing ourselves. When we got back to the LMU campus, we found a carnival atmosphere; bouncy houses, lobbies converted into movie theaters, cotton candy and snow cones, pool parties, volleyball games and trips to LA places like Manhattan Beach. In typical TFA style, they did the free afternoon up big and thorough. Also in typical TFA style (they give acronyms to EVERYTHING) TFA day means “Totally Free Afternoon.”

So I’m finishing my lesson plan for tomorrow, hitting the gym and then taking the bus down to Venice Beach where I’ll spend the evening walking along the boardwalk, biking up and down the shore or maybe just have a nice dinner in beach-side restaurant.

Happy TFA Day!

Nope, Not Broken Yet

2011-07-14T19:02:00.001-05:00

While I’m still not broken, I came pretty close today. During this “teacher boot camp” (my nickname for Institute), we are being pushed to our limits physically, emotionally and mentally.

Physically – the amount of work we have to do everyday is devastating. I work as hard as I can each day, allowing myself 25 minutes for a (sometimes) working dinner and yet I still can rarely get to bed before 11:30. The fact that I don’t function well on less than 7 hours of sleep and the fact that my alarm clock has to go off at 5:35 are taking their physical toll on me.

Emotionally – As soon as the students left the room yesterday, I laid down on their reading rug and pounded the floor in frustration. While I was venting another lady in the room was crying. One of our mentor teachers, who observes us and gives us great advice, just kept telling us “teaching is hard, hard work.”
My emotional outburst was due to the fact that EVERYTHING I tried that day, from my writing lesson plan, to the reading assessment to the individualized instruction I was giving to a student years behind grade level – COMPLETELY failed. Even though we only have 35 minutes for our reading lesson, I had to ‘reset’ the lesson TWICE, while having to exert my will to regain disciplinary control of the classroom each time (students act out when they’re confused). After leaving my classroom and walking to a instructional session, I asked my fellow 4^th grade teachers if they could smell anything. “Those are Mr. Miller’s ashes,” I told them.

Mentally – We are learning by on-the-job immersion. We’re learning both a foreign language (teaching terms and philosophies) and foreign skills. There is precious little time to decompress and reflect. After my lesson plan blew up yesterday, I had to rush out of the classroom to be sitting ready to go for a session on phonics instruction. We push ourselves to the limit only to have to mentally turn on a dime to try to engage instruction on yet another teacher skill set to which we’re just being introduced. Those new skill sets are piled on top of the ones we learned the day before and we’re expected to start implementing them the next day. While I’m only retaining about 10% of what the content I’m engaging with (and our sessions are pretty much hands-on) my hunch is that TFA assumes their Corps Members are smart enough that when they’re re-exposed to a teaching strategy later in the year, they will recall that initial instruction so as to begin implementing it in their full-time classroom. It’s mentally exhausting, though.

So after hurriedly tidying up the classroom during the five minutes I had between a lesson planning clinic and getting on the bus (which leaves promptly at 4:35, meaning those who miss it have to pay $65 for a cab ride back to Loyola Marymount) I squeezed into my bus seat in a very bad frame of mind. There was too much emotional and mental overload going on. I vented to my wife for awhile, graded some papers during a vegetable dinner (the food is making some of us sick) then headed to the resource room to get help on math methods from some master teachers. But someone in the middle of my 6:30-11:30 working session, I started to get back into a good frame of mind. Maybe it was from the guitar chords of Green Day pumping through my ipod as I entered info from a writing assessment into our class tracker. But sometime during that time, my brokenness was melded back into a determined spirit.

I will NOT be broken. I WILL push through. I WILL do my best to grow as a teacher since, “good teachers are made, not born”. And I WILL help overturn the systematic oppression of our nation as manifested through our inequitable public school system.

Still Not Broken!

2011-07-10T10:35:00.001-05:00

By Thursday afternoon I had come to a solid conclusion as to what this Institute experience is all about. I also came to understand why they call us "Corps Members." This is teacher boot camp and they are trying to break us. I'm not sure how to explain it all but imagine working at 100 MPH from the time you wake up at 5:30 until you go to bed around 1:30. Mixed in there are surprise assignments the staff throws on us (i.e. complex student assessments and the data entry that it entails) and instable working conditions (i.e. we had to move our classroom at the end of week, thanks to a labor dispute with LA's custodial staff). I did much better than my roommate, who averaged about 3 1/2 hours of sleep during the week. People are walking zombies, propped up by caffeine and the type of work-ethic that made them one of the 10% of applicants actually chosen to be a Corps Member. Of course, we're also fighting the physiological battles to stay focused and productive in the midst of sleep-deprivation and chaotic conditions. Toward the end of the week, there were groups of ladies on campus breaking down and crying. And guys venting to other guys with some colorful language.

I'm pretty sure this was all planned, too. Rumors get spread between current Corps Members based upon what they've heard from Alumni. The general consensus is that 1) Institute is the hardest part of the TFA two year experience 2) They are trying to weed out those who can't cut it 3) We are being violently taught the necessary skills of time-management and multi-tasking and 4) We are being taught the flexibility necessary to lead student achievement while working with school districts that are incredibly dysfunctional. As the leader of our summer school site keeps saying whenever some new curve is thrown our way, "if the people leading the educational system in our country made their decisions by asking 'what is best for the kids?', TFA wouldn't need to exist." That is very well said.

But I survived the first week of teaching. Today is Saturday and I'm going to take some Sabbath rest before putting in another long day tomorrow.

My First Day of Teaching

2011-07-09T10:17:00.003-05:00

Last Monday was my first day teaching. I taught a class of 4th graders how to make inferences from a story. There are about 600 TFA Corps Member here at the LA Institute and about 100 of us are at an elementary school in the Southgate neighborhood. We are split into collabs of 4 teachers each and during the day we each teach a lesson on reading, writing or math. I started with reading, obviously, and while prepping and delivering my reading lessons, I've been learning how to teach writing - which really scares my, btw.

Again, last Monday was my first day of teaching. I was the first teacher up for the day and the first words out of my mouth were proclaimed quite loudly, loud enough to jolt them upright in their chairs, "Hey, everybody!" Thus began a mini-lesson on our attention getting signal, followed by a mini-lesson on "carpet time" procedures, then the actual reading lesson.

I was able to play into my public speaking strengths in a way that I expected and I was able to maintain control of the classroom in a slightly better than expected way. Here are some excerpts of the observational notes given by two of the many people who coach and teach us.
"AMAZING! Are you sure you haven't done this before? You did a very great job for your first time" and "You are a natural! You have a strong command of the classroom and have obviously set your expectations clearly and reinforced with behavior narration."

It was quite a rush to experience my first day of teaching, but honestly, it went about as I expected.

Now the 2nd day was a bit different. First of all, we got 4 new students, which disrupted the classroom and threw me off because I couldn't remember their names. Secondly, the students were much more squirmy and talkative on their 2nd day. Thirdly, my "introduction to new material" part of my lesson plan was bombing and the kids weren't following me. For about 10 minutes, I was panicking. Panicking because I couldn't connect with the students and panicking because I wasn't sure how to respond to the talking.

But I was able to regain control of myself and the classroom. I started giving some behavioral consequences and re-thinking on the fly how to teach the idea of a "connection from the story based upon a character's personality traits." The rest of the time kept getting better. So to stumble out of the shoot, have my boundaries pushed by students, but recover and regain control - that was more satisfying than doing it correctly the entire way.

And one more idea regarding the TFA philosophy; TFA is completely performance driven. They choose people, like myself, who have been proven leaders but likely lack an Education Degree and assume that their leadership skills will translate into student achievement. While we are taught to craft lesson plans in an effective manner, we are evaluated not on how well we deliver the plan but on how well the students perform on the (end-of-lesson, end-of-unit and end-of-year) assessments. So the effectiveness of the teacher is based upon the success of the students.

I know that I'm good at public speaking and teaching. I'm going to have to grow in learning how to gather and interpret student-achievement data and how to make changes to my methods in response to student achievement, or the lack-thereof.

And one other note, on Thursday I was observed by one of the top instructors here at Institute, who has won some sort of national teacher award. My original Thursday lesson plan would've bombed without the help of a staffmember at Institute. As it was, that Thursday lesson and classroom environment were incredible and I was really into it. And that top instructor told me later that I did a great job and she even brought someone else in to observe me later. It was quite affirming.

Why I am in LA

2011-06-28T21:53:00.003-05:00

As I sit at my desk and type this blog post, just outside my window is a beautiful SoCal scene. The light of the setting sun is shining on green palm branches and purple flowers. Kids (most TFA Corps Members are just out of college) are strolling along the campus of Loyola Marymount University. And it is a beautiful college campus. One side of the campus offers a view of Venice beach and the other side offers a view of downtown LA. It is quite stunning.

But I'm a bit homesick. While my body is in beautiful LA, my heart is in muggy Gardner. Watching Erin and Dawson walk away from me at the Kansas City Airport last night was a very difficult thing. I had to spend some time in a stall of the men's room before re-gaining my composure. When Dawson heard the garage door open, he asked Erin, "daddy?" During his sunshine bedtime routine, the first person he wanted to sing about was daddy. When I read about that in a text from my wife, I started crying again. Then my roommate walked in (yes, I'm in college again) and it was a bit awkward. One day down, just four weeks and six days to go.

But why am I volunteering to separate myself from my family? Well, the simple reality is that in our country, where a child is born is most often the determiner as to the level of education they will achieve. To put is as simply as I possibly can, that is not right. As someone called to proclaim gospel, a gospel that is first of all "good news" for the poor, I must do my part to address that injustice. The reality is that some kids, good kids living in Kansas City, simply do not have the same educational opportunities that my wife had or my son will have. For that reason, I'm away from them for awhile, being trained to teach in such a way as to close that achievement gap.

Update
After finishing this blog post, I read the lectionary readings for the day. The theme for the week is "service" and both readings applied to what I wrote above.
Psalm 31 is about strength while serving God, and this is the final verse of that psalm:
"So be strong and courageous, all you who put your hope in the LORD!"

And then there is Luke 16. While it seems that much of North American church culture is about having a good family (a very inward focus), Jesus seemed to call us to something deeper. Not that we shouldn't love and serve our family (Paul was clear that we do), Jesus seemed to believe that a healthy family isn't the reason we follow Jesus. We're a part of such a big mission that personal sacrifices are necessary. Read and be shocked:
"A large crowd was following Jesus. He turned around and said to them, 'If you want to be my disciple, you must hate everyone else by comparison—your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple.27 And if you do not carry your own cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple.'"

Finally, they're working us so hard here that I barely have time to sleep, let alone to blog. I wrote this a few days before it posted. So, I might not be able to blog much, probably only on the weekends.

Dawson's First Royals Game

2011-06-26T07:00:00.000-05:00

I'd always said I wasn't paying to take Dawson to a Royals game until he understood the difference between the Royals and the T-Bones. Well, that's still probably true. But since Erin and Dawson were able to join me and the rest of the TFA KC Corps at the Royals game last night, Dawson got to experience his first ever Royals game. He was able to say something that sounded like "Go Wohyahls."

We walked around the outfield first and were standing there for Alex Gordon's lead-off home run. So the first at-bat of Dawson's first Royals game was a home run. Of course, the Royals tanked after that, meaning Dawson get's to understand that to be a Royals fan means you'll usually be on the losing side. But it was still cool to be in the outfield, just under the fountains, for that home run.

We then used the concessions vouchers that TFA gave us to sit at the park benches and eat some ballpark food. We then walked the entire concourse and up the long stairs to our TFA section. Dawson went straight to the top where he climbed in and out of the seats and ran the aisles. We then spent the rest of the night, until way past his bedtime, walking up and down the stairs, hearing all these young ladies telling Dawson how cute he was and pining for his attention. One TFA Corps Member told Dawson to "call me when you're six."

So maybe this is a glimpse into our future. Going to the K to watch the Royals lose and me watching Dawson respond to girls falling all over him. I guess things could be worse. I could be the father of a nice-looking girl and we could be Cardinals fans...

Draft Day

2011-06-22T06:54:00.005-05:00

During the first few days of our TFA induction, we were told over and over to "be flexible", "plan for the unexpected" and even "your placement might be the exact opposite of what you were expecting." We heard stories from current TFA Corps Members about having their teaching role switched 3 weeks into the school year, or not getting a job until mid-September. We even had a seminar focused solely on how our TFA KC staff was working hard with the KCMO School District but that at, best case scenario, we'd know just before the first day. We were given a list of attitudes to have during this time and told about a placement fund for those who don't get a job in the first month.

The next day, the head of personnel for the KCMO school district opened his session with, "I apologize for the delays, we usually don't know much until mid-August." But then, he was interrupted by a member of his staff, then turned back to us and announced, "well, it seems we've finalized everything, and the principals are here to announce their new teachers and you'll be able to sign your contracts."

The place erupted in cheers. It was quite a moment. Very well done by the KCMO school district.

I found out later that the TFA KC staff didn't know until a few hours before we did that we'd be finding out our jobs that day. The KCMO school district staff worked very intensely to get us all placed so quickly. Our principals didn't even know who they'd be getting until a couple hours before they met us.

So the head of personnel, acting like the NFL commissioner on draft day, brought up each principal, announced that principal's 'picks' (new teachers) and all the new teachers joined their principal on stage; taking a picture as a 'team' and singing their contracts right on the spot. We were even given hats with our school's name, just like the NFL draft. It was a great scene and atmosphere.

Each time one of the combined high school / middle school principals came up, I was listening intently, since my initial placement was middle school social studies. So when my name was called with George Melcher Elementary school, I almost missed it. If this had been a televised draft, the announcer might have said something like, "in a surprise pick, George Melcher Elementary has selected Donnie Miller to teach 5th grade." As I walked up front, signed my contract, donned my hat, then posed for the picture with my new co-workers, I was thinking "elementary, oh my word. What have I gotten myself into?"

I had been thinking that my original placement (older kids, one subject) would be easier and more to my personality. So it was quite surreal to be 'picked' for an elementary school. I enjoy kids of that age, I'm just nervous about the lesson planning involved in teaching every subject. My fifth grade co-worker is also a TFA corps member (there are 7 of us in our building), so it will be helpful to work and plan with her. But while reading the Bible yesterday afternoon, I was reminded of what I would often tell my congregation, "Serving isn't about you. It's not about what you get out of it. We serve for the sake of the God who has called us to serve and the people he has called us to serve." Well, considering that my school has a lot of room for growth and a lot of opportunities to help kids facing some serious challenges, this will be a great place to serve. As usually happens, I'll likely find out that what I assumed about a situation is different from reality, meaning that I may come to realize that 5th grade is exactly what I'm suited for.

But it will also be a great place to learn about teaching. I've heard a lot about some of the great teachers there and how the principal creates a very nurturing and caring atmosphere, while also maintaining high expectations. And, when the time is right, I'll be able to coach at one of the nearby high schools.

I'll be trained at Institute over the next five weeks, then I strap in for the ride of my life.

The Best and the Brightest

2011-06-22T06:36:00.003-05:00

Teach for America claims to recruit America's top college seniors. The time I've spent with them this week has convinced me that it's true. TFA's philosophy is that if people have shown leadership abilities in non-classroom areas, that past experience and inner-drive is what they need to succeed in closing the achievement gap in America's under-resourced schools. The Superintendent of KC, MO schools believes the data supports this claim. So much so that 100% of new teachers the past two years have been TFA corps members and 20% of the teaching force is now TFA. By far, this is the highest percentage of any urban school district.

So in an effort to prepare us for a new leadership role, we've spent time reflecting upon our past leadership roles, including hearing the stories of current TFA teachers. It's interesting to hear "I never failed at anything in college, but my principal told me she was two weeks from firing me." That guy ended the year with the most improved classroom. But here are some of the things I've heard from these leaders; ran track at Wisconsin, rowed for Ohio State, I've been working out with a guy who studied anthropology and swam an Northwestern, president of their sorority, a fraternity president who faced an 80% drop in membership and had to turn it around to keep their mortgage from defaulting, summer research projects at prestigious universities, a young lady who did her student teaching in Germany, founder of a non-profit in Argentina, two people with PhD's, leader of a non-profit in inner-city Houston, a lot of college RA's. I could go on and on with the list. These people have postponed law-school or turned down high-paying jobs for corporate America. And while many of them will later go on to that type of work, TFA believes we need advocates for ed reform in all areas of the country, not just the classroom.

The principal of Troost Elementary told us all that she can't believe the quality of TFA teachers, considering we come through a non-traditional teacher training tract. So TFA's theory seems to work, at least at a higher percentage than the regular teaching force.

While most of them are straight out of college, there are a few with post-college experience and even families. But only three of us in what we call the that 70's club. I've been interesting to some people, "you're that guy who started a church, right?"

Here's the criteria straight off TFA's website. While I did have some leadership experience in college, I got into TFA because of my post-college experience. I never would've been open to the social justice issues addressed by TFA when I was in college, it took seminary and life experience to open my eyes to systemic injustice.

We look for evidence of:

•Demonstrated past leadership and achievement: achieving ambitious, measurable results in academic, professional, extracurricular, or volunteer settings
•Perseverance and sustained focus in the face of challenges Sure learned this in starting and leading a church
•Strong critical thinking skills: making accurate linkages between cause and effect and generating relevant solutions to problems
•Superior organizational ability: planning well, meeting deadlines, and working efficiently
•Respect for individuals’ diverse experiences and effectively working with people from a variety of backgrounds
•Superior interpersonal skills to motivate and lead others
•Thorough understanding of and desire to work relentlessly in pursuit of our vision
Successful teachers are also accomplished leaders. Applicants have historically demonstrated leadership within a broad range of experiences, such as:

•Holding leadership roles on campus and delivering significant results for organizations and research projects
•Excelling as team managers at work, coaches of athletic teams, or directors of community organizations
•Demonstrating success in a variety of career fields, such as business, law, medicine, and education
•Achieving measurable results in professional jobs, military experience, or graduate school

Does bombing Terrorists really accomplish anything?

2011-06-18T14:33:00.003-05:00

I recently read an incredible article discussing whether bombing terrorists ends or perpetuates terrorism. While the article is ten years old, it's still a thought-provoking read.
You can read the article in context here, while I'll paste the content below.

Published as a ZNet Commentary, October 28, 2001, also in The Power of Nonviolence: Writings by Advocates of Peace, Beacon Press, 2003.

To hear those who support the current air assault on Afghanistan tell it, those of us who doubt the likely efficacy of such a campaign, and who question its fundamental morality are not only insufficiently patriotic, but also dangerously naive. Lampooning the left for adhering to such ostensibly simplistic slogans as “violence begets violence,” these self-proclaimed pragmatists insist that sometimes force is necessary, and that in the case of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, little else could possibly serve to diminish the threat of terrorist attack.
It takes me back, all this self-assured confidence in the value of preemptive assault. To 1986 in particular, when a co-worker insisted that although our bombing of Libya had failed to kill Colonel Quadafi, that by killing his daughter we had nonetheless served the cause of peace. After all, said my co-worker, she was destined to become a terrorist someday, so better to kill her before she grew. That others might be able to apply the same logic to Americans — who, after all could grow up to be Oliver North or Elliot Abrams — was lost on her, as she was convinced the world had been made safer that day. Of course, just two years after my colleague insisted that our assault on Libya had made us safer, 259 people in a plane over Lockerbie, Scotland — and eleven more on the ground — learned how dangerously ignorant such faith really was. They, as it turned out, apparently became the victims of actual Libyan terrorists, enraged by the previous U.S. attack on their country.*

All this talk of what’s naive and what’s realistic seems nothing if not bizarre: as if words no longer have their original meanings, or mean the opposite of what one might think.

So to be realistic means to believe that bombing one of the poorest nations on Earth will not only reduce terrorism, but also fail to ignite a new round of anti-American fanaticism. To be naive, on the other hand, is to pay attention to modern history, which tells us that bombing people is rather likely to fuel their anger, resentment, and desire for revenge.

To be realistic is to think that pummeling one nation will have some appreciable effect on al-Qaeda, despite the fact that the group operates in sixty-four countries, including many allies whom we have no intention of bombing. To be naive is to point out that terrorists aren’t reliant on one, or even several countries to operate, and as such, we could eradicate every member of the Taliban tomorrow without delaying by so much as a day any future attacks on our shores.

To be realistic is to say things like “all they respect is force.” To be naive is to point out that the force we have demonstrated over the years by our support for Israel, or bombing and sanctions against Iraq, has apparently led not to something so kind as their respect for us, but rather to their willingness to slaughter as many Americans as possible. If this is how al-Qaeda shows respect, I shudder to think what disdain must look like.

To be realistic is to say, “We tried peace and peace failed.” To be naive is to ask when, exactly, did the U.S. try peace: in the region, or specifically in Afghanistan? Was it when we were selling Stinger missiles to the Mujahadeen, so as to help them fight the Soviets? Or was it after, when we left the nation in ruins, unconcerned about helping rebuild so long as the Russians had fled? Or was it when we cozied up to the Taliban because they promised to crack down on opium cultivation, using the time-honored anti-crime techniques of extremist Islam?

To be realistic is to insist that nations harboring terrorists must be brought to justice. To be naive is to note that a) we aren’t really serious about that–after all, many nations that do so are coalition partners in the war on Afghanistan; and b) by that standard, any number of nations would have the right to attack us.

After all, we have harbored and even taught terrorists and death squad leaders at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. We have harbored known Cuban terrorists in Miami. And we are still refusing to hand over Emanuel Constant to Haitian authorities, even though he has been found guilty in a court of law for involvement in the murder of over 4000 people in the early ’90s coup attempt there.

To be realistic is to believe that the Afghan people will be impressed by our packets of peanut butter and pop-tarts, dropped from airplanes, and that they will thank us, and view us as their beneficent saviors. To be naive is to point out that the food drops, according to relief agencies, are insufficient to meet the need, especially since our bombing has aggravated the refugee crisis to staggering proportions. To be really naive is to note that to even get the food, Afghans would have to traipse across minefields, and might be blown to bits before they can even reach our humanitarian goodies. To be naive to the point of disloyalty, would, I suppose, be to ask whether or not American soldiers in Pearl Harbor would have felt better about the bombing of December 7, 1941, had the Japanese pilots made a second run to drop sushi and edamame.

Perhaps it’s just me. But something seems dangerously Alice in Wonderland when Clinton Advisor Dick Morris can say on national television that we should declare war on Afghanistan, then Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and Colombia — and not be viewed as a paragon of mental illness — but Quakers and pacifists are derided as uninformed boobs.

And yet I have no doubt that many of these American warlords will attend Martin Luther King Jr. day celebrations come January, and sing the praises of a man who would have condemned them roundly for their current course of action. And they will continue to go to church — those who call themselves Christians — and sing praises to someone whose teachings run completely counter to everything they are now doing.

But hey: King, Gandhi, Jesus: what did they know? Dreamers all of them: naive, simplistic, and not nearly as informed or clear-headed as Donald Rumsfeld, or Stephen Ambrose, or Tom Clancy, or White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

Even more disturbing than the uniformity with which conservatives have labeled dissenters un-American and unrealistic (which at least is to be expected), is the rapidity with which so-called progressives have accepted the need for, and ultimate propriety of war.

Richard Falk — a longtime international peace expert — has called Operation Enduring Freedom, “the first truly just war since World War II.” This, despite the fact that by the standards he himself has laid out for a just war, the bombing of Afghanistan — and the refugee crisis alone that it has sparked — completely fails the test of justice.

Or Nation contributor, Marc Cooper, who suggests that antiwar protesters suffer from self-hate, and who accuses us of claiming that the U.S. invited the attack, merely because we point out that certain of our policies might have something to do with the motivation for flying 757s into buildings. The difference between explanation and excuse apparently having escaped him, and the good counsel of a Thesaurus that might explain the difference apparently being out of his reach, Cooper insists that the left should embrace limited military action (the substance of which he leaves undefined) as a “moral imperative.”

Perhaps most perplexing is the stance taken by Eleanor Smeal, of the Fund for the Feminist Majority. Recently she testified to Congress about Afghanistan, not to plead for an end to the macho militarism currently underway, which is likely to accelerate the starvation of thousands of women and girls there, but merely to suggest that the women of Afghanistan not be forgotten in any reconstruction government. Not only does she appear to support the overthrow of the Taliban by the same U.S. government that funded it and cared not a whit for the women there until six weeks ago, but she also seems to trust that patriarchy can be pounded into rubble by exploding phallic symbols, dropped and fired by guys whose view of feminism is probably not much better than Mullah Omar’s. To suggest there is any way to reconcile this war with feminism or the interests of women generally strains credulity, especially given the propensity for gang rape so well developed among our new “contras,” the Northern Alliance. Talk about irony.

Again, maybe it’s just me. Or maybe it’s 1984, and War Is Peace, and Slavery Is Freedom, and Ignorance Is Strength. Or maybe all that is just bullshit, being served up on a silver platter, while the servers tell us it’s Goose Liver Pate. It reminds me of something my Grandma once said: “You can call your ass a turkey, but that doesn’t make it Thanksgiving.” Likewise, you can call your war just, and the rest of us naive, but that won’t make it so.

*Although a Libyan was convicted for the bombing of the Pan Am flight over Scotland, and Libyan involvement has long been the accepted wisdom regarding this incident, there is another school of thought worth mentioning. It too would follow the logic of a revenge bombing and would make the point of this author’s paragraph just the same. There are many who believe that the terrorists responsible for the Pan Am bombing were not Libyans, but rather Iranians, retaliating for the unprovoked shooting down of a civilian Iranian airbus by a U.S. Naval vessel earlier that same year (1988). As with the 1986 bombing of Libya, in the aftermath of this incident, I heard many people say it was probably for the best, because that would mean a few hundred less anti-American “fanatics” and potential terrorists down the line. George Bush Sr. — a presidential candidate at the time — remarked: “I will never apologize for the United States of America. I don’t care what the facts are.”

You can check out Tim Wise's blog here.
And for a similar article, check out Playing the WWII card; nostolgia and the war on terrorism

Being in the Minority

2011-06-18T04:45:00.000-05:00

Although books like Lies My Teacher Told Me have opened my eyes to things such as white privilege and the Meritocracy Myth, I've reflected some more on what it would be like to be a minority while reading Diversity, Community and Achievement for my TFA training. But reading and reflecting upon what it would be like to be a minority is a far cry from actually experiencing it. The first item on the "white privilege" list linked above is:
"I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time."

Well, during Erin and my recent trip to Chicago, I got to experience what it was like to be in the minority. While these experiences were short and fairly shallow, they were still effective in getting me out of my comfort zone and forcing me to see the majority culture through the eyes of a minority.

The first experience was on Sunday night, when we were finishing our tour of Chicago festivals. We started with the Blues Festival, moved on to the Rib Festival and then ended the Sommarfest. While walking from the bus stop to the festival, I pointed out two girls holding hands, telling Erin, "that's not something you see that often." As we walked into the blocked off area of the block party, I suddenly saw a lot of girls holding hands, guys, too. My first observation was the lack of pretense and posturing that was evident at the more main-stream Rib Festival. But that thought was quickly replaced by, "Erin and I are some of the few straight people walking around here." Walking around the festival, I spent some time wondering how these gay and lesbian couples feel when at large social gatherings in which they are in the minority.

The next morning, we took the L out to the Chicago Conservatory. It was a neat place to explore, Erin was impressed with the replicated Giverny garden of Monet and the lushness of the Fern Room. After touring the Conservatory, we hopped back on the L and headed west, deeper into the city and further away from the downtown loop. After about one L stop, I realized we were the only white people on the train. When we got off at our stop, while walking to a bus stop that would take us north toward the Cornipcus Theatre, we were surrounded by the usual business of a Chicago street, but unlike other times, we were the only white people on the street. For the next couple of miles, we saw a lot of people; people getting in and off the bus and people walking along the street, but only two other white people. It was one of the few times in my life in which I've been in a large group of people and been a small minority. Some of the thoughts that kept running through my head were "what is everyone else thinking about this white couple" and "what would it be like if being in the minority was a daily experience?" It was an eye-opening experience.

And suddenly, after crossing a street, we were in the majority and non-whites were again in the minority. I assume that the reasons for this type of neighborhood segregation in Chicago are similar to the reasons for the segregation in Kansas City, but the switch was almost instant. And I wondered what it must be like to know that there are certain neighborhoods in which you're not welcome, simply because of your race.

The neighborhood we were going to visit was the Polish area of Chicago. According to the guy who ran the Coperican Theatre, Chicago has the largest concentration of Polish people outside of Warsaw. This guy, who sounded kind of like a Superfan, recommended a tiny little Polish restaurant for fulfilling our desire for authentic Polish food.

The restaurant hadn't changed in years and the food was incredible. Erin had some chicken dumplings and I had an incredible polish sausage with some sweet sauerkraut. The eye-opening part of this event was that our waitress, an older lady who both took our order and prepared our food, kept talking to us in Polish. She was explaining the dishes and asking what else we wanted, but our Polish is, well, not too polished. She seemed to be a bit impatient with us, having an air of "this is a Polish restaurant, why can't you speak our language." In response to, yet again, being in the minority, I wondered what it would be like to be on the other end of the bumper sticker that read Welcome to America, Now Speak English.

Tony Campolo likes to say that the point of Democracy is not to let the majority rule, but to protect the minority. It seems to me, however that that isn't often the case. Sometimes because the majority wants to protect their priveleged status, but usually simply because good-hearted people simply are unaware of the advantages of being in the majority and the disadvantages of being in the minority.

My Last Day at FedEx

2011-06-17T17:25:00.002-05:00

Well, just a little over a year after I wrote this downer of a blog post, I have completed my last day at FedEx. While FedEx is a great company and they have offer a higher earnings capacity than my new career of teaching, and possibly my old career of pastoring, it's just not what I want to do with my life. Clocking in and out to deliver packages is a fine way to earn a living, but it's not for me.

So today was the last day. And while I'm nervous about my new career, going to be living off savings for a couple months while I train with TFA and stepping out into the unknown, I'm glad to be moving on to something different. While I felt like a bit of a failure, returning to the place I left 6 years ago, overall it was a good experience. FedEx was certainly a wonderful opportunity that God provided for my family's financial health, a pretty miraculous one, really. Read about it here.

But to top it all off, the guy who worked next to me during the morning sort, bought me a cake with "Good Luck" written on it. It was a really, really nice gesture. And since I didn't actually get a similar send-off during my last "last day", it was quite appreciated. My (former) coworker joked, "for your next last day, we'll throw you a cook-out."

Another Kindgom Conversion

2011-06-07T13:05:00.003-05:00

It's one thing to hold some intellectual beliefs about Jesus. A lot of people believe he's the Son of God and died for their sins. It's another thing to understand and live into the Kingdom he taught about and came to establish. For me, one of the most important conversion events was in reading Greg Boyd's book The Myth of a Christian Nation. Since reading that book, I've share it with about a dozen people, but offered it to many more.

I just shared the book with a good friend, who after finishing it, sent me this email:
Donnie,

Man, what a challenging book Myth of a Christian Nation is turning out to be. Can't judge a book by it's cover. I really thought it would just be bashing on America. For me it is just highlighting how black and white the differences between the kingdom of the world and the kingdom of God really are! And what a blessing. It takes over 100 pages for an open minded educated person to really have it sink in. I know we make our worldly lives complex, but when we look at Jesus, it really is very simple. Which just goes to show how good a trick the devil has played.

Thanks for suggesting it. I don't know what God has in store for me, but I know I want to fight for His kingdom! Keep up the good and non-violent fight!

And since we're talking about Greg Boyd, I'm going to share the contents of a recent blog post of his, which you can read in context here.

Hope you all had a happy Memorial Day. (Isn’t that something of a misnomer — a happy time remembering people killed in war?)

Memorial Day honestly leaves me conflicted.

On the one hand, I am very happy I live in a country where I’m free to engage in my own “pursuit of happiness” (as in “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”). I also appreciate the fact that I live in a country where the governed people get to choose (to some degree) who governs them. For all its flaws, I think democracy is better (though not more scriptural) than dictatorship. And I can’t help but appreciate the young men and women who have laid down their lives to protect this way of life. I benefit from their sacrifice, so it seems appropriate to remember them.

On the other hand, my Lord’s words and example have taught me that it’s better to love your enemy, do good to them, pray for them, and bless them than it is to ever kill them. I’ve been taught to never retaliate but to always return evil with good. I’ve been taught that violence is cyclical, and that if you live by the sword you’ll die by the sword. By submitting myself to this teaching, I’ve come to actually see its wisdom and beauty. I’ve come to see the taking of human life as demonically arrogant – demonic, because it expresses hopelessness in another, which is the opposite of love (I Cor. 13:7), and arrogant, because only the giver of life can justifiably take it.

To be honest, I’ve now come to see war as sheer insanity, and every fiber of my being revolts against it. I’ve gotten to the point where I’d rather die than participate in any of this, for any reason. And I grieve for all who do participate in it, for any reason. The fact that I personally benefit from some of the killing, because some of the killing is (at least is theory) supposed to protect the “American way of life,” doesn’t alter this assessment. Jesus is my Lord, not the American way of life. My allegiance is to the Kingdom of God. (And, in any case, as a white person I continue to “benefit” from the often barbaric and dishonest conquest of my ancestors over the American Indians and the enslavement of blacks — but this doesn’t mean I should approve of it).

I know some readers will immediately wonder, “But what about Hitler? This sort of thinking would let evil take over the world,” etc. Some may in fact experience outrage at my (Jesus’) suggestion that violence is never appropriate for Kingdom people. Some may see it as positively un-American and cowardly! In response, I’ll simply say six brief things:

1) I totally understand and even empathize with the objection, and the outrage. But Jesus’ way of life is SUPPOSED TO BE scandalous to the world. The earliest Christians refused to fight in wars to defend the Roman empire and refused to pledge allegiance to the Roman empire. And this was one of the reasons they were despised and martyred. I think this is how it’s SUPPOSED to look.

2) To act on the fear of evil taking over by killing one’s enemies rather than doing good to them is to simply say that Jesus was wrong and to reject him as Lord in this area of our life. This is not what a faithful disciple does.

3) We who have committed our lives to Christ are called to be faithful, not practical. Jesus’ choice to die rather than defend himself with violence is our example, and his choice certainly didn’t look practical on Good Friday.

4) The notion that we can “save the world” or “fix the world” through violence is the a lie that has fueled almost every war – and it has never, in the long run, worked. Every attempt to save or fix the world through violence simply ensures that violence will raise its ugly head again in the near future.

5) The idea that we can and must “save the world” or “fix the world” through violence is predicated on a mistrust of God’s providence. Do we believe in the providence of God or not? Whether we obey him when it seems impractical to do so reveals our faith — or our lack of faith.

6) I grant the obvious — that this world is the kind of world where it seems that violence is necessary. Common sense usually sides with the violent. But Kingdom people are called to manifest a different world: a world in which God reigns; a world that reflects the character of the loving savior rather than the vicious roaring lion. No wonder the New Testament tells us we’re supposed to be fools.

So yes, memorial day leaves me conflicted. I want to stand in solidarity with those who have lost loved ones in wars defending the American way of life. I want to respectfully acknowledge the depth of their sacrifice and acknowledge that I personally benefit from their sacrifice. But I also want to revolt against the demonic arrogance of violent-tending tribalism, manifested on all sides of any war, that makes bloody wars seem unavoidable. I want to scream, “There is a much better way to live. It’s the way of Jesus. It’s the way of self-sacrificial love. It’s the way of non-violence.”

God bless the families of our fallen soliders. God bless the families of the soldiers on the other side. God bless the families of the innocent victims caught in the cross fire. And God bless all of us by influencing our leaders to end this war, and every potential future war. Maranatha.

Bubba Starling; Putting Gardner on the Sports-World Map

2011-06-03T22:04:00.017-05:00

It was a beautiful September night and I was doing what I love to do on Friday nights in Gardner, sitting in the stands with Chris Billings, watching the GEHS football game. Gardner was starting their second year under their future Kansas Football hall of fame coach Marvin Diener, when a tall, but skinny QB broke a long TD run. I looked in the program and exclaimed, "that kid's a freakin' freshman." A couple of games later, a guy behind me mentioned, "oh yeah, he can throw a baseball 90 mph, too." To that I responded, "this kid's a freak." But I had no idea just how talented he really was. It's pretty hard to comprehend, really, watching Bubba play football. The best comparison I can think of is that's it's like a college football video game in which a player with artificially inflated talent runs circles around the other players.

Bubba's performance in GEHS's upset loss to Blue Valley (a team they'd beaten by three touchdowns earlier in the year) in the game to play in the State Championship was the most incredible thing I've ever seen. Due to a few unDiener-like mistakes, the Blazers got down by 17 points. Knowing he'd been put in at safety during another game, knocking down a fourth and goal pass to beat fellow state-championship hopeful McPherson HS, I turned to Chris Billings and said, "they need to put in Bubba on every play." Sure enough, the next kickoff GEHS received, it was Bubba standing on the goal line. Next punt return, Bubba was out there. And he got the ball EVERY single play. It didn't matter that everyone knew he was getting the ball, Bubba literally dragged two linebackers to pick up the first down. But the fact that GEHS's receiving core was less than stellar and that the defense was keying on him, Bubba couldn't bring them back by himself. He started cramping but rather than leaving the game, he simply stretched his legs while calling out the cadence from the shotgun. A few plays later, he collapsed on the field and had to be carried off. But the intensity with which that 'freak of nature' played before his body gave up on him was the most amazing thing I've ever seen an athlete do.

I'll admit, it's a bit weird to talk about a high school kid in that way, especially a kid I've never personally met, but I'm not the only one doing so.

Very interesting read. link

Here's the video on Bubba that was on the front page of ESPN.com this evening. For some reason, the embed code isn't working correctly, so here is the link.

And here's the video I took during the 2009 State Championship Game.

Man was it fun watching him play football for these past four years. And it sure has been cool to have ESPN in Gardner on several occassions this past year. Not that my opinion matters, but I view all of sports through my Hawkeye-allegiance. And while I'd love to watch him play for Nebraska in football in the Big Ten, I'd hate to see Bubba's career ended by a Norm Parker blitz. Wait, Norm Parker (Iowa's D-Coordinator) never blitzs. So I'd hate to see Bubba's chance at millions ruined by Iowa's middle linebacker, Zach Morris. Or maybe I'd hate to see him run roughshod over my Hawkeyes...

But I would love to see Bubba play for the Royals - article link.

The Whole Gospel - another article

2011-06-02T16:20:00.000-05:00

In a follow-up to this blog post, I wanted to share an article written by a former NTS classmate of mine, Tim Suttle. You can get Tim's new book, here.

You can read the article here, but I'll post the text of the article below.

Evangelical Christians are committed to something called the gospel. It's central to everything we do. The word gospel itself means "good news," and this good news is all about how Jesus came into this dark and broken world to make a way back to God. Over the past few centuries the evangelical version of the gospel has changed and is now something quite different than ever before. The gospel has become overly individualized and reduced to a way of managing the guilt of our own personal sins. This abridged gospel typically goes something like this: If you admit you are sinful, admit Jesus is God, believe he died for your sins, and ask him into your heart, then you will go to heaven when you die. Although this is preached in most evangelical churches, this gospel is actually not all that faithful to our scriptures or church history. Worst of all, it holds few if any moral or ethical implications for our lives.

Here's the problem as clearly as I can state it. For the past few centuries, individualistic conceptions of the gospel have championed some truly good things, chief among them being the conviction that human beings have the capacity to relate to God -- we can know God and relate to God personally. But an over-emphasis on personal faith has distorted the gospel. The good news has been reduced to a message about how to get into heaven when you die. Individualism has truncated our gospel, and left us blind to the obvious social message of Jesus.

The gospel has a personal dimension which is about how each person relates to God -- and this is a critical piece. It also has a corporate dimension which is about how humanity as a whole relates to God and to each other -- and this is a critical piece as well. The personal and corporate dimensions of the gospel must be held together. In American evangelicalism we have the personal covered, but we are lacking in our corporate understanding of the good news. That we are so lacking, I believe, robs the gospel of its impact on our society because the nexus of the personal and corporate is where all the power lies.

The iconic preacher Billy Graham is a representative of the personal gospel. When he preached, Graham would talk about personal sin -- the brokenness that lives inside all of us keeping us from knowing God and experiencing peace. Graham preached about how Jesus wanted to heal each one of us personally and lead us into a better way of life. Graham preached the gospel of personal salvation night after night to packed houses. And the people would sing the gospel hymn "Just As I Am" over and over.

The equally iconic Martin Luther King Jr. is a representative of the social gospel. When he preached, King would talk about social sin -- the brokenness that lives inside our social systems, keeping us from knowing God and experiencing peace and justice. King would invite people to embrace the kind of faith in Jesus Christ which would fundamentally change our approach to one another. King said Jesus wanted to heal not only each person, but our culture as well. He taught that Jesus wanted to lead us into a better way of life not only as individuals, but as a society. King preached the gospel of social salvation night after night to packed houses. And the people would sing the gospel hymn "We Shall Overcome," over and over.

Billy Graham and Martin Luther King Jr. were both evangelical Christians. They both preached a gospel which was incomplete without the other. Graham's message needs King's message and vice versa. The two messages are inexorably linked like two sides of the same coin. If the gospel doesn't include both the personal and corporate dimension of the Christian faith, then it is something very less that the true gospel -- and it will never change the world. Jesus taught that love toward our fellow human beings -- even our enemies -- is the path to God. This is not some ancillary teaching which can be tacked onto the gospel. This is the gospel he preached. You cannot love God if you do not love your neighbor (1 Jn. 4). This is how we see God. This is how we are blessed. This is how we inherit the earth. As evangelicals we need to recognize God's desire is actually not for a bunch of individuals who have been saved, but for a new community -- a new humanity. From a Christian perspective we will never experience this unless we begin to embrace the corporate nature of the gospel.

Our First Family Vacation

2011-06-01T13:55:00.000-05:00

While it was short in both time (2 nights) and distance (just the other side of Missouri), the trip we took this past Memorial Day Weekend to St. Louis with the Hupe family was our first ever family vacation.

To be honest, I was quite nervous about going on a trip with two toddlers, not sure how they'd respond to the change in routine and whether the potential lack of sleep would make the whole trip quite difficult. Overall, the trip was a great success! The boys entertained each other fairly well, diffusing some of the potential effects of over-stimulation. Overall, Dawson got enough sleep to keep all of us happy. So I didn't spend the weekend battling an over-tired toddler while in my own exhausted haze.

Here's a recap of our weekend along with some pictures.

Saturday
Morning: Drive to Saint Louis
At a rest area along I-70, while walking from me and to Erin, Dawson managed to trip, slip and sit down right in a rather deep mud puddle. While he sat in the mud crying, I was both laughing and decrying our terrible luck. It was some work, but we got him cleaned and into dry clothes. I thought maybe that was a sign of worse things to come, but the rest of the weekend went fairly smoothly.

Afternoon: The boys ran wild, with their parents close behind, at the Magic House. We could've spent days in that place.

Dinner: We had some incredible pizza at Deweys Pizza.

Sunday
Early morning: Though he had slept pretty soundly on one of the beds in our room, Dawson woke me up for good at 3:30 in the morning. At about 5, I jogged through downtown, past the Arch and over the Mississippi and through the quit little suburb of East St. Louis. While I wasn't sure whether I should jog through East St. Louis and I had to cover my mouth to keep out the bugs while crossing the river, overall it was a beautiful and refreshing early morning run.

Morning: We took the boys to Grant's Farm, a much better option for toddlers than the zoo. As you might be able to tell from the picture, Dawson did not enjoy bottle feeding the goats, nor getting swarmed by the eager goats.

Early afternoon: Both boys and both dads took a nap.

Late afternoon: We let the boys get soaked at the City Gardens. That was a good time in a great downtown park.

Dinner: Dawson entertained half the people dining at the Old Spaghetti Factory

Monday
Early morning: No jog this morning as Dawson woke up about 8 times during the night, likely because the crib was too small. After breakfast, we walked over to the Arch.

Morning: As we pulled into the National Transport Museum, the boys broke out into applause at the sight of all the trains. Dawson was in heaven and kept running back and forth through one of the open trains.

Lunch: We went over to the West Loop neighborhood and had some "world famous" sandwiches at Snarf's. The food was pretty good, great college neighborhood.

Afternoon: We drove home, both boys took turns napping then waking the other one up from his nap.

Finally, for the benefit of a certain friend to whom I like to give a lot of crap for being from St. Louis, I must admit I enjoyed my time in the Gateway City. The highlight being that I avoided seeing a Cardinals game and getting murdered, two events that occur quite frequently in St. Louis.

My Return to Madison Elementary

2011-05-31T13:52:00.000-05:00

Two Saturday nights ago, I was relaxing in my living room, thinking about how nice it was going to be to take my wife to dinner in the Power and Light District, then to KC Symphony and to then to get in a nice jog before worship the next morning. Until my good friend, Russ Koelzer, who is the founding pastor of LifeStream Christian Church here in Gardner, called me to see if I could fill in for his sick self the next morning. Since Russ is such a good friend, I was glad to help him out. So I preceded to spend some time that afternoon and the next morning reworking a sermon I'd preached a couple years ago for Trinity Family during Epiphany. The sermon was from Matthew's account of the calling of Peter, Andrew, James and John, the main idea being that Jesus calls and uses the unchosen and unqualified to change the world. It was a powerful message then and I think it made some connections that Sunday, too. As I was about ready to walk in front of the congregation, I thought of how I'd preached that sermon and many others from that same spot in the Madison Elementary Commons. It was a bit of a nostalgic moment for me.

While the content was powerful (mostly because of the research I'd done and a story I told) my delivery wasn't too great, I went WAY too fast. My hyper-speed was likely due to three reasons: 1) I tried to cram too much info into one sermon, as I'd added stuff to the original message 2) I hadn't preached for awhile and was a bit rusty and 3) I was a bit nervous speaking to a group of people I didn't really know. But even though my delivery wasn't too smooth, it was great to be able to preach again.

The ability and calling to preach was one of the things that caused me to be hesitant about leaving traditional pastoral ministry. But after wrestling with and praying about it for long time, I felt God's assurance that he would give me the right opportunities to faithfully live out that particular part of the calling he'd placed on my life. Basically, I had to come to a place of trusting God with the whole preaching thing. And I guess that last Sunday is just one example of future opportunities to use and give the gift of preaching.

"The Root of War is Fear" by Thomas Merton

2011-05-27T21:24:00.000-05:00

The following is a powerful excerpt of Thomas Merton's 1962 essay, "The Root of War is Fear." I first read this article in The Power of Nonviolence but found this abbreviated version here.

The present war crisis is something we have made entirely for and by ourselves. There is in reality not the slightest logical reason for war, and yet the whole world is plunging headlong into frightful destruction, and doing so with the purpose of avoiding war and preserving peace! This is a true war-madness, an illness of the mind and the spirit that is spreading With a furious and subtle contagion all over the world. Of an the countries that are sick, America is perhaps the most grievously afflicted. This is a nation that claims to be fighting for religious truth along with freedom and other values of the spirit. Truly we have entered the "post-Christian era" with a vengeance.

What is the place of the Christian in all this? Is he simply to fold his hands and resign himself to the worst, accepting it as the inescapable will of God and preparing himself to enter heaven with a sigh of relief? Should he open up the Apocalypse and run out into the street to give everyone his idea of what is happening? Or worse still, join in the madness of the war makers, calculating how by a "first strike," the glorious Christian West can eliminate atheistic Communism for an time and usher in the millennium?

What are we to do? The duty of the Christian in this crisis is to strive with all his power and intelligence, with his faith, hope in Christ and love for God and man, to do the one task that God has imposed upon us in the world today. That task is to work for the total abolition of war. There can be no question that unless war is abolished the world will remain constantly in a state of madness and desperation in which, because of the immense destructive power of modern weapons, the danger of catastrophe will be imminent and probably at every moment everywhere. We may never succeed in this campaign but whether we succeed or not the duty is evident. It is the great Christian task of our time. Everything else is secondary, for the survival of the human race itself depends on it. We must at least face this responsibility and do something about it. And the first job of an is to understand the psychological forces at work in ourselves and in society.

At the root of all war is fear, not so much the fear men have of one another as the fear they have of everything. It is not merely that they do not trust one another. They do not even trust themselves.... They cannot trust anything because they have ceased to believe in God.

It is not only our hatred of others that is dangerous but also and above an our hatred of ourselves: particularly that hatred of ourselves which is too deep and too powerful to be consciously faced. For it is this that makes us see our own evil in others and unable to see it in ourselves....

As if this were not enough, we make the situation much worse by artificially intensifying our sense of evil, and by increasing our propensity to feel guilt even for things that are not in themselves wrong. In all these ways, we build up such an obsession with evil, both in ourselves and in others, that we waste all our mental energy trying to account for this evil, to punish it, to exorcise it, or to get rid of it in any way we can.

We drive ourselves mad with our preoccupation and in the end there is no outlet left but violence. We have to destroy something or someone. By that time, we have created for ourselves a suitable enemy, a scapegoat in whom we have invested all the evil in the world. He is the cause of every wrong. He is the fomenter of an conflict. If he can only be destroyed, conflict will cease, evil will be done with, there will be no more war....

In our refusal to accept the partially good intentions of others and work with them (of course prudently and with resignation to the inevitable imperfection of the result) we are unconsciously proclaiming our own malice, our own intolerance, our own lack of realism, our own ethical and political quackery.

Perhaps in the end the first real step toward peace would be a realistic acceptance of the fact that our political deals are perhaps to a great extent illusions and fictions to which we cling, out of motives that are not always perfectly honest: that because of this we prevent ourselves from seeing any good or any practicability in the political ideas of our enemies--which may of course be in many ways even more illusory and dishonest than our own. We will never get anywhere unless we can accept the fact that politics is an inextricable tangle of good and evil motives in which, perhaps, the evil predominate but where one must continue to hope doggedly in what little good can still be found....

I believe the basis for valid political action can only be the recognition that the true solution to our problems is not accessible to any one isolated party or nation but that all must arrive at it by working together....

We must try to accept ourselves whether individually or collectively, not only as perfectly good or perfectly bad, but in our mysterious, unaccountable mixture of good and evil. We have to stand by the modicum of good that is in us without exaggerating it. We have to defend our real rights, because unless we respect our own rights we will certainly not respect the rights of others. But at the same time we have to recognize that we have willfully or otherwise trespassed on the rights of others. We must be able to admit this not only as the result of self-examination, but when it is pointed out unexpectedly, and perhaps not too gently, by somebody else.
These principles that govern personal moral conduct, that make harmony possible in small social units like the family, also apply in the wider areas of the state and in the whole community of nations. It is however quite absurd, in our present situation or in any other, to expect these principles to be universally accepted as the result of moral exhortations. There is very little hope that the world will be run according to them all of a sudden, as a result of some hypothetical change of heart on the part of politicians. It is useless and even laughable to base political thought on the faint hope of a purely contingent and subjective moral illumination in the hearts of the world's leaders. But outside of political thought and action, in the religious sphere, it is not only permissible to hope for such a mysterious consummation, but it is necessary to pray for it. We can and must believe not so much that the mysterious light of God can "convert" the ones who are mostly responsible for the world's peace, but at least that they may, in spite of their obstinacy and their prejudices, be guarded against fatal error....
For only love--which means humility--can exorcise the fear that is at the root of all war .

What is the use of postmarking our mail with the exhortation to 'pray for peace' and then spending billions of dollars on atomic submarines, thermonuclear weapons, and ballistic missles? This, I would think, would certainly be what the New Testament calls 'mocking God' - and mocking Him far more effectively than what the atheists do. The culminating horror of the joke is that we are piling up these weapons to protect ourselves against atheists, who, quite frankly, believe there is no God and are convinced that one has to rely on bombs and missles since nothing else offers any real security. Is it then, because we have so much trust in the power of God that we are intent upon utterly destroying these people before thay can destroy us? Even at the risk of destroying ourselves at the same time?
If men really wanted peace they would sincerely ask God for it and He would give it to them. But why should He give the world a peace it does not really desire? The peace the world pretends to desire is really no peace at all.
To some men peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others peace means the freedom to rob brothers without interruption. To still others it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody, peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and pleasure.
Many men like these have asked God for what they thought was "peace" and wondered why their prayer was not answered. They could not understand that it actually was answered. God left them with what they desired, for their idea of peace was only another form of war....
So instead of loving what you think is peace, love other men and love God above all. And instead of hating the people you think are warmongers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed--but hate these things in yourself not in another.

From Passion for Peace, edited by William H. Shannon, 1995. Permission to reprint is granted by Crossroad Publishing Company.

Interview with the founder of Teach For America

2011-05-21T09:43:00.001-05:00

For those of you who follow my blog but don't know much about TFA, this is for you.
Enjoy.

War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.

2011-05-18T20:57:00.000-05:00

The late Howard Zinn was a WWII vet who made his post-war career as an historian, author and political activist. Zinn stated that he never intended to write books that went against the mainstream thought of American history, but he wasn’t able to keep to himself the uglier, but often- ignored realities of US history that he uncovered during his masters work. While many people call him “unpatriotic,” Zinn claims that his critiques of American society were done with the intent of bettering the nation he loved. While I don’t agree with all of the political conclusions to which he arrived, I do appreciate his bold naming of our nation’s addiction to war.

Zinn’s most popular book, and therefore most hated by those who want to ignore the ugly side of US history, is A People’s History of the United States. Honestly, that book put me in a negative funk, a foul pessimism from which I wasn’t able to recover until reading Rob Bell’s book, Jesus Wants to Save Christians. Bell took a similarly honest approach to US imperialism, while offering a Christ-centered hope that Zinn wasn’t able to offer.

But Zinn’s perspective does offer some hope in his challenge for the US to spend less money on national defense and more money on social programs. While I don’t agree Zinn’s belief that socialism would cure all ills, he does make some good points. And his position as a veteran, historian and voice for our nation’s powerless does put him in a unique position to call our nation to higher standard in relationship to military oppression and fiscal priorities.
With that said, check out Zinn’s quote from the intro to a book I just started, The Power of Nonviolence: Writings by Advocates of Peace from 2002.
“The images on television were heartbreaking. People on fire leaping to their deaths from a hundred stories up. People in panic and fear racing from the scene in clouds of dust and smoke. We thought that there must be thousands of human beings buried alive but soon dead under a mountain of debris. We imagined the terror among the passengers of the hijacked planes as they contemplated the crash, the fire, and the end.

Those scenes horrified and sickened me.

Then our political leaders came on television, and I was horrified and sickened again. They spoke of retaliation, of vengeance, of punishment.

‘We are at war,’ they said. And I thought, they have learned nothing, absolutely nothing, from the history of the twentieth century, from a hundred years of retaliation, vengeance, war, a hundred years of terrorism and counter-terrorism, of violence met with violence in an unending cycle of stupidity.

We can all feel a terrible anger at whoever, in their insane idea that this would help their cause, killed thousands of innocent people. But what do we do with that anger? Do we react with panic, strike out violently and blindly just to show how tough we are? ‘We shall make no distinction,’ the President proclaimed, ‘between terrorists and countries that harbor terrorist.’ We bombed Afghanistan, and inevitably killed innocent people, because it is in the nature of bombing to be indiscriminate, to make ‘no distinction.’ Did we commit terrorist acts in order to ‘send a message’ to terrorists?

We have resonded that way before. It is the old way of thinking, the old way of acting, and it has never worked. Reagan bombed Libya, Bush made war on Iraq, and Clinton bombed Afghanistan and also a pharmaceutical plan in the Sudan, to ‘send a message’ to terrorists. And then comes this horror in New York and Washington. Isn’t it clear by now that sending a message to terrorists through violence doesn’t work, it only leads to more terrorism?

Haven’t we learned anything from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Car bombs planted by Palestinians bring tanks and air attacks by the Israeli government. That has been going on for years. It doesn’t work, and innocent people die on both sides.

Yes, it is an old way of thinking, and we need new ways. We need to think about the resentment felt all over the world by people who have been the victims of American military action. In Vietnam, where we carried out terrorizing bombing attacks, using napalm and cluster bombs, on peasant villages. In Latin America, where we supported dictators and death squads in Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and other countries. In Iraq, where a million people have died as a result of our economic sanctions. And perhaps most important for understanding the current situation, in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza, where three million Palestinians live under a cruel military occupation, while the United States government supplies Israel with high-tech weapons.

We need to imagine that the awful scenes of death and suffering in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania we witnessed on our television screens have been going on in other parts of the world for generations, and only now can we begin to know what people have gone through, often as a result of our policies. We need to understand how some of those people will go beyond quiet anger to acts of terrorism.

We need new ways of thinking. A $300 billion military budget has not given us security. American military bases all over the world, our warships on every ocean, have not given us security. Land mines and a ‘missile defense shield’ will not give us security. We need to rethink our position in the world. We need to stop sending weapons to countries that oppress other people or their own people. We need to be resolute in our decision that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children. War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.

Our security can only come by using our national wealth, not for guns, plans, bombs, but for the health and welfare of our people – for free medical care for everyone, education and housing, guaranteed decent wages, and a clean environment for all. We cannot be secure by limiting our liberties, as some of our political leaders are demanding, but only be expanding them.

We should take our example not from military and political leaders shouting ‘retaliate’ and ‘war’ but from the doctors and nurses and medical students and fireman and policemen who have been saving lives in the midst of mayhem, whose first thoughts are not vengeance but compassion, not violence but healing.”

Great thoughts, but not original with Zinn. It reminds me a lot of a great quote from President Eisenhower, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children…. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. ... Is there no other way the world may live?"

Thankfully, God became flesh in the person of Jesus to model, teach, die and resurrect to show us a better way.

La mort d' Oussama ben Laden (The death of Osama bin Laden)

2011-05-15T01:19:00.017-05:00

I just finished my final composition for my French 300 class at KU. Our professor asked us to do some abstract thinking for this composition, to give our thoughts on the killing of bin Laden. So I shared some of my thoughts and decided to post them here.

I see on my stats, that a few people from France occasionally find their way to my blog, maybe from the posts I've written in French. So if you're a french speaker and have stumbled onto my blog, I apologize for the terrible grammar. I haven't been working on french for very long and each of my composition papers are returned with a bunch of red ink that points out the grammatical errors. Though I am on pace to get a B or an A in the class. And I have to use English quotation marks because the French << >> causes the text between the symbols to disappear, some blogger formatting that I don't understand.
_________________________________________________________

Dimanche soir dernier, ma soeur m’a envoyé un texte qui a lit Regarde la television parce que les États-Unis a fait mourir Osama bin Laden. Aprés avoir entendre cette nouvelle, j’avais de soulagement et des peur. J’avais de soulegement parce que maintenant, il est possible que les États-Unis quitte l’Afghanistan. J’avais peur de le fait que le Taliban encore nous attackions. Je crois que la violence seulement crée plus de la violence.

Bin Laden, ou comme on dit en français Oussama ben Laden est né le 10 mars, 1957. Ben Laden est mort le 2 mai, 2011. Le 6 mai, l’Al Qaeda a admis que ben Laden a fait mourir par les marines des États-Unis.

Il est évident que Osama bin Laden était un mauvais homme. Jusque le dimanche dernier, ben Laden attackait les gens et les bâtiments depuis 1992. Le 29 decembre, il a attacké le hôtel de gold mihor et deux personnes sont mortes. Je repete, il est évident que bin Laden était un mauvais homme. Mais, je crios que les États-Unis auraient dû prendre bin Laden et lui juger. Nous ne sommes pas terrorists. If faut que nous obéissent les règles internationaux.

Chaque année, millierss de personnes font mourir à notre militaire. Bien sûr, chaque des morts sont des accidents, mais les personnes sont meme-morts. Comme Howard Zinn a dit, La guerre est terrorisme se multiplient par un cent.

Je suis Christian, donc je crois de l’importance d’obéir les mots de Jesus. Jesus a dit Aimez tes ennemis. Je ne crios pas qu’il soit l’amour faire mourir tes ennemis. Je pense qu’il n’est pas l’amour bombarder tes ennemis.

Alors, je sait que le government des États-Unis ne doit être ni Christian ni un ature religion. Mais, je pense que nous devons penser à les effets de notres actions militaires.

Quelquefois nous Faison des bonnes choses et quelquefois nous Faison des mauvaises choses. Il faut que nous soient honnête avec nous-mêmes et avec les autres payes.

En fin, la possibilité d’un autre attaque me donne peur. La réalité que la plupart des citoyens americaines pensent que nous sommes justes tous les tmps me donne triste.

What Systemic Sin Looks Like - Part 2

2011-05-13T11:47:00.000-05:00

Here is another example and some more thoughts on the topic introduced in this post.
South LA is historicially black and hispanic. It’s an area that is, at its highest economic level, made up of the poor and working class. The schools are the lowest performing in the state. The Community Coalition of South Los Angeles is a network of charter schools that guarantee that their students will not only graduate, but get into college. The CC works to get their students admitted and to raise the finances necessary to cover the first year of college.

In 2001, the CC ran into a bit of an unsuspected snag with that guarantee. The snag was regarding the school’s saludictorian, Roxanna. The school’s leaders had put off Roxanna’s college application work till the end of the school year, assuming there would be no problem getting the student with the school’s second highest GPA into a college. But they were wrong. As it turned out, Roxanna wasn’t able to apply to even the basic state universities because she was missing a chemistry class required by the collegiate system of California. So the leaders of the Community Coalition began to research this problem.

In their research, they discovered that the main reason black and hispanic kids in CA did not go to college was neither grades nor test scores, but simply because they’re missing one or two required math or science classes. In fact, a higher percentage of black and hispanic students take the SAT’s (meaning they intended to go to college) than their white and asian peers. No matter their test scores, however, these black and hispanic high school graduates are not allowed into state universities because they lack one or two of those required classes.
Further research uncovered an epidemic of low income schools not having enough offerings of these required classes to meet the demand in the schools. There were too many prospective students but not enough teachers. In response to this inequity, the Community Coalition started a campaign to inform the community that their high school students could make all A’s through high school but still not get into college.

The Community Coalition eventually introduced legislation to the school board and state legislature to open up more class offerings in the lower income schools. The response from the state legislature blew the minds of these educational reformers, uncovering a massive prejudice and the presence of systemic evil. In response to the proposed legislation to change class offerings, Liberal and Democratic state senators asked these education reformers, “if these kids all get a college education, who will fix my car when it breaks?” Seriously. Elected officials made those types of statements.
In addition to the pushback from the elected state congress, the Community Coalition also faced opposition from lobbying groups. Who were the lobbyists? The organizations that typically employ low income blacks and hispanics; agricultural, textile, garmet, construction trade lobbyists. After two years of fighting the attitude of “those kids in your neighborhoods have plenty of job options – all these low paying service jobs,” the Community Coalition gave up on the proposed legislation.

They didn’t, however, give up on their proposed equality-creating changes. With the surprising help of a local construction company that realized their employees at least needed basic algebra, they were able to start classes at the local level, helping these low-income students gain access to the college education easily accessible to their high-income peers.

In working to name, unmask and overcome systemic sin and oppression, we must avoid the extremes of the current political debate. If we're too conservative, we'll say "the individual is to blame - the individual must make better choices." If we're too liberal, we'll say, "the individual has no culpability - the individual is a victim of the system and had no individual choice."

Both views have some truth but both views also have a lot of mistruth.

In the New Testament, we see that individuals are culpable, accountable, forgiveable and redeemable. And if we'd simply take off the blinders of our North American individualism, we'd see that in the New Testament that systems are also culpable, accountable, forgiveable and redeemable.

The greek word from which we get the english word "world" is the word "cosmos." Cosmos implies not only the created world but also the systems and powers of the world's governments. Keep that in mind each time you read "world."

John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

Romans 12:2: "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will."

Ephesians 6:12 "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."

James 1:27: "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

James 2:5: "Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?"

Colossians 2:15 "And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross."

Is God to Blame? Beyond Pat Answers to the Problem of Suffering

2011-05-11T20:57:00.000-05:00

I just finished (less than 3 minutes ago) Greg Boyd's book of the same title as this blog post.
So much good stuff in this book, done with Boyd's typical thorough attention to biblical and philosophical detail, that any attempt to summarize would end with me reproducing the entire book. But if I were forced to summarize the book, I'd do so with this statement: "Our all-powerful and all-loving God chose to create a universe in which physical and spiritual beings had the freedom to choose for or against good. While God does seem to occasionally supernaturally override the laws of this universe he created, God's desire that his creation freely choose to love him means that beings will often choose evil, leaving creation to deal with the fall-out of that evil. While God may bring good out of evil, God is not the author of evil."

Just for kicks, here's a quote from chapter 7:
"One of the reasons why we like simplistic answers to difficult questions is that we don't like ambiguity. As Job insightfully saw, much of the abusive theology his friends were hurling at him was motivated by their own fear (Job 6:21). They hated the way Job's suffering called into question their God-in-box theology and they feared that what happened to Job might happen to them. Hence, despite all appearances they insisted that the universe was a fair place, that fortune and misfortune are God's just rewards and punishments, and that Job's suffering must be his own fault.
A central point of the book of Job is to denounce this theology. But this means that the universe is not a fair place. It means that we ultimately can't know why a righteous person like Job suffers. And it therefore means coming to terms with our fear of living in a sea of ambiguity."

People want simple answers because they're afraid of ambiguity. So they will say simple, dumb and hurtful things and hold onto those misguided beliefs. We learned this first-hand during the whole struggle to become parents. If we heard "God has a reason" one more time, we were going to punch the person who dared say it. While the failed attemps at pregnancy and the failed adoptions are almost distant memories compared the joy of being Dawson's mommy and daddy, a wholistic interpretation of scripture reveals that God was not the author, nor the one to blame, for those terrible events. But he is to be praised for bringing an incredible blessing out of those painful events. In choosing to create a world with open possibilities inhabited by free moral agents, God has allowed for the possibility of evil such as infertility while at the same time, bringing good out of even the worst circumstances.

In addition to Boyd's great answer (or attempt to answer to the best of the ability of a smart, but non-omniscient dude) to the question "why do bad things happen," Boyd also gives a great rebuttal to the Calvinistic "blueprint" view of the world and to the unfortunate view of Divine Election that comes from a misinterpretation of Romans 9. You can buy this book cheap on Amazon and it's worth the money just for the last two Calvinist-refuting chapters.

What Systemic Sin Looks Like - Part 1

2011-05-03T20:02:00.002-05:00

In response to this post on The Whole Gospel, I want to give two examples of the systemic (corporate) sin that Jesus gospel overcomes.
The first comes from Kansas City's history. I'm about halfway done with a book entitled Race, Real Estate and Uneven Development: The Kansas City Experience, 1900-2000.

The population of Kansas City, like most Midwestern and northern cities, was racially integrated and centralized up through 1910. The invention of the car lead to the creation of the suburbs, the creation of the suburbs lead to the dividing of the city along racial lines - i.e. - Jews and Blacks were not allowed into the same neighborhoods as whites. Now there was racial tension in these racially mixed neighborhoods, but the neighborhoods were still racially integrated.

From 1915 until 1930, there was a large immigration of black families from southern cities to Midwestern and northern cities. "In many cities, increased competition for housing and consequent racial conflicts including intimidation, harassment, cross burnings and violent race riots... The National Association of Real Estate Boards disseminated and amplified this ideology through its many textbooks, pamphlets, and periodicals that warned real estate firms that racial minorities threatened property values and that neighborhoods should be racially homogeneous to maintain their desirability."

"As housing activist Charles Abrams noted, 'Buyers liked the idea of being accepted into an exclusive neighborhood. To be discriminating, they were told, you must be discriminatory. The dream of the warm fireside, of the security and pride of ownership would be enlarged to include a whole community of neighbors, friendly, similar, socially acceptable, interesting and white.' In essence the production of the FHA and the entire real estate and banking industries after the 1930's. Later, various euphemisms such as 'protecting property values,' maintaining 'security,' 'stability,' or 'integrity' of community space became the dominant language used to reinforce social homogeneity without referring explicitly to race."

Unfortunately, this idea of "protecting property value" through the establishment of racially and economically homogeneous neighborhoods seemed to almost be common sense to me - at least that's what I've always been told. This book explains how developers like JC Nichols and government agencies like Federal Housing Agency as well as real estate firms created, disseminate, perpetuated and cemented that way of thinking.

JC Nichols helped develop the idea of a "housing covenant"; a promise to the builders and residents that no minorities would be allowed to buy a home in the newly developed neighborhood and that if a house was sold to a black person, the individual or company selling that house would face serious consequences. Check out this quote from JC Nichols himself who advertised his subdivisions ad "the most protected and highest class region in or near Kansas City" and his property deeds always warned prospective buyers that "none of the lots hereby restricted may be convened to, used, owned, nor occupied by negroes as owners or tenants." This was of thinking worked, as the stats given in this book reveal. I'm not exaggerating when I say that less than a handful of black families (2 families in Prairie Village) could be found living in the new Johnson County suburbs.

I now flinch whenever I see a JC Nichols sign around town.

Eventually, the laws supporting these housing covenants were declared unconstitutional at the federal level. There are examples, however, of these covenants still being enforced in KC in the late 60's, 20 years after federal courts ruled against them.

After the repeal of these housing covenants, however other methods for keeping the black people in the ever-deteriorating city arose. The FHA developed new mortgage laws allowing for a smaller down payment for first-time home buyers, yet records show that blacks rarely were approved for FHA loans. "As a result, the agency's mortgage insurance system and home ownership subsidies established a racially dual home financing system market by refusing to insure mortgages in areas not covered with a racially restrictive covenant, thus denying mortgages to Black families, and channeling capital into suburban housing construction."

Occasionally, black people were able to push through the lines of racial demarcation (ie. 27th St for several decades), ignore the threats and move into the nicer white neighborhoods. But the real estate agency had methods for fighting back and reestablishing the white status-quo. Real Estate appraisers, a practice still largely unregulated, would drop the appraisal value of houses in racially mixed neighborhoods, prompting the decay of these neighborhoods and the commencement of "white flight." To quote the book, "Once the real estate industry encoded racial discrimination into the structure and operation of the FHA, the racialization of metropolitan space was set in motion."

The all-black neighborhoods suffered from the withdrawal of resources such as jobs, rising equity for homeowners and quality schools. As the neighborhoods deteriorated, the white powers-that-be as well along with the average white homeowner patted themselves on the back for the foresight to protect their slice of the "American Dream" and continued to expand the gap between the majority of whites and the majority of blacks.

I'm only halfway through the book, but I've just started a chapter on the redevelopment of slum areas and the fighting of "urban blight." A process of reinvesting in the city and pushing poor families even further to the margins, a process that would eventually come to be known as "gentrification."

This exaclty the type of systemic sin we see being addressed often in Luke's Gospel. Mary fired the first shot in her Magnificat from Luke Chapter 2:
46 Mary responded,

"Oh, how my soul praises the Lord.

47 How my spirit rejoices in God my Savior!

48 For he took notice of his lowly servant girl,

and from now on all generations will call me blessed.

49 For the Mighty One is holy,

and he has done great things for me.

50 He shows mercy from generation to generation

to all who fear him.

51 His mighty arm has done tremendous things!

He has scattered the proud and haughty ones.

52 He has brought down princes from their thrones

and exalted the humble.

53 He has filled the hungry with good things

and sent the rich away with empty hands.

Jesus followed it up with the commencement of his public ministry at his hometown synagogue, in quoting the Prophet Isaiah:

16 When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures.17 The scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where this was written:
18 "The Spirit of the LORD is upon me,

for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released,

that the blind will see,

that the oppressed will be set free,

19 and that the time of the LORD's favor has come.*"

20 He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down. All eyes in the synagogue looked at him intently.21 Then he began to speak to them. "The Scripture you've just heard has been fulfilled this very day!"

Not surprisingly, there was an attempt on Jesus' life immediately after his reading from Isaiah. But no matter the pressure we face from those trying to hold onto their power and privilege through the perpetuation of the status-quo, we must honor Jesus by working on behalf of the poor. Not just charity, but system-changing work.

An important part of the gospel is working to overturn systemic sin and oppression.

For part two of this discussion of systemic sin, click here.

My thoughts on Osama's killing and our nation's response

2011-05-02T16:28:00.002-05:00

Actually, I think the thoughts of Walter Wink are best suited to this event and to our nation's reaction.

And check out David Brush's post.

The quote below if from Engaging the Powers.

"Violence is the ethos of our times. It is the spirituality of the modern world. It has been accorded the status of a religion, demanding from its devotees an absolute obedience to death. Its followers are not aware, however, that the devotion they pay to violence is a form of religious piety. Violence is so successful as a myth precisely because it does not seem to be mythic in the least. Violence simply appears to be the nature of things. It is what works. It is inevitable, the last, and often, the first resort in conflicts. It is embraced with equal alacrity by people on the left and on the right, by religious liberals as well as religious conservatives. The threat of violence, it is believed, is alone able to deter aggressors. It secured us forty-five years of a balance of terror. We learned to trust the Bomb to grant us peace.
The roots of this devotion to violence are deep, and we will be well rewarded if we trace them to their source. When we do, we will discover that the religion of Babylon – one of the world’s oldest, continuously surviving religions – is thriving as never before in every sector of contemporary American life, even in our synagogues and churches. It, and not Christianity, is the real religion of America. I will suggest that this myth of redemptive violence undergirds American popular culture, civil religion, nationalism, and foreign policy, and that it lies coiled like an ancient serpent at the root of the system of domination that has characterized human existence since well before Babylon ruled supreme. In order for us to get our bearings, however, we have to go back to the mythic source."

To continue reading this chapter, click here and start reading on page 12. But I'm not sure how many pages you'll get to read, though. Believe me, this book is worth the purchase, one of the best books I've ever read. I had a "red pill/ blue pill" type of mind change when reading this book. And it's what eventually lead my down the "rabbit hole" taking me into teaching in the inner-city.

My review of Rob Bell's new book "Love Wins"

2011-04-22T13:11:00.001-05:00

Following the pattern occurring all throughout the inter webs, I'm doing my own review of Rob Bell's new book Love Wins.

Forget any discussion of theology or biblical interpretation, I want to share the most awe-inspiring observation that Rob made in his entire book. It comes from page 145 of the chapter entitled, "There are Rocks Everywhere."

"Why does my lawn have brown patches where I can't get the grass to grow, while five feet away grass grows through the cracks in the concrete in the driveway, grass much like the grass I wish would grow in those brown patches?"

Folks, it's for that kind of thoughtful viewing of the world around us that I read Rob Bell's books and subscribe to his podcasts .

Of course, if you'd like a more serious review, you can read the reviews done by Zach Pogemiller and Greg Boyd.

And here's a review from the president of Fuller Theological Seminary.

Finally, for those of you reading this blog post that think Rob Bell falls somewhere outside the teachings of orthodox Christianity, well you need do know that there is a call waiting for you - a call on line one of the clue phone! :)

Shane Claiborne's Letter to the IRS

2011-04-20T06:36:00.001-05:00

Check this out.
And to read the entire blog post, click here.

Dear Internal Revenue Service,

I am filing my 1040 here. As you will see, I made $9600 this past year, and found that according to the 1040 form, I owe $324.44 of that to federal taxes. While I am glad to contribute money to the common good and towards things that promote life and dignity, especially for the poor and most vulnerable people among us, I am deeply concerned that 30 percent of the federal budget goes towards military spending, with 117 billion going to support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. (Further, when we include the 18% that goes towards past military costs, such as the 380 billion in debt payments, 80% of which are military related debts, that number goes up to a total military budget of 1,372 billion dollars — nearly half of the federal budget). My Christian faith and my human conscience require me to respectfully reserve the right not to kill, and to refrain from contributing money towards weapons and the military.

For this reason, I am enclosing a check for $227.11, which is, according to the form, 70% of what I owe. The remaining $97.33 represents 30% of my tax payment, the amount that would go towards military spending. I will donate this remaining 30% to a recognized US nonprofit organization working to bring peace and reconciliation. My faith also compels me to submit to the governing authorities, which is why I am writing you respectfully and transparently here. I am glad to discuss this further if you have any questions. I can be reached by phone at 215 423-3598 or by mail at 1838 E. Allegheny Avenue Philadelphia, PA 19134.

May we continue to build the world we dream of.

–Shane Claiborne

All of the Gospel

2011-04-19T05:54:00.002-05:00

If you grew up in an evangelical church, like I did, you often heard the phrase, "I presented the gospel." What the person meant in saying that is, "I explained to the person that Jesus died for their sins on the cross and that if they repented of those sins and gave their life to Jesus, they would be forgiven and spend eternity with Jesus in heaven."

"I presented the gospel."

And that is Gospel. At least part of the gospel.

Before I go on, I need to define the word gospel. It comes from a Greek word that means "good news." It was originally a military / empire term. Representatives of the Roman government would go from town to town across the empire, proclaiming the good news of the current Roman Emperor's victory over their enemy. A preacher would preach the gospel of Julius Caesar.

As they often did, the early church borrowed from the culture around them to explain the message of Jesus. Jesus' life, death and resurrection was given the title gospel - good news of Jesus' victory over all that opposes God. Gospel means Jesus has conquered sin, death, hell, the devil, the grave - you name it.

So for evangelicals to proclaim the gospel of Jesus' victory over our personal sin and physical death, they are proclaiming gospel. Most evangelicals however, don't believe that we can be set free from sin in this life - that we must keep sinning until the next life. Wesleyan evangelicals however, proclaim a gospel of Jesus' victory over sin in this life. Often Wesleyan churches call this the full gospel.

But when our proclamation of gospel is only about the defeating of personal sin and our own resurrection, we're not proclaiming the entire gospel. In a nutshell, evangelicalism got caught up in the individualism of the American culture, reducing it's gospel proclamation to having my own sins forgiven and getting my own butt out of hell.

But sin is more than personal and Jesus' gospel is a story of victory over more than personal sin and our personal grave. It's also about victory over systemic sin, institutionalized injustice and evil. The type of sinful oppression often called out by the Old Testament prophets. They type of systemic sin that keeps the privileged wealthy and the underprivileged poor.

And a biblical view of heaven is not just about the next life. In fact, when the word "heaven" is used in the gospels, it isn't referring to the next life at all - it's referring to life right now, on this earth, in our present life. Not the "sweet bye and bye" nor the future glory to which we'll all "fly away." The word "heaven" was referring to the reign of God. Jesus came to establish that reign. Not in the distant future, but right now.

There is a day coming, Jesus and the Old Testament prophets called it The Day of the Lord when Heaven will have complete reign. Evil will come to an end and all of God's desires for this world will become a reality. Pastor John in Revelation 21 gives us a picture of Jerusalem coming down and the creation of a new heaven and a new earth.

But our role as followers of Jesus is to proclaim the gospel - right now. To work to help people realize that God's will for the world can start becoming a reality now. That all the powers of sin that both mess up our lives and destroy entire groups of people were defeated on the cross and can be overcome by those living out gospel.

And while this gospel is about the reality that we can be set free from personal sin and that we have a resurrection to which we can look forward. Another huge part of the gospel is that the poor no longer have to stay poor. That God's will for this world is that the powerful and privileged care for the weak and voiceless. Gospel says that all of God's creation can be taken care of in this life. Jesus' victory on the cross has set us free from the need to be concerned only with ourselves, to keep our wealth to ourselves and to continue to prop up an unjust system that guarantees that that haves continue to be the haves on the backs of the have-nots. Gospel says that there don't have to be any more haves and have nots. Through a Holy Spirit empowered, Resurrection reality - the haves make room for the have nots.
The gospel is good news for the poor. For the outsiders. For the have nots.

And that victory over systemic sin is just as much gospel as the forgiveness of personal sin.

But don't take my word for it, listen to Jesus' first public speech in the gospel of Luke, the 4th chapter.
14 Then Jesus returned to Galilee, filled with the Holy Spirit's power. Reports about him spread quickly through the whole region.15 He taught regularly in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

16 When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures.17 The scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where this was written:
18 "The Spirit of the LORD is upon me,
for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released,
that the blind will see,
that the oppressed will be set free,
19 and that the time of the LORD's favor has come.*"
20 He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down. All eyes in the synagogue looked at him intently.21 Then he began to speak to them. "The Scripture you've just heard has been fulfilled this very day!"

But the haves didn't like this talk of the have nots having equal access to God and to justice, so they tried to do to Jesus what they did to the Prophets centuries before - kill him. And the heaven that Jesus came to establish has continued to be pushed back and rejected by those who felt threatened by the upside-down nature of the Kingdom of God. Those who had the most to lose didn't feel comfortable knowing that the gospel of Jesus was good news for the poor.

This summer, I'll begin my training to help bring in a little more heaven (through the education that will help them succeed) to some have not children deeply loved by Jesus but spurned by a sinful system.

And even in moving from a pulpit to a blackboard, I'll still be living out the calling I was given as a 15 year old kid. A calling to preach the gospel, especially to those who have never heard it.

And for a little more reading, check out this post http://www.redletterchristians.org/10-more-reasons-the-gospel-thats-good-news-for-the-poor-is-good-news-for-the-rich/

Waiting For Superman

2011-04-18T05:46:00.001-05:00

I just finished watching an incredible documentary on the public school system in our nation; what is wrong and how we can fix it. It was quite inspiring, to say the least. And yet one more confirmation for this new path I'm taking.
You can check out the website here, http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/action/
While the people in this organization don't claime to have all the answers, their motivating philosophy is summed up in a line from that documentary: "We know what works - great teachers. And we know what doesn't work - bad teachers."
That is, of course, the same philosophy guiding Teach for America.

When I logged into my TFA website today, I watched a highlight video from their recent 20th anniversary celebration. And to my excitement, though not really to my surprise, I saw in the highlight video several of the same leaders prominent in "Waiting for Superman."

20th Anniversary Highlight Video from TFA 20th Anniversary Summit on Vimeo.

What you've just watched is what I'm about to be joining!

A New Calling - teaching in the inner city

2011-04-15T13:07:00.002-05:00

Two years.

I've spent two years thinking and praying about this.

Two years asking God, "is this really where you want me to go? This seems like the right path. If not, please, please stop me."

Not only did God not stop me, but with my job offer to teach through Teach For America, He pretty much laied it all out for me. More on that in a future post

About two years ago, several different strands began to come together. The first was my desire to do ministry in a non-traditional setting. Some missional writer whose name I can't recall wrote (Although this seems like something Reggie McNeal would say) wrote in a place which I can't remember something along these lines, "pastors of the future need to find a profession beyond regular pastoral ministry."

When asking myself what I'd like for that other career to be, I thought back to my days in college when I'd joke with some friends preparing to teach and coach, "if I wasn't called to preach, I'd be doing exactly what you're doing." I'd always said that teaching and coaching would be my second choice, if God was okay with it. Well, now with my new teaching job and my possible role at Indian Creek Gardner, I might be able to do both - though those details still need to be worked out. That strand had lain dormant for awhile but came back to life after reading that quote and through my coaching experience in 2007.

My 2007 coaching experience was wonderful. I'd forgotten how much I'd missed football until being back on a practice field and listening to the pop of shoulder pads. I took an immediate liking to the sound of being called, "coach." It was such a great experience that I almost cried when leading the team onto the field for our first game. As the head 7th grade JV coach, I was able to touch the lives of some kids while also helping them to improve and even win some games. Due to how well the kids responded to my coaching and the feedback from the school's administration, I assumed I'd be rehired that next fall. But the head coach, a former college teammate of mine, was required to give hiring priority to a teacher over me. A conversation with a friend in the District's administrative department, however, inspired me to seek out educational certification. That search lead to Rockhurst University, where I've been accepted into their Masters of Education program. Coincidentally, Rockhurst is one of the KC partners with TFA.

Another strand in this new calling is my growing desire to serve the people Jesus' modeled and taught us to serve, "the least of these."
To summarize this, here's a part of my initial letter of intent from my TFA application:

I grew up on an Iowa hog farm; far removed both culturally and economically from the under-resourced school districts of America’s inner cities. It was during my graduate studies at Nazarene Theological Seminary that I became aware of the systemic injustices existing in our nation. While studying the Old Testament Prophets I realized that governments and institutions can be just as guilty as individuals in committing acts of oppression against the more vulnerable groups and individuals of society. I came to understand that while the destructive choice of an individual is one cause of poverty, systemic oppression is another. This was a big change of perspective for a conservative, Iowa farm kid.

This change of perspective has come from some reading I've been doing over the past few years. Here's who this strand turned into a calling to serve the inner city.
- In 2008, I read Jesus for President (all these books are linked on the side of this webpage) by Shane Claiborne. One line in particular has stuck with me, Claiborne's challenge to go into the places that the Empire has forgotten. In our Empire, that's the inner-city.
- In reading Lies My Teacher Told Me, I learned how our nation's educational system is set up to help affluent students succeed while poor students are robbed of those resources while at the same time being told the reason for their failure is their own lack of a work ethic. Our educational system teaches some kids that they're worthwhile and other kids that they're worthless, then backs up that teaching through the inequal distribution of educational funds.
- Last summer I read Savage Inequalities. That book stocked the fires of righteous indignation first set ablaze by Shane Claiborne. One line idea from that book sticks with me (and I paraphrase), "Of course some people will be generals while others will be soldiers, but we can't continue to designate some people as those with the chance to be generals while others are given only the option of being soldiers due simply to the economic status into which they were born."
- In January I read Generous Justice by Tim Keller. Post 1 Post 2 That book provided a good biblical foundation for this new calling to teach in the inner city. Keller reminded me of what I already knew, Jesus spent time with the poor and those ignored by the rest of society and then he expected that his followers would do the same.
Finally, Crazy Love challenged me to be willing to give up everything to serve the poor. At that time, I made a commitment to invest all that we'd saved into the Masters of Education program at Rockhurst in order to get a teaching job in an inner city school. With TFA, that process has gotten less expensive and much quicker. But I needed to be challenged the way Francis Chan challenged me.

During my TFA interview, my interviewer asked me, "Am I sensing a strain of social justice in your desire to work with TFA." I laughed out loud then explained everything I wrote above.

Finally, the TFA strand. You can read about Teach For America here. Basically, this organization is all of the above strands come together. Their motto is, "that one day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education." TFA selects and trains proven leaders and put them in under resourced school districts, which also giving their teachers money for their educational degree. I had heard bits and pieces about TFA before, but until the episode of The Office "IT Guy" walked away from his job saying, "I'm going to each computers for TFA, " I hadn't actually researched the organization. When I went to their website, I realized "this is it." And as I explained in this post, it was quite a coincidence the way it all came together. And my next post will be some even more non-coincidental coincidences that lead to this new position and new form of ministry.

When I was called to preach at the Iowa District Church of the Nazarene teen camp in June of 1994, I was given the distinct calling to preach the gospel, particularly to those who had never heard it before. And while this new endeavor feels a bit like a new calling, I think it's actually just a new take on the same calling. My methods will certainly change but the calling to proclaim (or "preach") the good news (i.e. gospel) that my life is still guiding my life.

Teach for America

2011-04-15T11:19:00.001-05:00

Sitting in the interview room on KU's campus on a snowy March Monday, tears almost came from my eyes as I was hearing the news from the Teach For America recruiter. She told our group that in January, the Superintendent of the KC, MO schools had approached TFA with a request to increase the number of TFA corps members teaching in the school district from 50 to almost 200. I honestly couldn't believe what I was hearing. That same January, I felt a 'nudge' to check out an online informational seminar from TFA regarding their application process. While chatting with a TFA recruiter during that seminar and explaining to him my leadership background, he encouraged me to not wait to apply next fall for the 2012 school year (as I'd originally planned) but to go ahead and apply this spring, for the 2011 school year. This recruiter thought I had the leadership background necessary to get accepted into TFA.

This was interesting news and quite an encouragement. I had been thinking that 1) I had very little chance of getting accepted into TFA, due to the 48,000 applications they received this year and 2) My educational background didn't qualify me for any secondary content level, so I needed to finish my French work before applying. As it turns out, I'm already close to being qualified to teach Social Studies. But due to this recruiter's encouragement and in response to a 'nudge' to participate in this informational seminary, I submitted my application. I had also been thinking that 3) Even if I got into TFA, the odds of me being assigned to a KC, MO classroom were pretty slim.

Almost two months later, sitting in that KU classroom, I was blown away to realize that at the exact moment I was getting a coincidental 'nudge' to apply to TFA, Dr. John Covington was making plans to more than triple the number of TFA corps members in KC, MO.

If you've been paying attention to the news here in KC, you've noticed that there has been a bit of controversy regarding the non-renewal of some teacher's contracts and the hiring of about 150 TFA corps members. Though I won't go into all the details, it's not surprising that the news media isn't telling the complete story - all those details make the news story's too boring and uncontroversial. But here's an interview with Dr. Covington, explaining what he's doing. link

Last week, the new KC, MO TFA corps members had a conference call with Dr. Covington. Again, I almost had tears in my eyes with the realization of what I'm about to do, while also pumping my fist with excitement. Dr. Covington explained the changes being made in the KC, MO schools and how he went from being skeptical of TFA to tripling the presence of TFA in the KC, MO classrooms. Basically, the students of TFA teachers outperformed the 'classically trained' teachers. He said, "I don't care what organization they come from, I want to hire the best people who will make the best teachers."

Dr. Covington also told us three things about our experience teaching in KC, MO:
1) He's going to make it "very difficult" for us to leave the district after we've completed our two year commitment
2) They are creating a leadership track to prepare TFA teachers for administration
3) We could teach in any inner-city, but if we want to be a part of the transformation of a community, we needed to teach in KC, MO.

Yesterday, I bought my round trip plane tickets for the Summer Institute in LA, from June 26th to July 30th. It's going to be really difficult to be away from my family, but I'm ready to start the adventure of TFA. And this fall, at a KC,MO High School yet-to-be-determined, I'll be teaching middle school social studies.

And there will be some more blog posts coming, too...

The Story Continues

2011-04-07T17:01:00.004-05:00

The Story Continues
Our theme for today is that the story continues. Yes, this chapter is closing but the story of Trinity Family really will continue. As one example, on Friday, I received this email from a pastor in Oklahoma.

“I am a pastor of a church in Oklahoma City, OK (Antioch) and I am starting a series this week called "Love Wins". I am dealing with Judas and Peter and how Jesus loved them even though they betrayed and denied, and how Peter chose to be restored to that love. I am also going to preach about how Love Won on the cross and through the resurrection and how Jesus used and uses imperfect people to spread his message.

When I went to Google to find pictures to use for promotion, one of those pictures led me to your web site and your "Love Wins" ministry. I am planning to use your video about the Gentlemen's Clubs this Sunday (if that is okay with you). I have just completed a series challenging our people to get outside our walls and to take the church to the streets, and your story moved me. I wanted you to know how much I appreciate what you are doing for the Kingdom! Jesus is very pleased with your heart and your mission. Keep up the good work.
Nathan Tate

The story continues…

- As the Michael and Elizabeth Palmer welcome their baby into the world this September

- As Joe Kumor finishes up his ministry degree and continues to preach at teach at his home church. The guy who once told me he’d rather be shot at in battle then preach before a congregation.

- As I get to take what I’ve learned here at TFC about God’s love for the poor into a KC, MO classroom. Sharing God’s love with the kids the rest of society has forgotten.

- As Josh and Ashley Vance help lead a missional church in St. Petersburg, Florida.

- As we join our outwardly-focused mindset and energy with Indian Creek Church. A church who shares our heart for those outside the church.

- As people in Ethiopia continue to draw fresh water from the well we helped dig.

- As orphans in Bangladesh continue to eat food from the garden we helped create.

- As the kids of people like Travis, Brett and Lindsay grow up with parents who know Jesus. They know Jesus because of this church.

- As Jamie Raymo continues to learn how to do life without chemical dependence.

- As Zach Pogemiller helps more and more people understand Jesus’ message of nonviolence.

- As the “three amigos” of the TFC nursery grow up together and keep fighting each other.

- As Erin and I guide Dawson’s spiritual development, following the example set by Noel and Dawn Forrester.

- As we get to be daddy and mommy to a child we thought we might never have. A child so many of you prayed for, even before he was conceived.

- As our “miracle baby”, Noah Pride keeps celebrating one more birthday.

- As Ben and Irene Delong get to live out the calling they’ve had since we became friends 6 years ago. A calling to share Jesus’ love with the gay community. The story continues as they get to live out that calling in Midtown.

- TFC Midtown will continue TFC’s legacy of reaching the people that other churches ignore through methods that other churches would never dream of trying.

- The story of TFC will continue. In all of you.

TFC Photostory

2011-04-06T14:54:00.016-05:00

Here's almost 7 years worth of pictures condensed into about 20 minutes.

It's Been a Wonderful Life (or at least a wonderful 7 years)

2011-04-05T06:28:00.003-05:00

The final scence of the Christmas classic, It's a Wonderful Life always gets to me. George Bailey has spent his entire life trying to juggle two almost competing desires: 1) to provide financially for his family and 2) to serve the town he loved. Of course, when George feels like a failure at both of these endeavors, as well as compared to the standards for success for his profession, he tries (in vain) to end his life. And at the end of the movie, when all hope seems lost, the whole town comes and bails him out. But what gets me is how George is helped out and even praised by all the people he's been helping; people he didn't even realize he was helping. As George's living room fills with people, he is able to see a reality much greater than the small and frustrated perspective he'd been having. Whenever I watch that scene, I think, "that's what I want my life to be about - giving my life away for others." And I usually cry thinking about it.
Well, as our last worship gathering for the church I began and pastored, I had an It's a Wonderful Life Moment. Honestly, I don't know if there will ever be a moment in my life in which I have more praise and thank-you's poured over me than hour of open sharing that happened this morning.

Mostly, that hour was a blur of tears, hugs and 'thank-you's'. But I remember a few lines, many of which were forced out between tears.

"Thank you for leading my daughter to Christ. For speaking at my wife's funeral. For helping me celebrate her first post-mortem birthday."

"I was so lost, but you, Erin and this church found me."

"This is the only church I've ever known. I've been sober for six months because of this church."

"You and the church changed my paradigm for what church is to be about. My understanding of the Kingdom has expanded. For awhile, I wasn't being obedient to God. But your obedience inspired me to be obedient." And the growth I saw in this friend over the period of about a year was the most dramatic change I've ever seen in a Christian.

"I never thought I'd care anything about God or the bible. But now I know Jesus. Thank you. We've been through a lot together. Thanks to you and Erin for always being there for me."
That guy wanted to talk longer but he just couldn't get the words out. But I knew what he was trying to say.

In response to my sermon about going after the lost sheep - "Donnie, I was 'the one.' I could be real around you. You accepted the real me."
This guy wanted to say more but couldn't choke back the tears. His wife said that was one of the few times she's ever seen him cry.

"I've been a Christian my whole life, but this church gave me a vibrancy I'd never experienced before. Donnie has a unique and fresh way of explaining God." This friend is now preparing for full-time ministry
"Donnie and Erin, you really helped me see the truth."

From a teenager who gave me a tearful hug, "Thank you for doing that bible study with me last summer." I was starting to drift in the wrong direction but you nudged me back toward God."
"This church has helped my family know what it means to love people the way Jesus loved."

It has been anything but easy. But it has been more than worth it. I've always had a gift for words but I have no words to describe the awe and thankfulness at having been such a significant part of the spiritual journey of so many people. Maybe we should all just gather around the piano and sing, "Auld Lang Syne."

Thank You

2011-04-04T12:10:00.000-05:00

This is the final thing I shared with my congregation as pastor of TFC. I thought maybe I'd make it through without crying, but I wasn't even close.

Thank You
I haven’t wanted to end our time together this morning. Because as soon as we’re done with this morning’s worship, my role as pastor will come to an end. I’m still around, here to help people with the transition - for as long as necessary. But officially, the role of lead pastor transfers to Andy. And I’m glad. I could think of a few better people to pass you over to – but not many… I think I was God’s man for the past seven years but Andy is certainly God’s man for the future.
But the last thing I want to say to all of you is “thank you.” There’s nothing more appropriate than that.
- Thank you for letting me be your pastor. For trusting me. For rebuking me. For praying for me. For listening to me preach. For putting up with me. For believing the best about me. For taking care of my family financially. For challenging me to love Jesus more. For choosing yourselves to love Jesus more. For living out the Kingdom in front of me. And for loving me. And my wife. And my son. Being your pastor has been a privilege that words can’t do justice. It’s an experience that has forever changed me – mostly for the better. And one that I’ll never, ever forget. Thank you.

(Glinda):
I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return
Well, I don't know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today
Because I knew you...

Like a comet pulled from orbit
As it passes a sun
Like a stream that meets a boulder
Halfway through the wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good

(Elphaba):
It well may be
That we will never meet again
In this lifetime
So let me say before we part
So much of me
Is made of what I learned from you
You'll be with me
Like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have re-written mine
By being my friend...

Like a ship blown from its mooring
By a wind off the sea
Like a seed dropped by a skybird
In a distant wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
(Glinda):
Because I knew you

(Both):
I have been changed for good

(Elphaba):
And just to clear the air
I ask forgiveness
For the things I've done you blame me for

(Glinda):
But then, I guess we know
There's blame to share

(Both):
And none of it seems to matter anymore

(Glinda):
Because I knew you

(Both):
I have been changed for good

(Elphaba):
And just to clear the air
I ask forgiveness
For the things I've done you blame me for

(Glinda):
But then, I guess we know
There's blame to share

(Both):
And none of it seems to matter anymore

(Glinda):
Because I knew you

(Both):
I have been changed for good

(Elphaba):
And just to clear the air
I ask forgiveness
For the things I've done you blame me for

(Glinda):
But then, I guess we know
There's blame to share

(Both):
And none of it seems to matter anymore

(Glinda):
Like a comet pulled from orbit
As it passes a sun
Like a stream that meets a boulder
Halfway through the wood

(Elphaba):
Like a ship blown from its mooring
By a wind off the sea
Like a seed dropped by a bird in the wood

(Both):
Who can say if I've been
Changed for the better?
I do believe I have been
Changed for the better

(Glinda):
And because I knew you...

(Elphaba):
Because I knew you...

(Both):
Because I knew you...

I have been changed for good...

My Last Sermon at TFC

2011-04-03T16:49:00.000-05:00

This is my final message. I want to start with a video we used to show as we travelled around the area, gathering support for our new church.

I still get kind of pumped watching this video. But that line, “Gardner shows no signs of slowing down” is a bit embarrassing now. I didn’t know it would all slow down. I didn’t know that from the time we shot that video until the time we launched TFC, three other churches would open in town. You know what, I’m glad I didn’t know about the challenges. If so, I might’ve wimped out. But with a church composed of myself, my wife and Jeremy, Tonya and Mason Pride, we bought a house and moved to Gardner, KNOWING this new church was going to help people find a new relationship with Jesus.
I’ve learned to let a lot of this go, but for a long time I was really caught up in numbers, specifically the number of people in worship. I’d beat myself up over it, honestly. When one day, while hanging out at my parents over Christmas I remember asking God (again) why we didn’t have more people in our church. It’s only happened a few times in my life, but that was one of the few times God has answered with an almost-audible voice, “Donnie, I promised you you’d reach unchurched people in Gardner. And you are. I didn’t however, promise you how many.” So I started counting up the people who called TFC home who hadn’t been in a church before, and I realized, “yep,” God had come through on his promise. In a little bit, those of you who have come to faith in Christ at TFC will have a chance to share your story.
In addition to that video, whenever I’d speak at other churches I’d also preach from Luke 15. Luke 15 is all about Jesus searching out people who were lost. Luke 15:1-7
I want to share a couple observations. Some things I learned when I first preached from this passage, 7 years ago. And what I’ve learned during the almost 7 years of leading this church.

The love of Jesus is costly A lot of us have an extra-biblical view of what is happening here. We have this picture of the shepherd, at the end of the day, leading his sheep into the safety of the sheep pen. We see the shepherd counting each sheep as it comes through the gate, “96, 97, 98, 99…” Until the shepherd realizes that one of his precious sheep is missing. So the shepherd wisely locks the other 99 in the pen and then bravely goes out to find the lost sheep. It’s a great image. An image of the love of Jesus that warms us. The only problem is that that image, isn’t in this passage.

I’m not sure where we get that image. In my case, I think it was some songs we’d sing in church. Or maybe because my dad was a farmer and we actually had sheep. Maybe some pictures I saw in a children’s bible. But wherever that idea came from, it’s not in the passage. Vs 4 Jesus is asking a rhetorical question. Of course you don’t leave the 99 in the wilderness just to find one. In farming, it’s just a reality that you’re going to lose the occasional animal. Animals wander off, die giving birth or die from some sickness. It’s just a cost of doing business. But what you don’t do as a farmer is risk the entire herd on the off chance that you might rescue that one lost sheep. While the shepherd is off looking for that one lost sheep, a lot of bad stuff could happen to the other 99. A wolf could attack some. Another shepherd could steal a few. They could walk off a cliff. Sheep are herd animals. If one walked off the cliff, the other 98 would follow. I’m not exaggerating. Sheep are dumb. I don’t know this for sure, but that might be why Jesus compares us to sheep. We all do some pretty dumb stuff.

But that’s not the point of this parable. The point is that the Good Shepherd risks the safety of the other 99 on the off chance that he just might find that one lost sheep. In a bit, we’re going to celebrate communion. It’s a meal that reminds us that we are people of the cross. And nowhere do we get a better picture of how much Jesus’ love cost him than when we look at the cross.

But as people of the cross, we are to be living out that same costly love. GS risked the other 99. So we have to ask ourselves, what is it costing me to share the love of Jesus with other people? Are we risking anything? If it isn’t costing you anything, you’re probably not sharing the love of Jesus. You may be sharing a worldly kind of love – a love toward those who we like or who are kind to us. You may be being nice, polite, friendly, a good neighbor. And those are all great. But unless what you’re doing for other people in the name of Jesus is actually costing you something – it’s not Christ-like love.
Loving people the way Jesus loved costs us our time. Changing our schedule so we can be around people who need the love of Jesus. Loving people the way Jesus loved will cost you some money. We see it all throughout the NT, that one of the most Christ-like ways we love other people is by sharing our money with them. And if we’re not sharing our money, the love of Jesus isn’t in us. Money becomes an idol that replaces Jesus.

And if we’re loving people the way Jesus loved them, it’s going to cost us our reputation. At least among good, upright religious folks. People who are so busy looking down on others, they can’t see their own sin. As our church has gone into strip clubs and gay bars, engaging people in the same way Jesus did in the gospels, some people couldn’t handle it. In various different ways, myself and our church has felt the backlash on that. But you know what? It was worth it. In every single way, it was worth it. No pricetag for Sharon’s commitment to Christ. Or for the people who show up at Andy’s every Thursday night to study the scriptures and encounter the life-transforming love of Jesus. Billy Graham once said, It’s the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, God’s job to forgive and our job to love. But leaving the comfort of the 99 to go after that one that is lost – it’s costly. Building relationships with outsiders – costly.
The love of Jesus is scandalous vs 1-2 The titles “tax collectors” and “sinners” is almost cliché for us. We’ve heard it so many times, we’ve forgotten the scandal. We think, “of course Jesus loved the tax collectors.” But who are the tax collectors of today?

I remember a line from another sermon I was preaching before this church launched, “If Jesus were here today, he’d be hanging out downtown at the gay bars. Showing God’s love to those rejected by the religious community.”

I knew this in my head. But what I didn’t know was that one night, there would be a baby shower in strip club, that as we were given gift after gift, the manager of that club, with tears running down his face, would tell us “no one has ever loved us the way you’ve loved us.” And when the head bouncer warned me, “Donnie, don’t turn around, that girl didn’t follow our request to put on more clothes,” I knew I was taking a risk similar to the risk Jesus took.

Neither did I know at the time I delivered that sermon, that one night I’d be singing karaoke at one of those downtown establishments. But the time that our people spent in that bar would eventually result in people coming to faith in Christ. Whatever that cost our church – it was worth it.

The love of Jesus is scandalous. Even more so when we realize that it meant for Jesus to share a meal with “sinners.” Eating with someone wasn’t just a way to hang out. It was a theological statement, a statement about God. Whenever a rabbi, like Jesus, ate with someone, he was saying, “God loves you and accepts you. There is a place for you in his kingdom.” Exactly why we see this response – vs 2

And you know how Jesus responded to those self-righteous religious leaders? These religious leaders could quote the entire bible. They knew God didn’t accept those people. But here is Jesus – God-in-the-flesh, eating with these “notorious sinners”, therefore declaring, “God accepts you.”

You know what seems like a bigger scandal, at least to me. Jesus ate with the religious leaders, too.

“God loves and accepts you, too.” Jesus’ love is scandalous.

Jesus responded differently to different groups. To the religious people who believed they had it all figured out, looked great on the outside and thought they should tell others how to live. He got in their face, challenging their fake-ness, telling them to stop ordering others around and to focus on getting clean on the inside.

But to the non-religious, the ones whose weren’t faking it, who were clearly messed up. With them, Jesus took a more gentle approach. Assuring them of God’s love and acceptance and then letting the love of God serve as the motivation for change.

Jesus knew what he was doing. In the gospels, we see the religious and non-religious, Pharisees and sinners both choosing to leave their sin and follow Jesus. We also know that a lot of people turned away and some religious zealots eventually got him crucified.

We also see in Jesus’ example that hanging out with people and assuring them of God’s unwavering love is not a condoning of sinful behavior. And getting in the face of religious leaders is not necessarily a condemnation of sincere intentions, even though the judgmentalism was clearly misguided. Rather, Jesus pushed past the bad behavior, past the sinful judgmentalism – all the way to the heart. If the heart could just meet the scandalous love of God, the behavior would take care of itself. We don’t need the addictions of sin when we’re getting our acceptance from God. We don’t need to condemn others when we’re getting our value from God’s love for us.

Churches are great at loving the people who think like us, act like us, believe like us, vote like us, look like us cheer for our sports teams – whatever. Which is why most churches are culturally homogeneous. As author Ann Lamott said, You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people that you do. Unfortunately, a lot of churches are great at creating an “us vs. them” mentality. “God is for us and against them.” But you can know that the love of Jesus is transforming a church when people of different cultures and opinions can live together in community within the same church. Jesus’ love destroys the “us vs. them” mentality. We’re all in this together. We’re all broken and in desperate needs of God’s powerful love.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the years of leading this great church, it’s that unless we’re being shocked by its scandalous nature, we don’t really understand the love of Jesus.

Cynicism

2011-03-27T11:19:00.001-05:00

In my previous post, I referenced the weekly email sent out by my District Superintendent. I want to share something else from that email. It's about cynicism and forgiveness. It's hard not to by cynical when you're in a pastoral position. While we take it too far sometimes, I enjoy hanging out with another pastor friend in Gardner and just letting the cynicism flow as we make each other laugh at our stories.
But it's also good to know that I'm not the only pastor who struggles to forgive and to stave off cynicism. Enjoy this challenge from a colleague who is very talented as a leader but secure enough to admit his shortcomings.

Good morning, Pastor

This morning I prayed that God would help me to forgive you. Relax, I don't mean “you” specifically, I mean “you” generally as my brothers and sisters in Christ. Maybe it’s just me, but sometimes the cumulative effect of disappointment over how God’s people act leaves me …. well, disappointed. Truthfully, over time that disappointment can become anger. I ended up there by Sunday night after several instances of receiving reports of people talking, acting, gossiping, and assuming in ways that leave me with a significant expectation violation to deal with. My expectation is that holiness people will act like it! When that doesn't seem to happen, my temptation is to become angry (including anger with myself). If that anger is not dealt with appropriately it can turn to cynicism, and that is a major red-flag that the problem is no longer with “those people” – the problem is with me. Some time ago God confronted this temptation in me and gave me a way out (1 Cor. 10:13). I was at College Church listening to a sermon from Dr. Graves. It was a sermon on forgiveness. I went to church that day smarting from some tough exchanges with people that week, probably feeling a bit sorry for myself, and no doubt being tempted to fall into a cynical attitude about the church. As my brother David preached on forgiveness I didn't really see the connection at first (I'm sometimes slow on these things) but then the Spirit opened my heart and I heard the clear message: cynicism and unforgiveness live right next to each other! I realized that the most powerful way to ensure that cynicism cannot get a foothold in my life is to drink deeply of God’s grace that enables us to pray, Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
I did not want to write this today because it exposes one of my many flaws. I just wonder if perhaps pastors as a group face this temptation because we are on the front lines of the work of the Spirit in the lives of people who are broken by disappointment, fear, and hurt? May I offer to you this Jesus-taught strategy for those times when you are tempted to anger and cynicism toward the very people you are called to love? Forgive them. As God has forgiven you, forgive them. And the peace of God that is beyond understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Obituary

2011-03-27T11:16:00.001-05:00

I just read an obitiuary of sorts regarding my time in pastoring TFC. I read it in the section of my DS's weekly email entitled "transitions," in which he shares news of pastors joining or leaving the District. It was now my turn to be in that section.

"Pastor Donnie Miller (Gardner Trinity Family) announced his resignation to the congregation to be effective at the close of services April 3rd. Donnie and Erin planted TFC more than five years ago and have led the church in some of the most creative outreach ministries we know. The ministry of TFC will continue but will relocate from Gardner to Midtown Kansas City under the strategy of reaching some of the most marginalized people among us. We wish the Millers all the best in the days ahead."

You know what, I'm honored by that description of my pastoral service at TFC.

Leaving Well

2011-03-25T11:16:00.000-05:00

People leave churches. It happens. Unfortunately, it happens a lot. While it may be common, it does sometimes put pastors in awkward situations. When it's the pastor leaving the church, it puts the congregation in an awkward (at best) situation. A pastor friend of mine was just describing it as a break-up. We say we'll be friends and we have the best of intentions, and sometimes we do stay friends, but the truth is we used to be so much more than friends. I think that's a pretty good description.

Sometimes the person's decision to leave is a personal reason, other times it's not. Either way, I've always taken it personally. I used to feel kind of guilty or weak for this feeling until I read a blog post from Adam Hamilton in which he said that no matter how many thousands of people call him pastor, he still takes it personally every time someone leaves. And then I just read this honest and emotional article from Leadership Journal.

The reasons for and methods of leaving have run the gamut; from people mad that I talked about money in a sermon to people needing a church with a youth group. I've been on the wrong end of emotional explosions and attacks on my character to people tearfully telling me how much they love us and the church but that they need to make a change. And of course, there are those who just stop showing up for worship but never bother to tell myself or anyone else. Those are the awkward ones. Even the bitterly angry "breakups" eventually get resolved or healing happens, but when people just ditch you without saying anything - those are the ones that cause me to duck down the aisle at Walmart when I see them coming toward me. I used to try to hunt people down but sometime in the past couple of years, I decided I didn't need to chase people.

But of all these different experiences, the ones that stick out in my mind are the solid leaders who have left. The people who were "pulling their weight" so to speak - leading, serving and/or giving in significant ways. Again, this is all over the spectrum. Some people who have had significant leadership roles just told me they were done and then basically walked off the job, leaving us scrambling to fill the gap or compensate for that gap. While I completely understand the desire to simply be done, that's not the healthiest way to transition out of a leadership position. The most extreme example happened one Sunday after we'd just finished loading up the trailer. In fact, we'd just locked up the trailer door and were turning to leave when a person who had been serving in a significant role announced that he'd just finished his last Sunday and wouldn't be back. Geez... that was sudden.

But those unfortunate instances highlight the examples of leaders who have left well. Those who were willing to finish strong, help train a replacement and work for the well-being of all - despite the personal awkwardness the situation may have caused them. These people let me know far in advance of their final Sunday that they'd be looking for a church home but followed through on their ministry commitments until a predetermined date. It's not easy to continue to show up to your leadership position when those you're leading and/or serving know you'll be "breaking up" soon. Those are the leaders who have inspired me to whenever my turn would come, to leave well.

Well, sometime in January of this year, I knew my time to leave had come. It was one of the most incredibly difficult decisions I'd ever made, but I was confident that the timing was right. Although this may sound overly spiritual, I felt released from my role as pastor of TFC.

But I had a couple challenges facing me: 1) This is one of my two income sources, so I depend upon the paycheck. 2) Due to Erin's teaching position, we couldn't make a serious change until the end of the school year. But despite those challenges, I knew it was time for me to leave. I set a goal of leaving by the end of June but I wasn't exactly sure how to leave well nor whether I'd even have the guts to do so.

The easiest thing would've been to hang on in my pastoral role until the socially acceptable time-frame for a pastor's resignation; usually within two weeks to one month of announcing the resignation. Basically, just keep going through the motions until submitting a formal resignation at the beginning of June. This would allow me to keep getting paid through June and to avoid the awkwardness of a "lame duck" pastor.The only problem - that wouldn't have been a very loving nor honest way to treat the congregation.

While I was sharing with my District Superintendent that it was time for me to leave, he challenged me to leave well. In fact, my DS used the examples of other leaders who have left TFC well in challenging me to do the same. The fact that I'm the only pastor TFC has ever had was going to make this potential pastor transition different than your average church - meaning I needed to handle it differently than most pastors would do so. My DS challenged me to not wait until June to share with the Advisory Council that I would be leaving but to tell them way in advance, to best prepare them for my departure as well as give them enough time to figure out the next step for TFC. While this wasn't going to be a comfortable conversation and it would lead to a potentially awkward few months, I knew my DS was right. So I had that conversation with the Advisory Council.

Honestly, it couldn't have gone any better. It certainly was difficult, though. During that meeting and throughout the next few weeks, the Advisory Council members went through all the stages of grief; shock, denial, anger and acceptance. Some people shed tears and some balled up their fists in frustration. But they responded to my vulnerability and honesty with a commitment to leading TFC to the best possible future. (I'll blog more on that later). And when it was time for me to share the transition / resignation with the congregation, they stood with me and have helped lead this transition.

Of course, my worst fears haven't been realized. It has been awkward, not with the Advisory Council anymore but with some members of the congregation. But people are also supportive, understanding and trusting of my decision and leadership. Secondly, I'm going to get paid through June! While the Advisory Council decided to make this transition happen as quickly as possible, they honored my commitment to stay through June and have decided to pay me for that time period. If I've done one thing right, it's help TFC manager her finances well, so we'll be passing along quite a bit of money to TFC Midtown. And it possible that I might be starting a new position July 1st. But I won't know that for a couple more weeks. If it happens, believe me, I'll share it here.

While I've certainly made plenty of mistakes while leading TFC, I've always tried to do the right or best thing no matter how difficult or uncomfortable it may have been. It seems to me in navigating the most difficult time period for our church, I've been able to follow through on what was right, allowing me to leave well.

Taking off the Bumper Stickers

2011-03-23T16:40:00.000-05:00

"One of the most fundamental ways that we witness to God's love is we move toward our enemies. Now, some enemies, if you walk up and give them a big bear hug - that's gonna get awkward. So, perhaps it begins in your heart with an awareness, 'this person is an enemy and my witness to God's love in the world is directly connected to whether I move toward this enemy or whether I back away - thus creating more distance.'So, perhaps one of the most simple, rubber-meets-the-road ways we witness to the love of Christ is we simply move towards the enemy.

Now, in some cases, it means we simply stop talking evil of them. In other cases, it means we take off the bumper stickers. And by that, I simply mean, sometimes loving your enemies means setting aside the categories you've been given about you and them by your culture. Sometimes, loving your enemies simply means rejecting the fact that they even are your enemies and rediscovering their humanity.

Perhaps one of the first ways we witness to God's love for a world that so desperately needs to see it is that we move toward our enemies."

- Rob Bell

I periodically need to remove the bumper stickers and set aside the categories, remembering the humanity of those who are opposite of myself.

La Belle et La Bête

2011-03-19T06:23:00.002-05:00

Here's another composition for my French 300 class at KU. It's my own version of the classic French fairytale, "Beauty and the Beast."
If it ends rather abruptly, well, that's what happens when you realize you've just reached your 300 word requirement....

Il était une fois un jeune beau prince habitait un grand château. Ce jeune beau prince était très fier de se beau visage. Un jour, une vieille laid dame est venue au château. Le jeune beau prince ne lui parlée pas parce qu’ elle était très laid. Alors, la vieille laide femme l’a dit qu’ il serait une laid bête jusqu’ au moment où une jeune belle femme l’aimerait. Tous les habitants des le château sont éte affliqés avec la malédiction aussi.

Pendant ce temps, une belle jeaun femme habitait une petite ville provincialle. Cette femme s’apellait Belle. Belle aimait beaucoup lire mais elle n’avait aucun ami. Un jour, quand Belle marchait à la forêt, elle s’est perdue. Elle marchait à la forêt depuis longtemps quand elle est venue au château de la laide bête. Belle frappait à la porte quand quelqu’un lui a appelée “Qui est la porte?”

Belle a repondu au personne, “Je m’appelle Belle et j’ai besoin de votre aide.” à

Tout de suite, quelqu’un a ouvert la porte. La porte venait de s’ouvrir quand Belle a vu qu’une théière avait lui parlé.

“Pourquoi êtes-vous une théière?” Belle a t-elle à la théière.

“Je ne peux pas vous dire pourquoi je suis une théière” la théière a repondu l-elle. “Mais, il faut que tu saches qu’une bête habite ici.”

Belle a crié “Une bête! Comment la bête est-elle? J’ai très peur des bêtes!”

“Ne t’en fais pas. Quelquefois, la bête est fâchée et quelquefois la bête est gentille. “ la théière a repondu à Belle. “C’a s’arrangera. Alors, vous devez rencontrer la bête.”

Belle a dit “Je ne suis pas sûre que rencontrer la bête soit une bonne idée. Mais, je le ferai.”

La théière a crié “Quelle bone nouvelle!” Ensuite, Belle et la théière ont commencé à marcher à travers le château.

Quand Belle et la théière sont arrivées au troisième étage, Belle a vu un grand corps au bout du couloir. Après avait marché à la lumière, Belle a pu voir que le corps était celle de la bête. Ils ont commencé à traverser le château et parler ensemble.

Ca fait plusiers mois qu’ils ont passé beaucoup de temps ensemble. Belle a appris à la bête pour lire et la bête a instruit Belle pour chasser.

Un jour, Belle s’est rendu compte qu’ elle aimait la bête. Par consequence, Belle a embrassé la bête. À ce moment-là, la malédiction s’est cassée et la bête est devenue une jeune belle prince! Alors, tous les objets du château se sont transformés en etre humaines. Il était un bon jour pour tous les habitants du château. Ils ont vécu heureux et pour toujours.

Enemy Love Conquers the World

2011-03-18T13:49:00.002-05:00

From Frederich Buechner in The Magnificent Defeat

"The love for equals is a human thing - of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles. The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing - the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world. The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing - to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints. And then there is the love for the enemy - love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured's love for the torturer. This is God's love. It conquers the world."