Violence and the Church

I just finished watching James Carroll’s “Constantine’s Sword” in class, a film by Oren Jacobs. It punches you in the gut with a treatise on the atrocity of the Christian church’s endorsement of hatred and violence through the years.

As it neared ending, I could feel the tears burning the back of my eyes, and my stomach lurched. I’m tired from carrying the weight of this knowledge.

One of the main veins of injustice Carroll traces is the oppression of Jews as “Christ killers”. Along the journey, he interviews a dear old Jew who lost his entire family in Auschwitz. I’ve walked the pathways of Auschwitz. Cried as I discovered the inhumanities committed there against people. Auschwitz was the largest network of German death camps under the Nazi regime (and allowed by the Christian church…). It became the final resting place for hundreds of thousands of Jews, including many Christians of Jewish ethnicity.

Near the end, the film begins to trace a continuation of the patterns of injustice and violence into today with the war against terrorism, a war being fought in the name of freedom—a “God-given right”.

It also makes me think of our opinions and involvement on the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand there are people that are evil and are a threat even to their own people, not just our nation. But I wonder how often we go in with a hero mentality, going in thinking we know best and will push our will upon others because it’s the right way. Perhaps we should take more time to listen, should go in to only support what others are doing.

(Disclaimer: I don’t think I know near enough to really talk intelligently about all this, so please grant me the grace of listening to my tears even if the expression comes rough around the edges…)

Tying back to a comment from class on Tuesday, I can’t help but wonder what our Iraqi brothers and sisters in Christ, our Palestinian brothers and sisters in Christ, think about our involvement and our stances.

God, save us from ignorance, misunderstanding, and even outright misuse of our faith when it comes to power, politics, and faith. We often feel we are the oppressed, but I would argue there are others far more oppressed and we perhaps are the oppressors.

P.S. You should watch the movie. http://constantinessword.com/?page_id=122

A View from the Other Side

My cohort is privileged to join another cohort for our current grad school class.

I'm sitting in the first session, and I'm already so refreshed by perspectives I don't usually get to hear. Perspectives coming from brothers and sisters who love Jesus and love their neighbors, but get to bring a lens of interpretation different than mine due to differing ethnicity, differing context, etc.

Here are a few sound bytes from class challenging us to consider another perspective:

"The radical right wing people..."

"What about the Palestinian Christians...?"

"Some say America was founded as a Christian nation, but talk to the Native American peoples, and the African American peoples and they might have a different perspective to offer..."

I'm realizing all over again how important it is to not be inbred when it comes to theology, politics, and all other arenas of conversation, perspective...To not always talk with people coming from the same context, because they're going to say the same things, think the same things (as independent and self-reflected as we think we are).

1.29.10

My sister’s voice came clearly through the cell phone, “God told me that you are called ‘to be a prophetic singer to the nations of his beauty and holiness.’”

I stare out the car window at the passing Florida bush, and tears filled my eyes. See, I have trouble knowing God’s voice in my life, but I long to know it. Sometimes I fear I’m missing something in my relationship with him that I don’t hear him speak to me in words. So this makes me cry when she continues on, saying God told her he knows my heart to hear his voice.

Earlier this week, I wrote on a scrap of paper, requesting prayer from a dear woman, a prayer warrior. I had requested prayer for clarity about my future, about the fact that I have not idea what I’m doing when I finish my master of divinity in a year and a half. She came to me the next day and said that as she was praying for me God had given her a verse that she needed to share with me. Ruth 2:12, “’May the LORD reward your work, and your wages be full from the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to seek refuge.’" She encouraged me that I needed to stop being anxious about what God has for my future, and that I need to hide myself under God’s wings, that He would provide for me.

It was a little weird since I don’t usually have people come up to me and tell me they have something from God to tell me, but what made it even weirder and also very cool was that it was exactly what I needed to hear.

Almost like God knew or something.

So these last few days I’ve been reminding myself to rest under God’s wings, to trust his hand in my life and not allow myself to worry.

And this is when my sister’s call came.

I’m not sure yet what it all means—a prophetic singer to the nations?—but I know one thing for sure: I don’t need to be anxious about it. So I’m sitting back and waiting. Resting. Listening. Waiting with an open heart and a sense of anticipation to see what God does next.

You know what else is kind of erie? I clicked a song in my iTunes faves list so I could listen to tunes while I wrote this. It started playing, and suddenly I realized it’s “Cover Me” by Bebo Norman…

The Starfish and the Spider

I just finished reading The Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom, and it is a must read for anyone in any kind of leadership position.

First, how can you not be intrigued with a mysterious name like that? The subtitle sheds some light on its topic, however: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. Framan and Beckstrom explore the relationship between centralized organizations and decentralized ones. To set the foundation for this, they unpack fascinating examples like MGM, the Spanish Army, and AT&T for centralized organizations and Skype, Wikipedia, and the Apaches for decentralized ones.

Not only do they explore examples of centralization and decentralization, they explain the factors that make an organization one or the other and also offer helpful suggestions for finding the “sweet spot” between the two extremes in your own context.

Plus, it’s an interesting and fast read – always nice. :)