Month: July 2018

Stories of Self-Denial, 1

With the encouragement of some close friends, I have decided to share a few stories with you from my life.  I have been following Jesus – not always with perfect faithfulness, but those are a different set of stories; I mention that fact here to clarify that I am not making any claims to an exceptional Christian life, only a Christian life – for some 45+ years.

I don’t have as many years ahead of me as I have trailing behind me.  Lately, I have felt the Holy Spirit’s prompting, I suspect (I am not certain; that’s why I asked my friends’ advice), to share these experiences for the encouragement of others.  The memory of God’s good work should not die with the individual.  And God has been very good to me over the years.  These stories are told here in order to praise God by letting you know how good He has been to me.  (Check out my post about the Biblical meaning of “praise.”)

I firmly believe that self-denial is at the heart of obedient Christian discipleship.  Jesus could not speak any more clearly.  He says:

“If anyone wants to follow me, they must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and the gospel will save it.” (Mark 8:34-35)

Self-denial is the heart of the good news.  Self-denial defined every day of Jesus’ life on earth.  The crucifixion was Jesus’ ultimate act of self-denial.  Now he says to us, “Follow me.  Be like me. Live like me.  Be willing to die like me.  Say ‘No’ to your own selfish interests and submit entirely to the Father in heaven like me.”

It is impossible to be a disciple of Jesus Christ without learning to recognize those forks in the road where God tells us to abandon our own plans and walk in a different direction.  I am blessed in that the Holy Spirit has allowed me to recognize a few of those forks over the years.

Denying yourself is not easy.  In fact, it can be painful.

It’s not something we can do expecting immediate “blessings.”  Sometimes the rewards for obedience don’t appear for years.  Maybe they won’t appear until eternity.  At other times, the benefits become obvious in the moment.  In any case, we don’t follow Jesus because he is a cosmic gumball machine dispensing instant, observable blessings for our every action.

Sometimes self-denial entails immediate suffering.  But we do it anyway, gladly, willingly and repeatedly simply because we need to be with Jesus.  We love him, and we know that life does not make sense for us anywhere else but at his side.  As Kierkegaard wisely observed:

“If you will believe, then you will…accept Christianity on any terms…then you will say: Whether it is a help or a torment, I want only one thing, I want to belong to Christ, I want to be a Christian.”

For as long as I could remember, I had always wanted to be a wildlife biologist.  Trekking through the wildness, studying wild animals, learning their hidden secrets and behaviors that no one else had yet to witness, this was my lifelong dream as a child.

I chose my university accordingly.  The University of Montana was the only place for me.  Between its department of Wildlife Biology and the presence of Dr. John Craighead, my childhood hero and an American pioneer in modern ecology and wildlife studies, moving into the university dormitory made me as happy as a 17-year-old pig in slop.

I had qualified for the on-campus work study program so I hightailed it over to the office of the Montana Cooperative Wildlife Research Unity, founded by Dr. Craighead, and I asked for a job.  Over the next several years my dreams started to come true.  I became an assistant to several doctoral students, helping them in their field research.  I was living my dream and the signs all seemed to say, ‘Full steam ahead.’

But I also hooked up with another group in my freshman year:  Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship.  I attended their Large Group meetings.  I joined a Small Group Bible study, and I became friends with the local IV staff-worker, Marv Anderson.  (Marv and his wife Doreen are dear friends to this day.  I consider him to be one of my spiritual fathers.  Every believer needs someone like Marv in their life.)

Believe it or not, I had been born and raised in the church, but I had always thought very independently about my life.  At the university I began to rub shoulders with young people who talked openly about God’s will for their lives.

What?!  You mean following Jesus meant that I couldn’t just chase after any career I wanted?  I was supposed to pray, listen for answers, ask others for advice and do the things God wanted me to do????  Yikes!  Admittedly, I may have been sleeping during those particular lessons at church, but this was a brand-new attitude for my teenage, embryonic Christian faith.

But, with lots of helpful encouragement and advice from Marv and others, that’s exactly what I began to do.  And I started to realize new things about myself.

First, the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to see that, in large part, my career choice was driven by a major problem in my character.  I have always been an introvert.  Not that there is anything wrong with being an introvert.  I am quite happy with myself in that regard.  But this young man had gone much further into himself and become a good old-fashioned misanthrope.

I did not like people very much.  I was angry and antisocial – yeah, why in the world had I sought out Inter-Varsity?  It must have been the Holy Spirit again.  And I came so see that my desire to live alone in the wildness had as much to do with my dislike for the rest of the human race as it did with my love for animal life.  Yet, I was increasingly impressed by the fact that Jesus loved people.  And if I wanted to follow him, then he wanted me to love people too.

That realization caused me to seriously question whether I could continue calling myself a Christian.  I knew in my guts that no one could say they believed in Jesus while hating other people.  Yet, the last thing I was interested in was learning to love others.  Heck, I didn’t even like myself most of the time!

After a period of great internal wrestling, I concluded that I couldn’t walk away from Jesus.  I knew that I was lost without Him.  It was up to me to change, whether I liked it or not.  So, I added two new requests to my time of daily prayer.

First, I asked Jesus to teach me how to love people as he loved them, to give me his heart for others.

Second, I confessed that my plans for wildlife biology were my own.  I had never before asked the Lord what he wanted to do with my life.  So, I started asking, ‘Jesus, what are your plans for my life?  What did you make me to do?  If you want me to be a biologist, great.  But if you want to take me somewhere else, I will give up biology and do whatever you want.’

If you have checked out the biography on my blog, you will know that I have never worked as a biologist.  After graduation I followed a path into Christian ministry.  Something I never imagined I would do.  I said ‘No’ to my life-long plan – in the middle of seeing it all come true! –  because it had always been my plan.

It turned out that Jesus had a better idea for an introverted misanthrope who had also been given some unexplored gifts in communication and public speaking.

I have never regretted my decision to walk away from biology.  God’s plans for me have meant considerable hardship, at times.  The journey hasn’t always been easy.  There are more stories yet to be told.  But I have never been sorry for the choices I made, because I believe there was no other way for me to keep following after my precious Savior, Jesus Christ.

I thought I was going to the University of Montana to work with John Craighead.  Actually, I went there to meet Marv Anderson…and, of course, my wife Terry.  I had never heard of Marv before, but his model of faithful discipleship changed my life forever.

Learning “to deny myself” ended up saving me from deep personality flaws that were steering me into a life of isolation and loneliness.  Had I stubbornly held on to the person I was at the time, I would have eventually been lost.

Believe me.  Jesus always knows best.  Even when his direction is hard.

If Russia is an Enemy, It’s Our Own Fault.  So, Let’s Fix It!

The cheapest, easiest, most reliable –and the vilest – way for a government and its leaders to assure the support of its citizens is to have an enemy.  If the nation doesn’t already have a big, fearsome enemy, then the government can always invent one.  The bigger, more dangerous and frightening the better.  All nations do this.  The good old U.S. of A. is particularly adept at this national game.

We were told that the Soviet Union was out to conquer the world.

Preaching a message of Us vs. Them, especially if you can persuade folks to believe that They pose an imminent, existential threat to Us, is the simple, time-tested method of rallying people around the flag and stirring patriotic loyalty to the nation-state.  Civil religion is the sharpest hoe for plowing this national field.  It doesn’t require much thought from either side, and religious messages – whether civil or uncivil – always cut the deepest.

In fact, the process is downright magical.  Religious leaders, especially preachers, are the most adept practitioners of this art of fear-mongering, but precious few presidents, senators or congress-persons have ever been capable of saying “No” to the mystical powers of simple enemy-conjuring.

In fact, this is a guaranteed method for any nation-state hoping to convince its young men and women to sacrifice their lives on a foreign battlefield, typically a place they have never heard of before, while hating an enemy they don’t know, have never seen, and can only conceive of through the lens of the dehumanizing propaganda dished out to them in basic training – or the nightly news.

Take the latest enemy all Americans are supposed to fear:  Russia and the Bear incarnate, Vladimir Putin.

I will not take on the near-hysterical “Russia-meddling in our elections” story here. (Let me just say that I am standing with journalists like Max Blumenthal, Glenn Greenwald, and Aaron Maté who still refuse to jump onto that bandwagon until we are provided with evidence that any such thing actually occurred.  So far, we have only been shown accusations dressed up like evidence. I will also note that members of the important watchdog group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, such as Ray McGovern and William Binney have written extensively on this subject, an area with which they are intimately familiar, and they generally come to the same conclusion.  Please, check out their arguments.)

Below I have links to 2 interviews of Professor Steven Cohen.

Part 1 here.  Part 2 here.  Please take a few minutes to watch and listen.  Part 2 especially addresses US culpability in damaging our relationship with Russia.

Cohen is professor of Russian studies at New York University.  He is also emeritus professor of politics at Princeton University.  He has spent much of his life working in the Soviet Union/Russia.  He is a lifelong student of Russian political history.  I have read many of his articles, but most recently I read his fascinating book, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War (Columbia, 2009).  The book’s final 3 chapters, The Fate of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev’s Lost Legacies, and Who Lost the Post-Soviet Peace? are especially pertinent to today’s anti-Russia headlines.

You won’t see Prof. Cohen interviewed on corporate news outlets because he is a man of principle who, as any true academic will tell you, bases his arguments on facts and evidence.  He doesn’t toe the popular line.  He won’t repeat the standard fear-mongering charges of US politicians, bipartisan  Russia-phobes (the Democrats and so-called liberals have gone around the bend!) and the network talking-heads.

In fact, Cohen presciently warns about the very real dangers of today’s McCarthyite atmosphere — he calls it a New Cold War more dangerous than the last — where anyone who thinks it is a good idea to talk with Russia and to build a positive, cooperative relationship with the world’s other nuclear super-power can only be a Putin stooge. He also explains why Russia has very good reason to see the United States as an aggressor.

If we are in the midst of a new Cold War, it was begun by the USA not by Russia.

Russia need not be our enemy.  In fact, there is every reason for us to work together as allies.  If that is not the case, it is our own fault.  We need to own up to and make amends for the many ways the USA has trashed its relationship with Russia by breaking our promises and betraying their trust.

Christians, too, should be deeply concerned about matters of facts, truth, maintaining peace, and building friendships rather than antagonisms.  I do not believe that these are the concerns motivating president Trump’s overtures to Vladimir Putin.  I suspect that his friendship with Putin has everything to do with his deep financial ties and indebtedness to the Russian mafia, otherwise known as the oligarchs.  (See the books by David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump and It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration is Doing to America).  But, whatever his motives, positive overtures to Russia is the one sensible thing Trump has done.

I encourage God’s people to pray and to think critically before jumping on anyone’s political bandwagon.  Pray for diminishing tensions that will help to ensure peace.  Pray for national humility.  We need to confess our many national sins that have made the Russians skeptical of our intentions…with good reason.

God loves Russia and the Russian people as much as anyone else.  We are not His favorites.

Call Congress in Support of the Yemen War Powers Bill

The organization Just Foreign Policy has been advocating for the Yemeni War Powers bill to be passed by Congress in order to stop the genocide now occurring in that country.

Yemen has become the scene of the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.

Leaked! Despite War Crimes in Yemen US Trains Saudi Pilots

See my previous posts here, here, here, here .  We have soldiers and intelligence assets on the ground.  The US also the largest arms supplier to Saudi Arabia, the principle antagonist in Yemen’s civil war.

American money, arms, and soldiers, directed by our president and an acquiescent, do-nothing

congress, have helped Saudi Arabia to turn Yemen into a slaughter house where innocent men, women and children are butchered every day.

Please read the latest call for action from Just Foreign Policy reproduced below and make those three phone calls.  Thank you.

“The House goes out on recess this week. If a Yemen war powers bill is going to be introduced in the House before recess, that decision will be made today. If no bill is introduced, we’ll have no Congressional vehicle in August to respond to the threatened Saudi-UAE escalation of the war. The UN has warned that ten million more Yemenis will be pushed to the brink of starvation if the U.S.-Saudi war in Yemen does not end this year. 

“The actions today of three Representatives will be key:

Ro Khanna: (202) 225-2631

Adam Smith: (202) 225-8901

Ted Lieu: (202) 225-3976

“Please call their offices now, in that order. When you reach a staffer or leave a message, you can say something like: 

“’I urge you to move forward with the introduction of a Yemen war powers bill in the House before recess. This will deter Saudi-UAE from escalating and pressure them to agree to the UN peace deal. If Saudi-UAE escalate, the bill will give grassroots activists a vehicle for response.’

“When you’ve made your call[s], please report so here. 

“The UN and aid groups have warned that if the U.S.-Saudi war in Yemen is not ended this year, another ten million Yemenis will be pushed to the edge of starvation. The UN envoy has said he is close to a deal that would stop the Saudi-UAE assault on Hodeida and return the parties to peace talks. Thus, if the UN envoy is successful in his efforts, it could spare millions of Yemenis from being pushed to the edge of starvation. The crucial thing needed to end the war is more U.S. pressure on Saudi-UAE.

“That is why the question of what Members of Congress do now is so urgent. What Members of Congress do now to increase pressure on the Trump Administration and Saudi-UAE to end the war is the only variable apparent on the scene that appears to have any chance of sparing millions of lives in Yemen. 

“In particular, the introduction of a House war powers bill before the recess would give us a vehicle around which to organize public opinion to pressure Congress. Without such a vehicle and without such organizing, past experience indicates that the worsening of the U.S.-Saudi imposed humanitarian crisis in Yemen is a tree that falls in the forest without making an effective sound in the U.S. The worst developments are occasionally reported in mainstream U.S. press. But the attention is not sustained. The last time the issue received sustained attention in the U.S. was in March, when Senators Sanders, Lee, and Murphy introduced a war powers bill in the Senate and pushed for a vote. That is the kind of attention that we need in the U.S. on Yemen now. 

“Urge Khanna, Smith, and Lieu to act:

Ro Khanna: (202) 225-2631

Adam Smith: (202) 225-8901

Ted Lieu: (202) 225-3976″

Please make the calls.

I Thought We Hated Other Nations “Meddling” in Our Politics?

“The Trump administration has launched an offensive of speeches and online communications meant to foment unrest and help pressure Iran to end its nuclear program and its support of militant groups, U.S. officials familiar with the matter said.”

Hassan Rouhani of Iran and President Trump

That is the lead paragraph of a recent story in Reuters.  The headline says, “U.S. launches campaign to erode support for Iran’s leaders.”

Read the entire story here.

I haven’t written anything about the asinine ‘Russia-meddling’ brouhaha, or Trump’s dangerous withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, because both topics are such a stew of lies, misinformation, partisan back-stabbing and political/media hypocrisy that I get a headache whenever I considered writing a post.

Maybe I will try something in the future, before Trump starts a war with Iran in an attempt to distract from his overtures to Russia, which are important, valuable, necessary and worthy of praise!

No, I have not become a Trump fan.  Not even close.  But the hyper-partisanship that blinds people to the truth and turns them into knuckle-headed contrarians objecting to worthwhile diplomacy is going to lead us into another insane war if we are not careful.

Anyway, I saw this headline on Twitter and read the article.  It is important to be aware of what the US is doing in Iran, not because it is unprecedented but because it is common practice, and we do it constantly in many different places.

To just scratch the surface of the many abominable things wrong with the mainstream discussion of ‘Russia-meddling,’ the Reuters article provides a perfect window into both the hypocrisy and the supreme irony of current US domestic politics and the corporate media’s manipulation of a sheepish American public.

Kierkegaard’s Depression and Service in God’s Kingdom

1836 February

The melancholy Dane.

“People understand me so little that they do not even understand when I complain of being misunderstood…I have just returned from a party of which I was the life and soul; wit poured from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me – but I went away – and the dash should have been as long as the earth’s orbit —————- and wanted to shoot myself.”

1847 August

“I must come to closer grips with my melancholy. It has until now lain deep down and the tremendous intellectual strain has helped to keep it down.  That my work has profited others, that God has approved it and helped me in every way is sure enough.  Again and again I thank him for having done infinitely more for me than I ever expected…I shall therefore remain quiet…and try to understand myself, and really think out the idea of my melancholy together with God here and now.  That is how I must get rid of my melancholy and bring Christianity closer to me.”

1848 May

“My life began with a terrible melancholy, in its earliest youth deranged in its very deepest foundations, a melancholy which threw me for a time into sin and debauchery and yet (humanly speaking) almost more insane than guilty…so I grasped eternity with the blessed assurance that God is love, even though I was to suffer thus all my life; yes, with that blessed assurance.  That is how I looked upon my life.”

These are only a few of the numerous references to depression and suicidal impulses that Sǿren Kierkegaard discloses in his journals.  There are many more.  They are one of the reasons that I feel an affinity for this 19th century Christian brother.

Of course, Kierkegaard lived long before any medical treatments, or even talk therapy, were available for people suffering with depression.  Which makes it all the more amazing (to me, anyway) that he not only managed to withstand his periodic suicidal impulses – I am oh so happy that he never shot himself! – but that his chronic depression eventually played an important role in the circumstances that drew him to faith in Christ.

The Christian Kierkegaard’s openness about his depression and its interactions with his trust in Jesus teach me a number of valuable lessons:

Even when Sǿren was twisted into knots by the darkest, psychic oppression, he continued to search for life’s answers in relationship with his heavenly Father.  If there is any meaning to be found in life, he knew that it appears as we surrender ourselves more and more completely to the Father of Jesus Christ.  He never gave up on faith in Jesus, though I am sure that he felt like it many times.  That persistent faith assured him that we are deeply, deeply loved by God whatever else our terrors, sadness, or emotional despair may try to insinuate in moments weakness and vulnerability.

Though Kierkegaard struggled with temptation, he never surrendered himself to believing that his depression was a divine punishment or judgment.  He did not allow the experience of depression to determine his faith in the Lord.  Just the opposite.  He knew that he had been forgiven and accepted by God.  Even though it must have created a torturous, existential contradiction, Sǿren found a way (just like the psalmist) to live by faith even as he “walked through the valley of the shadow of death.”  Kierkegaard was often a depressed believer, but he was a believer nonetheless.  And he held to the truth that God always loved His children, even when they were depressed children.  The adjective (depressed) didn’t matter.  Faith clung to the noun (child of God).

Rather than blame God for his suffering and angrily pull away from the Father, Kierkegaard used his suffering as a vehicle for reflection and self-understanding.  There are things that even the depressed person must choose by force of will.  Kierkegaard eventually saw his depression as a gift from God, for he was convinced that melancholy (as he put it) was essential to his psychological insights and productivity as a religious author.  A lifetime of struggle with depression and thoughts of suicide molded him into the man God wanted to use.

In a sense, then, depression became the cross that Kierkegaard carried throughout his life of Christian discipleship.  His writings were intended to help the Danish national church open its eyes to the true gospel of Jesus Christ.   Sǿren was, in effect, an evangelist to all the people of Denmark.  Depression became his tutor directing him into the various avenues he explored for communicating the real Christian gospel to a nation of people who already thought they knew it all.  As he neared the end of his life, Kierkegaard acknowledged the privilege of being used by God in this way and genuinely expressed his gratitude for the “life of melancholy” that kept him praying, seeking, thinking, studying, writing, believing and hoping.

For Jesus said, “If anyone wants to come after me, you must deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.” (Mark 8:34-35)

I pray that I will imitate Kierkegaard in the way that he took up his cross for Jesus.

Meet Lola the Prairie Falcon

One of the reasons my blog productivity has waned a bit this summer is because of my hobby (or alternative lifestyle!) of falconry.  I have been busy raising and training a new falcon.  Terry has bugged me for some time to make Lola a subject of this blog, so here you go.

Allow me to introduce you to Lola, my female prairie falcon.

With the help of a friend, I took Lola from her eyrie – a small cave in the side of a cliff – on May 31st when she was approximately 17 days old.  She was huddled together with 1 sister, 2 brothers, and 1 egg that failed to hatch.  This is the average size for a prairie falcon eyrie.

For anyone worried about this practice, let me say that I probably saved Lola’s life.  Biologists estimate that the mortality rate among 1st year raptors is about 75%.  In other words, there is a 75% chance Lola would have died before next spring had I not taken her.  Nature is beautiful, but it is also harsh, can be cruel (at least, in our eyes) and is always unforgiving.

Prairie falcons are very common in the western United States.  Unlike the peregrine falcon, which was saved from extinction by conservation

My last falcon was a peregrine named Bo. Here he is grabbing a quail for breakfast.

efforts facilitated through the Environmental Protection Agency’s enforcement of the Endangered Species Act, prairie falcon populations have never been so low as to be threatened, much less endangered.

(I am biting my tongue not to excoriate president Trump’s gutting of the EPA and the current plan to effectively terminate the ESA!  All God’s people ought to be screaming bloody murder over these catastrophes.  Maybe I will do that in a future post.)

Here are a few things to know about Lola:

  1. She is an “imprint,” meaning that she thinks I am her dad (or mom?). Both
    Lola at 17 days having her first meal at her new home.

    prairie and peregrine falcons will imprint up to the age of 21 days.  There are both pros and cons to training an imprinted falcon.  I have never done it before, and I am experimenting.  So, I decided to give it a try for a variety of reasons.  Maybe I will talk more about imprinting on another day.

  2. One of the benefits of imprinting is that Lola is as tame as a puppy dog. She likes to hang out with me in the living room, which makes her lots of fun…for now.  We will see how things work out in the coming months once she begins serious training and hunting.
  3. No, imprinting does not necessarily mean that she can never be released or
    Teaching Lola how to interpret the news.

    be able to mate and raise young in the wild. We don’t thoroughly understand the imprinting process, yet.  There are documented instances of imprinted raptors mating with their wild counterpart and nesting in the wild successfully.

  4. I wanted a female because the primary game species in my area throughout the winter is pheasants. Female raptors are about 1/3 larger than males.  I want to be able to hunt rooster pheasants when they flush, and a male prairie falcon would be too small to kill male pheasants consistently.
  5. When Lola was small I took her with me
    My two favorite little girls playing on the porch.

    everywhere, except when my shopping required leaving her in the car alone for long periods. She enjoyed sitting on the table with me in her wicker basket at my local coffee shop, meeting the customers coming and going.  It’s called socialization.  When raising an imprint, I had to ensure that Lola had food available 24/7, never experience unsatisfied hunger, did experience a broad spectrum of activity, and was always with me.

    They grow up so fast.
  6. Soon after Lola could fly, we began a procedure called “hack.” There are a variety of ways to approach hacking, but it basically means that the hawk or falcon is allowed to fly around on its own during the day.  So, every day Lola and I drive out to a beautiful, isolated valley – no people, roads, buildings, power lines or telephone poles – that virtually screams “Montana!”  Out here I can be reasonably certain that she will remain safe as she explores.I set her on the roof of my Jeep and let her do her thing.  Right now her
    Lola’s favorite inside perch on the banister.

    “thing” includes chasing larks, harassing the neighborhood marsh hawk, learning to use the wind, gaining self-confidence, muscle tone, stamina, strength and just lookin’ incredibly cool in the way that only big falcons can do.  Don’t worry.  Lola regularly returns to land on the Jeep roof as if to say, “Ain’t I the ritz, dad? Did you see that?!”

    Just to make sure I stay focused, she often buzzes my head for fun.  After 2 hours or so, at some point when she is standing on the roof, I offer her the lure (a leather thingy that I can

    Lola at hack, queen of her domain.

    swing in the air) with her daily meal attached.  She flies or jumps over, grabs the lure, begins to eat, and I get her ready to go back home.

  7. Well, that’s what Lola and I are up to now. I will let you know how we progress in the months ahead.

Teargas on the Playground

Children in the Aida refugee camp – 7/10ths of a densely packed, square kilometer containing nearly 6,000 people on the outskirts of Bethlehem – have one playground.  It is nestled behind the Lajee Center, one of several community development organizations in this Palestinian community.

No one goes to the playground hoping to play dodge-ball with incendiary teargas canisters, not even Palestinian kids.  But it never hurts to be prepared.  Especially when there is an active Israeli military base across the street from the swing sets and the slide.

Actually, the concrete Annexation Wall (as I call it) is directly across the

Annexation Wall & sniper tower overlooking Aida refugee camp

street, but the resident army unit snuggles tightly against their side of the barrier overlooking the playground.  So, the soldiers have a bird’s eye view of the little boys pushing their toy cars in the sand box.

The army base also has its own set of steel gates, large enough to accommodate trucks, tanks and fully loaded personnel carriers, built into the Wall that grants them immediate access to Aida’s largest street.  The very street passing by the Lajee Center and its playground.

This mammoth, gray gate can only be opened and closed from the outside, the Israeli army side.  The residents of Aida have no control at all.  They cannot lock the soldiers out of their neighborhood, but the soldiers can, and do, invade their homes as they please.

What seems to please the Israeli soldiers most often these days is shooting teargas, rubber bullets and skunk water at the people whose only “crime” is being Palestinian living in Israeli-occupied territory.

Naturally, the crime of being Palestinian includes little children, too.

Why else would Israeli soldiers fire teargas onto the Lajee Center

Children run from teargas on their playground

playground, terrorizing Aida’s preschoolers that sunny, spring morning?  It’s hard for a 4-year-old to outrun the gas, especially when the wind speeds its dispersal.  But the youngsters do their best.  Fortunately, most of them have a parent or older sibling present to help their escape.

The soldiers paused occasionally as they strolled down the wide street, gas masks covering their faces.  Over and over they calmly lobbed canisters of fuming noxious smoke among the panic-stricken children.

Imagine the chaos as people flee in all directions, either trying to escape the plumes of blinding gas or frantically searching for their little ones now vanishing inside a wet cloud of white smoke that can easily suffocate a small child in less than a minute.

Teargas blinds your senses.  It blinds your eyes with incredible, stinging pain, flooding your cheeks with acidic tears.  It also blinds your brain to the neural impulses that tell your lungs TO BREATHE!  So, you think you can’t.

Teargas in the streets

First, because of the burning gas torching your mouth and throat, you can’t breathe.

Second, because your brain has been tricked into suppressing the automatic reflex, you can’t breathe without great, deliberate effort.  But, unless you’ve covered your mouth sufficiently or escaped the cloud of smoke, taking another breath of teargas is the last thing you want to do.  But you need to breath!  So, what do you do

Soldiers do as they please, when they please, wherever they please. This day it pleased them to shoot teargas at little children

I have no idea how the minds and bodies of tiny infants, delicate toddlers, baby brothers and bigger sisters managed to cope with this surprise attack.  Nor do I know the stories of the family members and friends, all blinded themselves, whose only thought was to rescue the screaming child they heard somewhere off in the murky distance. (I heard this story from a friend who filmed the incident as it unfolded from the balcony of her home.  The image above is one frame from that film.)

No one had expected to play dodge-ball with teargas canisters on the playground that day.

But Israeli soldiers are inventive at coming up with new games to play with Palestinians, especially in the Occupied Territories.  And aren’t we told repeatedly that this is the most moral army in the world defending the only democracy in the Middle East?

It’s Official: Israel is a Racist State by Law

Israel’s Knesset has passed a new Basic Law – a series of laws that substitute for Israel’s non-existent constitution – called the Jewish Nation-State Law.  You can read the full text of the law here.

Israel has always struggled to defend its contradictory claim of being a Jewish and a democratic state, simultaneously.  Critics, which most recently includes members of Israel’s Supreme Court, have long pointed out that establishing a state only for Jews undermines its claims to democracy, which requires equality for everyone, Jews and non-Jews alike.

Many Israeli legislators have worried about the court’s bizarre tendency to acknowledge this obvious contradiction and to rule accordingly, issuing decisions which typically favor democracy above Zionist racial profiling.

Horrors!

But, don’t worry.  Israel’s political Zionists have a plan.  Enter the new

Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked

Jewish Nation-State Law.  One of the law’s staunchest supporters is the current Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked who openly laments the court’s tendency, when forced to pick between Jewishness or democracy, to defend the democratic principle of equality before the law.

Now the Jewish Nation-State Law will force even the highest court in the land to change its evil ways and acknowledge that, in the land of Israel, Jewish ethnicity rules supreme.  As Justice Minister Shaked declared in a Knesset debate last February

“There are places where the character of the State of Israel as a Jewish state must be maintained and this sometimes comes at the expense of equality.”  (emphasis mine)

Ms. Shaked’s thoughts on how to respond to Palestinian resistance against Israel’s military occupation.

Speaking in Jerusalem at the Israeli Congress on Judaism and Democracy the Justice Minister reaffirmed her position, insisting that Israel

“is a Jewish state and not a state for all of its nationalities…the Supreme Court should stop upholding the former at the expenses of Israel’s religious values…We need to protect the Jewish character of the state even if that means sacrificing human rights.” (emphasis mine)

Opposition leaders, some of whom are also Arab legislators, voiced their opposition to the law (here, here and here).  But they lost by a 62 – 55 vote.  This new “constitutional amendment” has thrown down the gauntlet on the world stage.  The message is clear:

Behold, here we stand!  Israel.  A racist, apartheid, Zionist nation-state, and we are proud of ourselves.

What will the world’s civilized nation-states do now?

Reading Religion Reviews My Book, “I Pledge Allegiance” #readingreligion # americanacademyofreligion

Eerdmans Publishers recently notified me of the first (to my knowledge) online review of my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America.  You can find the review here at the Reading Religion website (an outlet of the American Academy of Religion).

Jacob Alan Cook, an Adjunct Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Friends University, is very kind in offering a positive review of my latest book.  He is both a thoughtful reader and reviewer, qualities not as common as you might think.

In the spirit of continuing the conversation – a conversation I believe is the most important contribution the Christian church can make to America’s public life at this moment in our history – I want to offer a few responses to Professor Cook’s observations.

Towards the end of his review, Cook suggests that “the root of the problem [i.e. the church’s abandonment of Jesus’ kingdom ethics] lies deeper than Crump’s analysis.”  He points to Bonhoeffer’s suggestion that the basis of every ethical problem is the human tendency to think that we already know what God wants of us, thereby conforming God’s will to our personal preferences.

I agree with Cook’s assessment of our ethical dilemma.  But I also think that I make this point several times myself, although I may not have been as thorough or as explicit as I should have been.  I will keep this in mind for the future.

Professor Cook also dabbles in a bit of theological archaeology as he muses on the possible connections between my evangelical upbringing and my book’s emphasis on the place of evangelism within the ethics of God’s kingdom.

I think he is right to highlight this connection, but not for the reason he implies.

Yes, evangelicalism has traditionally distinguished itself by emphasizing the importance of personal evangelism in the Christian life.  But I would argue that the tenor of I Pledge Allegiance is due to an entirely different evangelical characteristic — namely, taking the Bible seriously.

I hope that my book’s analysis of the Synoptic Gospels makes it clear that sharing the good news of the gospel is an essential ingredient of Jesus’ kingdom ethic.  My goal in I Pledge Allegiance is to describe a Biblical theology, not an evangelical theology…in fact, just typing out those final, two words has stretched my attention span to the breaking point.  Yikes!

If there are any similarities between my arguments in I Pledge Allegiance and the work of Carl F. H. Henry (a godfather of American evangelicalism), as Professor Cook suggests, then it is because we both have read the same Bible and drawn similar conclusions.

So, thank you again, Professor Cook.

And if you subscribe to this blog but have not yet read I Pledge Allegiance yourself, I hope that this helpful review at Reading Religion will motivate you to do so.  What are you waiting for?

Saint Donald’s Epistles

I have just returned from a trip to western Washington (state), so I need to get busy again!

The following excerpts from Saint Donald’s Epistles (an old fashioned word for “letters”) were waiting for me when I checked my email.  It was sent to me by a friend and former colleague at Calvin College.

I don’t think it requires much commentary.

 

Saint Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 13 (NIV)

St. Paul by Rembrandt

(4) Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. (5) It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. (6) Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. (7) It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Saint Donald’s Epistle to America, chapter 13

(4) I am impatient, I am unkind.  I envy, I boast, I am arrogant. (5) I dishonor others, I am self-seeking, I am easily angered, I keep a record of wrongs. (6) I am delighted with my own

Donald Trump waits to speak as he is introduced at the New York Veterans Police Association on April 17, 2016. (Photo by Anthony Behar)

goodness but do not rejoice with the truth. (7) I always protect only what is in my own interest, always trust in my feelings of superiority, always hope that others will recognize my perfection, always persevere to achieve my own glorification.

Saint Donald’s Epistle to the World, chapter 13

(4) Henceforth, America will be impatient, America will be unkind.  It will envy, it will boast, it will be arrogant. (5) It will dishonor others, it will be self-seeking, it will be easily angered, it will keep a record of wrongs. (6) America will be delighted with its own goodness but not rejoice with the truth. (7) It will always protect only what is in its own interest, always trust in its feelings of superiority, always hope that others will recognize its perfection, always persevere to achieve its own glorification.