I have been watching, reading, and pouring over the events surrounding Wikileaks, wanting to write some sort of thoughtful commentary. But, as The Atlantic points out, this event has brought about some of the best journalism, political analysis, and writing we’ve seen in years and I find it difficult to try and say something newer or more insightful than those that are more knowledgeable of the past and have more time and acquaintance with the primary sources in question. With more of these leaked diplomatic cables being released every day, this coverage is literally non-stop. My productivity at worked has suffered because of the tangled web of links one can get caught in going from one story to the next to the next; I have at least a couple dozen quotes and links saved in my Evernote notetaking app in order to use in some future writing (or present).

But nevertheless, even among my friends who care about this situation, there appears to be some common misconceptions about this whole situation, leading them to direct their frustrations, diatribes, and anger in the wrong direction. I wish to clarify some of those here today. First, I must say on the outset that I am absolutely, entirely in favor of most all that Wikileaks has done and is doing. I think they are serving America’s longterm interest and the well-being of its citizenry far more than even our own federal government is doing. Do I think they have done everything perfectly and responsibly? No, but no four-year old media organization can be said to have done so. Wikileaks has (and will) make mistakes–its founder has even admitted that–but so will/has our federal government in its own “attempts” at serving the greater good. The only question remains: who do you think does more damage when they make those inevitable mistakes (the government or Wikileaks?), and therefore, who requires more scrutiny, responsibility, accountability, and fear of being out of control? I (as well as Glenn Greenwald and The Economist) wholeheartedly fear the results of a government out of control more than a Wikileaks out of control. But, in fact (as we move on to the misconceptions) ….

1. Wikileaks has not been out of control or indiscriminate in its release of these cables.

As has been well-documented, Wikileaks has possession of over 250,000 State Department cables. Wikileaks has frequently been accused by many in the media of having quote-un-quote “dumped” all of these cables with no care or discretion whatsoever. At the time of this writing, though, of those 250,000 cables, Wikileaks has only released 1193. They have been specific about which ones to release, and further, before they posted the cables on their website, they submitted them to three major well-respected newspapers (The New York Times, the U.K.’s The Guardian, and Germany’s Der Spiegel) who have thus edited out information from the cables that constituted unnecessary bits that would harm American troops or national security. And then, when Wikileaks has posted the cables online, they have kept every redaction these major newspapers suggested, thereby holding back the type of information everyone assumes they are releasing.  Further, with both this leak and the last leak focused on the Afghan war, Wikileaks has (according to the AP) “appealed to the U.S. ambassador in London, asking the U.S. government to confidentially help him determine what needed to be redacted from the cables before they were publicly released.”  The government, on both occasions refused to help Wikileaks, but did in turn help The New York Times accomplish the same task.

2. Wikileaks has, in fact, done nothing illegal or wrong.

That is, of course, if you believe The New York Times has not acted illegally in publishing these stories. There is absolutely no difference in how Wikileaks has acted in comparison to these major newspapers (read Dan Gillmor’s essay, “Defend Wikileaks or lose free speech“). If you honestly believe Wikileaks should face some sort of justice, you are basing this on a precedent under which every other legitimate investigative media outlet in the world would be guilty as well, which would be an “extremely dangerous” precedent.  Contrary to very popular belief (even among ignorant Senators), Wikileaks has done nothing that would fall under the Espionage Act of 1917.  They would only be guilty of a crime if they aided and abetted the original leaker in leaking the information. But, as so far seems to be the case, it did not “obtain” these documents or “pursue” them; they “received” them independently from a military source. It is not illegal to publish classified information (see this 4 year-old article in the conservative–and in this case extremely hypocritical–National Review).  Legal experts are “flailing” to figure out, conjure up, or even create a law that Wikileaks has broken, under which to take legal action against them. From the linked article: “And judging from new media reports describing the administration’s thinking on this, there is currently no plausible theory under which Assange could be charged with a crime — despite claims by Obama officials that WikiLeaks has broken the law.” (This also makes wrong and unethical the decisions by the private companies [Paypal, et al.] that have stopped doing business with Wikileaks because “the State department told us Wikileaks was doing something illegal, which was against our terms of service”. The government is simply lying. This isn’t true.)

3. Absolutely no harm has come to any individual of group as a result of any leak Wikileaks has ever released.

As Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks wrote in his wonderful article in The Guardian yesterday,

WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time we have changed whole governments, but not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. But the US, with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few months alone. US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan. NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn’t find a single person who needed protecting. The Australian Department of Defence said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published.

Neither the Pentagon nor the Defense Department has been able to find a single case where this has brought harm to anybody.

4. Julian Assange is not seeking a “secret-less”, “war-less”, or “government-less” utopian society–just a “corruption-less” one.

Once again pointing to Assange’s article, he says clearly that “People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for those lies. If a war is justified, then tell the truth and the people will decide whether to support it.” Todd Gitlin of The New Republic perpetuates this wrong assumption by writing, “… Assange is not just a random leaker. Credit him with a theory. It’s his generation’s anarchism.” As proof, he goes on to quote an essay Assange wrote in 2006 where he says that

The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership [leading to] consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption.

But Gitlin leaves out the next two sentences of the essay which read

Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance. (emphasis mine)

This is not a man opposed to “governance”, just a certain “type” of governance. Assange’s goal is to reveal excesses in secrecy and the presence of corruption at both the governmental and corporate level. And he has. These cables reveal so much illegal, corrupt, unjust, unethical, and “Un-American” activities that have been done in the name of the American people without our knowledge, approval, or support. And there’s a reason why we don’t know these things; not because they need to be secret, but because we as Americans would not support them.

5. It is not the case that these cable don’t really say anything new.

As Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com lists for us, this is patently untrue and is only being propagated by politicians in an attempt to stop the media cycle concerning these writings. They are trying to say at the same time that this is a huge danger for American National Security and yet not that a big deal. Here are some of the things Greenwald points out:

• “the U.S. military formally adopted a policy of turning a blind eye to systematic, pervasive torture and other abuses by Iraqi forces;”
• “the State Department threatened Germany not to criminally investigate the CIA’s kidnapping of one of its citizens who turned out to be completely innocent;”
• “the British Government privately promised to shield Bush officials from embarrassment as part of its Iraq War “investigation”;”
• “‘American leaders lied, knowingly, to the American public, to American troops, and to the world’ about the Iraq war as it was prosecuted, a conclusion the Post‘s own former Baghdad Bureau Chief wrote was proven by the WikiLeaks documents;”
• “Hillary Clinton’s State Department ordered diplomats to collect passwords, emails, and biometric data on U.N. and other foreign officials, almost certainly in violation of the Vienna Treaty of 1961.”

Review: “Popes & Bankers,” By Jack Cashill | Patrol Magazine

Here was the exchange:

Joel Miller: 
Paul, I appreciate your taking a stab at the book. I head up acquisitions for one of Nelson’s nonfiction teams, and Popes and Bankers was a book that I signed. Jack is certainly controversial, but don’t be so quick to dismiss. The Bill Ayers connection is well attested at this point. Christopher Andersen covered it in his book, Barack and Michelle (see pages 164-166). Ayers stitched the final MS together from Obama’s unfinished work and a “trunkload of notes.” Compositionally, stylistically it’s Ayers’ work. And Ayers was not a “terrorist,” in scare quotes, as you suggest. He was a terrorist in truth, a man who set bombs to protest the Vietnam War.

Nelson has done popular history like Popes and Bankers for some time. I also signed Stephen Mansfield to do The Search for God and Guinness, Judge Andrew P. Napolitano’s Dred Scott’s Revenge, and many others. I also signed, for some additional context, The Faith of Barack Obama by Mansfield. I hope we are known for publishing pointed books that hit a nerve with people. I think Popes and Bankers does that very well.


Like Reply

–paul in reply to Joel Miller: 
No, I really like Popes and Bankers. Like I said, it is a very enjoyable read. My frustration is when a Christian publishing house gives voice to only a certain sect of “controversial” authors — the conservative ones. I’ve heard Stephen Mansfield preach, and he’s very good, but definitely conservative, and Judge Napolitano is obviously a well known commentator on Fox News. I would love to see you sign, say, someone from MSNBC, perhaps, to write a “popular history”, or maybe someone like James Carville could write a book for you.

In the end, my issue is that history is never unbiased, nor should it pretend to be. And if you want to be a conservative publishing house, then be that. But I think it does injustice and injury to the Gospel to drape one’s publishing house in the cross and then provide a view of “popular history” that is clearly from one political corner of the world. It gives the impression that the “Christian” view of history from this authoritative and influential “Christian” publishing house is ultimately the same as a “conservative” view of history, and that kind of identification of one with the other has set this nation back about hundred years in theological nuance, care, and practice.

If your publishing house cares about the church, I would hope it would not entangle itself in the political wranglings of the world, just to sell a few books.

After the amazing success of our first house show several months ago, we just had to have another one.  Therefore tomorrow, Saturday, December 4th at 7pm in Philadelphia, we are having our second house show entitled The Birdhouse presents, Vol. 2: The Housecooling (Go to the Facebook event page for details and to RSVP).  Our house, as a venue, is called “The Birdhouse” (it’s even on Foursquare).  The show’s gonna be really, really good.  This time around we have four main acts performing (with me doing a little intro set).  Acts include:

• Chris Currie (formerly of Full Fathom Five) & friends
• Luke Bartolomeo (novelist, poet, and editor of the Monongahela Review)
• Heath Warner (also known as “Paul Warner” by day)

We will be recording this evening and putting online for free, just like the first show (Chris also played at that one, though just by himself).  We will have some drinks and snacks, but feel free to bring a six pack, a bottle of wine, or some food (baked goods are always welcome!).  See you there!

More than any show in recent memory, Mad Men has captivated me in such a way that I cannot stop watching it.  I just started watching the show a couple of weeks ago and I’m on the last episode of Season 1.  Now, I’m usually wary of something that receives non-stop praise and adoration like Mad Men has.  I often wonder can a television show really be so good that it evokes responses like this? It’s hard for to imagine and hold in my mind the idea of something that can take hold of people so singularly and consistently that it leaves people in awe (I have a similar inability to imagine how a show like Dexter would fall in this category).

But I’m a believer now.

I began watching the show and immediately was arrested by it; the only problem was that I couldn’t figure out why on earth I was.  It took me about seven episodes to realize what was so different about the show and why it appears to be of such a different ilk and calibre than anything else I’ve ever watched on TV.

Mad Men (Wikipedia page) is the story of a group of Manhattan advertising executives living in the sixties and the relationships between them.  That’s it.  There is literally no plot outside of the characters except history itself.  The show is the most character-driven thing I’ve ever watched.  And it should be slow, but it’s not.  The dialogue and characters are so engaging, so real, so multi-faceted and -layered that you can’t help but want to figure them out.  The characters are so complex that you get to see them in their fullest breadth of emotions and moral spectrums.  It is not uncommon to find yourself being disgusted by a character in one episode, then feel like they’ve changed in another episode, only to watch them fall back to old flaws in a third.  And so you realize that they (and we) really do exist in a paradoxical world where both the good and bad within us live at one and the same time.

The main “character” (I hesitate writing “protagonist” or “hero”, because no one in life is that simplistic) is one Donald Draper (how’s that for a name?).  Draper is performed by Jon Hamm, who many might know as one of Liz Lemon’s hilarious and goofy love interests in 30 Rock (he’s the one who lost his hands).  Donald Draper is one of the most complex characters I’ve ever watched.  This is one of the benefits of television over film, I think.  In a lot of ways, television art can be more long-form in its content than even film, provided that it sustains the narrative as Mad Men has.  Draper is so complex, so nuanced, so mysterious, that one can watch and believably observe the small events and moments that change him over a long period of time, rather than the usual one-big-changing-moment that occurs in films or more self-contained episodes.  It has been a marvel to watch the oh-so-subtle changes he has gone through in just one season; I can’t wait to see more.

Anyway, I could go on about how stimulating and intelligent the dialogue is, how everything from the sets to the clothing to the language is as painstakingly authentic to the period as it can be, or how amazing it is watching real events in history bearing on these individuals living in those times–but I won’t, because I heard these same things for a long time and still never watched it or cared until I did.  Instead, I would just wholeheartedly encourage everyone out there to watch this show online (start at Season 1, Episode 1), or just buy the DVD.

Mad Men is currently in its fourth season on AMC.  You can watch the current season at AMC’s video website.

This morning I got an email from WordPress (the blogging platform I use) saying that in two weeks they will be retiring the blog theme that I have long used.  They said they would be replacing it with the theme you see on the site right now.  So, I went ahead and switched over early.  It doesn’t look very different, but it does come with a lot of different options and the coding behind the site is sort of different so font sizes and element spacing is a bit different.  It may take me a few days to fix the new issues and pick what settings I like and such, but I should be good to go pretty quickly.  Secondly, the header you see at the top of the page is the new default header for this theme.  Do you like it? I can easily go back to my original header which is the picture you see at the top of this particular blog post.  Thanks for the feedback and the reading.

Outlive Your Life: You Were Made to Make a Difference
by Max Lucado
Thomas Nelson, 2010
My Rating: 3/5
Purchase at Amazon

________

“Social Justice” is all the rage right now. The swaths of American twentysomethings serious about their faith who have found Evangelicalism to have a heart inflamed for the wrong things, a head stuck in the wrong places, and absolutely no legs at all have tried to wrestle with and take seriously the call for God’s people to be not simply his “ambassadors” or “proclaimers”, but rather his very Hands, Feet, and Presence. Movements like Shane Claibourne’s The Simple Way here in Philadelphia and New Monasticism have shaken many from the fog of an (ultimately inadequate) purely intellectual faith into a faith that is firmly rooted in life. As Calvin put it, “For we cannot with propriety say, there is any knowledge of God, where there is no religion or piety.” In other words, the truest knowledge of God and His Gospel is found in its practice just as much (if not more) than in its content.

But, until recently, the concerns of this movement have found themselves most readily embraced by those surrounded with starkest representations of brokenness and social injustice–those in cities. This has egged on the increased polarization between the “‘urbs” and the burbs. Those in cities have looked on in judgment at the suburban Christians out there who seem out of touch with the “real” issues of the day as they sit in their comfortable, safe, disconnected real estate developments; suburbanites have in turn accused us city dwellers of merely being swept up in a liberalistic fad driven by cultural accommodation, a slip in morality, and a loss of the “authority of Scripture”. Indeed both of these opinions are incorrect caricatures of the believers living in these differing worlds, but nevertheless, those in suburbs have begun to feel the pressure to figure out how they too are meant to serve this broken world.

Max Lucado’s newest book Outlive Your Life is an attempt to answer some of these concerns. It could easily be entitled Social Justice for Soccer Moms. Ever since last year’s Fearless (read my review), my assumptions about Lucado were proven incorrect and I have been excited to have Max Lucado be so popular in the super mainstream and commercial Evangelical world. In the present book, Lucado spends the first few chapters showing us the necessity of the Church reaching out, the next few giving us a “heads up” on what we’ll encounter if we take this call seriously, and the last chapters giving us the reason why we do it and practical ideas to live it out. He has some wonderful exhortations to the Church, most often subtly placed in the prayers he closes each chapter with. Consider this prayer from page 107:

Dear Lord, you promised we would always have the poor among us. Help me to make sure that the reverse is also true: that I am always among the poor–helping, encouraging, and lending a hand wherever I can. Enable me to love the invisible God by serving the very visible poor in my corner of the world. Help me to be creative without being condescending, encouraging without being egotistic, and fearless without being foolish. May the poor bless you because of me, and may my efforts somehow reduce the number of the poor. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.

Ultimately, though, in spite of the bright spots, the book falls flat. It does not do enough to shake people from their slumber. I can see Lucado’s desire to do this oozing between his words, but his decision to not push too hard too fast (out of pastoral consideration, I assume) ends up turning this book into little more than an encouragement to write a check to a couple of charities now and then and maybe actually smile and give some cash to the next homeless guy you meet. Sure, there are subtle “suggestions” to actually spend some time living life with those that are poor and underprivileged, but his subtlety is almost too effective, ultimately neutering his desire to evoke real change in his readers. For example, Lucado encourages us to serve the poor, but does not challenge the idea I’ve heard so often that this call to the Church “actually” means to serve the “spiritually” or “emotionally” poor; he warns us that to truly live the Christian life is to invite persecution upon ourselves but says nothing to counter the mindset that would believe that simply having a coworker say he doesn’t believe in God is tantamount to 1st century “persecution”.

In short, there is no limit to how far the human heart will go (even the Christian human heart) to keep itself comfortable, isolated, and fooled into thinking it is fulfilling its eternal obligations. We will turn anything into just enough of a system that we can grade ourselves, check our boxes off, sleep easy, and ultimately cease living life by faith itself. If there is any hope to move the human heart to action, strong fortifications must be attacked, high walls must be scaled, and long-held defenses must be countered. What Lucado says in this book is absolutely true in most every regard, but he seems to lose sight of the fact that this issue, to this audience, is one that requires a little more fire and a little less balm.

If you are trying to find a really good book for this issue, I would whole-heartedly suggest David Platt’s Radical, Francis Chan’s Crazy Love, or Total Church by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis (it’s cheaper at WTSbooks).

(Disclosure: I was sent a free copy of this book from Thomas Nelson publishers)

Wawa Eggnog.

It only comes out for a few months out of the year, but when it does, I go kind of crazy. Seriously, it’s one of the best drinks I’ve ever had and every year it’s as good as the year before. No joke.  Others agree.  It’s so thick and creamy and not too “noggy”. It comes in two varieties: Original and Pumpkin Spice. The latter is good to at least try once in your life, but really, Original is where it’s at.  Also, here’s a little secret:  WaWa Egg Nog is really just Turkey Hill Egg Nog licensed for a WaWa bottle.  So if there’s no WaWa around you and all you’ve got is Turkey Hill, that’s all you really need.

Every year my brother and I have a bonding moment over our mutual love for this fine delicacy. We almost grow physically ill while we’re home with our parents from ingesting so much dairy and egg whites. And it’s worth every bit of it. So drop by your Wawa today and pick up some of it to try. Or, if you are in Philadelphia and have never had it before, I’d be glad to buy you your first one.

As is now becoming a typical preface to the American twenty-something story, I was raised in an Evangelical family. It wasn’t until high school though that these ideas began affecting my soul. But, being in my watered-down southern Baptist experience, the spiritual appetites this “awakening” had produced were never satiated. I longed for the deeper things of God that I had only then, 16 years or so down this journey, realized were even there: a God that cared about far more than “consistent quiet times” and “witnessing to my friends”. A God whose call for me was not first and foremost to fight the modern-day vicars of Darwin (my public school science teachers), but a God whose call for me was a call for me – a deity far more interested in my enjoyment in Him rather than my service to Him – who sovereignly and independently called out for me through the fog of my emotionally turbulent, perpetually “emo” high school existence into a new, vibrant, and abundant emotionally turbulent, perpetually “emo” high school existence. Me and my crew of fellow impassioned “youth groupies” who met at the JAM House (Jesus And Me) every Wednesday night longed for growing miles deep when the church seemed far more interested in growing miles wide.

Seven years later, I sit here in a Philadelphia coffee shop, having resisted the call of my church to go to Liberty University and instead opting for a large urban secular education in the middle of Richmond, Virginia. I’m a seminary drop out now, less sure now than ever in what “secondary” doctrines of the Christian faith I ascribe to. I still struggle now with nearly the exact same set of “sins” I struggled with during that time in high school – perhaps more, in fact. It seems my mouth is filthier, humor darker, eyes weaker, and checklist of sins-not-done shorter now than ever.

Nearly all of those youth group and “Christian” school friends have now either fallen into the depths of naivete and fundamentalism or have “fallen away” all together, most falling in the latter category. For nearly my whole life, my father–who taught Sunday School growing up–showed himself to probably not be a Christian and for years showed no signs of changing though he “longed” for it to happen. In college my campus ministry actively engaged the secular/atheistic student organizations exposing me to their ideas and stories of “leaving the faith”. I frequent various de-conversion sites, and read several atheist blogs. I am in email contact with a self-described “apostate” whose distractingly hyperbolic rhetoric hides a hurting man that was confronted with the intellectual short-comings of the brand of faith he had been sold. My life, current and former, is filled with pictures of a Christianity that does not “work”. So in light of all these things, I’m forced to ask:

Why the hell am I still here?

In spite of the theological inaccuracy of such a question, I’ve recently found myself wondering what would make me fall away? I’ve realized that none of the typical answers to that question would make me doubt my faith. I’ve heard every argument against Christianity, and frankly, I find them to be sincere but inadequate justifications for disbelief. I can honestly say: no amount of suffering (to myself or others), no attack on the “inerrancy” of Scripture, no level of hypocrisy, no philosophical or intellectual wrangling, no historical/textual/grammatical/archaeological argument would shake or has ever shaken my faith. So what would cause me to walk away?

If people can’t change.

Maybe it’s daddy issues, maybe it’s my own personal “struggles” (or failures, rather) with my own sins, or maybe it’s all the people I’ve known that have given the middle-finger to the cross and now live quite fulfilling lives – I don’t know. But regardless where it’s from, something in me needs to believe that for those that God has seized and made His own, they are forever actually changed. I need to believe that my mom can perhaps have a good marriage with this man someday. I need to believe that the darknesses in my own mind and heart can be healed. I need to believe that Christianity does with people what it says it does. Maybe that’s why I’m now a counselor and want to do more research and education in Psychology. Maybe it’s a backward way to my own salvation–to show me that people are pliable and hearts moldable. I need to know: does Christianity only leave us either naive or apostate?

Quick disclaimer for all the armchair theologians reading this: I know all the theology underlying what I’m saying. I know that Christianity is a process. I know the preciousness of the doctrine of Progressive Sanctification. I know that there’s a very real reality of “backsliding” that is not “falling away” and that many of the friends that I think now have fallen away are only in fact prodigals waiting to “come to their senses”. I know that the very questions I’m asking are theological absurdities and irrationalities that are not based on an accurate and Biblical picture of reality. But the human soul is a tumult of irrational anxieties, fears, and questions; and intellectual (and spiritual) honesty demands that these things are wrestled with and not just swept away under the banner of “my doctrine says this is wrong”.

(With that out of the way) So why don’t I fall away? A few reasons. God and the Bible have proven themselves as authoritative. Christianity has shown itself to be the most reasonable and beautiful picture of reality no one could have imagined. I believe I’ve been so deeply changed by God I could never not believe. Also, there’s not an absolute dearth of pictures in my life of a God that changes hearts. I know people with amazing stories, I’ve seen people come back to the faith, and I’ve watched my affection for God grow over time while certain addictions in my heart have lost some (though not all) of their power. But there’s one thing that has been keeping me here that inspired me writing this. The clearest, most plain and simple example of someone genuinely being changed by a sovereign spiritual act of God – my little brother.

He was never a “non-believer” per se. He was always very interested in apologetics and other more intellectual Christians pursuits, though he never wore it on his sleeve. In fact, he never really wore much of anything on his sleeve. All my life he’s been the quintessential “Eeyore” – the seemingly emotionless pessimist. He even walked around as a very young child repeating his mantra “I hate my life”. He would never talk about anything more than an inch deep. He was a hardened shell whose way of dealing with life was to keep everything inside and not let anyone know it was there. He just didn’t seem to care about anything. I think we all know the type. I remember being in college and people asking me if my brother was a Christian. I would just say, with a smile on my face, “No, I don’t think so. But for some reason, I’m not worried about him.” And then I would go and pray. I’ve always prayed often for that guy. I don’t think he knows that.

A couple of years ago, he went to some random church retreat with some people at his college and something happened. He was not looking for it. He didn’t think he needed it. He always thought he was a Christian. But nevertheless he was changed. He is, to this day, the only person I’ve ever been able to watch go from spiritually apathetic, to spiritually alive, to spiritually mature. What has happened in his life really and honestly can only be explained by some genuine experience with a genuine God and Gospel. His passion for the things of God is not necessarily unique among people I know, but it certainly is unique for him. He is, in such a short amount of time, a mature man that has dealt with the most difficult moments of his life only after this conversion and it has not shaken him, but it has only grown him into a man I respect, love, and look up to on so many levels. He prays for and with others often. He seeks accountability for the things that haunt and hurt him. He talks about and from his heart. He loves others dearly and seeks to serve when he can. He hurts and struggles openly and knows that it’s okay to not be okay. And this has freed him.

And it has also freed me. He is an amazing man of God now that God is using to save me and keep me. God has used my brother to keep me in this beautiful faith and show me that it does do exactly what it says it does: it connects people to the living God – an experience that can do nothing but change us. This shows us the importance of both relationships and true spirituality in the Christian faith. It seems that a watching world watching Christians act like what they proclaim is a picture that can overcome the darkest of doubts and the most severe of anxieties of faith. There will always be suffering in this world. There will always be the necessity of added nuance to our doctrines in light of further findings. There will always be diversity of thought and practice in the name of Christ. But a Church of genuinely changed people – a prospect I previously thought an impossibility – living out of the overflow of their changed hearts is something that can speak to these things and overcome them; all while bringing redemption, wholeness, and healing to a world seeking to make apostates of us all.

Thanks, Matthew.

One of my dearest friends, Andrew Vogel, got married two weeks ago (p.s. He has an amazing blog). He had originally asked me to do this Scripture Reading at the wedding. But unfortunately, the drive from Philly to Newark, Ohio is a long one, and many variables can make for much delay, and indeed, this is what happened.  (Amy and I went on to the rest of our plans: a wonderful visit to God’s country, Pittsburgh).  Anyway, to add to the pain of this loss, this particular set of Scriptures that I was going to have the honor of reading just happens to be the best set of Scripture readings I’ve ever encountered for a wedding.  No Song of Solomon or 1 Corinthians 13 here; just a proper and exegetically sound exploration of the sweeping story of God’s relationship with his own Bride.  Therefore, I felt compelled to share these verses with you today.  May they stir and woo you for Bridegroom for Whom your soul was made.

Andrew and Laura, I pray that this feeble attempt at publicly participating in the celebration of your union communicates the love and grace of our Lord to your hearts.  May it bless you.

_______________________

We will be reading four passages from Scripture, the first is the creation of Eve in Genesis 2, verses 18-25.  Please listen:

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.” So the Lord God formed from the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and the man chose a name for each one.  He gave names to all the livestock, all the birds of the sky, and all the wild animals. But still there was no helper just right for him.

So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. While the man slept, the Lord God took out one of the man’s ribs and closed up the opening.  Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib, and he brought her to the man.

“At last!” the man exclaimed.
“This one is bone from my bone,
and flesh from my flesh!
She will be called ‘woman,’
because she was taken from ‘man.’”

This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one. Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame.

Our next passage is Ezekiel 16, verses 4-14.  God later uses the marriage imagry as an illustration of his relationship with Israel. Listen now to how he describes his people:

On the day you were born, no one cared about you. Your umbilical cord was not cut, and you were never washed, rubbed with salt, and wrapped in cloth.  No one had the slightest interest in you; no one pitied you or cared for you.

“But I came by and saw you there. I said, ‘Live!’ and I helped you to thrive like a plant in the field. You grew up and became a beautiful jewel. And when I passed by again, I saw that you were old enough for love. So I wrapped my cloak around you to cover your nakedness and declared my marriage vows. I made a covenant with you, says the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine.

“Then I bathed you, and I rubbed fragrant oils into your skin.  I gave you expensive clothing of fine linen and silk, beautifully embroidered, and sandals made of fine goatskin leather.  I gave you lovely jewelry, bracelets, beautiful necklaces,  a ring for your nose, earrings for your ears, and a lovely crown for your head.  And so you were adorned with gold and silver. Your clothes were made of fine linen and were beautifully embroidered. You ate the finest foods—choice flour, honey, and olive oil—and became more beautiful than ever. You looked like a queen, and so you were!  Your fame soon spread throughout the world because of your beauty. I dressed you in my splendor and perfected your beauty, says the Sovereign Lord.

Our next passage is Ephesians 5:22-33.  Consider what Paul the Apostle says regarding marriage:

For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord.  For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church.  As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything.

For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word.  He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault.  In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself.  No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. 30 And we are members of his body.

As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.”  This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one.  So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Our final passage is Revelation 19:6-9. After Israel falls, Jesus dies and rises again to restore us to God. Our sins are not only forgiven, but forgotten. Listen to John’s vision now as recorded in Revelation:

Then I heard again what sounded like the shout of a vast crowd or the roar of mighty ocean waves or the crash of loud thunder:

“Praise the Lord!
For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.
Let us be glad and rejoice,
and let us give honor to him.
For the time has come for the wedding feast of the Lamb,
and his bride has prepared herself.
She has been given the finest of pure white linen to wear.”

For the fine linen represents the good deeds of God’s holy people.

And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb.” And he added, “These are true words that come from God.”

[photo credit]

The Problem

“Social Justice-y” issues are in style right now. As globalization and social media collide, our global neighbors are feeling ever and ever closer, and our awareness to global issues is rising. What’s your little pet issue? Women’s rights? Children’s rights? Animal right? Poverty? The Environment? Global conflict and wars? As the change.org website points out in its suggested post ideas page, this clean water access issue is a primary factor in all of the above areas. Unclean and unsafe water is the primary cause of 80% of all disease and it kills more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. 90% of all of these deaths happen to children (source). Many global wars, including the conflict in Darfur can find their root in water access (source). The hours spent finding, carrying, and distributing water–and not going to school or working–are so numerous that it is a major source of poverty in the world (source). Indeed, there are even more implications for this most basic of issues, and they are well-catalogued on that “suggested post ideas” page, but these were the issues that struck me most.

Why people should care

Water, as the U.N. agreed in July, is a fundamental human right, as it’s lack prevents one from the enjoyment of life and every other human right. As the world becomes smaller, we are more dependent upon one another in nearly every way. It is becoming more impossible to ignore our “neighbors” and their welfare. Should not the deaths of 3,800 children every week stir us towards some sort of compassion (source)? To see the disparity between how easy it is to address this issue and how little the developed countries are contributing to its solution, is shocking, to put it mildly. But this doesn’t just have moral implications for us. As economies become ever more entwined, developing and developed countries are becoming more dependent on one another, and the issues of one cannot help but affect the other. It is in the interest of our long-term economic vitality to address this issue head-on and see this task to some sort of completion.

Why Christians should care

Water is an essential and mystical part of the Christian story and message, giving them unique motivations and resources for addressing this issue. From the opening chapters of our Scriptures, water is seen as a a major source of conflict and depth when untamed; but when handled by God, it becomes a source of life and redemption. The Israel story begins with God creating the world out of the murky depths. The Israelite people are set free from bondage to a prince of death and find their redemption by passing through a Red Sea, which previously would have held certain death and return to bondage. Israel enters the promise land in a similar fashion. God promises to sprinkle clean his people with the waters of redemption. It is by more than one water well that Patriarchs find their wives and Christ finds a woman in need of redemption. It is in the world to come that the Tree of Life is seen once more, and a River of Life flows from its roots offering life and salvation to all who drink. And perhaps in the greatest place that God meets His people–in the waters of Baptism–they find their Identity, his Covenant, and their Inclusion into the Family of God.

Water is essential to the story of Christianity. According to the sacrament of Baptism, God, in a very real sense, communicates Himself to His people through, of all means, water. Of all the substances He could have chosen to make Himself present in and through which to visibly identify His people, He chose water. Christians should care about water. As the visible representations of the hands, feet, and mouth of God, the Church has a powerful opportunity and responsibility to communicate the presence of Christ by subduing the chaos brought about by untamed and unsubdued waters and thereby bring redemption, wholeness, and healing to entire communities, nations, and regional economies.

When Jesus came and died, he died as the culmination of the history of the Israelite people–but not just that. As a product in the line of Evolution, within the body of Jesus was the entire evolutionary history of the cosmos and humanity. This being the case, when he died and was raised, he did not just bring a resurrected humanity, but a resurrected creation as well. And because of that, Christians were given the task of spreading this resurrection and redemption even to the natural world around them. They have failed much in this, but may I suggest that this is a way that they may return to their initial call to subdue that which is out of order in this world?

What we can do

The first suggestion offered by change.org for those stirred to action is to sign the petition found here to encourage U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to further the U.N.’s efforts to address this issue. But, as has been explored by greater thinkers than I, we cannot separate our moral lives from our economic ones. And for that reason, if we care about this issue at all, our personal economics will express this. There are so many things someone can do for very little money. There are two main ways that change.org offers to begin fundraising. One is through charity: water, through which a $20 donation can give someone clean water for a year. The other is through water.org, where a $25 donation can give someone clean drinking water for a lifetime. Both of these sites have many other ways to get involved as well.

As I looked into this issue (for the first time, really), I was astonished not only by how big the problem is, but how simple the solutions. May I challenge all of us–Christians, Atheists, and those of other faiths alike–to take charge of an issue that is so tangible, so attainable, and so basic for us all.

[photo by jlwo on flickr]