“Shariah: The Threat to America”: A Commendable Worry Badly Addressed (via Prof. John Stackhouse’s Weblog)

More and more we are seeing a “clash of civilizations” between Christianity and Islam. It is important that Christians (and Muslims) think/pray about how we are going to get along on this planet and avoid more wars. Stackhouse gives some good thoughts here.

The Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C., recently released a report called Shariah: The Threat to America that sounds the alarm against fifth-column Muslims within and anti-American Muslims beyond America's borders. Penned by an elite team culled from the ranks of America's soldiers, diplomats, politicians, and spies, it pronounces shari'ah (the code of Islamic law that governs all of life) to be the great threat of our times similar t … Read More

via Prof. John Stackhouse's Weblog

The Media, Violence and Partnership (via Vinoth Ramachandra)

Vinoth Ramachandra is an excellent example of taking the Gospel of Jesus and engaging/confronting unjust political, economic, and social structures that oppress people. Please read this!

Last week saw a pitiful demonstration of the power of the Internet, coupled with the way global media corporations love to promote religious extremists. Why did the media seize on the words of an obscure, sectarian pastor of an unknown Florida church with less than 50 members and broadcast it to the whole world, knowing that it would inflame Muslim passions? The same media are largely silent when scores of churches are burned down and hundreds of … Read More

via Vinoth Ramachandra

Time to Give Mark Driscoll a Sabbatical? (via Prof. John Stackhouse’s Weblog)

If you are concerned with some of the teaching coming out of Mars Hill Church in Seattle then I suggest you read some of John Stackhouse’s critique on Mark Driscoll’s take on stay-at-home-husbands.

There’s a lot to like about what Mark Driscoll has done in his pastoral work at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Sadly, however, there’s a lot to dislike, too. Brother Mark is right, for example, to bemoan the lack of clear preaching of the Bible that calls people to intellectual and moral account, rather than merely entertaining them or confirming them in their blithe consumerism. He’s also right to worry about the feminization of much North America … Read More

via Prof. John Stackhouse’s Weblog

The Poisonwood Bible

Yesterday, or the day before, I finally finished The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. When this novel came out in 1999 it was widely reviewed and critics said things like, “powerful,” “remarkable,” and “enjoyability.”  This is not the reason I read it. While I was in Chiang Mai, Thailand, last August, I met up with some of the youth I pastored from 2002-2005, and this novel came into the conversation. The book was part of an English class at Chiang Mai International School, and if you know anything about the content, it was challenging to these students–many of them are missionary kids themselves. I am puzzled by the fact that I didn’t bother to jump in on the conversation and read it along with them. I was probably too busy reading my Bible and did not at the time see the value of entering into the dialogue. I missed out.

The story is a tragic tale of a family of six who become missionaries to a politically unstable Congo in the 1950’s. Beginning the book is a little disorientating because we soon realize there are five narrators, five perspectives on all that is happening in the Price family and in the Congo. I think this narrative technique added a sense of realism, for don’t we all know that life can be told from many perspectives? No one person sees everything. For instance, Orleanna, the mother, is able to describe what it is like to be subject to her husband’s oppression in a way her four daughters, by virtue of their age and relation to their father, cannot. Yet, each daughter adds their own peculiar insights, and as you listen to their slant on things these girls become living persons. Rachel, the eldest, is self-absorbed and enamored with American celebrity culture; Leah is religious and desperate to please her un-pleaseable father; Adah was born deformed, and she offers a cynical, yet profound perspective; and Ruth May, so young and innocent, she offers a simple and hopeful angle on things. Each daughter brings her own unique perspective and the result is a multidimensional world that feels like the one you and I live in.

There is so much tragedy in this story. There is the father, Nathan Price, who more or less forced his family to support his neurotic dream of being a kind of John the Baptist who would convert the Congolese heathen of Kilanga village. His entire ambition was founded upon a fear that, having been the sole survivor of his platoon in WWII, he had to prove the worth of his existence. He felt so ashamed, felt like he owed his fellow soldiers good reason why he got to live and they didn’t, so he looked to over-seas missions as the way of his redemption. But, being so blinded by his brokenness and insecurities, there was no love, no willingness to listen to the villagers and their African culture, and the entire ministry was a failure. His gospel, his good news, for the Congolese was like a Poisonwood tree. He thought it was a tree of life, like the one in Eden. In the end there was no fruit, no life, just poison and flames.

Like any father or husband gripped by fear, driven by a incontrovertible ambition, Nathan oppressed his family. This was one of the hardest things for my imagination to hold, for I know that this fictional character is also a real person in the world. Like Nathan, there are men who are enabled by a patriarchal vision of marriage (e.g. “men lead, women follow”) to be condescending, overbearing, threatening, and above any sort of recourse by the family since they are to submit to his God-given authority. Reading this story just further confirmed in my heart that the best model for a husband and wife relationship is an egalitarian model, where each person has equal authority, equal voice, and equal worth. This is the truth St. Paul enunciates in Ephesians 5:21, “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ,” and is the frame in which one should understand any talk of a wife submitting and a husband being the head. Don’t get me wrong, I am not anti-authority. I am anti oppression. I have no problem with God having authority over me, or leaders in the realm of politics and church, but when we give one fallen human authority over another in the close-knit relationship of marriage, I think this way of structuring power too often leads to abuse of some kind. I have known many men who have excused their short temper, justified their belittling tone towards their wife or kids, because they see themselves as in some way “above” their wife. Would not an egalitarian model do away with this? I feel that my wife and I are seeking to live in this way of marriage, and so far things have been beautiful. I think multi-lateral leadership is far more beautiful than uni-lateral leadership. This makes me think of the Trinity: Father, Son, Spirit, in eternal loving communion, sharing power as they seek to restore the cosmos.

The other travesty in the story is the Congo itself, and all that happened to it. Prior to reading this story I had never really had any inkling of how guilty the West is of subjugating the African countries economically and politically. I did learn a little from the movie Blood Diamond, but I did not give it much thought until finishing this book. In the story we learn that not only is Nathan Price bringing a Poisonous message, but so is the West, the Americans and Belgiums. After the Congo gained independence from Belgium, the new Congo Prime Minister, Lumumba, is assassinated by the Congolese army, with the help of the CIA. In his stead is placed Mobutu (see pic below), a despot who is inclined to Capitalism and Western economic interests–he also had a fetish for a leopard skin hat, and that just is an ominous sign. What follows is a despotic rule that leaves Mobutu and Western countries with their wallets stacked and the entire Congo nation lying in starvation and corruption. Instead of the wealth of the Congo’s natural resources (diamonds, cobalt, gold, etc.) helping to improve the nation’s faltering infrastructure, the capital flies over those in need and into the coffers of the wealthy nations. And there really is no way for the Congo to get out of this pit because it has billions of dollars of debt owing the Western nations. A debt that was incurred during Mobutu’s scandalous political career. He got to build palaces, an airport, accrue several billion dollars of wealth, and now the people of Zaire have to pay for it. This is an injustice. And the overwhelming thing is that this is only one country among many who are experiencing economic and military oppression. So this book has made me think about how I as a follower of Jesus respond to such injustices. I am humbled to know that I am part of the problem, that Canada is implicated in the subjugation of African people. It makes me think about how the gospel, the message of Jesus, surely has something to say about this cruelty. And I end up longing for God to put an end to these messed up world structures and longing for Him to help me participate in this movement.

Alright, I could write more, but I feel my sentences are not as coherent as I’d like them to be, and I am, simply put, hungry for breakfast. If you can, read this book and let me know what you think. All in all it is a great read and, for us Christians, should make us think/pray deeply about gender relations, fatherhood, missions, and the Gospel.

MS.