THE CASE AGAINST CROSS-CULTURAL MISSIONARIES

I just finished a book by Bob Finley of Christian Aid. In it, he argues persuasively that all foreign missionaries should be pulled out of the countries in which they are currently serving. As you can imagine, this stance has caused furor in many Christian circles. Cross-cultural missionaries, after all, are often held up as the consummate Christians, and a church’s support of them a sign of radical obedience to the Great Commission.

Except that there are many things wrong with the cross-cultural missionary approach in the 21st century. First, there is no instance in Scripture that God ever sent a person to a place where he would be viewed as a foreigner and where he would have to learn a new language to communicate with the people around him. Not to say that because there is no example in the Bible, we can’t do it, but to say that that overwhelming example in the Bible is of something different: Christians evangelizing people who are visiting from another country, so that those visitors can go back to their home countries to spread the message. The parallels in modern-day America, for example, would be the massive number of non-citizens studying in our universities and living in our cities. Many are from countries that wouldn’t even let an American in for missionary purposes, but of course would let in a citizen who happened to have become a Christian while in America.

Finley argues that even if we could get American missionaries into these countries, we wouldn’t want to. Even the most austere of American Christians would still enjoy a standard of living far higher than that of the people he or she is trying to reach. Imagine a Muslim or a Buddhist or a Hindi person moving into your community, building a house ten times bigger than everyone else’s, drawing a salary a hundred times greater than the average, and enjoying gadgets far more cutting-edge than anyone has ever seen – and then that person tries to convert you to their religion and speaks of how their religion is about sacrifice and simplicity. No way would you buy it. But that’s what it’s like for an American, Canadian, or European missionary to go to a country in the developing world.

Money skews the whole thing, but it’s not the only thing. The fact that we are not from that culture also counts for a whole lot. Many people, out of genuine hospitality and cultural norms, will accept the message of a foreigner, but they will still see it as a foreign message. Better for people to hear the gospel from someone of their culture, lest it be mistaken as a Western or industrialized religion. Indigenous missionaries speak the language with perfect accents, understand cultural morays, and don’t furlough, either. Foreign missionaries, on the other hand, have to go through intensive language study just to get by. They may never totally “get” the culture they’ve been transplanted to; even if they do, they will invariably be viewed as outsiders, and in some cases suspected as being spies. And they are more expensive, by a factor of roughly 100, meaning that for the cost of sending an outsider into a country, you could equip 100 insiders.

Finley talks about Christians in Africa, Asia, and South America who pleaded with him to do what he could to get the foreign missionaries out of their countries, for their foreignness and their wealth were hurting, not helping, the work. He urges churches and missions agencies to forsake our colonial mentalities, which care more that we are expanding our reach and care less that we are abasing our brothers and sisters in developing countries. He recommends that we stop upholding foreign missionaries as the paragon for Christian sacrifice, and that we motivate young Christians to radical obedience in different ways than to encourage them to the mission field.

He speaks at length about what is appropriate for outside funds to support (outreach efforts, which can sometimes mean a few bucks for bicycles so that itinerant preachers can get to far-flung villages faster and more easily) and what is inappropriate (churches and pastors, which should be self-supporting and which are open to greed or jealousy or suspicion if they are funded by outsiders from rich countries). He warns against giving money directly to individuals, citing the Biblical principle of donations being laid before the elders for them to distribute as needed.

I am a huge fan of Christian Aid, and found the book to be well-written and challenging. I am conflicted, because many of my friends are foreign missionaries, and my church supports a number of foreign missionaries. I wish I could take comfort that it doesn’t have to be “either-or,” but that both models can peacefully co-exist, but Finley is adamant that an “either-or” approach is unacceptable. This is one I’ve stewed on for a few years now, and I will keep stewing on it. Either way, may God be glorified.

ALL BEFORE 9

Amy and I have definitely become morning people. Yesterday, my alarm clock went off at 5:00 am. It woke Amy up first; I crawled out of bed about 10-15 minutes later. She did some cleaning, ironing, and sorting of baby items, while catching up on TV shows she’d taped earlier in the week.

I had my time with God, and then headed down the street for my Wednesday morning men’s Bible study. Upon my return, I did some push-ups and sit-ups, while catching up on email and sports sites between reps. Then I had breakfast, read the paper, and made a list of house projects I was planning to do that day.

Amy and I reconvened to discuss these projects. I told her I had class at 6:00 pm, so I had the whole day but the list was long and that I had better get started. She also felt the time pressure of having lots to do and not a lot of time. And then we looked up at the clock in the room and noticed it wasn’t even 9:00 am. In our early rising and running around, we lost track of just how early it still was.

But before I could congratulate us for getting such a jump on the day, I thought to myself that the flip side is that we start getting ready for bed around 9:00 pm. Since we have no social life, our early morning routines don’t cramp our style. We’re such nerds.

WHAT’S A JOB FOR

Aside from the fact that we should strive for excellence in all things, and that all work can be made into service to God’s purposes, what’s a job for? If you have a job that isn’t an overtly Christian one (i.e. employed by a church or Christian organization), you can make three cases, all of which I believe can be equally important for the kingdom of God.

First, your job can be a means to making money to support yourself, your family, and those in need. I used to pooh-pooh this reason, as did many others, because it seemed like such a cop-out, inferior to direct service and often used as a justification for enjoying a standard of living incongruent with that of most of the world. But I have come to realize that that pooh-poohing is itself a form of arrogance and worldliness; the Bible is clear about not making differentiations like this to puff yourself up. I have also come to realize that pursuing a job in order to make money in order to be generous is quite Biblical; you get the sense in Paul’s writings that a major part of his job was to redirect funds from those who had them to those who needed them, and that to have was not cause for guilt but opportunity to give. In fact, if you have a marketable skill and you don’t use it to make money, that’s a waste. Not to say that Jesus doesn’t call us to give up things, like the fishermen who dropped their nets to follow Him. But be careful when you walk away from a lucrative career that you are qualified and positioned to take; ask yourself if it is a decision grounded in faith, or if it is fear of having a lucrative career, dealing with its pressures, and/or being scorned by other Christians.

Second, your workplace can be your mission field. When God moved in powerful ways in the 1st century as it relates to world evangelization, He almost never sent people to far-flung places but rather to their own communities. I don’t think it’s a stretch to make a parallel case that if you are an accountant and you become a Christian, your natural “community” to bring Jesus Christ home to is an accounting firm; if a construction worker, than to the construction site.

Third, your work can be edifying to the purposes of the kingdom of God. Ultimately, if you make money to give it away and evangelize people while on the job, but the fruits of your labor are neutral or, even worse, negative to the ways of God, then what’s the point of expending all that time and energy? Every profession can be redeemed for God’s purposes, but some are more useful than others. Careers in non-profit are obvious ways to live out Kingdom values, but businesspeople and lawyers and teachers and doctors have useful skills and can contribute useful services.

So what’s a job for? The same as what’s life for: to enjoy God and to glorify Him forever.

SOMETHING HAS GONE VERY BAD

The sermon at this morning's worship service was from Genesis 2, the account of what most people call "The Fall," that is, when the serpent tricked Eve and Adam and God banished them from the Garden of Eden.  Our pastor talked about how that sin – of mistrust in a Heavenly Father to do good – has seeped into all people and families and relationships since then. 

 

I felt a certain poignancy about that message later that afternoon when I read in today's paper about the awful abuses committed by Catholic priests and the even more awful covering up that took place by their higher-ups.  I do not mean to point a special finger at priests or the Catholic Church – I know that childhood sexual abuse happens in all religions and all cultures – but it is particularly despicable that such evils were committed by people in positions of intimate trust and religious stewardship. 

 

Many of the people who I have spoken to who have themselves been victims of sexual abuse at the hands of people in religious authority have told me that of the many distortions that result – self-image, sexuality, relationships – the hardest by far is the sense of warping of spiritual truth.  Sometimes the perversion is explicit – abusers have quoted Scripture to justify their repeated sexual acts.  Other times it is implicit – abusers count on the shame of the abused, the disbelief of those they tell, the assumed trust in the authority of the office.  Either way, it tarnishes what is meant to be a beautiful thing – God in intimate relationship with us, God placing us in intimate relationship with one another. 

 

Something has gone very bad in our world.  The sin of our ancestors – of not trusting God's goodness – has seeped into all of our lives, and as a result we are torn asunder from ourselves, each other, nature, and ultimately God.  The Christian belief in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as a conquest over sin and death is something that ought to move us much more than it does today in our inoculated, numbed-down society.  For it is an audacious, sweeping claim – that by the blood of One all might be made clean.  Given just how dirty we all are, and how much we continue to dirty ourselves and get dirtied, it is indeed an audacious, sweeping claim. 

 

To paraphrase two of the common themes in the writings of the apostle Paul: First, if this claim is not true, we who believe in it are of all men most to be pitied.  But second, if it is, should it not demand all of us?  Oh, may I neither despair because of the evil in me and in the world, nor numb myself or convince myself that I'm OK and you're OK.  Nor assent to what I believe to be true but live it out only half-heartedly.  No, may I believe, and live accordingly.

 

 

NO COMPETITION

I've written before in this space about the lack of competition in many government functions, and how it skews things like efficiency and motivation.  In other words, if I'm a barber and I decided to stop doing a good job or jack up my prices, my customers would stop coming to me and go down the street to another barber.  But if I was the only barber in town, my customers would be stuck with me even if I decided to stop doing a good job or jack up my prices.

 

So here is one of the big differences between the private sector and the public sector.  Our free-market system is efficient, ruthlessly so at times, when it comes to weeding out products, services, and companies that don't keep up in their value to their customers.  If you want to stay in business tomorrow, you have to stay ahead of your competitors today.  Governments, on the other hand, don't often face the same kind of competition, especially when it comes to three pretty important buckets of products and services. 

 

First, the poorer you are, the less able you are to move if you don't like the local government.  Richer folks are more mobile and so governments do in fact face competition when it comes to providing them with a basket of goods (clean streets, good schools) in exchange for a price (taxes).  But localities have a monopoly over poorer folks, which can lead to the "bad barber" kinds of behavior by those localities.

 

Second, there is no competition when it comes to the federal government and its policies, products, and services.  Even for the rich, who can move from Philly to the suburbs or from southeastern Pennsylvania to South Jersey, there is no escaping the rule of the federal government.  (I suppose you could move to Canada if you don't like it.) 

 

Finally, when it comes to acute situations, it's often the government or no one. In situations of natural disasters and terrorist attacks, as well as smaller-scale ones like water main breaks and house fires, there's no one to turn to but a public agency.  

 

Not to say there is no incentive, of course.  Government people that do poor jobs can and do get voted out of office, fired from their jobs, and/or vilified in the media.  Government that do good jobs can and do get voted into higher office, promoted to better jobs, and/or lauded in the media.  These are certainly sufficient positive and negative motivators.  It's just different than the private sector, where it's easier to measure success, easier to know how you're doing.

 

But let's flip this around.  Be good in the private sector, and you can take pride that you're better than your competitor and/or that you generated more profits than last year.  Be good in the public sector, and you can take pride in a whole lot more.  You can be proud that you did the best you could for the poor and disenfranchised, those who needed it the most and who had the least number of choices to turn to.  You can be proud that you provided a valuable benefit to an entire nation of citizens.  You can be proud that you answered the call in the situations of the greatest urgency and emergency, when people were in distress and they had nowhere else to turn.

 

In other words, you can look at public sector work as inferior to private sector work because it lacks the profit incentive, has harder challenges, and less tangible measures and rewards for success.  Or you can look at it as superior to private sector work, not in spite of those facts but because of them. 

 

(Postscript: what has been interesting to note as I think back on the articles, magazines, and books I've gravitated toward in the last ten years or so is how these differences are really beginning to blur.  That is to say, the private sector is beginning the understand the importance of non-financial considerations, complicating the picture for some – for it is truly harder to pursue financial gain AND environmental stewardship AND social justice – and crystallizing it for others.  Meanwhile, the public sector is making impressive advances in philosophies normally reserved for the for-profit world, like performance measurement and outsourcing.  I guess I've always found the blurry parts more interesting.)

Blog Rules

Part of my OCD nature is the rules I set for myself. Some of them are for moral purposes – do do this, don’t do that. Others are for self-disciplinary reasons – to make the best use of my time, to take care of my body. And still others are symbolic – touching my heart and blowing a kiss whenever I see a US flag, or raising my hand every time I hear a certain praise song that reminds me of Christian martyrs.

I have blog rules, too, and here they are:

1. No more than one post per day. If the muse hits me more than once in a day, oh well.
2. Minimal editing of what I’ve written. It’s a musing, not a published article.
3. Mix up the topics. I try not to sit on a favorite topic for more than a few posts in a row.
4. No navel-gazing. Rarely will I write about the minutiae of my life, unless it’s about capturing the texture of urban life.
5. Don’t take myself too seriously. I like to communicate with authority, which can sometimes be confused for stuffiness or competence. Rest assured I usually have neither when I’m blogging.
6. No privates. While I seek to be open and vulnerable, I also want to be discreet. And when in doubt, I err on the side of discretion.

So there you have it, the pinnacle of my OCD-ness, that I would 1) have blog rules, 2) list them in a post, and 3) not be ashamed one bit about #1 and #2. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have another list to make.

32 Going on 18

I felt like a freshman yesterday. First, I went to a career fair and found myself amidst a most impressive crop of aggressive, sharply-dressed seniors. Sparkling resumes in hand, they shmoozed with ease; meanwhile, I fumbled through my recycled folder for the photocopies of my dog-eared resume.

I left the fair and headed to one of the main buildings on campus to make some personal copies with a swipe card my wife had from her grad school days. I asked the guy at the security desk where I could find a copier and he said, "Room 316 on the third floor." I actually asked him, "And what floor am I on now?" Politely, and without a hint of sarcasm, he replied: "You're on the ground floor."

Without his directions to the elevator, I don't think I could’ve found it. And yet, when I took it to the third floor, Room 316 was nowhere to be found. I decided to try a receptionist area; they look helpful, I thought to myself. The woman said, "Try Room 310." I retraced my steps to the general vicinity and saw that Room 310 was the offices one of the school's publications. The room next to it, though, looked promising. "Room 312," I proclaimed out loud, as if to tell myself, the woman at the receptionist desk, and the security guard.

I walked in and found the copier, relieved that my ordeal was almost over. I only had about ten copies to make, anyway. I swiped the card and it showed 24 cents on it. At seven cents a copy, I didn't get very far.

After three copies, I went back to the woman at the receptionist desk with my new problem. She told me to go to the Reprographic. I had never heard of such a place. I asked, "In this building?" She nodded, and said "ground floor." Ground floor -- I know where that is, I thought to myself, but I have no idea where on the ground floor the Reprographic is.

I took the elevator back down to the ground floor, wandered around, found another security desk, and asked the guy there where the Reprographic was. He pointed me in the right direction. I found the Reprographic. There was a guy behind the counter and told him I needed to add some money to my swipe card. He asked for my school ID card. I was puzzled but handed it to them. This is a lot of scrutiny for just wanting to add a few coins to my swipe card. He said it was a dollar minimum and that it would be added to my student bill. I said I preferred to just give him a few coins. He said he thought I was asking for print-outs, not copies. "No, we don't do that." When I asked where I could do that, he said he didn't know.

Seven copies short, I gave up the chase and went on with my day, feeling very much like a tiny little freshman on the big bad campus. But tomorrow's a new day.

Spiritual Gifts

Much has been made of the three lists of spiritual gifts in the New Testament: Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, and Ephesians 4.  Some people do spiritual gift inventories to decipher what gift or gifts they have, and others do the same inventories to see what gifts are present or missing in their groups.  Most, whether consciously or subconsciously, use this information to distinguish themselves and others, as if there were an unsaid pecking order of spiritual gifts.

 

I don't think Paul, who wrote all three of the books mentioned above, had these applications in mind when he made these lists.  First, I don't think these lists are meant to be comprehensive, as if this is the all-inclusive list and there are no others that people can have.  Second, the focus is not on the gifts as much as on the Giver; from what I read in these three books, divisions were an issue, and part of what Paul was trying to do in all three letters was to respond to those divisions by telling his readers that gifts weren't meant to rank people but to unite them. 

 

Finally, you get the sense that what's most important to Paul is not what gift you have but that you use it.  He uses the analogy of a human body, as if to say, "It doesn't matter what body part you are; but whatever body part you are, you better fulfill the role of that body part – or else this body's in trouble!" 

 

If Paul were writing a letter to 21^st century America, he would see divisions and boasting and low self-esteem, too.  And he'd make up another list of spiritual gifts.  Not to further shed light on what counts as a spiritual gift – all talents have spiritual dimensions if we acknowledge them to be from God and for His purposes – but to spur us on to using them to build up the whole Body.  Amen, let it be so.

SHEER SIZE

One of the things that is challenging and frustrating about government work is the sheer size of the problems it tackles.  Not to say that there is not complexity in the for-profit and non-profit sectors.  But at the end of the day, people look to government to respond to our biggest challenges: protecting our homeland, protecting our abused children, protecting our citizens before and after natural disasters. 

 

I cannot yet get my head around how to even think about formulating an effective response to such daunting tasks, let alone take action.  You're talking about coordinating massive amounts of money, huge bureaucracies, and fuzzy and oftentimes conflicting goals.  For-profits can focus on making money, and if they're somewhat enlightened, consider other important angles, like environmental impact and social justice and community improvement.  Non-rpfots can focus on important social ends, and if they're somewhat enlightened, consider the financial and operational and managerial ramifications of their actions.

 

But governments have to consider all of these goals and more.  These goals are often hazily defined, and they mean different things to different people.  And what needs to be done often requires the graceful nimbleness of a ballerina and the brute force of an elephant, and ballerina elephants are hard to come by.

 

These are challenges that energize me and frustrations that discourage me.  And I'm just a thinker now.  Just wait until I start becoming a doer!

A NEW CHALLENGE TO TACKLE

My internship through school is on a project my school has been working on for about four years, which is to improve the performance measures by which the city’s foster care system and its partnering agencies are evaluated. This notion of performance-based contracting is currently en vogue in public management, and it makes perfect sense to me: people and organizations should be held accountable to and compensated based on their performance. Even and especially when it comes to something as important as children in danger, children in transition.

Easier said than done. Any time you institute incentives, you create unintended consequences, for there are no incentive structures that perfectly align incentivized performance with what people and organizations really want. And any time you take agencies who are used to working and getting paid one way, and fundamentally change the way they are to work and get paid, you’ll need to do some pretty good selling.

The nice thing is that we’ve got some very good people involved here. The people in the city’s agency genuinely care about kids and about making sure they get taken care of in these times of endangerment and transition. And the people at my school join them in that concern, and desire to be excellent in bringing what they’re good at to make that work even more effective.

So after applying my personal principles and business skills to a non-profit setting in which I sought to accelerate minority entrepreneurship, for the next several months I’ll be applying those same skills to a new challenge. I’ve got a lot to learn but good people to help me and a bank of experiences to draw from. So let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work.

PREACHING AND PEOPLE

Bart Campolo, founder of an urban ministry called Kingdom Works whose motto is “love God, love people – nothing else matters,” is fond of asking people to think of five sermons that impacted their spiritual lives, and then to think of five people who have impacted their spiritual lives. The point being that it is much easier to think of the five people, and that what’s important, then, in making a difference for the kingdom is meaningful and authentic relationships.

I couldn’t agree more. But one of the things I enjoy doing is public speaking. When I get a chance to speak to a group and I do well, it’s a wonderful feeling, because I feel happy not that I’m this great speaker but that God spoke through me and I got to be a part of it. Genuine moments of doing a good job and not having sinful pride creep in are a true delight, and public speaking is one of those avenues for me.

So given that what Bart is saying is really true – that words aren’t nearly as impactful as relationships – what am I going for when I speak to a group? What is it that I want to accomplish? I used to want to speak with such eloquence, spirit, and authority that people would have life-altering experiences and think back to my words as a turning point in their spiritual journeys. Obviously, God still does do this kind of work; I can think of a handful of talks that have absolutely changed my life. But such incidents are rare.

Instead, I now ask God to get me in between whatever it is He wants to say and we need to hear. Sometimes, that means that not a whole lot happens: some people are encouraged, and others scratch their heads. And sometimes, that means that a lot happens: the “penny” drops for people and groups, and powerful truths that were just a hair away are now at hand. But most of all, it’s on God to work or not work, according to His sometimes mysterious but always perfect ways. Also important is that a talk is but a piece of that work that He is working in peoples’ lives. Maybe it leads to follow-up conversations. Maybe someone can build on a truth when they study the Bible later on or talk to a Christian friend. Maybe those who were scratching their heads at the time go through something later on in life and that truth comes into clearer focus.

Whether and how God chooses to work, I pray I’d keep preaching, listening, and relating.

SAY NO TO CHRISTIANITY . . . AND YES TO JESUS

This isn’t a “Christianity isn’t about religion, it’s about relationship” argument about semantics. Rather, this is a missiological perspective on the concept of Christianity here in the US and outside the US.

Outside, there are many parts of the world where the word for “Christian” is synonymous with the word for “foreigner.” I believe strongly that indigenous outreach must be emphasized, for foreigners (i.e. not native to a country, for example an American missionary in Africa) are not nearly as spiritually effective or financially efficient as natives, and they can create all sorts of incorrect perceptions that to follow Jesus is a Western thing, something that people from modernized, industrial nations do.

In fact, many missiologists, when considering the Muslim world, support a form of conversion that allows Muslims to retain their Muslim faith and simply add to it their allegiance to Jesus. In many Muslim societies, conversion to Christianity is punishable by ostracization, disowning, beatings, and even execution. It is also considered conversion to a Western set of beliefs.

You might be cringing at the thought that this angle is merely a form of syncretism, i.e. that the following of Jesus is simply being added to other religious elements that have nothing to do with the core of the Christian faith. Consider, then, how we Western Christians have ourselves syncretized the Christian faith. There is a lot of good that came out of the Reformation, but some of what has emerged from this historical movement has created a Christian faith in North America and Western Europe that is similarly “Jesus and,” that is we follow Jesus and we have elements of religion that may have nothing to do with what we read in the Bible.

This is a point our pastor made a few weeks ago, when he read a quote from a theologian in Colorado, I believe, who argued that Christianity has nothing to do with the Biblical notions of faith and discipleship. Christianity, he argued, is simply a set of beliefs we mentally assent to, closer to a political ideology or a secular philosophy than to the life-changing faith that the 1st-century converts in the Bible experienced.

Whether at home or abroad, let’s not get caught up in Christianity. At its worst, it is a great and saving faith dressed in Western clothes, which causes it to be rejected or opposed by those who don’t wear Western clothes. At its worst, it is a set of beliefs that make for interesting late-night dialoging or safe Sunday church-going and overall do-gooding.

Those are bad outcomes because the true faith, of the Bible and the Lord Jesus Christ, is so much more. It is life-changing and relevant and provocative and merciful and flavorful and all-consuming. The enemy of the best is the merely good. And Christianity, as defined above, as merely good. Following Jesus is the best.

BLESSED BE THE NAME OF THE LORD

At this morning’s church service, we sang a praise song that I like, called “Blessed Be Your Name.” It speaks of blessing God in good times and bad, which has been an important aspect of my Christian walk – that in both good times and bad, I remember and praise God, and that the greatest thing about God isn’t that He gives us good times or helps us through bad times but that He is praiseworthy at all times.

A thought crossed my mind as we sang the song. I recalled that Job said, “Blessed be the name of the Lord” after a catastrophic day. I picked up a Bible and flipped to the beginning of the book of Job to read the account. A chill came across me as I read of his finding out almost simultaneously about losing all his possessions and multiple family members, for it reminded me of the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The past two weeks, my thoughts of this national tragedy have been manifold. I have been moved to give, and moved by others who have given. I have lamented the logistical and bureaucratic failures of the many levels of government who could’ve and should’ve done better in responding to this disaster. I have contemplated all of the socio-economic angles that this incident has brought to light.

What I haven’t done is asked for God to help those who believe in Him to say in the midst of losing so much, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Nor have I girded myself up spiritually, that were I to experience a similar loss I could say the same. But after this morning’s worship, I have done both. What an anchor, that in the best of times and the worst of times, the most blessed thing is the Name of our Lord.

“Blessed be Your Name in a land that is plentiful, where your streams of abundance flow, blessed be Your Name
And blessed be Your Name when I’m found in the desert place, though I walk through the wilderness, blessed be Your Name
Ever blessing You pour out I’ll turn back to praise, and when the darkness closes in, Lord, still I will say
Chorus: Blessed be the name of the Lord, blessed be Your Name, Blessed be the name of the Lord, blessed be Your glorious Name
Blessed be Your Name when the sun’s shining down on me, when the world’s all as it should be, blessed be Your Name
And blessed be Your Name when the road is clogged with suffering, though there’s pain in the suffering, blessed be Your Name
Bridge: You give and take away, you give and take away, my heart will choose to say, “Lord, blessed be Your Name”

IN THE WORLD BUT NOT OF IT

Today was my first day of school as a full-time grad student. I had an evening class. I was planning on knocking off my housework (i.e. painting our hallway) around 4ish, taking a shower, and having a bite to eat, to leave myself plenty of time and energy to walk to class.

But between the knocking off the housework and the taking a shower, I checked my email and got an important update on our adoption. So I had to tend to that frantically, making my shower, bite, and walk to class much more frenetic.

Nevertheless, I didn’t have to power walk it to make it on time. I was even able to take a couple of bags of plastic containers to the recycling bins on campus before heading to class. It was nice out, and lots of students were milling around the walkways, a stark change from the relative desolation of the summer months.

By the time class ended, it was dark out, and there was a different vibe around campus. I passed by frat boys in backwards baseball caps and flip-flops. Anyone who was walking alone, and some who weren’t, were chattering away on a cell phone. There were eighteen-year-old girls strutting down the walk in low-cut jeans (it is truly a sign that I’ve reached a certain stage in life when my first thought is “I can’t believe what these kids are wearing nowadays” rather than “wow, she’s hot”).

It was the first day of classes, so the frenetic pace wasn’t about studies and exam-related stress, like it will be later on in the semester. Instead, the energy was of young people flitting about in a new, freer social environment, and loving every minute of their college life.

As for me, my mind was on our daughter, and the adoption logistics we need to get through to get her. I thought about needing to buy more paint and what else did I need to add to the grocery list for tomorrow morning and what it will be like to hold our baby for the first time. I calculated that by the time I go to bed tonight, most of the campus will just be “waking up” to the start of their social wanderings; and that by the time I wake up tomorrow, many students will be just then returning from those wanderings.

I felt neither superiority nor envy. Just a sense that on this first day of classes, I might be a student just like everyone else – but I’m really not like anyone else.

NFL PREDICTIONS

September: what a great month for sports fans. College football has kicked off (literally), baseball is heating up (although with my A’s swooning, it could be a painful roast), and the NFL is back on the docket. And so here are my predictions for the 2005-2006 season:

AFC West: 4 Chiefs, Chargers, Broncos, Raiders
AFC North: 3 Ravens, 6 Steelers, Bengals, Browns
AFC South: 1 Colts, Jaguars, Texans, Titans
AFC East: 2 Patriots, 5 Jets, Bills, Dolphins

NFC West: 4 Seahawks, Rams, Cardinals, 49ers
NFC North: 2 Vikings, Packers, Bears, Lions
NFC South: 3 Panthers, 5 Falcons, Saints, Bucs
NFC East: 1 Eagles, 6 Cowboys, Giants, Redskins

AFC Wild-card: Ravens over Steelers, Jets over Chiefs
NFC Wild-card: Falcons over Seahawks, Panthers over Cowboys
AFC Divisional: Colts over Jets, Ravens over Patriots
NFC Divisional: Eagles over Falcons, Panthers over Vikings

AFC Championship: Colts over Ravens
NFC Championship: Eagles over Panthers
Super Bowl: Eagles 27, Colts 20

PARTISANSHIP OR COMPASSION

I’ve been reading through 2 Corinthians in the morning, and over the last couple of days have gotten to the section where Paul exhorts the church in Corinth to prepare for his arrival by raising as much money as possible so he can bring it to churches and communities in need. It is a beautifully written appeal for compassionate and cheerful giving.

It has been heartening to see how many Americans desire to be generous in this time of desperation in New Orleans, and how many have acted on that desire and given of their time and money to support those in need. But two things have left a bad taste in my mouth concerning the aftermath of Katrina. One is how poorly organized and poorly conceived are some of the relief efforts, both public and private. It pains me to see inefficiency when it comes to matters of such grave importance and in situations of such scarce resources.

I have also been disappointed in the venomous partisan politics that have flavored many peoples’ take on this tragic event. Conservatives are vilifying the looters as lawless and immoral losers who would dare commit crimes at the expense of people and organizations and municipalities already bearing so great a loss. Liberals are venting all their frustration with President Bush, chastising the federal government for being slow and stingy in their response to this disaster and insinuating that it is because of a lack of concern for the mostly poor, mostly minority citizenry that is left in New Orleans.

I do not discount that there is some truth-telling on both sides. And every world event is indelibly laced with strands of politics and race and class. But I guess it is my hope that the character of America, which is revealed in times of desperation, is proven to be one of compassion, cheerful giving, and selfless courage, not of bumbling bureaucracies and partisan finger-pointing.