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Burundi's pure anti-socialist health-care plan

Speaking of health care, the subject came up as Olivier took me around the city yesterday.

Burundi's health care plan is perhaps one that pure capitalists would dream of. No government run program here. Everyone pulls his or her own weight.

"There is no insurance here," Olivier explained. "There's no public insurance, and no private insurance.

"When you get sick, you pay what it costs. If you can't pay for medicine, then you don't get the medicine.

"If you go to the hospital, they will treat you, but if you can't pay when they have finished, you can't leave. You have people who are still in the hospital months after they are healthy," he explained, noting that the hospital for these debtors becomes like a prison until they can pay.

Don't worry, you soft liberals, there is mercy in the culture if not in the system.

"When people truly are unable to pay, someone eventually intervenes," Olivier said. "Either family or church will come up with the money eventually.

"Sometimes the president de la Republique will personally intervene on someone's behalf."

Oh no! They just ruined a perfectly good health-care plan with government meddling! If we get rid of that part perhaps we will have the perfect counter proposal to Obamacare!

Obviously, I am being sarcastic, we have already talked about some of my thoughts on the health-care issue, but I would think that America as a nation with considerably more resources than Burundi can come up with something -- if reasonable people decide to really look for solutions -- between death panels and debtors prisons.

What does health care have to do with repentance and Burundi?

By the way, the American health-care reform debate may not seem like a subject for this blog on reconciliation. And it may seem strange for me to talk about it during my trip to Burundi.

But remember, reconciliation happens when forgiveness meets repentance. And, very little is understood about repentance, I have discovered. Not here in Burundi, not in France and not in my home country of the United States.

One aspect we hope to talk more about is the desire, when one truly repents and begins to be restored, to make things right. Even more is a desire to reject core thoughts that we hold or that have been held by our group or even our predecessors once we realize that these thoughts go against truth and justice.

Well, even in something like health-care reform we can see some of the signs of thinking that disciples may want to reconsider.

If you are in Christian circles in America you may not get a chance to hear differing thoughts on this and other debates, which can give the impression that there is only one, true Christian way to think about this.

Here are some others that you can add to your sources of reflection.

Brian McClaren writes many things I have been wanting to say in his Open Letter to US Conservative Christians. You should also check out what Jim Wallis has to say on the subject. McClaren also lists several faith-based fact-checking sites.

By the way, if you’d like to do some fact-checking about the health care debate, here are some faith-based sources that I believe can be trusted to avoid uncritical and inaccurate reporting about health care. I understand they will be offering correctives to rumors and misinformation in the months ahead.

http://blog.faithinpubliclife.org/
http://www.sojo.net
http://www.catholicsinalliance.org/

I, for one, would like to challenge all Christians to not forward ANY e-mail they receive that speaks of politics without first checking to see if the source is credible. People of faith (any faith) are easy marks for those who are looking to exploit the word-of-mouth machine.

We tend to believe what we hear automatically when it comes from someone we think is like us. Politicians, interest groups and corporations have long figured this out and some lobbying groups have come to specialize in preparing factless campaigns focused on conservative Christians. So all they need to do is get a Christian to forward their "facts" and it becomes automatically credible to the other Christians who will receive it.

Disciples need to be wise and not allow themselves, no matter what their political beliefs, to be used like this. The results can be more important than we think.

Here in Burundi, like in neighboring Rwanda, an overwhelming percentage of the population was Christian. But their faith did not lead them to repent of cultural ideas that had been handed to them through colonial rule and their own ancestors.

And when pushed to the edge, it was their beliefs in their own group superiority and need for vengeance and self-protection against the enemy that led to genocide in Rwanda and 11 years of ethnic violence in Burundi. All of this happened with churches participation at worst and silence at best.

And the result has been a young population that, while it has not turned away from the church in droves, is increasingly questioning the foundations of this faith that was not able to keep people from acting out of their worst nature.

When I watch the town-hall anger and read some of the hateful comments that I have come across on facebook and blogs (my wife was privy to some message strings on Obama and health care from some of her high school friends on Facebook recently that would make you think twice -- no, thrice -- about how far we have come on race relations in the US), I sometimes wonder what is possible in America. 

Are we so far removed from the people who took out machetes and whacked their neighbors when they felt threatened? Are we really that different? I would argue that we are not different at all. The only thing that protects us is what core beliefs we allow to govern us.

And right now, I am not sure that those core beliefs are in order.  

Human face on the principles

Not ready to dive back into writing after the pre-election series, but I came across this interesting video that puts a face to our often thoughtless comments about Muslims.

For those who have very little contact with Muslims (like any other group with whom we have little it is too easy to stick our stereotypes. This clip helps you see what I and many others who have many Muslim and Arabic friends and neighbors see all the time.

Normal people who want to live a decent life. It helps us get back to the basic principles of our fundamentally equal worth and then to figure out how to act like we think it is true.

I wish you could have been here

If you are, say, an Evangelical Christian who believes that Barack Obama is going to turn America into a godless land of homosexuality and abortion ...

If you are still wondering whether he is a secret racist waiting to unveil a slew of anti-white legislation ...

Or even if you just simply prefered the John McCain / Sarah Palin ticket ...

I wish you had been here with me last night.

You would have witnessed something that is hard for me to explain in words. But if you had seen it, you might have gotten just a little taste of why the election of Obama just might be something good for your country afterall.

Had you been here, in my Paris apartment, when I woke up at 5 a.m. to learn that Obama had won, you would have seen my shell of self-protecting pessimism slowly fade.

I had prepared myself for the possible defeat by telling myself and any French or African friend who would ask that "I'll believe it when I see it." ... "You don't know my country like I do," I'd say when they would remind me of the polls.

But as I watched the pundits on CNN talk about the significance of the victory, I just sat numb. No smiles. No reaction really. I was just trying to wake up, literally, and realize that this was not a dream.

You would have seen me nod in approval at John McCain's concession speech and then grumble "where was this John McCain during the campaign?" But I would have calmly told you that I thought he had been very honorable.

And then, when they cut to Grant Park in Chicago. You would have seen me sit up in anticipation. If we had been involved in small talk, it would have stopped at this point.

You would have seen my eyes start to tear up as the crowd cheered its president elect.

And then, you would have heard a strange sound escape from me. I didn't even recognize it as an attempted sob, not having experienced such a phenomenon in years.

More tears, and then fighting them off for some reason. And then you would have really seen something. As he began to speak, I watched the faces of white and black supporters together, cheering in joy. Then, at the sight of a young black man with a single tear steaming down his face, I lost it.

I had no idea what this sound was or where it was coming from. You would have seen me literally look around to see if it was coming from someone else. But no, the sobbing was coming from me. You would have seen me marvel as I looked in the mirror and saw my disfigured face like I have never seen it.

And you would have heard me whisper, "God, thank you for letting me see this."

This sobbing would go on for 15 minutes. And, if you knew anything about me and my usual emotional control, you would have understood that something significant was taking place.

I would have told you that the only other time I had cried like this was after a good friend of mine, a white man named Mark who lives in inner-city Chicago, cried in repentance after watching a video about some aspect of racism against blacks.

Mark's tears had represented the first time I had EVER seen a white person feel and accept responsibility for what had happened in the past. And it did something in me. The next day, I was all alone watching another program about racism that previously would have caused me to simply shake my head and then move on with my day. But on this day, it cut to my soul.

The tears flowed. The sobs built up inside me until that protective dam -- constructed during years of  survival training against self-pity, shame, self-hate, etc. -- gave way. The strange sounds blurted out of me and then streamed in a wonderful release that surprised me in its pleasure.

That day maybe eight years ago, something changed in me. My friend's demonstration of repentance had helped me take the first step in a healing process against the effects of growing up black in America. 

If you had been here last night, you would have seen step two.

As I sat there sobbing, I recognized the feeling. I was in Paris instead of inner city Chicago, but the feeling was exactly the same.

Back in Chicago, Mark's tears had demonstrated repentance and declared that what had happened in the past shouldn't have happened, that my ancestors really should have had the same value as his, that I indeed had the same value as him.

On this night, America's vote for Obama was declaring the same messages to my soul. And as you look around Paris and Chicago and Kenya ... you would see a lot of other people who seem to be feeling something similar.

"We won, we won," you would have heard a black French girl scream at an election celebration here in Paris. "With this, maybe France will realize that we are worth something, too." 

If you had been here, I think you would have seen it. You would have felt it. You would have seen through my filter a bit, and it might have actually made sense to you.

You might have sensed in me and others the opening to a door of soul healing, of repentance and forgiveness, of reconciliation. Godly ideas, no?

If you had been here, even if today you are still uneasy about what evils Obama might bring to America, you might also sense that for a lot of people this election might be bringing something awfully good.

Here comes the judge

Our letter closes with statements based in perhaps the most important of all cultural influences on the American church.

This is something I didn't understand until I left the country 13 years ago and began meeting Christians from other nations. There exists a decidedly American world view that goes something like this:

* God has chosen America out of all nations because it was founded by Christians seeking to follow Him.

* In the past, the country was blessed because it honored Him and tried to follow his ways.

* In recent years, the country has begun moving away from Him, taking prayer out of schools and other public venues, approving of abortion and becoming tolerant of homosexuality and sexual immorality in general.

* If the country continues on its current path, it will lose its blessed status and incur the wrath of an angry God.

We won't go into detail, but there are a few main problems with this thinking.

1. America is not Israel. The Bible never says anything about America being specially blessed or chosen for the purpose of blessing the world. This is a culture myth that has been repeated across time and across the world. The Romans thought this way.  Hitler spoke of Germany as a special place with a divine calling. The list goes on. People naturally seek divine justification for their very human desire to be superior to others. Americans don't realize how much more Roman they are than they are Biblical when they fall into this thinking.

2. Even if it were true that somehow God had chosen America as a special place, can we honestly look at our history and believe that the country was morally better in the past than it is now? This is where most African-Americans, though often socially conservative, differ decidedly with white America.

Was America following God in massacring the Indians and enslaving Africans and others? Were people god-honoring through years of publicly approved lynchings, discrimination and subjugation of a people?

We could go on to consider the treatment of women, of immigrants, of the poor in general during the industrial revolution ... Was America following God better in those days than it is now?

Did God look the other way on these issues because we may have prayed in school back then or because homosexuality was kept quiet and hidden?

Just what was better about back then? This totally depends on your cultural glasses.

BACK TO THE LETTER

You will notice this general line of thinking in the closing parts of our letter.

So what does all this mean for the nation?

In the past when the Lord brought someone with the beliefs of Obama to lead a nation it meant one thing - judgment.

Read 1 Samuel 8 when Israel asked for a king. First God says in 1 Samuel 8:9 "Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do."

Then God says

1 Samuel 8:18 " When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day." 19 But the people refused to listen to Samuel. "No!" they said. "We want a king over us. 20 Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles." 21 When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the LORD. 22 The LORD answered, "Listen to them and give them a king."

Here is what we know for sure.

God is not schizophrenic

He would not tell one person to vote for Obama and one to vote for McCain. As the scripture says, a city divided against itself cannot stand, so obviously many people are not hearing from God.

Maybe I am the one not hearing but I know God does not change and Obama contradicts many things I read in scripture so I doubt it.

For all my friends who are voting for Obama can you really look God in the face and say; Father based on your word, I am voting for Obama even though I know he will continue the genocidal practice of partial birth abortion. He might have to nominate three or four Supreme Court justices, and I am sure he will be nominating liberal judges who will be making laws that are against you. I also know he will continue to push for homosexual rights, even though you destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for this. I know I can look the other way because of the economy.

REPENT, OR ELSE

First off, you will see that fear of judgment is a major motivation in this cultural interpretation of faith. It's based on the idea that God judged Israel in the Old Testament when they didn't follow his ways as prescribed.

But what are those ways? If you come from a certain part of American culture, you will assume, as has our writer, that this pertains to abortion and homosexuality.

In the passage listed in our letter, God was warning Israel (a special nation with a special calling in God's plan) that they should not have a king. Period. Any king.

They were supposed to follow God directly so that God could reveal himself to the world in a special way through this peculiar nation that would be unlike any other.

His goal was to bless the entire world through this nation and they were messing it up by trying to be like everyone else.

WHY DID GOD DESTROY SODOM?

The writer mentions Sodom and Gomorrah and the often repeated idea that God destroyed these cities because of homosexuality.

Again, culture informs us here more than Scripture. If we read the texts again, we see simply that God says that there had been an outcry against evil in these cities.

It never specifies that that evil was homosexuality. We see elsewhere that there was violence and bloodshed in these cities. And then we see that a gang wanted to have sex with the men (angels, in fact) who were visiting Lot.

So we assum that God's judgment was about homosexuality. We completely miss the evil of a gang forcing sex on anyone, regardless of whether it was homosexual or heterosexual behavior. Lot was willing to offer one of his daughters for the mob of men. Could God have been angry about that, too?

The assumptions we make about why God destroyed the cities are of course not entirely illogical.

Except for the fact that Scripture removes any reason for assuming.

Look at Ezekiel 16:49:

"Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy."

Wow. Arrogant, overfed and unconcerned with the poor and the needy. Does this sound like Western society in general? It does not mention homosexuality here. Is it biblical to say that economic justice issues are not important compared to homosexuality and abortion?

Look in Isaiah 1 when the prophet speaks of Sodom and Gomorrah.

"... learn to do right!
       Seek justice,
       encourage the oppressed.
       Defend the cause of the fatherless,
       plead the case of the widow."

Some have argued for defending unborn children here. I can see that. But I see nothing about homosexuals.

I understand the Bible does have something to say about homosexuality. We're not debating that here. But should we be afraid of judgment because of its existence?

WHICH GOD DO WE BELIEVE IN?

Regardless of whether homosexuality is a major concern of God's, we have to ask a more basic question.

Do we believe, as we like to preach, that Jesus has paid the price for sin and that God is now primarily concerned with inviting people, as they are, to enter into relationship with Him?

Or do we believe that God is primarily concerned with bringing all of humanity into conformity with his laws and punishing sin and sinful nations?

It seems that many American Christians are afraid of this coming judgment on their nation. That may be legitimate, but I would ask Christians who believe this way to consider whether God might have just as much grace today as he had on their forefathers who committed many of the injustices mentioned above.

If we realized how graceful God has been to us and our ancestors despite some pretty horrible actions, perhaps we would be more amazed at this God than we would be afraid of Him.

And perhaps we would be much more willing and ready to extend that same type of grace and love to those we think are violating God's laws today.

A great teacher I read about said something about how those who have been forgiven little love little.

If we live under a myth that says we were good in the past, we won't seek forgiveness for the past. And it stands to reason that we would stand in superior judgment over others in the present.

FINAL PRAYERS

On this election day, I hope more American Christians will step back from one culture group's narrow list of Biblical morality issues into a broader vision of what "His will on earth" includes.

I pray that they would then decide which issues matter most to them and then freely, humbly and gracefully choose the candidate whom he or she believes best represents the best chance for the nation and our world to be shaped and impacted by God's love and grace.

I pray that they would not be motivated by fear or by selfishness but by a true desire to see His will done on earth as it is in heaven.

I pray that they would recognize that while God is not schizophrenic, we are severely limited in our ability to discern clearly what comes from him and what comes from our culture.

Thanks for joining me over the past week or so and for reading all I've spewed your way. Thanks as well for all of your comments. It was challenging and fun. I hope it stretched you as much as it did me.

Go vote!

Happy Election Day, America

Before our last installment, I want to wish all of my friends and family in the States a blessed Election Day. Hope you don't have to stand in line too long.

You should know, regardless of where you stand on the issues and the candidates, that the whole world is excitedly watching you and your democracy.

Americans sometimes overestimate how much the rest of the world thinks of them. We think everyone hates us, and that everyone wants to be us. Neither is really true.

But it is true that everywhere I go these days people are talking about our election. I have friends who are planning on staying up all night to watch the results.

I've got people asking me what I think everyday. French, Africans, Arabs, Asians ...

This election has truly captivated everyone.

Europeans are thrilled to see America do something that they don't even think could happen in their country. It boggles the mind to see a country that is capable of standing behind Bush/Cheyney and its interpretation of democracy and then follow that with being ready to elect a black man.

Africans and Arabs are amazed to see the nation ready to elect someone with African roots and whose name sounds Muslim. It gives them hope for change, for being understood. Hope that America can be more like its creed.

I think people are also simply impressed with the person of Obama. He personifies something that many of them want to believe about humankind. That we can move beyond all the things that divide us. 

All along I have expressed my pessimism and doubts that America would really be able to make this choice. "I'll believe it when I see it," I kept telling people.

And it was like I was letting the air out of a baloon. I could see their excitement deflate and a serious look of disappointment would replace it.

I realized that, as someone who speaks of reconciliation and of Christian hope, I was not being true to myself and my beliefs. Ultimately, mine is a faith of optimism and hope. If we don't believe we can reach for something higher and better, then we have little hope of forgiving one another and repenting, changing our ways for the better.

So, no matter who wins, I have decided to see the positive and to focus on the fact that windows of progress have been opened. People are talking about and struggling with issues from different angles and being forced out of their comfort zones.

People are being forced to think beyond their simple stereotypes. Not just about race or about political persuasions. But also about nations and peoples. Christians are not all the same and don't all see things the same way. Nor do all Americans. Nor do all black people or all white people.

We are all complex people seeking our place. We want to be respected. We want to have value. We want to be understood. We want to be able to make a decent life for ourselves and our children.

Here's hoping and praying that either Obama or McCain will help lead our country, and even our world, closer to those goals. 

When two wrongs make a Wright

OK. What do we do with Jeremiah Wright?

While he has largely disappeared from the headlines recently despite some renewed political ads from the Republican side, Wright is an important part of the letter we've been examining.

Again, the writer makes a strong argument that should make any reasonable person stop to think about this pastor, his church and what influence it has had on Obama's thinking.

Obama tells us he has good judgment but he sat under Jeremiah Wright teaching for 20 years. Now he is condemning Wright's sermons. I wonder why now?

Obama said Jeremiah Wright led him to the Lord and discipled him. A disciple is one in training. Jesus told us in Matthew 28:19 - 20 "Go and make disciples of all nations." This means reproduce yourself. Teach people to think like you, walk like you; talk like you believe what you believe etc. The question I have is what did Jeremiah Wright teach him?

So he's going to point some things about Rev. Wright and his church that should make us wonder about the effect it had on Obama. Sounds logical. Except for the fact that we shouldn't have to wonder about what Obama thinks about race issues.

Not only has he written two books that touched on all of the factors -- including this church -- that shaped his views, but he also gave a 37-minute speech after the Wright ordeal originally crested back in March.

Why should our questions about what he might have thought about Wright over all those years matter more than what the man says now? His life and his campaign speak of building bridges between races and groups.

But still, let's look closer at what the writer shares because we can find some of the key issues that make it difficult for us to understand one another:

Would you support a White President who went to a church which has tenets that said they have a

1. Commitment to the White Community
2. Commitment to the White Family
3. Adherence to the White Work Ethic
4. Pledge to make the fruits of all developing and acquired skills available to the White Community.
5. Pledge to Allocate Regularly, a Portion of Personal Resources for Strengthening and Supporting White Institutions
6. Pledge allegiance to all White leadership who espouse and embrace the White Value System
7. Personal commitment to embracement of the White Value System.

Would you support a President who went to a church like that?

Just change the word from white to black and you have the tenets of Obama's former church. If President Bush was a member of a church like this, he would be called a racist. Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton would have been marching outside.

This kind of church is a racist church. Obama did not wake up after 20 years and just discovered he went to a racist church. The church can't be about race. Jesus did not come for any particular race. He came for the whole world.

A church can't have a value system based on race. The churches value system has to be based on biblical mandate. It does not matter if itʼs a white church or a black church it's still wrong. Anyone from either race that attends a church like this would never get my vote.

Here we find a basic idea that bogs down reconciliation efforts today. It goes something like this. 1) All people groups and races are equal. 2) The only fair and moral way to respond to people groups and races, then, is to treat and judge them in the exact same way.

So, as the writer argues, if it would be racist and unacceptable for one group to do something, it must also be true for the other.

In a perfect world, this would be true. But the world is not perfect. And, when it comes to cases where reconciliation is needed, it is almost always true that the groups in question are not on equal footing.

Why is this important? Because when you study reconciliation, you see that typically those in the best condition tend to support a solution that involves forgetting the past and simply deciding that everyone, from now on, is equal and on equal footing.

We don't have time to get into all the reasons why this is not a fair or reasonable way to deal with past injustice. But again we understand it much more when we take a similar example from a different cultural setting.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE

So, a writer could reason like this:

What would you think if we were to create a nation in the middle of Africa just for White people? We will take the land from existing countries and establish this homeland. White people from all over the world will be able to come and have citizenship there.

Would that be considered racist and unacceptable? Not after WWII it wasn't.

The movement for a Jewish nation in Israel gained steam in part because more people realized that persecution and attempted destruction of the Jewish people made it necessary to actively work to preserve and protect their culture.

People recognized that there were special circumstances that required special action -- not equal action. Special circumstances created a problem; special action was needed to remedy it.

We're not here to debate how good a solution was found in the creation of the modern Israeli state. The point is, we can see a reason for unequal action in this case.

And I would argue that the description of Rev. Wright's church is not at all shocking if one understands the desperately frustrating context that blacks have lived in for most of American history (including a huge percentage still today).

CULTURAL FILTERS

As Obama explains in the speech embedded on this page, the anger, hopelessness and destruction of self-esteem brought about by constant reminders of inferiority from mainstream society brought many people and even churches to the conclusion that they had to make a special effort to combat those effects.

When one understands this, the idea of being committed to the black community, black businesses and neighborhoods, developing a black work ethic, etc. ... is not so shocking.

Though the parallel with the fictional white candidate with a church focused on the white race sounds logical when you are wearing a certain cultural filter, change your glasses and it doesn't ring true at all.

When one has the filter shaped by the frustrating black experience we mentioned above, Wright's church does not seem racist at all. Racism would exist if they were claiming that Blacks were better or more important than others.

What this church is doing seems no more racist than John McCain's campaign seems nationalist when it stresses "America First."

People close to black and inner-city culture tend to understand that this is a decision to concentrate on the advancement of a people group that is trying to catch up and re-establish a sense of value that years of slavery and segregation have worn down.

Rev. Wright any many other Christians moved to this approach in large part because they saw no sign of repentance or commitment from the majority culture church to do anything about the results of years of injustice.

BOOTSTRAPS

Many did something very American, actually. They decided they would have to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, if you will, as did waves of immigrants they had watched come to this country and advance to one degree or another.

Italians, Irish, Hungarians, Poles and later different Asian groups had pulled together in their communities and helped one another with the idea that they would be able to secure a better future as a group in America.

If you understand the effects of our national race history on black culture, your filter helps you understand why a local church would consider it consistent with its Christian understanding to lift up the people of its community.

You might also understand why those wearing this filter might sense a need to speak prophetically about injustices in the majority culture that might harm its people and others in the world.

They might even understand it even when these words go too far, or take on a tone that hurts more than it helps.

THE OTHER FILTER

But that is how it is seen from within the context.

The majority culture context has another filter.

It is a filter of bruised pride and frustration at being cast as the bad guy all the time even as it sees its grip on power sliding away. It is a filter of fear, wondering whether there will be revenge in store because of those past injustices.

It is a filter that tries desperately to detatch its people from the evils of the past so that they, too, can enjoy a strong sense of value again.

It is a filter that leads to a sense of injustice and victimization when confronted with the complaints of the other group. 

The majority of the American Evangelical church is culturally linked to the part of American society that sees through this filter.

And, as we have noted in earlier posts, though our writer is black he is still culturally linked to this part of the church as well as its filter. He is one black man with a certain cultural approach to Obama.

ANOTHER BLACK MAN'S REACTION

Now, let me share with you the reaction of another black man.

I don't consider myself radical or racist. I have a white spouse and attended a white church in the States before coming to France, where I still work in a largely white context. And none of the people I know would consider me radical or anti-white.

(If they disagree, they will be writing comments on this blog to tell me so.)

But listen to this: Nothing about Rev. Wright's famous "God damn America" speech shocked me.

I wouldn't have used the words because I am a bridge builder. But my filter leads me to understand the basic idea he was conveying. And had I been in the church that day, I don't think I would have stormed out in protest.

This does not mean I am comfortable with everything that Wright says and does. Not at all. But my filter, and perhaps it is similar to the one worn by Obama, does not see people as good or evil, but a mix of imperfection and perfect creation that makes up this maddening world we are hoping to see change.

Tomorrow, we'll hit on the overall topic of Christian fear of judgment to close this series. 

My world in 2008

Timeout from the letter.

I hadn't seen Focus on the Family's Letter from 2012 in Obama's America before starting this series of reports. Had I done so, I surely would have wanted to use it as my base letter.

But Jim Wallis has a pretty tough response from another Christian point of view so I won't bother adding to the mix.

Dobson's letter is a good example of the kind of thinking that develops when people isolate themselves and surround themselves with others who are like them.

But is sad for me to see how one-sidely political Focus on the Family has become. Has it changed or have I?

Surely we both have.

I have changed because I am surrounded by people who think differently from myself. I can't avoid it.

I realized it was useless to try when my Facebook friend list started growing and I realized I could no longer keep my extremely diverse circles from perceiving one another.

And nor did I want to anymore. If it's been healthy for me to be confronted with all of these people, the same could probably be said for all of them.

I know that this blog is read not only by my conservative Christian friends from Ohio and Chicago, but also by my aethist and agnostic friends from Paris. It is read by black friends and family from the inner city and the suburbs ... by white friends from every economic level ... by Arab and North African friends like Samia who shared her comment yesterday ... by gay and lesbian friends and socialist friends, even a few communist friends ...

All of these friends -- truly friends -- make it impossible for me to be closed in my thinking. They don't let me get away with that.

I must think about how I am saying things and how different people will understand what I am saying.

More than that, I have learned from all of them. I have learned that none of them are out to harm me. They all want basically the same things in life, even if they disagree about how to go about seeking it.

With that in mind, we can continue looking at the Brown letter. We've got three more days to get this done!

The gory truth? Considering abortion

OK. Now that we've laid the groundwork, let's touch on some of the specific concerns brought up by our letter writer. I won't be going into theological or moral debate or quoting Bible verses.

There are plenty of people doing that all over the Internet. You can Google them to find out what you want.

Our focus here is to show that everything depends on the way you approach an issue.

ABOUT ABORTION

The the writer goes on to talk about one of the results of being a horrible liberal, which the culture with which he identifies has determined is akin to being anti-God and anti-America.

There is a reason he voted No on banning partial birth abortion. There is a reason he voted No on confirming Justices Roberts and Alito. These two judges are conservatives and they have since overturned partial birth abortion. The same practice Obama wanted to continue.

Let's take a look at the practice he wanted to continue

The 5 Step Partial Birth Abortion procedures:

A. Guided by ultrasound, the abortionist grabs the baby's leg with forceps. (Remember this is a live baby)
B. The baby's leg is pulled out into the birth canal.
C. The abortionist delivers the baby's entire body, except for the head.
D. The abortionist jams scissors into the baby's skull. The scissors are then opened to enlarge the hole.
E. The scissors are removed and a suction catheter is inserted. The child's brains are sucked out, causing the skull to collapse. The dead baby is then removed.

God help him.
There is a reason Obama opposed the parental notification law.

This is of course a powerful image and one we should not avoid considering. We need to consider the reality of what we are doing.

I have been greatly challenged by the gruesome pictures of aborted babies and it is difficult not to be moved by them.

On the other hand, I have also been greatly moved by the stories of women and girls struggling with pregnancy. I, like many people, am torn by this and am sensitive to the passion on all sides of the issue.

BEING CONSISTENT

At any rate, does this gruesome description, or even the gruesome photos, make this a clear-cut case that no Christian should ever support abortion rights or support a candidate who does?

What if we handled war the same way?

One could describe the effect of a cluster bomb ripping through a child's kidney ... the searing pain, the slow, painful death. One could describe the mother holding her child in agony, helplessly watching the child die.

We could show equally disturbing photos of war victims.

(I Googled images of both abortion and war victims and decided against showing either here, though I have provided the links).

Someone who stands against the death penalty could describe what happens when someone is electrocuted:

Witnesses routinely report that, when the switch is thrown, the condemned prisoner "cringes," "leaps," and "fights the straps with amazing strength."

"The hands turn red, then white, and the cords of the neck stand out like steel bands."

The prisoner's limbs, fingers, toes, and face are severely contorted. The force of the electrical current is so powerful that the prisoner's eyeballs sometimes pop out and "rest on [his] cheeks."

The prisoner often defecates, urinates, and vomits blood and drool. "The body turns bright red as its temperature rises," and the prisoner's "flesh swells and his skin stretches to the point of breaking."

Sometimes the prisoner catches on fire, particularly "if [he] perspires excessively." Witnesses hear a loud and sustained sound "like bacon frying," and "the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh" permeates the chamber.

This "smell of frying human flesh in the immediate neighborhood of the chair is sometimes bad enough to nauseate even the Press representatives who are present."

During the execution, the prisoner almost literally boils: "the temperature in the brain itself approaches the boiling point of water," and when the post-electrocution autopsy is performed "the liver is so hot that doctors have said that it cannot be touched by the human hand."

The body frequently is badly burned and disfigured. There is considerable evidence suggesting that death inflicted by electrocution is anything but instantaneous or painless.

One could legitimately see images of war or an electrocuted man and still conclude that this destruction of life was a necessary evil of sorts.

So, once again we see that what seems so clear is much less clear when we take a step back and see from a broader perspective.

OPENING OUR EYES

When it comes to gory details, we tend to be exposed only to those supported by the group with which we identify.

And the powerful emotional strength of those details tends to push us to believe with even more passion that our group's point of view is correct.

This plays into the tendency we mentioned earlier to believe in a sort of divine endorsement of our point of view. How could God not see these images and feel what we are feeling?

A HIGHER VANTAGE POINT

Again, this is human. Everyone does it. People on the right and on the left. Anti-abortion people as well as Vegans and animal rights activists.

But again, I am addressing these posts largely to Christians because they claim to have access to something that goes beyond human reasoning. They claim to be able to tap into God himself.

If they are going to do so, however, they are going to have to step back from their culture group quite a bit more than they think.

They will have to humbly recognize that they are indeed human and prone to the same deception and narrow point of view as everyone else.

Then, they need to admit that they need help from above if they are going to see clearly.

Those who want to be peacemakers and reconcilers in this world have to take several steps:

* confess their own narrow-minded pride

* recommit to listening for truth from above

* commit to listening to others from different social groups, religions, countries, cultures, political perspectives and to consider all of these people as children of God like themselves rather than demonizing them.

If we can do this, we have a much better chance of seeing more clearly and in representing not only Christian positions but also a truly Christian attitude toward others.

Differently biblical?

So why did I spend two days talking about the influence of culture on our points of view?

Because the whole of the standard American Evangelical opposition to Obama and other left-leaning candidates is based on a series of assumptions, or established truths that this community has come to believe are non-negotiable.

Rick Warren, during the debate at his Saddleback Church, based many of his questions on this list of issues that Christians should use to determine whether a candidate can be supported.

We find some of these issues in the beginning of the letter we are examining.

The writer, in explaining that issues are more important than race for him, says this:

200 years from now I won't be asked if I was black or white. I will be asked if I knew Jesus and accepted Him as Lord and Savior. 

In an election there are many issues to consider but when a society gets abortion, same-sex marriage, embryonic stem-cell research, human cloning (to name a few) wrong, economic concerns will soon not matter. 

We need to follow Martin Luther King's words, don't judge someone by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

The basic idea here is that the writer's opinions don't come from culture but rather from Jesus and the Bible, independent of culture. As we have noted the past few days, the writer's views may be independent of race, but they are not independent of culture. His Biblical ideas line up with those of one part of the church.

And then he says that a person's character (remember the discussion on value from the other day?) can be determined by how he or she stands on these issues. The unsaid but clearly understood idea is that if one does not agree with the basic points being made, then that person's character is to be doubted.

THE BIG ISSUES

The key issues: abortion and other issues concerning the unborn and then homosexuality. Economic matters are dismissed as unimportant morally.

This is one point of view. It is the point of view of much of the Evangelical community. But it is not at all the only way of seeing things.

Jim Wallis, who writes at Sojourners shared his personal faith priorities for this election on his blog. You will notice in his priorities quite a different view coming from someone who reads the same Bible and believes in the same God and savior as the writer of this letter.

Wallis writes:

I am in no position to tell anyone what is “non-negotiable,” and neither is any bishop or mega-church pastor, but let me tell you the “faith priorities” and values I will be voting on this year:

• With more than 2,000 verses in the Bible about how we treat the poor and oppressed, I will examine the record, plans, policies, and promises made by the candidates on what they will do to overcome the scandal of extreme global poverty and the shame of such unnecessary domestic poverty in the richest nation in the world. Such a central theme of the Bible simply cannot be ignored at election time, as too many Christians have done for years. And any solution to the economic crisis that simply bails out the rich, and even the middle class, but ignores those at the bottom should simply be unacceptable to people of faith.
• From the biblical prophets to Jesus, there is, at least, a biblical presumption against war and the hope of beating our swords into instruments of peace. So I will choose the candidates who will be least likely to lead us into more disastrous wars and find better ways to resolve the inevitable conflicts in the world and make us all safer. I will choose the candidates who seem to best understand that our security depends upon other people’s security (everyone having “their own vine and fig tree, so no one can make them afraid,” as the prophets say) more than upon how high we can build walls or a stockpile of weapons.
• “Choosing life” is a constant biblical theme, so I will choose candidates who have the most consistent ethic of life, addressing all the threats to human life and dignity that we face — not just one. Thirty-thousand children dying globally each day of preventable hunger and disease is a life issue. The genocide in Darfur is a life issue. Health care is a life issue. War is a life issue. The death penalty is a life issue. And on abortion, I will choose candidates who have the best chance to pursue the practical and proven policies which could dramatically reduce the number of abortions in America and therefore save precious unborn lives, rather than those who simply repeat the polarized legal debates and “pro-choice” and “pro-life” mantras from either side. ...
• Every human being is made in the image of God, so I will choose the candidates who are most likely to protect human rights and human dignity.

I would urge you to read the entire post to get a better picture of his thinking, but you can clearly see that what our letter writer and so many of our Christian friends passionately see as the clear-cut proper Christian position is actually only clear-cut when we clearly cut ourselves off from broader points of view.

Wallis tries to help us see that while Obama's views on abortion or some other issue might be troubling to Christians, the Republican stance on a host of issues is not in line with Scripture either.

How does one decide that it is on abortion and homosexuality that God is going to judge the character of a person? I would argue that we decide based on our culture and who it is that is influencing us.

African-Americans and others close to the inner city (or perhaps people like me who have become closely acquainted with the effects of our foreign and economic policy in Africa and elsewhere) predictably are more likely to tune in to the Bible's voluminous references to poverty and justice issues.

Just as many suburban Evangelicals are able to overlook or downplay  these issues in favor of those that strike them as more pertinent, many other Christians may legitimately do the same with stem cells, abortion or gay marriage, for example.

Is it fair to label them as unbiblical or to challenge their character? I would argue that we should consider them "differently biblical" and show them some humility. Perhaps we should even listen to them and seek to learn about these issues that they see as vital. Perhaps we will actually become more biblical Christians in the end.

We'll get more into the specifics of some of these issues in the coming days.