alien (un)intelligence

I’m not making this up. This happened last week:

I take my truck to the dealer for some work. After handing over my keys I walk into the small “customer waiting area” - a small room complete with a pot of coffee, a bunch of lame magazines, and a television on the wall blaring CNN. I walk past the only other waiting customer, a woman with her head literally buried in a fast food bag.

I brought a book with me. I’m reading Teacher Man, a memoir by the Irishman Frank McCort. In the chapter I’m reading he is describing an ongoing struggle: He was born in America but raised in Ireland. When he returns to work in New York he is considered an Irish immigrant. When he returns to study in Dublin he is labeled a Yankee. He is a a foreigner in both the land of his birth as well as the land of his roots.

As I try to focus on the story over the sound of the news, a few more customers make their way in and sit down around me: A very old man in an old cap and oversized sunglasses, and a well-to-do couple who look like they are close to retirement.

After a few minutes they start the small talk. Then a story on the news laments the every increasing price of gas. The woman who is now done with her fast food feeding makes the observation that it is crazy that the cost of gas won’t stop going up every day.

The husband of the couple agrees with her, and then makes the comment that the culprit is the ever increasing demand for gas versus the supply.

Then she drops the bomb:

“Well you know, the main reason for the high supply is all the foreigners who live in this country. They come over here and they all drive their cars and use up all the gas. Get rid of the foreigners and you get rid of half the demand right there!”

My reading freezes in the middle of a sentence, but I don’t look up. Without a moment of thought, the husband agrees. I wonder for a short moment if they are really talking about all foreigners, or just jumping on the anti-illegal-immigrant band wagon.

But in his next breath the husband clears up any confusion:

“And then of course there are also the illegal foreigners who come here. They want to work? Okay... fine. Put ‘em in a uniform and ship ‘em off to Iraq and that’ll put ‘em to work.”

Then something is said about how that will keep ‘em from wanting to come over here or something. But my brain locks up for a second in shock and I miss it. Besides, now they are talking about immigrants, oil, and war in the Middle East.  So I probably shouldn't say anything about my father being an immigrant petroleum engineer from Iraq.  It probably won’t be until I am driving away an hour later when I will think of something clever I should have said.

So instead I grip the edges of my book a little tighter, and this son of an immigrant re-reads the chapter about an immigrant while sitting in a room full of people who don’t like immigrants.

washed out & blown away

When I was a kid bad weather terrified me.  Even if there was no rain, all it took was that little white funnel shaped "tornado watch" immage to appear on the upper corner of the television and I began to twitch.  

And at night, as soon as the thunder and lightening started, I would take evasive action:  Roll over on my stomach, cover myself with the blanket (because of course anything under the covers was safe, and anything exposed was in danger), bury my face in my pillow, and plug my ears with my fingers.  I would burn up with sweat in the summer, and I couldn't breath, but it was my only defence against the terror.  I did everything I could to not see the lightening or hear the thunder.  And every night, no matter what the weather, the liturgy of prayers I would say with my mother always ended with, "No tornados tonight?"  

These days I love thunderstorms.  When the sky gets dark and the thunder rolls, I love to open the windows and listen to the rain fall to earth.  However, this spring I am beginning to wonder if I should start building an ark and gathering pairs of animals.  I have lived most of my life in Tornado Alley, but I have never seen as much wind and rain as has fallen on us this spring in Arkansas.  I took this picutre a couple of weeks ago from our appartment balcony in the middle of the afternoon.  I woke up from a nap and thought it was night.

A week later the weather woke us up about 4:30 in the morning and motivated us to start heading for the closet.  And sadly, the storms killed people and destroyed homes to the west and east of us around that night.  Arkansas - and much of this area of the south - is a soggy mess.  And it is not letting up.  I wonder if it is always like this here, or did we move during an extra stormy season.

And yet our water and wind woes pale to the tragedy in Burhma.  Lives lost.  Homes gone. Danger of famine and disease.  And a useless junta government.  Lord have mercy...

still dreaming

Sleep, sleep tonight
And may your dreams be realized.
If the thunder cloud passes rain
So let it rain, rain down on he.
So let it be.
So let it be.
U2: MLK

(Read about the MLK memorial in Washing D.C. here.)

crucifixion and prayers for peace

This week the focus of First Born Son is both Holy Week and the 5 Year Anniversary of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq.

Seven days into the invasion of Iraq there was a special chapel service at Asbury. I have never seen so many hundreds of people crammed into Estes Chapel. Emotions were high. People who supported the war and those who opposed it were all gathered together to talk, listen and pray through two countries at war.

There was some time given in the service for people to stand and share their thoughts, feelings and prayers. Our pastor John David moved back and forth around the isles, taking a microphone to anyone who stood to speak.

I was pretty numb and so I honestly can’t remember anything anyone said, except for one older lady. When she stood and took the mic from John David she gently told us that her son was on the front lines marching toward Baghdad. In fact, there were reports that some in his outfit had already been killed. She was as afraid for her son’s life as any good mother would be. But then she said something that shocked at least me, if not most of the people in the chapel.

I am going to say something that I don’t think anyone else here is going to say. God loves Saddam Hussein, and Jesus died for his sins. So while I’m not holding out hope that he is going to change, I am praying for Saddam Hussein.

Today is the day we remember that God loved the world so much that his Son was crucified. This is the critical moment in our salvation story: Genesis tells us that God created ADAM – Hebrew for “humanity” – in his image. But humanity turned away. When the time came to redeem his creation he chose Israel, an enslaved people group who were the lowest of the social order at that time. And he sent his Son through these lowest people to redeem humanity. He was from what is now Palestine, a backwater province of the Roman Empire, born in Bethlehem, a backwater town in this backwater province, to a peasant virgin girl betrothed to a workingman. In the middle of the dung and the straw of a stable, the Savior of humanity was laid in a donkey trough. When his time had come, he rode on the back of a donkey into Jerusalem, where he was nailed to a cross, which meant he was cursed as a Jew and had no citizenship as a Roman. From the cradle to the grave he was among the lowest of the low. And if salvation began there, then that means it is for everyone – for all of ADAM. All of us created from dirt, and all of us redeemed by Christ… the NEW ADAM.

I am fairly confident that a very, very small minority of Christians I knew at that time prayed for the Iraqis during the first few days of the war. But this year, as we celebrate Holy Week while lamenting an unholy war, we have been given an opportunity to remember, repent and pray for the peace of Christ that is found at the Cross.

O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus, your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in the bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Book of Common Prayer

Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, give us your peace.

domestic violence and the suffering christ

This week the focus of First Born Son is both Holy Week and the 5 Year Anniversary of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq.

"DOMESTIC VIOLENCE"

You poor child.

There you are,
following in the footsteps of your ancestors,
but your father is his own man.

He beats you. And your mother.
Women and children are not safe around him.

He takes you by the neck, and tells you to stop crying.
If you don’t, he warns,
he’ll beat you some more.

What could be worse?
Maybe the police officer standing in the window,
watching your father beat and rape you.
He walks through the door, but makes no arrest.

Just a nod, once;
the slow, subtle nod of permission
meant to go unseen by others.

And so your father beats you,
and rapes you,
(and your mother)
while the police watch for hours.

Then, quite suddenly, the officer breaks down the door,
pulls out his nightstick
and begins to beat your father… and you.
Both of you he throws around the room
breaking pictures and lamps and tables and chairs and walls.
Now the doors are wide open to the world.

Father finally submits to the handcuffs
and is taken away.
Then the officer looks at you, and asks why you are not thankful
that he stopped your father from beating you.

Then he commands you – you all covered with blood and broken bones and mental scars –
to clean up the house quickly, or else he’ll look bad;
all the while the world comes through your door and takes your heirlooms.

While you crawl through your own blood
over broken glass and the remains of your home
with genitals exposed and swollen,
this ignorant, determined, self-righteous cop
stands proud and declares out the door:

“Here to protect and to serve.”

When I first wrote this poem in 1993 it was only four stanzas. I penned it after my uncle died in Baghdad because the embargo on Iraq made finding medicine for his kidney failure impossible. I came back to it for two reasons in 2006. First, the woman at the checkout in Wal Mart who, after looking at my name on my credit card and asking where it was from, then asked, “Why don’t they like us much over there? Don’t they know we’re just tryin’ to help?” And second, my cousin’s murder in Baghdad during the recent civil war.

I’ve never really “finished” it. It grew (and has continued to grow) out of my realization and frustration that Saddam was a tyrant and the U.S. was a bully: First Saddam brutalizing his own people and using chemical weapons, but at the time the U.S. needs him to fight Iran, so we look the other way... later the U.S. bombs Iraq into the stone age, and then leaves Saddam in power and never lets them rebuild... then the U.S. decides that bombing Iraq will be adequate retribution for 9/11, and so a country that has nothing to do with the radical Islam of Osama Bin Laden is turned into one... and the thing is done so poorly that civil war breaks out.

Almost 30 years of the Iraq's sons and daughters bleeding to death between a beast and a bully.

The Scripture tells us that before he is arrested and crucified, Jesus goes into the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. So overcome with shock and awe at the terror of what is about to happen, one account tells us that, “his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood.”

This is the moment in our Story where the sins of the entire world for all of history are placed on the Lamb of God. All this sins. Of all the world. For all of history. And so this is the moment in our Story where the Son of God bleeds with his children in Iraq for the sins of a beast and the sins of a bully.

Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Lord have mercy.

Jesus in the Garden statue at the Abbey of Gethsemani Monastery in Trappist, Kentucky.
My wife took this picture right after a rain.  I have always thought that the water on the metal looks like blood.

iraq: five years gone

"Is there no savior for our hopeless world?  Concerned with political interests, our leaders have lost the trust of honest people to mediate a just and lasting peace.  They mouth religion but have no honest trust in the divine.  They cannot be the savior; they are the problem.  In their mouths they say, “In God we trust.”  But their hearts insist, “In God we cannot trust.  We will be God.  We will save the world.  We will rid the world of evil.”  What atheists express in words, our leaders second by their actions."

Joseph F. Girzone

Joshua in a Troubled World

Lord have mercy.

Christ have mercy.

Lord have mercy.

what makes a prophet false?

This week the focus of First Born Son is both Holy Week and the 5 Year Anniversary of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq.

In early 2001, I was in what can be called a “restoration of my faith.” I had been through some dark years, and a pastor named Bud had taken me under his wing and was shepherding me back home.

One of the tools Bud used was a book he gave me by Henry Blackaby entitled The Man God Uses. At the time Blackaby was a giant in the evangelical Christian sub-culture. He had co-authored a book called Experiencing God that almost everyone in our church, and a majority of Christians I knew, had worked through at one time or another. I read that book from cover to cover, highlighting passages and making notes in the margins. One of the reasons I answered the “call to ministry” is because I read that book.

Disappointment is hard to deal with.

Before the invasion of Iraq, Blackaby told the Agape Press, “...those who oppose the war to liberate Iraq need to read God’s Word.” He actually went on to say that anyone who opposed the President on the invasion of Iraq were subject to God’s judgement.

But he was not the only “hero of the faith” to make such a claim. The late Bill Bright, founder of (the poorly named) Campus Crusade for Christ - an organization that many of my friends from college went to work for - signed the famous “Land Letter” to President Bush stating that war with Iraq was both Biblical and godly.

And there was also Charles Stanley, a stalwart whom many I trusted in the faith have read, quoted and followed. He also went on to say in a sermon given right before the invasion that the President had been given the authority by God to wage war on Iraq, and we were foolish to question or doubt.

Of course I could go on. To this day there are many major evangelical pastors and teachers who constantly call for war with the Middle East, declaring it is God’s will and mandate. Some seem like they are decently solid in their theology until it comes to Arabs, the Middle East and the End Times.

Others are just downright crazy. The latest example in this camp is John Hagee. But the most outrageous line comes from a Hagee lieutenant named Rod Parlsey (who consequently has worked closely with Texas Governor Rick Perry and has become snug with Senator John McCain). He recently wrote in his book Silent No More: “...I will tell you this: I do not believe our country can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam. I know that this statement sounds extreme, but I do not shrink from its implications. The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed...”

He goes on to say that Christopher Columbus intentionally set out on his journey because he believed that the wealth of the New World would help finance the war against Islam.

I’m not making this up.

So what is my point? Well, first of all there are thousands of pastors who stand on the teachings of Blackaby, Bright and Stanley more than they stand on the Gospel (though they would never admit it). So then what is being taughtthousands of our churches? Clearly nothing that would lead to peace in the Middle East and the true Kingdom of God on Earth as it is in Heaven.

But here is the kicker: These Christian men of God have publicly declared that any Christian in the U.S. who did not support the war in Iraq were subject to the judgement of God. Well, it turns out that last month the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - the supreme leader of Iran - said publicly that God would punish any Iranian who did not support Iran’s nuclear weapon program.

So who’s side is God on? I’m going to go with neither. For in the end, I don’t see much difference between Rev. Stanley and Ayatollah Khamenei. They both use nationalism, fear and violence to drive home their agenda... an agenda that has nothing to do with the Gospel of Peace. And most tragically, their followers on both sides will faithfully yet blindly follow their messages into a senseless war against each other... a war that has nothing to do with God and the fact that he created us all in his image.

Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Lord have mercy.

from ireland to iraq

This week the focus of First Born Son is both Holy Week and the 5 Year Anniversary of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq.

During my final semester of college as an English major, a combination of my best friend Kelly and one of my professors introduced me to what are still my three favorite Irish exports:

But of course, today is the day that most Americans (including me) count themselves Irish: St. Patrick's Day. One of my St. Pat’s day traditions - besides drinking a little extra Guinness - is to pull Thomas Cahill’s book How the Irish Saved Civilization off the shelf and read the chapter on the first missionary to Ireland: Saint Patrick.

His is the story of a man, who as a teenager living in England, was kidnapped and taken to be a slave in Ireland. Long story short, after six years of slaving away as a shepherd, he makes his way back home to England. After his return home, God calls him back to Ireland to be the first missionary of the Gospel to the Emerald Isle.

The man actually went back to share the love of Christ with the very people who sinned against him.

Two moments in Cahill's book always strike me. The first comes when he describes Saint Patrick as trying to show the Irish that "... the sword was not the only instrument for structuring a society." The second, is pointing out that the British Christians refused to see their Irish brothers as equals because they were not Roman citizens.

To break it down in simply, Saint Patrick shows us that it does not take (nor ever took) bombs and bullets to deal with Iraq, and that one does not need to be a certain nationality or citizenship to be treated as one created in the image of God.

Today is typically the day for most of us to wear green shirts, drink green beer, and don "kiss me I'm Irish" buttons (all of which real Irish detest by the way). But really it is a day to consider Ireland and the patron saint she gave the Body of Christ.

Ireland is a land that has known occupation, sectarian divide and terrorism. But I believe that the patron saint of the Emerald Isle can still teach us something about how to deal with the land of the wilted desert rose... Iraq.

Saint Patrick understood what “forgive your enemies” looked like. He also knew that the “less than human barbarians” of another country were actually those created in the image of God, and so instead of using a sword he came with the Gospel of peace.

That we in the United States would learn more from Saint Patrick about foreign policy than we do about green clothes and beer.

Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Lord have mercy.

holy week & unholy war

This week the focus of First Born Son is both Holy Week and the 5 Year Anniversary of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq.

Today is Palm Sunday... the beginning of Holy Week. On Thursday we will remember his agony in the garden, His final meal with his disciples, and his arrest. On Friday we will remember his crucifixion, death and burial. And on Sunday we will celebrate his rising from the dead and that he is alive. But the week begins with remembering - and often reenacting - his celebrated arrival in Jerusalem that began the Passion Week.

The Scripture tells us that when Jesus entered the city on the back of a donkey, large crowds of people - who were in town for Passover - ran out to meet him. They waved palm branches while shouting praises to Jesus as he entered the city.

Palm Sunday at my church growing up was pretty typical. Along with the standard bulletin, the ushers would hand everyone a large palm branch as they entered the sanctuary. During the opening worship anthem, everyone would sing out loud while waving their palm branches back and forth in the air.

And just about every year, without fail, a group of church members would be recruited to reenact the scene. All the men, women and child actors would be decked out in blue, red, green and brown bed sheets cut to look like poor representations of first century Middle Eastern garb, while for the men smaller cuts of fabric would be tied around their heads and draped over their shoulders. And one man would always be decked out in a white robe, long hair wig, and fake beard. This man was our Jesus.

The sanctuary was rather large, with five sets of isles leading to three doors at the back. Usually during the first singing of the chorus, with the congregations palm branches swaying back and forth, our “Jesus” would walk in from the back center set of doors. As he slowly walked up and down the isles and around the sanctuary, the “Passover crowd” followed waiving their palm branches.

One year someone got the idea to make the scene more dramatic. This particular time started off as any other. The music started, the congregation stood, and we all began singing and waving all palm branches as the back door opened. But this time, instead of on his feet, our Jesus was sitting on top of a real... live... donkey.

And somewhere during the second stanza, while heading up the third isle, the donkey - who had to be a little confused and frightened by this mass of people waving palms in one hand while pointing at him with their hymnals in the other - did what most animals do when the moment is right: He shit on the sanctuary carpet.

The next year the worship committee made sure that didn’t happen again. When the back doors flew open and our Jesus made his triumphal entry, he was again on the back of a real live donkey. But as the animal cleared the doors and fully entered the sanctuary, everyone could see that something was different: The ass was wearing a huge diaper.

That's authentic first century realism.

For me, this is the image I always have in my mind as we begin the most sacred of weeks in the Christian year. But the image of the real event had to be pretty amazing. As the word of Jesus raising his friend Lazarus from the dead had spread, the people in Jerusalem had to be getting excited.

It was Passover: The annual remembrance and celebration of when God delivered his people out of slavery and called them his own. And now here they were, in a land occupied by a foreign, pagan power, at the bottom of the social order. They were ready to be delivered again. They were ready for a savior. And this Jesus might be the one.

But I’ve learned something about those palm branches I never knew. In Jesus’ day, the palm branch to the Jews was a symbol of military victory. A kind of nationalistic flag in a way. So when the throngs gathered they thought they were greeting their King mighty in battle. What they were getting instead was a Suffering Servant mighty in sacrifice.

By waving those palm branches, they show that they were expecting Jesus to be their military hero: overthrowing their enemies, redeeming their exiles and re-establishing them as the top power in the world. But what they failed to realize that Jesus had come to overthrow a greater enemy than Rome, to redeem all of humanity and to establish a Kingdom where the last would be first, the hungry would be fed, the homeless would be sheltered, the sick would be healed, the widow and orphan taken care of, and where enemies would be forgiven... and maybe even invited to the table.

This didn’t fit with the people’s agenda, and by the end of the week the crowds that had cheered for his welcome now chanted for his death.

I think it is significant that Palm Sunday opens a Holy Week that falls on the same week of the five year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Why is this significant? Because I know of too many pastors and churches who, from the run-up to the war until now, have waved the flag before the Cross, and in doing so have missed the Kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Lord have mercy.

weapon of war & peace

In Sunday School when I was a kid we would have “sword drills.”  Because the New Testament refers to the Word of God as a “sword” we were told that the Bible was our weapon.  In a basic drill the teacher would yell out, “Sword drill!” and at the same time we would all hold our Bibles high into the air above our heads in order to show that we were armed.  Then he or she would call out a passage of Scripture, which often was either tied to the lesson or some principle of behavior we were supposed to follow in order to be good children of the Lord. The first person to find the verse and pull the trigger by reading it out loud was the winner.  It was quite a sight:  The sound of tissue-thin paper swirling into a storm as two-dozen 3^rd graders furiously flipped through the pages of their Bibles.  I usually went straight to the table of contents, as I could never remember the order of books after Genesis.

The other day I was in Wal-Mart, like usual, I wandered over to the book section while my wife did some of the shopping. They have a huge religion section there, and I came across the shelf of Bibles and fancy Bible-covers. There were a couple of covers designed for children, and one of them (pictured below) was created to have an army flavor - complete with camouflage, side pockets, and (wait for it) a rifle scope crosshair image… with the Cross of Christ at the center.

I have never been too comfortable with the Gospel of Peace being presented in militaristic ways, like when I was a kid, but this was a new one. I am not even entirely sure what message it sends, but I have an idea.

But this story quickly became a “tale of two Bibles.” Yesterday I was at the Dickson Street Bookshop, a used book store in downtown Fayetteville. Outside on the table of “must go” books was an old, very worn Bible. The inside cover had a name written in it, proving that it had once belonged to someone. There were still a couple of church bulletins and a newspaper clipping of weddings and funerals between some of the pages. And then, somewhere in 1 Samuel, was a small color picture cut out of a magazine. The picture was of a very Bin Laden looking man, though I am not sure it is really of him. Either way, the man looks very Middle Eastern… and most likely Muslim.

My past tells me that often times people have pictures in their Bibles of whom they are praying for.

Of course the question for me is What Bible are we following? We have a Gospel where Christ is pretty clear about forgiving our enemies, praying for and even serving them, and working for peace. So on the one hand, we can dress up our Bible with images of targeting our enemies in the name of God, while on the other hand we can dress up our Bibles with images of our enemies that we can pray for.

Given that much of the church in America supports the idea of bombing the Middle East before we pray for it – and will use Scripture to back it up – I am troubled by which Bible is most often being followed.

And you know, as I look at both of these pictures side by side, I can’t help but laugh (in a sad way) that Islam is the only one blamed for being the “violent” religion.

"God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God.”
Matthew 5:9

"For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds."
2 Corinthians 10:3-4