It Ain't Truth If It Doesn't Hurt

A Christmas Eve Letter...

Dear God:

Tonight we celebrate the anniversary of the coming of your Son. More than 2000 years ago, you sent your child to Earth. You sent him to a world torn apart by war, imperialism, oppression, religious intolerance, pride, slavery, poverty, and injustice. You sent him to show us a new way--a way of fellowship. He came and revealed to us that the greatest commandment of all is to Love.

On the surface the world looks to be a much different place than it was on that night some 2,0006 years gone by. But underneath, my sweet sweet Saviour, the world remains much the same. My own country has caused a war that has ripped apart a sovereign nation and plunged it into a bloody religious civil war. Forty million of your children are dying in Africa from a disease that those of us that live with it in the United States are able to manage--due to our privilege and our medical system. The land of your Son's birth has known constant struggle, apartheid, murder, and subjugation for fifty years and knew colonization before that. Your children are fighting one another my God...Jews, Christians, and Muslims...killing one another over dogma ignoring the fact that the core of each branch of your faith is to love one another. Tonight, millions of your children will sleep on America's streets. Hundreds of millions around the world will go to sleep hungry.

In this world God, I look to my friends and family as examples of what the world could be. When I fall, they are there to catch me. When I lose faith, they are there to share their light with me.,  I stumble my God. And sometimes I walk in strength. But I never walk alone.  And, if this true for me then it must be true for the world.

We need you my God. We need another miracle. Or we need someone to remind us of the miracles that we create every day. I know that the love on Earth is infinitely greater than the hatred that we see and hear on the news every day. But the Devil is the way of despair, and he has done much to ensure that we hear as little about the acts of love and kindness that happen every second. Help us to see through the haze my God. Send your Angels to light our footsteps. Let the celebration of the birth of your Son be a celebration of the gifts that he brought to his world and the supreme act of love he committed when he gave himself up for us.

Let the New Year be a true jubilee...a celebration...guide us Father for we have lost our way.

Love,

Your Children

The UN...What the Fuck!

This morning I logged into my yahoo account to send some emails for work, and the morning headline caught my eye: The UN Security Council Approves Sanctions for Iran. I thought great...it's time to start building nuclear fall out shelters again...because if we invade Iran...they are going to give us the finger and really blow some shit up.

Really, I am against nuclear proliferation...by anyone. I think that every nation on earth should be required to dismantle exisiting nuclear weapons and nuclear power stations. I also believe it is the height of western arrogance and powermongering that exisiting nuclear powers have decided they have a monopoly on nuclear energy and/or have the right to determine which non-nuclear nations get to develop nuclear energy. I undersand that both China and India are nuclear nations that are not Western powers...but neither China nor India have ever dropped a nuclear weapon on anyone.

What really tickled me this morning is that one of the follow up headlines was that the UN has just approved a 1.9 billion dollar rennovations. I text messaged Coya and told her that at least the UN will look really pretty when it dissolves after the inevitable invasion that will follow when Iran refuses to dismantle their uranium enrichment program.

I'm going back to bed.

Evangelical Christians vrs. Genocide, Poverty, Polluters, and Wal-Mart!?!?!

Ave Maria...Salve Regina...the world is a changing. So, I was on the elipitical machine the other day reading Newsweek or Time from just after the election. The theme of the issue was the new evangelicals. It seems that the whole Superchurch Pastor Ted Haggert being outed as a party boy power bottom has caused new light and attention to be shone on the evangelical movement in the United States, and there are some really interesting happenings going on.

The article talked about how many evangelicals are trying very hard to distance themselves from the Jerry Fallwell's and Pat Robertson's of the world. They are no less conservative on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage (although I guess the parishioners at one mega church in Missouri aren't necessarily anti-gay marriage as a flock), but they are down right progressive when it comes to working to end genocide in Darfur, advocating for a liveable wage, demanding stronger environmental protections, battling sexism, and the latest news is that a coalition of evangelical churchs across the South have started a boycott and TV ad campaign against Wal-Mart basically saying that Jesus wouldn't shop there, so we shouldn't either.

This is all sort of freaking me out. From a Biblical standpoint these progressive stances make total sense...but I'm not used to my evangelical brothers and sisters making sense. I'm used to seeing them rabid and foaming at the mouth chewing on chain link fences surrounding the local abortion clinic or boycotting the funeral of a murdered tranny. What happens when your "enemy" around one part of your identity is an "ally" on many others? I'm really curious as to how this new wave of selective progressivism in the evangelical community is going to play out? Will there be a separate Christian Environmental movement? Or will traditional progressives and evangelical progressives find a way to form coalitions to work on certain issues without identity conflicts causing a melt down. What happens when you show up at a Wal-Mart boycott and someone in the crowd is wearing a Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve t-shirt? Or when you recognize the person sitting next to you at a community meeting with city council members to pass a liveable wage ordinance as the local screamin' preacher that was just railing against a woman's right to choose on the six-o-clock news the night before?

In the past the left and the religious right have rarely come together on any issue, but the effectiveness of some of the work that evangelical center-right is doing should be broadly supported. I think this is an opportunity to open channels of communications across the political spectrum...but the communication is going to have to be done in such a way as not to explode any of the landmines that are the paving stones along the path that both sides will be walking.