I'm honored to introduce you these young people who not only deconstruct, critique, theorize, and propose social change - they are part of the change.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
it's okay to vilify Jesus
Many things I don't understand. Well, I can understand why people do certain things, but I don't understand why we don't see that we contradict ourselves.
And I will place my cards on the table: I'm saying all this because I stand on the side of the One people insult.
We say that religions co-exist,
But then we give nasty names to Jesus.
We say that there is freedom of religion,
But we ridicule those who carry the name of Christ.
We protect the freedom of speech,
Yet we spend time trolling on YouTube
Leaving no videos about Jesus un-insulted.
We say all is right if nobody's hurt
But those who follow Jesus, we hurt
We say we (try to) live by the Golden Rule,
When we hate the Rabbi who taught it - and lived it
Even if keeping it meant losing His life
And I will place my cards on the table: I'm saying all this because I stand on the side of the One people insult.
We say that religions co-exist,
But then we give nasty names to Jesus.
We say that there is freedom of religion,
But we ridicule those who carry the name of Christ.
We protect the freedom of speech,
Yet we spend time trolling on YouTube
Leaving no videos about Jesus un-insulted.
We say all is right if nobody's hurt
But those who follow Jesus, we hurt
We say we (try to) live by the Golden Rule,
When we hate the Rabbi who taught it - and lived it
Even if keeping it meant losing His life
It's okay to vilify Jesus. Great, even.
Because it shows, apparently, that we are:
Rational, Scientific, Intelligent, Open-minded, Objective, Independent
A Critical Thinker Who is Of Sound Reason
Enlightened.
Enlightened.
And Jesus wants me to love these people sincerely?! And I'm supposed to overcome evil with good by asking God to bless them...no tit for tat? Surely giving them three-sixteenths a teaspoon of their own medicine is no revenge, no?
Yet I know that during the times when I disregard the Love of my life, I do just the same. I deny Him and choose my own way to live, my own decisions, my own ideas, which are by nature at war with His goodness and love. During those times, I, too, actually believe that it's okay to vilify Jesus.
And each time I would think that I am:
Rational, Scientific, Intelligent, Open-minded, Objective, Independent
A Critical Thinker Who is Of Sound Reason
Enlightened.
Enlightened.
Time and again I come to Jesus ashamed. Surely it's beyond pardon...I contradict the very love I profess for Him. Yet He says that He remembers my betrayals no more, and that I should not avoid Him deceiving myself that I have it all.
It is Jesus' sincere and insistent love that first so powerfully won and still wins me over, so how can I contain this love that was meant to overflow? After all, who am I, really, to not do the same for people - regardless of what they have done?
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
courage to believe
Faith is inherently un-provable. It takes courage to believe in something you can't prove...but none at all to believe in nothing.
Francis W. Porretto
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
things i used to hear growing up
A mixture of lores, sayings, teachings and beliefs (probably of good intent)
1. If you point at the moon,
a) your ears will be cut off, or
b) your tongue will be cut off, or
c) your finger will be cut off.
2. If you have nightmares, sleep on the underside of your pillow.
*a Malay taxi driver's advice in 2011
3. If the soles of your shoes face upwards when you take them off at someone's doorstep, spirits will follow you home.
4. Don't bring Muslim and Hindu friends home because
a) they will bring kutu ('headlice') into our house
b) they are not Christian
5. If you trim your nails at night, you will see spirits.
*The irony: a Malaysian relative was amazed at my courage to go ahead nonetheless. He/she also said because I didn't believe in this lore, I wouldn't see the spirits.
6. My primary school used to be a cemetery, so was my secondary school.
*But it turns out that everyone's primary schools and secondary schools were also cemeteries. All those years of feeling special...
7. If you choked on a fishbone, keep stabbing a pair of chopsticks against the bottom of an empty rice bowl.
8. If you sleep in front of a mirror, your soul will be captured into the mirror.
9. Peel an apple in front of the mirror at midnight and you will see
a) your crush, or
b) your future boyfriend, or
c) your future husband, or
d) a ghost, or
c) a witch
10. Don't play with Indians because
a) they are smelly, or
b) they have kutu, or
c) you will become BLACK
In the name of cute folklore, I developed two of my own and have been propagating them to anyone who would hear them.
11. Your breakfast tomorrow is what your fart smells like today.
If your fart smells like hotdog, it means you're having hotdogs for breakfast tomorrow.
12. If you find a piece of hair in your food, congratulations - you're in luck!
Better still if it's a bug!!!
Speaking of which, I just found one in my soup.
1. If you point at the moon,
a) your ears will be cut off, or
b) your tongue will be cut off, or
c) your finger will be cut off.
2. If you have nightmares, sleep on the underside of your pillow.
*a Malay taxi driver's advice in 2011
3. If the soles of your shoes face upwards when you take them off at someone's doorstep, spirits will follow you home.
4. Don't bring Muslim and Hindu friends home because
a) they will bring kutu ('headlice') into our house
b) they are not Christian
5. If you trim your nails at night, you will see spirits.
*The irony: a Malaysian relative was amazed at my courage to go ahead nonetheless. He/she also said because I didn't believe in this lore, I wouldn't see the spirits.
6. My primary school used to be a cemetery, so was my secondary school.
*But it turns out that everyone's primary schools and secondary schools were also cemeteries. All those years of feeling special...
7. If you choked on a fishbone, keep stabbing a pair of chopsticks against the bottom of an empty rice bowl.
8. If you sleep in front of a mirror, your soul will be captured into the mirror.
9. Peel an apple in front of the mirror at midnight and you will see
a) your crush, or
b) your future boyfriend, or
c) your future husband, or
d) a ghost, or
c) a witch
10. Don't play with Indians because
a) they are smelly, or
b) they have kutu, or
c) you will become BLACK
In the name of cute folklore, I developed two of my own and have been propagating them to anyone who would hear them.
11. Your breakfast tomorrow is what your fart smells like today.
If your fart smells like hotdog, it means you're having hotdogs for breakfast tomorrow.
12. If you find a piece of hair in your food, congratulations - you're in luck!
Better still if it's a bug!!!
Speaking of which, I just found one in my soup.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
the struggle for justice
"The poorest people in our world suffer from a lot of familiar problems. They suffer from hunger, homelessness, illiteracy and sickness. And in response, all over the world, people of goodwill bring to bear familiar forms of assistance: we bring food and shelter and education and medicine.
But at the root of much of this suffering is actually a different problem - a less familiar problem - namely, violence. Many times the widow's children are hungry because bullies have stolen her land and she can no longer grow her own food. The street child is homeless because sexual abuse in the home has forced her onto the streets. The young boy is illiterate because he is held as a slave in a brick factory and can't go to school. The teenage girl has AIDS because she has been forcibly infected with the disease while held captive in a brothel.
In such cases we can't meet the root cause of suffering with the familiar remedies of food, shelter, schools or medicine. It simply doesn't meet the need. In fact, we can give all manner of goods and services to the poor, but if we do not restrain the hands of the bullies from taking it away, we will be disappointed in the long-term outcome of our efforts. As the rock-star activist Bono has learned from his work with the poor in Africa, caring for the poor is "not a matter of charity; it's a matter of justice."
This then is one of the things that makes IJM's calling to the church so different. We are calling Christians to address the distinctive problem of violence that lies beneath so much of the suffering of the poor - the suffering that tenaciously keeps so many of the poor in poverty.
To be clear, among the global poor, hunger, homelessness, education and medical care are massive needs worthy of our urgent attention. But the traditional remedies for these problems simply don't address the underlying problems of aggressive violence.
Violence is different. Violence is intentional. Violence is scary. And violence causes deep scars. Accordingly, to deal with violence, Christians must be different."
But at the root of much of this suffering is actually a different problem - a less familiar problem - namely, violence. Many times the widow's children are hungry because bullies have stolen her land and she can no longer grow her own food. The street child is homeless because sexual abuse in the home has forced her onto the streets. The young boy is illiterate because he is held as a slave in a brick factory and can't go to school. The teenage girl has AIDS because she has been forcibly infected with the disease while held captive in a brothel.
In such cases we can't meet the root cause of suffering with the familiar remedies of food, shelter, schools or medicine. It simply doesn't meet the need. In fact, we can give all manner of goods and services to the poor, but if we do not restrain the hands of the bullies from taking it away, we will be disappointed in the long-term outcome of our efforts. As the rock-star activist Bono has learned from his work with the poor in Africa, caring for the poor is "not a matter of charity; it's a matter of justice."
This then is one of the things that makes IJM's calling to the church so different. We are calling Christians to address the distinctive problem of violence that lies beneath so much of the suffering of the poor - the suffering that tenaciously keeps so many of the poor in poverty.
To be clear, among the global poor, hunger, homelessness, education and medical care are massive needs worthy of our urgent attention. But the traditional remedies for these problems simply don't address the underlying problems of aggressive violence.
Violence is different. Violence is intentional. Violence is scary. And violence causes deep scars. Accordingly, to deal with violence, Christians must be different."
---
"This then is the ultimate paradox of our despair over injustice. It masquerades in the robes of hard thinking, realistic analysis and modesty, and dismisses hope as illusory, naive and even arrogant. But truth be told, it is despair that has the facts wrong. In the long run, it is always the tyrants and the bullies who end up on the ash heap of history. Sometimes the moral arc of the universe is long indeed. Sometimes unbearably long. But on both small and epic scales, it does bend toward justice. And miraculously, God has given into human hands the power to bend it more quickly to its ultimate destination. This is what the facts of history tell us. Indeed, God intends that our hope in the work of justice be built not simply on bare theological assertions about the character of God but also on the hard factual evidence about the track record of God.
Hope is not simply wishful thinking; it is a fruit of the Spirit born of the spiritual discipline of remembering."
Gary A. Haugen
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