Quotes for today

I am constantly searching for ways to do good
in this world. One of the best ways I know of to
do this is to bring social issues which I feel are
important to the attention of everyone, and
perhaps especially to the attention of my
Christian brothers and sisters, many of whom I
feel have neglected some of these issues. In my
search for information with which to make my
points, I recently came across a couple of
interesting quotes. The first is from Tony
Campolo, an ordained Baptist minister, Professor
Emeritus of Sociology at Eastern University, and
well-known Christian author:


"I have three things I'd like to say today.
First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000
kids died of starvation or diseases related to
malnutrition. Second, most of you don't give a
shit. What's worse is that you're more upset with
the fact that I said shit than the fact that
30,000 kids died last night." - Tony Campolo


He's right, isn't he? Some of you are more
upset that he said "shit" than with the fact that
30,000 kids died last night. Think about that.
It brings tears to my eyes. For those of you
reading this who are pastors, watch out if you see
me in your church some day; I just might stand up
and repeat Mr. Campolo's words.


I have noticed that a lot of pastors
generally don't preach on today's important
issues. Some of them think if they do it may be
perceived as political, and they don't wish to
make political statements in their churches. I
would argue that while some of the issues may also
be political, or the solutions may involve
politics, they are first moral issues, and
therefore they are Christian issues, and
appropriate material for sermons. With that
thought in mind, I bring you this quote from
Martin Luther, who probably doesn't require any
introduction to most of you:


"If you preach the Gospel in all aspects with the
exception of the issues which deal specifically
with your time you are not preaching the Gospel at
all." - Martin Luther


If you don't speak on those issues, you are
not preaching the Gospel. That's the words I've
been looking for, and Martin Luther said it so
well. If we don't speak out about all the people
in this world who live in absolute poverty, if we
don't speak out about all the people who don't
have enough to eat, if we don't speak out about
the people who will be adversely affected, or will
even die, because we live lifestyles that change
the global climate with our carbon emissions, if
we don't speak out about the people who we torture
and kill in our wars, we are not preaching the
Gospel.

I'll leave you with a "bonus" quote, from
another "Martin Luther", the Reverend Doctor
Martin Luther King, Jr.:


"The church must be reminded that it is not the
master or the servant of the state, but rather the
conscience of the state. It must be the guide and
the critic of the state, and never its tool. If
the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal,
it will become an irrelevant social club without
moral or spiritual authority." - Martin Luther
King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963.

The Endangered Species Act: Noah's Ark

I've often wondered why the religious community isn't more "environmentalist" than they are.  After all, shouldn't they care about all the things that God created?  Yet for many Christians, and especially among conservative Christians, the environment just doesn't seem to be a high priority item.  How do you get the environmental message across to these people?  For those of us who are environmentally concerned Christians, I know it can be extremely frustrating at times to talk to our fellow Christians about environmental matters.  I came across this document a few minutes ago:

http://www.biodiversityproject.org/spiritguide.pdf

It's from The Biodiversity Project and it's entitled "Building Partnerships with the Faith Community: A Resource Guide for Environmental Groups."  I had barely started reading it when I came across this:

"One of the most lasting—and perhaps most significant—contributions the religious community can make to biodiversity lies in its core teachings: the unique message it can proclaim about biodiversity. This message has sometimes transformed not just the particulars but the entire tone of the debate. For example, when religious leaders explain that species diversity should be preserved because “God saw all that God had made, and behold it was very good,” the discussion moves away from utilitarian calculations.  While such considerations have their place, discussing biodiversity purely on utilitarian grounds sometimes leads to debates about the “usefulness” of a given species, which in turn can lead to “loggers vs. owls” conversations."

OK, so far, so good:  God saw ALL that he had made, and it was good.  And who are we to judge which portions of the Creation are "more good" or "less good" than the others?

The next sentence is this:

"Similarly, describing the Endangered Species Act as a 'Noah’s Ark' helps us understand that our relationship with the rest of the natural world is ancient."

Ah-ha!  The Endangered Species Act  IS Noah's Ark.  It is, isn't it? Didn't God tell Noah to take male and female of every species and load them onto the Ark to preserve them?  He didn't say, "Decide which species you think are most important to your economy, and load them onto the Ark."  What he said was:

"And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.  Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.  And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them."    (Genesis 6:19-21 KJV)

EVERY LIVING THING.   So shouldn't Christians be the strongest supporters of the Endangered Species Act and other environmental legislation?  From a Biblical point of view, wasn't the Endangered Species Act given to us by God?

I have barely started reading this document, but I can see that it has the potential to be extremely useful.  If you ever find yourself in a position to talk environment issues with Christians, or expect that someday you might, perhaps you should read this document, too.

http://www.biodiversityproject.org/spiritguide.pdf

Book Report: “The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience”

I just finished reading “The Scandal of the
Evangelical Conscience” by Ronald J. Sider. If
you're not familiar with Ron Sider, he is
professor of theology, holistic ministry, and
public policy as well as director of the Sider
Center on Ministry and Public Policy at Eastern
Baptist Theological Seminary. The subtitle of the
book is a question: “Why are Christians living
just like the rest of the world?”

Before I became a Christian, one of the
things that kept me from any interest in becoming
a Christian was that I thought Christians were a
bunch of hypocrites – they didn't practice what
they preached. In a recent Barna Group poll, only
44 percent of non-Christians had a positive view
of Christian clergy, just 32 percent of
non-Christians had a positive view of born-again
Christians, and only 22 percent of non-Christians
had a positive view of evangelicals. I suspect
that many of those who think poorly of Christians
do so for the same reason I did: they don't think
that Christians practice what they preach.

Now that I am a Christian, it's no longer
just about “them”. Since I am a Christian, it's
about me too; it's about “us.”

I'd like to mention a number of the points
Sider brings up in his book. The first is that
born-again Christians have a higher divorce rate
than non-Christians. We know that God hates
divorce, and we talk about “defending marriage”,
but we don't live up to God's expectations of us.

Although God calls on us to love all of his
children, many of us are still racist. A survey
by George Gallup Jr. and James Castelli found that
11 percent of Catholics and non-evangelical
Christians would object to having black neighbors.
Mainline Protestants came in next at 16 percent.
Seventeen percent of Baptists and evangelicals
would object to having black neighbors. Among
Southern Baptists, 20 percent objected to black
neighbors.

Although there is some disagreement among
evangelicals whether marriages should be
traditional, husband dominated marriages, or
egalitarian marriages, it is certainly the case
that evangelicals are more likely to have
traditional, husband dominated marriages. Several
recent studies have shown that wives are 3 to 4
times as likely to be beaten in traditional
marriages than in egalitarian marriages. Are
evangelical Christian men beating their wives more
than non-evangelical Christian men? Probably so.

One of the issues that greatly concerns me is
poverty, hunger, and inequitable distribution of
wealth. Sider mentions that dramatic economic
sharing was the norm among the early Christians:
“All who believed were together and had all things
in common; they would sell their possessions and
goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any
had need” (Acts 2:44-45) Although the early
Christians were not by any means a pure socialist
society, Acts 4:34 does tell us that “there were
no needy persons among them.”

In the middle of the second century, Justin
Martyr said of Christians, “We who once took most
pleasure in accumulating wealth and property now
share with everyone in need.”

In about AD 125, Aristides wrote of
Christians, “They walk in all humility and
kindness, and falsehood is not found among them,
and they love one another. They despise not the
widow, and grieve not the orphan. He that hath,
distributeth liberally to him that hath not. If
they see a stranger, they bring him under their
roof, and rejoice over him, as it were their own
brother: for they call themselves brethren, not
after the flesh, but after the Spirit and God.
And if there is among them a man that is poor and
needy, and they have not an abundance of
necessaries, they fast two or three days that they
may supply the needy with their necessary food.”

Read that last line again:

“And if there is among them a man that is poor and
needy, and they have not an abundance of
necessaries, they fast two or three days that they
may supply the needy with their necessary food.”

Most of us have large houses with
refrigerators, stoves, televisions and so on.
Most American families have more than one car. We
are well-clothed, well-fed, well educated, and
have time for recreation and leisure. Yet there
are 3 billion human beings in the world who live
on less than 2 dollars a day. There are over 1
billion human beings who live on less than 1
dollar a day. And every year, 15 million children
under the age of five die of starvation. The
early Christians would fast for several days to
allow others to eat, yet we live like kings while
allowing this sort of poverty in the world.

In the book, Sider not only points out what
we are doing wrong, he also talks about how we got
to be that way. One of the points he makes is
that we think of Jesus too much as “Savior” and
not enough as “Lord”. Yes, Jesus died for our
sins, but before he died for our sins, he lived
his life as an example for our lives, and he
instructed us on how we are to treat our fellow
human beings. In the New Testament Jesus is
referred to as “Savior” 16 times, but is referred
to as “Lord” 420 times. So why do we spend so
much time thinking about how Jesus has saved us,
and so little time thinking about what our Lord
has commanded us to do?

Sider also talks about what we can do to live
the lives that Jesus would have us live. I'm not
one to give away the ending of a story, so you'll
just have to read Ron Sider's “The Scandal of the
Evangelical Conscience” yourself, and I urge you
to do so.

My "Open Mic" Presentation

A couple of weeks ago, the local coffeehouse
had an “open mic.” Ordinarily, I would play my
guitar and sing at such and event. But in the
past, they've had lots of spoken word performers
there, poets and story tellers and such, so I
decided to do a spoken word piece for the open
mic. Following are the words I spoke:

Although the notice of this event in the
paper said no vulgarity would be allowed here, I
am going to use the most vulgar, profane, and
obscene words that I know:

George Walker Bush

Now you may think I'm going to talk about
Bush's illegal and immoral war of aggression in
Iraq, and if I were going to do that, I'd probably
quote from the International Military Tribunal at
Nuremberg, Germany in 1946:

“To initiate a war of aggression ... is not only
an international crime, it is the supreme
international crime, differing only from other war
crimes in that it contains within itself the
accumulated evil of the whole.”

But that's not what I'm going to talk about.

Or you may think I'm going to talk about
Bush's refusal to do anything about global
warming, and his efforts to prevent anyone else
from doing anything about global warming. But
that's not it either.

Or you may think I'm going to talk about
Bush's giving tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans
while people right here in America are unable to
afford enough food to eat, or any sort of health
care. But that's not it either.

I'm going to talk about torture.

You probably heard some time ago about the
torture that took place in Abu Ghraib. You
probably even saw some of the pictures. You
probably didn't see the pictures and video of
Americans torturing that were recently aired on
television in Australia, because Bush did
everything he could to prevent any of that from
being released, and when it finally did get out,
the so-called “liberal media”, being George Bush's
lap dog, didn't cover it the way they should have.
Well, if you did see the pictures that came out
of Abu Ghraib a while back, but didn't see the
recent stuff, I can tell you that you haven't seen
anything yet. If you really want to see it, you
can find it on the web. It is not pretty.
Americans are doing things that you can not
imagine, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Guantanamo,
and throughout the world.

When the word first came out about the
torture taking place in Abu Ghraib, Senator John
McCain introduced an amendment to the defense
appropriations bill that would ban torture. Not
that another law is really needed, since the U.S
is signatory to the Geneva Conventions and other
international laws forbidding torture. But since
Bush still believed that he had the right to
torture, McCain introduced that bill and even
though Bush had threatened to use the first veto
of his presidency to stop it from becoming law,
even though Dick Cheney went to Congress twice to
convince them not to pass it, Congress did pass
it, and seeing the handwriting on the wall, Bush
signed it. He also issued a signing statement
that said that he will interpret the law in
accordance with his powers as president and his
obligation to protect the American people. Which
means, in plain language, I will torture anyone I
please. Just last week, Bush had his lawyers
arguing in court that the McCain amendment banning
torture doesn't apply in Guantanamo.

I submit to you that torture is not only
illegal, but it is immoral, it is un-Christian,
and it is un-American. A friend recently
mentioned seeing a bumper sticker that said, “Who
Would Jesus Torture?” When Jesus talked about how
we are to treat our fellow human beings, he said,
“As you have done to the least of these, so you
have done to me.” So I'd like to ask you, not
“Who would Jesus torture”, but who would torture
Jesus? To repeat the words of Jesus, “As you have
done to the least of these, so you have done to
me.”

George Walker Bush would torture Jesus.

According to Jesus, he already did.

Is it our responsibility to do something
about it? I'd like to present the words of some
people who I consider to be great human beings.

The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.
said:

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved
in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who
accepts evil without protesting against it is
really cooperating with it.”

Albert Einstein said:

"The world is a dangerous place. Not because of
the people who are evil; but because of the people
who don't do anything about it."

Mohandas Gandhi said:

“Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is
cooperation with good.”

At the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC,
you will find these words:

“Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a
perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a
bystander.”

Thou shalt not be a bystander. We all have
the responsibility to do something. We all have
the responsibility to not be a bystander.

You may think, “I am only one person, what
can I do?” What I can do is what I am doing at
this moment: bringing the horror of the torture
that our president practices to the attention of
as many people as I can, pointing out that we all
have a responsibility as moral human beings to do
something about it, and demanding that we all live
up to that responsibility. Each of you will have
to decide what you personally can do. If we all
do what we can, we will make a difference.

Margaret Mead said:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,
committed citizens can change the world. Indeed,
it is the only thing that ever has.”

Gandhi said:

“A small body of determined spirits fired by an
unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the
course of history.”

Anita Koddick said:

“If you think you're too small to have an impact,
try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.”

I'm asking all of you to be the mosquito in
the room. I'm asking all of you to stop the
torture. I'm asking all of you to stop George
Walker Bush.

More Insane Hypocrisy from the Bush Regime

More insane hypocrisy from the Bush regime: now
Condoleeza Rice is concerned about an increase in
China's military budget, and says China "should
undertake to be transparent about what that
means."

Rice says we must "make sure that we're looking at
a Chinese military buildup that is not outsized
for China's regional ambitions and interests."

The source of all the concern is that China raised
its military budget to 35 billion dollars. Big
deal. The U.S. currently spends nearly 500
billion dollars a year on its military. When you
consider that the population of China is 4.4 times
the population of the U.S., the fact that they
spend one fourteenth as much on their military
doesn't seem like such a big deal.

If we look at military spending in terms of per
capita spending, the U.S. spends almost 1700
dollars per person on its military, while China
spends about 27 dollars per person on its
military. The U.S. spends 62 times as much per
person on its military than China spends!

A couple of months ago, the Bush regime was
concerned about the tiny amount Venezuela spends
on their military, now it's China. Considering
that the U.S. spends as much on its military as
the rest of the world combined, there is
definitely something wrong with this picture. Is
the U.S. concerned that other countries might have
the ability to defend itself from a U.S. attack?
Oh my, we couldn't have that, could we? What's
going on here? Why does the U.S. insist it must
have military superiority over the entire rest of
the world?