Short-Term Missions

Last week, the Desiring God Blog posted on short-term missions throughout the week.  This is the wrap-up with links to their different posts.  The major messages that came through were that those going on short-term missions must have a servant’s attitude, take care that their efforts don’t harm the poor and the local Christian efforts that they mean to help, and realize that those who go on the trip often receive more than those they mean to help.

Two articles from the Chalmers Center at Covenant College were particularly interesting.  They sought to differentiate between relief and development, arguing that when the poor can help themselves we must pursue development.  The second article that I linked to provides this suggestion (the DG Blog quoted a shorter section of this):

Despite these words of caution, STM trips can play a positive role in the lives of all those involved, but a different paradigm is needed. Rather than going as “doers,” some powerful dynamics can be unleashed if STM teams go as “learners” from the poor or as “co-learners” with the poor. Consistent with an asset-based model, going as a learner emphasizes the gifts which poor people have to share with others: the spiritual, intellectual, physical, and social resources that God has already placed in their community. Listening to poor people and asking them to share their insights affirms their dignity and reduces the tendencies towards pride on the part of the outsiders. Furthermore, the poor really do have something to teach us, for they have unique insights on what it means to trust in a sovereign God to “give us this day our daily bread.”

This article also had a good discussion of different cultural views of time:

An important dynamic that affects the interaction of STM teams and low-income communities is that there are often core cultural differences with respect to time. Most Americans are from a monochronic culture which believes that time is a very important resource that should not be wasted. Of course, there is some good in that perspective, and it enables Americans to produce a lot. But many other cultures have a polychronic view that says time is primarily an opportunity to invest in relationships. In such cultures, knowing and serving others is more important than pursuing many new projects or activities. Hence, people from polychronic cultures may not feel unduly impatient or burdened if life unfolds a little bit slower than the people from monochromic cultures would like.

STM teams that fail to understand these dynamics can inadvertently undermine long-term development. For example, when Americans gain a reputation for needing to do things very quickly, it can foster an attitude in poor communities that discourages local people from doing things to improve their own situation. Locals start to say, “We don’t need to do anything. Let’s just wait and some outsiders will show up and do it for us!” Again, if the STM teams would focus less on “doing” and more on “being and learning together,” this problem could be mitigated.

Radical Orthodoxy

At Endued, Rick references a good article by Calvin College professor James K.A. Smith on how Calvinist and Pentecostal beliefs can complement each other.  From the notes at the end, it appears that Smith has written on a movement called “Radical Orthodoxy” (RO).  Wheaton College professor Ashley Woodiwiss provided a tantalizing introduction to this movement in Christianity Today in 2005. She He shows that the RO movement combines a devotion to orthodox Christianity with a postmodern critique of modern Western society.  Here’s the crux of her his portrayal:

In the RO version, modernity, that historical moment that witnesses the rise of liberal democracy and capitalism (and the philosophies and theologies that affirm them), must be seen as a pure project of power whereby the church and its account of reality (again, in “thought, word, and deed”) has been forcibly ejected from its earlier and necessary public space whereby it forms the soul according to the truth and beauty of God. As such the modern state has arisen as a device of and for liberal absolutism. Its message is individual human liberty, and it brooks no counter-version to its story.

In terms similar to those found in certain postmodern philosophers, from whom they borrow without completely buying, RO theorists and theologians (re-)describe the modern state not as “tolerant,” “pluralistic,” or “free” in the standard sense of those terms, but rather like Hobbes in Leviathan when he describes the state’s sovereign power as that “mortal God.” For them, the state has become the actual replacement for the church, replete with its own liturgies, vestments, rites, practices, saints, holy days, and disciplines. Rather than fitting us for heaven, the state and its multiple apparati (media, education, professions, etc.) form us for service and allegiance to the state and its needs. At one time, Christian subjects fought and died, they believed (perhaps mistakenly), for the sake of Jesus; now Christian citizens fight and die for the American way of life.

Some would say that this is in fact just what the state (carefully regulated and watched) should be about; and that a certain amount of material or cultural excess is well worth the price for a secured personal and religious liberty. After all, soul-crafting as the hobby of states (ancient and modern) leads almost inevitably to internal oppression and external war. But the concern for RO theologians extends beyond a critique of the modern state and its operations; it extends to why we as Christians must recognize what modernity (with its liberal state and free market) is really up to. So in the words of William Cavanaugh (the most accessible RO theologian):

“The invention of religion as a private leisure activity allows people to fit into the state and market without conflict, … Private religion is meant as a refuge, a solace for tired shoppers and harried office workers. Religion helps us escape from or cope with, but not change, the frenetic pace of life in consumer society.”

I find much to admire about the liberal democratic and capitalist framework of the society in which we live.  It provides for a basically humane society that allows people the freedom to live their own lives and participate in society as Christians or non-Christians.  However maddening and disappointing the results can be, I think that those principles provide an important bulwark against tyranny from the right or left.

But as I’ve mentioned in other posts, I’m also concerned about the way that the state vies for people’s loyalties, seeking to channel Christians’ commitment for its own purposes.  I will be intersted to see what solutions the RO movement offers.  Even if one doesn’t fully accept the critique that RO makes, it’s a good reminder that our ultimate loyalty as Christians lies above and beyond the modern state.

UPDATE (6/10/09): A helpful commenter pointed out that Ashley Woodiwiss is male, not female, so I changed the post to reflect that.  Also, while he was a Wheaton professor at the time that he wrote the article in 2005, he is now at Erskine College.  Thanks to the commenter for the corrections!

Perkins on the importance of informed solutions

After John Perkins essentially fought the Mississippi court system to a draw twice, dropping his charges against the local authorities when they promised to drop theirs against him, he believed that the most important part of his experience was informing people about the injustices of police misconduct and brutality:

One of the things for Christian observers is that there are times when the biggest need is for information rather than exhortation.  We need to know more about what really goes on before we solidify our theoretical ideas about what a Christian “ought” or “ought not” to do.

Whether we admit it or not, our reading of biblical ethics is colored by our perception of the world around us.  If we think that there are only a few “bad guys” such as burglars or murderers, and that all the given political, legal and economic structures around us are basically okay, then we are bound to read our Bibles in a certain way.  We will assume that it tells us to “lay low,” whether we are a part of the law or only under the law; that the person who speaks out is a rebellious agitator.

But that assumption can be badly shaken up by a good look at what happens to many people who are simply crushed by, rather than helped by, these social structures and institutions that we take for granted.  If sin can exist at every level of government, and in every human institution, then also the call to biblical justice in every corner of society must be sounded by those who claim a God of Justice as their Lord. (Let Justice Roll Down, Ch. 21, pg. 195, 1976 edition)

This is a great reminder that we need to see if justice goes beyond rhetoric and good ideas and is actually carried out.

When the church looks irrelevant

From John Perkins’ autobiography Let Justice Roll Down:

You see, in all my years growing up in Mississippi, I had never heard the simple truth of the gospel: the fact that Jesus Christ could set me free and love His life in me.  I grew up knowing nothing about Jesus Christ.

In fact, I had always looked at black Christians as sort of inferior people whose religion had made them gullible and submissive.  Religion had made so many of my people humble down to the white-dominated system with all its injustices.  Religion had made them cowards and Uncle Toms.

But I was a Perkins and I wasn’t like that at all.  No way was I like that.  So I did not see the black church as relevant to me and my needs.

And I did not see white Christianity as meaningful either.  To me it was part of that whole system that helped dehumanize and destroy black people; that system which identified me as a nigger.  So how could the white church really be concerned about me?

I had lived in the South.  I had drunk at separate drinking fountains.  I had ridden in the back of buses.  And never in the South had I heard one white Christian speak out against the way whites treated blacks as second-class citizens.

I had never accepted the falsehood that I was a second-class citizen.  Nor had I ever accepted the myth that I was a nigger.  So I did not see the white church as relevant to me and my needs. (Ch. 7, 57-58, 1976 edition)

Perkins eventually found forgiveness for his sin and meaning for his life in Christ, as well as a passion for justice that he found so lacking in his boyhood home.

Paul Tripp: the American dream compromises Christian community

I’m excited that the New Calvinists are challenging the American-evangelical synthesis that blesses the assumptions of American life with religious approval.  At the Desiring God blog, Paul Tripp states it about as strongly and as well as it can be said:

I read a book on stress a few years back, and the author made a side comment that I thought was so insightful. He said that the highest value of materialistic western culture is not possessing. It’s actually acquiring.

If you’re a go-getter you never stop. And so the guy who is lavishly successful doesn’t quit, because there are greater levels of success. “My house could be bigger, I could drive better cars, I could have more power, I could have more money.”…

You can’t fit God’s dream (if I can use that language) for his church inside of the American dream and have it work. It’s a radically different lifestyle. It just won’t squeeze into the available spaces of the time and energy that’s left over.

And I’m as much seduced by that as anybody. We have sold our four-bedroom house because our kids are gone, and we’ve bought a loft in Chinatown, Philadelphia. And we’re amazed at how simple our life has become. We’re grieving over how we let our life get so complicated.

Last year, for example, I put almost $2,500 worth of gas in my car. This year, I’ve put $159 in the first quarter. It’s because we’re walking places, and that slows our life down, and we’re near the people in our church because we’re within walking distance of the church. And we’ve had so many natural encounters with people because of that.

We’re living in a much smaller place. We got rid of most of our stuff. As we went through it, we laughed about how we just collected stuff. All that stuff has to be maintained. It grabs your heart, it grabs your schedule, it grabs your time. It becomes a source of worry and concern and need to pay.

So we’ve just been confronted with how all of those things that aren’t evil in themselves become the complications of life that keep us away from the kind of community that we need in order to hold on to our identity.

Let me be clear about a couple of things.  First, I’m a beneficiary of the American dream and of the incredible opportunity that America offers to so many of its citizens.  I’m not suggesting a political overhaul that would deny that to others, but rather that we as Christians may want to reevaluate how living a fully American life might compromise the higher priority of living a fully Christian life.  Second, as in so many things, I’m much more in the thinking and talking phase of this than in the acting phase, so I don’t want to pretend that I’ve got it figured out.  I did think that this was worth sharing, though.

I think that the New Calvinism seems to share some of the same concerns that the Emerging church movement does.   The best example of this that I know is Mark Driscoll’s ties to the Emerging leaders early in his career, before they parted ways.  Adherents of both seek a more authentic commitment to God and the Christian life than they find in the American evangelical mainstream.  What’s so exciting about the New Calvinism, in my opinion, is that it addresses the concerns of the Emerging movement in a biblically faithful and confident way, in contrast to some in the Emerging movement’s uncomfortableness with traditional doctrines.  As I’ve said before, I’m watching the New Calvinist movement with great excitement.

If you want to see what I’ve written on the New Calvinist movement, check here for of my posts with this tag.

If you want to see my analysis of the Emerging movement from the perspective of challenging the American-evangelical synthesis, you can see it here.

Defense Secretary Gates’ strategy

I’ve been happy with Defense Secretary Robert Gates under both Bush and Obama.  He seems to have drawn a lot of favorable reviews and has presided over a more effective approach to the war in Iraq.  This article from the Washington Post presented a review of his focus on Iraq and Afghanistan, along with some criticisms of him as well.  One criticism that I had not thought of was that he may be so focused on these wars that it could compromise our ability to project power to other places.

Gates’s critics, including some active-duty generals and many of the senior officials he has fired, say his intense focus on Afghanistan and Iraq threatens to turn the vaunted U.S. military into an army of occupiers and nation-builders. “I am sure the North Koreans fear the MRAP [Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles] and the Iranians are cringing in their boots about the threat from our stability forces,” former Air Force secretary Michael W. Wynne, who was dismissed last year, wrote in an online column. “Our national interests are being reduced to becoming the armed custodians in two nations, Afghanistan and Iraq.”

I wanted to pass it on as food for thought, and the whole article is worth reading (with some bad language).  I think a lot of one’s reaction will depend on his or her assumptions about American military and foreign policy goals.

Hat tip: Tom Ricks

St. Francis, the preacher

Mark Galli sets the record straight on the saying famously attributed to St. Francis, “Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary, use words.”  Galli doesn’t believe that St. Francis said it and reminds us that he was known for his preaching as well as his voluntary poverty.  In fact, preaching is what the friars of the Middle Ages were supposed to do.

Here is Galli’s description of Francis’ preaching:

He began preaching early in his ministry, first in the Assisi church of Saint George, in which he had gone to school as a child, and later in the cathedral of Saint Rufinus. He usually preached on Sundays, spending Saturday evenings devoted to prayer and meditation reflecting on what he would say to the people the next day.

He soon took up itinerant ministry, sometimes preaching in up to five villages a day, often outdoors. In the country, Francis often spoke from a bale of straw or a granary doorway. In town, he would climb on a box or up steps in a public building. He preached to serfs and their families as well as to the landholders, to merchants, women, clerks, and priests—any who gathered to hear the strange but fiery little preacher from Assisi.

He apparently was a bit of a showman. He imitated the troubadours, employing poetry and word pictures to drive the message home. When he described the Nativity, listeners felt as if Mary was giving birth before their eyes; in rehearsing the crucifixion, the crowd (as did Francis) would shed tears.

Contrary to his current meek and mild image, Francis’s preaching was known for both his kindness and severity. One moment, he was friendly and cheerful—prancing about as if he were playing a fiddle on a stick, or breaking out in song in praise to God and his creation. Another moment, he would turn fierce: “He denounced evil whenever he found it,” wrote one early biographer, “and made no effort to palliate it; from him a life of sin met with outspoken rebuke, not support. He spoke with equal candor to great and small.”

Another early biography talked about how his preaching was received: “His words were neither hollow nor ridiculous, but filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, penetrating the marrow of the heart, so that listeners were turned to great amazement.”As a result, he quickly gained followers, and it wasn’t long before he told his most devoted adherents to preach as well. In the fall of 1208, he sent the brothers out two by two to distant reaches. What did he tell them to say? In an early guide written during this period, Francis instructed his brothers to tell their listeners to “do penance, performing worthy fruits of penance, because we shall soon die … . Blessed are those who die in penance for they shall be in the kingdom of heaven. Woe to those who do not die in penance, for they shall be children of the devil whose works they do and they shall go into everlasting fire.”

This last quote raises questions about the content of Francis’ preaching. He was clearly a product of his age and his church. It’s hard to tell sometimes if “penance” for Francis meant something more akin to biblical repentance, or to the medieval version of “works righteousness” that the Reformers eventually and rightly condemned.

The point is this: Francis was a preacher. And the type of preacher who would alarm us today. “Hell, fire, brimstone” would not be an inaccurate description of his style.

I just used this famous (mis)quotation a couple weeks ago.  Guess I won’t be doing that anymore.

Hat tip: Justin Taylor

Book Review: John C. Polkinghorne, One World: The Interaction of Science and Theology

Polkinghorne is an Anglican priest who also taught mathematical physics at Cambridge.  In One World, he argues that science and theology share a similar goal of understanding the reality of the universe.  He does not see them in opposition to each other.  I’ve already made a couple of comments here and here on this book.

As I read, I was able to get a better sense of his theological commitments, although I would not want to pin him down to a certain position from just this short book (in a comment on my first post above, Joel stated that he believed Polkinghorne was an open theist, which seemed consistent with what I read in the book).  He certainly believes in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ and in eternal life in a resurrected body, and states that the Eucharist truly becomes the body and blood of Christ (perhaps suggesting an Anglo-Catholic view?).  He also had an interesting defense of “natural theology,” or learning about God from nature: it shows God’s work in the cosmos and that he is bigger than our own concerns.  A universe that can be understood by science and natural laws expressed in elegant mathematical equations points to a Creator and reminds us that we are not the only thing that God is concerned about.  Certainly I’d wish to add that God has showed his amazing love for us in Christ in a way that he has for no other members of Creation, but I think Polkinghorne’s point is a good one.

On the other hand, he emphasized human free will and God’s “self-limiting” in love, rather than a more Reformed view of a totally sovereign God.  Indeed, there were points where he did not seem comfortable with a God whose reasoning he could not understand (for example, a God who chooses to work miracles in some cases and not in others).  He clearly respects the Scriptures, citing them throughout the book.  But he did not believe in their total reliability, as evident when he cited two specific stories that he did not believe, the sun standing still for the Israelites to defeat the Amorites (Joshua 10:6-15) and Peter catching the fish with the temple tax (Matthew 17:24-27).  He characterized the New Testament (or any holy book) as a product of a specific culture in which “the gold of eternal truth is mixed with the base matter of contemporary attitudes” (92-93).  Finally, he seemed to have a much greater emphasis on God’s love than on His judgment.

Albert Mohler on the abortion polls

I thought that Mohler provided a very sensible reaction to the Gallup poll show a pro-life increase.  Here’s an excerpt:

The elections do seem to demonstrate that the pro-life convictions of many Americans are not well grounded or considered.  While the pro-life movement can take real hope from this new headline, there is clearly much ground yet to be won.  Americans may be squeamish about abortion and, thanks to modern ultrasound technology, they have a genuine concern for the unborn child, but this has not yet translated into a firm and convictional determination to bring the scourge of abortion on demand to an end.

The pro-choice movement can point to the election of President Obama and many other pro-choice candidates, but the movement must be biting its nails over the trend evident in this new poll and similar surveys.  The most ominous trend for the pro-choice movement is the increasingly pro-life character of younger Americans.  As some observers have pointed out, a generation that can see ultrasound images of themselves in their own baby books tends to see abortion for what it is — the killing of a child.

Read the whole thing.  It’s not too long and gives good insight on the challenges facing pro-life and pro-choice advocates.

What helps you learn history?

This summer, I’m going to be focusing some of my reading on how college students learn and especially how they learn history.  If you have an opinion on this topic from your experience or reading, I’d love to see it.  Post it in the comments for this post.

So, is there anything that has helped you (or not helped you) in history courses that you have taken?