Mission 3:16?

I stopped being a proselytizing Christian somewhere between 'saving' my eighth grade friends from drugs and depression and discovering that there's more to Christianity than Audio Adrenaline's "Mighty Big Leader." But I admit I probably would have thought this was a decent article until relatively recently. It's an OK start; just demonstrates how far the church has to go if we are ever to truly call ourselves transfigured and transformed.
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An excerpt:

Are we settling for less?

Changing the mission mindset of American Christians will be no easy task.
“We have so long perceived ourselves as the bastion of mission-sending, the great North American force going out,” says Bill O’Brien. “And even where we have established partnership, it’s often just a buzzword. In most cases we still have 51 percent of the money and position.”
Mutual partnership between Western and non-Western Christians would turn the traditional short-term mission paradigm on its head. Considering that Christianity is thriving outside the Western world and shrinking in the West, partnership could mean that Western churches begin receiving mission teams, not just sending them.

For instance, Christians from Africa and Asia could teach American Christians how to live faithfully in a pluralistic society without becoming syncretistic.
Believers from countries that persecute Christians could help American Christians learn how to handle increasing intolerance toward believers here.
Followers of Christ from impoverished countries could help American Christians understand the biblical perspective on money and happiness.
...
From "Mission Tourism," by Marshall Allen
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How about, Christians from everywhere else could help US of American Christians understand how we continue to screw them over?

There is a fundamental system that the church, as a product of society, is refusing to address: the world is hierarchically ordered, and the industrialized nations are at the top. If Jesus came as the prince of peace for ALL, when will Western Christians understand the death of an African to be as horrible as the death of an American? What does it take for Western Christians to see Christ in those who are marginalized, ignored, forgotten? What does it take for us to stop calling those who are invisible "them," and instead think of them as part of "us"? If we were to truly "do unto the least of these" as we would do unto Christ, I don't think we would come parading our paint buckets and shiny Bibles. If we were to see the face of Christ in the face of every starving parent, I think we would be horrified that our savior can't feed his children while we struggle with obesity. I think the first thing we would ask him would be "how did your situation get to be like this? Why does it continue to be like this? What can I do?"
But when the answer would convict us and implicate a change in lifestyle, it's a whole lot easier to forget to treat people as if they ARE Christ. It's easier to come home happy that the poor people HAVE Christ in their lives. Added bonus when we brought him to them.

Coke kills

Read about it here.

trees are smart too

It is February 15th and today I climbed a tree barefoot.
It wasn't entirely intentional. I ate lunch in my favorite spot overlooking the walkway under the Hood museum and just as I was thinking about sleeping for the first time in 29 hours I looked up and it was smiling at me. At first I couldn't get up because it was so old and so big. I was about to give up when the tree told me to take my shoes off, and I listened because it is much older than me, and when I stepped back to drop my sock I found the lone, slender branch, extended straight out above me. Sometimes you just have to remember that trees are smart too.

When I had clambered up and given my cold-shocked muscles a chance to relax I watched the sparse but steady flow of pedestrians beneath me. They thought they were being smart by not looking straight at me, but they didn't know that I was higher than them and I could watch them catch me in my glance, look away, and smile to their scholarly selves. I thought about how silly it is that we spend so much energy avoiding awkward eye contact that might imply a social obligation to be friendlier than we are particularly feeling, or to spend more time with a stranger than we would prefer to lose. And I thought that maybe if more people climbed trees we wouldn't feel so alone.

Oh Cupid tree, oh Cupid tree

Here is an email correspondance I had today with a friend at Brigham Young University. Hope it makes your valentine's day as hilarious as mine.
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He wrote:
My RA suggested that i send you a valentine - because valentines day is about as big as Christmas around here. I told him that he didn't really understand and that you would probably laugh me to shame, but he insisted -so consider yourself valentined. Happy valentines day.

I wrote:
Aaaaaw, how cute. And yes, I laughed you to shame--had to read it to my roommates. They laughed too. Happy Valentines day to yourself--watch out for those cupids; we can't have you falling in love before your mission.>> Kristina

He replied:

I don't mean to bother you anymore but i am walking around campus dumbfounded...seeing as this is my first BYU valentines day. You mentioned cupids, there were about 5 of them standing outside the student center todayyelling "We love love - welcome to the love house" and there was another (infull attire of course) in the quad area inbetween the library and studentcenter with a boom box playing love songs, and he was screaming "happyvalentines day." There are of course hearts flying around - people arewalking around handing out little paper heart - heart cookies, papers,valentines, chocolate hearts, even walking hearts with legs - (very tacky).
The best was in Statistics...The quiz question concerned a table thatdisplayed the data from a survey of boys and girls, asking how many thoughkissing on the first date was OK. The question was something like. "Giventhe above distribution, conditional for boys, what percent thought kissingon a first date was OK?" - it was something like 57%
I guess the upside is that the library will be a tad quieter because everybody will be out on their dates :)

I replied:

WOW you just made my day. I am currently happily mired in reading all about gender in rural Kenya and juxtaposing the BYU picture you just painted with the picture of a girl who does 11 hours of household chores a day and scored high enough on her primary test to enter the country's most prestigious senior high school, but might not be able to becuase her father would rather marry her off for the dowry (which would allow him to build the family a new house) made me laugh for about FIVE minutes. I am thinking about the absurdity of existence and there is a certain hilarity in the intense variety of the human experience...kissing on your first date vs. birthing 8 children with a man you've just barely met out of necessity for running the family farm...
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T - 10 seconds

A few thoughts (mostly explained by Prof. Alverson) i somewhat regurgitated 1.5 hours ago for my anthro exam (hopefully in more words than this):

For precolonial Africans, time = communal space.
It was marked by lived experiences/events in the community: naming, initiation into adulthood, marriage; planting, harvesting, trading. One was never "bored" and one never had "too much too do" or "not enough time." One did not have the experience of "wanting" more than one could have because there was enough for all and in times of hardship all was shared.
In capitalism and market economies, time = private property. It is something that we must fill with productivity, (or if we have the luxury, laziness) because time is money. We are forever seeking to balance work with play (relationships, entertainment, philosophical exploration, learning) in order to live "good lives" and feel fulfilled. Most of us spend much of lives confused about how to do this and "empty," "bored," with "too much to do" and "too little time in which to do it," and we face a constant battle to be content with what we have and what we "have to do."

Gonna lay down my sword and shield

Ability to Wage 'Long War' Is Key to Pentagon Plan
By Ann Scott Tyson The Washington Post
Saturday 04 February 2006
Conventional tactics de-emphasized.

The Pentagon, readying for what it calls a "long war," yesterday laid out a new 20-year defense strategy that envisions US troops deployed, often clandestinely, in dozens of countries at once to fight terrorism and other nontraditional threats.
Major initiatives include a 15 percent boost in the number of elite US troops known as Special Operations Forces, a near-doubling of the capacity of unmanned aerial drones to gather intelligence, a $1.5 billion investment to counter a biological attack, and the creation of special teams to find, track and defuse nuclear bombs and other catastrophic weapons.
China is singled out as having "the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States," and the strategy in response calls for accelerating the fielding of a new Air Force long-range strike force, as well as for building undersea warfare capabilities.
The latest top-level reassessment of strategy, or Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), is the first to fully take stock of the starkly expanded missions of the US military - both in fighting wars abroad and defending the homeland - since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The review, the third since Congress required the exercise in the 1990s, has been widely anticipated because Donald H. Rumsfeld is the first defense secretary to conduct one with the benefit of four years' experience in office. Rumsfeld issued the previous QDR in a hastily redrafted form days after the 2001 strikes.
The new strategy, summarized in a 92-page report, is a road map for allocating defense resources. It draws heavily on the lessons learned by the US military since 2001 in Iraq, Afghanistan and counterterrorism operations. The strategy significantly refines the formula - known as the "force planning construct" - for the types of major contingencies the US military must be ready to handle.
(for full article clink on my post title or copy and paste:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020406Z.shtml)
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...down by the riverside
down by the riverside
down by riverside
gonna lay down my sword and shield
down by the riverside
aint gonna study war no more

If this is "compassion abroad," welcome back to the Cold War.
Our press is "free" and our country has amnesia. I wonder what kind of peace, security and democracy our freedom crusades will bring this time?