What Would You Do?

NPR's Morning Edition had a sobering story today about the persecution of Christians in Iraq. You can listen to it here, or you can read a CNN article about the same subject here.

It's not just Iraq where Christians are having a hard time, of course. Most incidents never reach the press and we never hear about them.

Nevertheless, the NY Times, that bastion of liberalism, ran a story yesterday about the persecution of Christians in India. (Last November, I blogged about the hard time Dalits have in India; the NYT story isn't about Dalits, though.) As I read the stories, I found myself wondering what I would do if faced with these situations. What would you do? It's easy to show up at church in America and sing about our loyalty to Jesus and how wonderful it is to be a Christian. The worst opposition we face is usually our own sin and self-preoccupied narcissism. But what if we faced what these Indians face? What would we do? Check these excerpted vignettes, or read the entire story here:

The family of Solomon Digal was summoned by neighbors to what serves as a public square in front of the village tea shop.

They were ordered to get on their knees and bow before the portrait of a Hindu preacher. They were told to turn over their Bibles, hymnals and the two brightly colored calendar images of Christ that hung on their wall. Then, Mr. Digal, 45, a Christian since childhood, was forced to watch his Hindu neighbors set the items on fire.

“ ‘Embrace Hinduism, and your house will not be demolished,’ ” Mr. Digal recalled being told on that Wednesday afternoon in September. “ ‘Otherwise, you will be killed, or you will be thrown out of the village.’ ”

...

Here in Kandhamal, the district that has seen the greatest violence, more than 30 people have been killed, 3,000 homes burned and over 130 churches destroyed, including the tin-roofed Baptist prayer hall where the Digals worshiped. Today it is a heap of rubble on an empty field, where cows blithely graze.

Across this ghastly terrain lie the singed remains of mud-and-thatch homes. Christian-owned businesses have been systematically attacked. Orange flags (orange is the sacred color of Hinduism) flutter triumphantly above the rooftops of houses and storefronts.

...

[A] Hindu mob in the village of Nuagaon dragged a Catholic priest and a nun from their residence, tore off much of their clothing and paraded them through the streets.

The nun told the police that she had been raped by four men, a charge the police say was borne out by a medical examination. Yet no one was arrested in the case until five weeks later, after a storm of media coverage.

...

A few steps from where the nun had been attacked in Nuagaon, five men, their heads freshly shorn, emerged from a soggy tent in a relief camp for Christians fleeing their homes.

The men had also been summoned to a village meeting in late August, where hundreds of their neighbors stood with machetes in hand and issued a firm order: Get your heads shaved and bow down before our gods, or leave this place.

Trembling with fear, Daud Nayak, 56, submitted to a shaving, a Hindu sign of sacrifice. He drank, as instructed, a tumbler of diluted cow dung, considered to be purifying.

In the eyes of his neighbors, he reckoned, he became a Hindu.

In his heart, he said, he could not bear it.

All five men said they fled the next day with their families. They refuse to return.

What would you do?

When Christians Look Really Stupid

Here's yesterday's post from FriendlyAtheist.com. I hope Hemant doesn't mind me just reproducing most of his post, but it's good as is. No need for additional commentary.

The religious right group American Family Association’s OneNewsNow site seems to have an automatic filter that replaces the word “gay” with “homosexual.”

Because they want to use the more harsh sounding term, perhaps?

So when runner Tyson Gay won the 100 meter race at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials over the weekend, here’s what the news site wrote:

The article has since been corrected.

However, this article mentioning basketball player Rudy Gay, still needs some fixing…

.

How Not to Share Your Faith

Friendly Atheist asked his readers to submit stories of "Christians who were well-meaning about sharing their faith, but actually ended up pushing you further away from Christianity. . . . Is there someone who intended on helping you find God. . . but did it in a way that just backfired completely? What happened? Why didn’t their 'tactic' work? What were you thinking/feeling?"

Read the post and responses here and learn what not to do. I'd categorize it this way:

• Be a hypocrite.
• Harp on hell.
• Harp on sins.
• Focus on denominational distinctives.
• Use terminology that no one ever uses in normal conversation.
• Pretend to be interested in the other person, but do so only as long as he's interested in talking about Christian stuff.
• Argue or pretend to listen, but don't actually discuss.
• Talk a lot, because time is too short to spend it listening.

Anything you'd add to this list?

.

Bonus Question: How many of these people rejected Jesus because of Jesus? (Isn't HE supposed to be the stumbling block?)

Potato, Potahto, Tomato, Tomahto. Let's Call The Whole Thing Off (?)

Apropos our discussion of marriage, here a story of an evangelical marriage that is lasting, and even doing pretty well, albeit with a twist . . .

What happens when the leader of an anti-Mormon ministry is married to a Mormon? Not what you'd probably think.

Read the article from the St Petersburg (FL) Times here. It's too long to paste in this entry, but it's worth the read.

Although I'd strongly discourage a follower of Christ from marrying someone who isn't (and that's what I believe the Bible teaches, as well), it appears that this was a case of two nonbelievers marrying, then one of them later coming to faith in Christ. The article doesn't state that explicitly, but that's the way it looks to me. In which case, this article portrays a "mixed" marriage that's actually pretty attractive. Check out the husband's comment about what he considers his role in the marriage to be. No wonder they get along.
.
(You might also want to check out the husband's web site: WhatMormonsDontTell.com . You can learn some good things about Mormon beliefs there.)
.
(And the lyrics in the title come from George and Ira Gershwin's song here. If you haven't heard the version recorded by Ella and Louis, your life isn't complete: Disc 2, Track 5.)

How Islam Helps Us Understand Donald Trump (or is it the other way around?)

Saturday morning, I was streaming the BBC while shaving and heard a thought-provoking interview/discussion between John Humphrys and Tarik Ramadan. Humphrys is a reporter and news anchor. A former theist, he's doing interviews with a Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew and inviting them to convert him back to belief in God. Ramadan is a Muslim academic and theologian. We would probably call him a "moderate."

The interview itself (which you can listen to here) was fairly predictable, but it got more interesting when they discussed the question of who goes to Heaven. It's conceivable to Ramadan that the 9/11 hijackers may have gone to Heaven, because no one knows what thoughts might have gone through their minds in the last two minutes before their planes crashed (Ramadan does not, however, seem to endorse their violence). Asked whether he, himself, would go to Heaven, Ramadan answered, "I hope so." He explained that, as a sincere Muslim, you can only do your best and hope for the best. At the end of your life, God will make the determination where you go, based on how you've lived your life. You can hope for mercy.

These statements help me understand Muslim extremism and terrorism. If you can never be sure whether you're saved, you may feel the incessant need to demonstrate your zeal in the service of God. To bring His kingdom to earth by any means necessary. To fight evil relentlessly. Especially if your holy scriptures seem to encourage such behavior.

It reminds me of that piece-of-**** show, The Apprentice. I'll save my rants about the show until later (or never), but the relevant part is this: You work and work and work, and try and try and try, and at the end, you go to the Judgment Chamber and hope for the best while fearing the worst. In Islam, you "compete" against yourself, not against others, and more than one "winner" can ultimately enter Heaven, so the parallel isn't perfect. But the lack of assurance is there, as is not knowing your destiny until the last moment. (For the Muslim, however, there is one sure way into Heaven, and that is dying as a martyr. Isn't that encouraging.)

As for me, I'm thankful for Jesus, who opens the door, shows us the way, and gives us life (John 14.6). For the One who promises not to cast out those who come to Him (John 6.37) and who's committed to preserving His "sheep" through this life and into the next (John 10.28, 29). He is the martyr, not we (John 10.18). And because of all the above, we don't have to wait until the final judgment to know whether we belong to Him (1 John 5.11-15).

Our final point of encouragement? The confident assurance that when we see Jesus, whatever He may look like, he won't be sporting a Donald Trump comb-over.

Male:Female Imbalance

I chuckled this morning while reading the latest entry from Friendly Atheist. Although he and I are polar opposites in many of our beliefs, I enjoy hearing a bit about how the "other side" thinks.

At my church, where I help out with the young adults group, we have an imbalance in the ratio of men to women. For some reason, we do a great job of attracting women, but the men are a little more reluctant to attend, to commit, and to get into discipleship groups. Of course, we have some great guys who do all of the above, but numerically we're out of balance by a ratio of maybe 2:1.

So I was intrigued by Friendly Atheist's comments about his own groups, which are overwhelmingly male. What does it all mean? Is religion for women, and atheism for men? Is there something in our constitution that inclines us that way? Or does it have something to do with the "personality" of these groups and how they operate?

And how do we Christians, who believe that the Gospel of Jesus is for all persons - even males - get more guys to show up and to commit to follow Him? Maybe we should start raiding the atheist conventions?

Here's Friendly Atheist's blog entry, lightly edited (by me) for clarity:

At the AmericanAtheists convention, there were more women (at least ratio-wise) than I’ve seen at just about any other atheist/skeptic event. It was nice to have them there, but this convention, like all others, was short-lived.

It raisesthe question of why there are relatively few women in the secular movement. Why is it when I go to any atheist gathering (a convention, a local group, or a campus group), there are an overwhelming number of men?

It’s a strange question to ask, considering the presidents of American Atheists (Ellen Johnson), Atheist Alliance International (Margaret Downey), and the Freedom From Religion Foundation (co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor) are all women.

What’s more, even the previous presidents for each organization (Madalyn Murray O’Hair, Bobbie Kirkhart, and Anne Nicol Gaylor, respectively) were women. O’Hair and Gaylor were also their groups’ founders.

(How many major Christian organizations can say all that?)

Plus, we have the always-awesome Skepchicks.

So where are the other secular women?

Here are some possible theories that were brainstormed at a bar with a group of guys over the weekend:

• The men scare them off


• Girls don’t enjoy philosophical discussions


• There are too many gay men at atheist events… why should women bother coming?

That’s a short list that needs to be expanded.

I’d argue for the first one. Imagine an Atheist Meetup event (or any situation, really) with 9834823 men and one woman. She will be hit on by damn near everyone. It’s frightening. And it changes the whole dynamic of how the guys act. If there was a more even split between the sexes, this wouldn’t be so bad, but we’re nowhere close to that. And if the girl is cute, we’re all in trouble.

What are the solutions to this problem? Besides trying to tell men to stop being so damn creepy, I’m not sure…

One suggestion that was mentioned was that we should ban women from attending the conferences altogether. They’ll get mad, organized, and show up to the events to boycott. And that way, we’ll have some more women at the conferences.

There must be a better way, though.

Between Friday and Sunday

Tombs and Wombs

While at the concert last week of Bach’s St. John Passion, I had a new thought – new for me, that is. The text from the book of John says that Jesus was laid in “a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid” (John 19.41). For some reason, it struck me that this is a parallel with his birth. He was born from a virgin womb, and He was buried in (and rose from) a virgin tomb. If there’s any theological significance to this, I haven’t yet figured out what it is. But it is a nice symmetry.


News You May Have Missed: Ahmadinejad, The Press, and Easter

When the 15 British sailors were released from Iran a couple days ago, the press uniformly reported that President Ahmadinejad said he was releasing his prisoners as an Easter gift. For example, the New York Times ran this AP version: "Irans's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said he had pardoned the sailors as an Easter holiday gift to the British people.”

That caught my eye, because I wouldn’t expect the president of Iran to care much about a Christian holiday.

What did he really say? MSNBC ran a longer version of his remarks, and they’re informative:

“Ahmadinejad said he had pardoned the sailors as a gift to the British people and to mark the birthday of Islam's Prophet Muhammed and Easter. On the occasion of the birthday of the great prophet (Muhammad) ... and for the occasion of the passing of Christ, I say the Islamic Republic government and the Iranian people -- with all powers and legal right to put the soldiers on trial -- forgave those 15."

“The occasion of the passing of Christ.” Would somebody please tell the press that the death of Jesus isn’t the definition of Easter?

(More about this story at GetReligion.org.)

Who Said It?

"Evangelical Christians are the most incompetently portrayed group in America, in TV, in fiction, in the news. When Christians say that the media gets them wrong, Christians are absolutely right. Christian life in this country is really horribly documented, and way more interesting than is done. Generally, in the media, very religious Christians are portrayed as hardheaded doctrinaire knuckleheads. But in fact, from my experience, the most religious Christians I know tend to be incredibly thoughtful, complicated, generous to a fault, very principled and not knuckleheads. Actually, they’re sort of weirdly the opposite of the stereotype, and that includes people from the hardcore fundamentalist faiths."

Who said it?

• a. Jim Dobson


• b. Pat Robertson


• c. Ira Glass (atheistic Jewish host of the radio and TV shows, This American Life)

OK, the test was too easy, but the answer is still surprising. Click here for the whole interview.