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?

"Napalm is Very Powerful"

OK, I admit it. I'm a softie. More often than most would suspect, something makes me teary-eyed. A story I heard Monday on NPR's All Things Considered was one of those times. It was an essay by "the girl in the photo." The photo in questions is one of the most iconic of the Vietnam war and was taken after "our" side dropped napalm on a village in an attempt to flush out the bad guys. I remember the picture well, as I was a teenager in those days (but too young to have been drafted). Regardless of your age, you've probably seen the photo at one time or another.

Here's what Kim Phuc had to say about her experience:

On June 8, 1972, I ran out from Cao Dai temple in my village, Trang Bang, South Vietnam; I saw an airplane getting lower and then four bombs falling down. I saw fire everywhere around me. Then I saw the fire over my body, especially on my left arm. My clothes had been burned off by fire.

I was 9 years old but I still remember my thoughts at that moment: ...

You can listen to the rest of her essay (about 5 minutes) or read it here, but listening's better.

Everything You Believe is Wrong: Biofuels Are Worse Than Gasoline (Global Warming, Part 8)

Is this the end of our love affair with ethanol?

Science Magazine has published a study headed by a Princeton professor which got some press yesterday. Rather than reprocess the story, I'll simply give you the abstract from their web site:

Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land Use Change

Most prior studies have found that substituting biofuels for gasoline will reduce greenhouse gases because biofuels sequester carbon through the growth of the feedstock. These analyses have failed to count the carbon emissions that occur as farmers worldwide respond to higher prices and convert forest and grassland to new cropland to replace the grain (or cropland) diverted to biofuels. Using a worldwide agricultural model to estimate emissions from land use change, we found that corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years. Biofuels from switchgrass, if grown on U.S. corn lands, increase emissions by 50%. This result raises concerns about large biofuel mandates and highlights the value of using waste products.

If you'd like more detail, Scientific American has provided a longer treatment of the article. You can read it here.

NPR's All Things Considered picked up on the story yesterday. The print summary is here, or if you'd like to listen to the audio, it's here.
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All of this only goes to prove that in public policy, the "obvious" answers are rarely as slam-dunk as their advocates present them. Beware of unintended consequences.

Who Cares?

Every day on NPR, and every day in the newspaper, I encounter a story on the two-month-old strike of America's movie and TV script writers. To which I respond: Who Cares?

The media are enthralled by the story, but I have yet to hear even one person at work, home, or church comment on the strike. Not a single person. Who Cares?

"There will be fewer new series on TV for the balance of this year." Who Cares? (I don't watch TV, anyway.)

"There may be fewer new movies at the cineplex." Who Cares? (I haven't found time for half the already-extant movies I'd like to see, and my favorites usually aren't from the U.S., anyway.)

If the writers never came off strike, my life wouldn't change. Would yours?

If the writers never came off strike, we could still read books. There's no book strike, and even if there were, I've got a 10-year backlog on my shelves at home . . . and another 1,000 years' worth at the library.

If the writers never came off strike, we could listen to music or go to concerts.

If the writers never came off strike, maybe more people would read my blog. Now there's something I could care about!

But what if things got really, really desperate? Perhaps we could relearn the art of conversation.

Bible, Bach, and . . . Well, I Guess That's All You Need

Did you hear the story on NPR's "All Things Considered" last night? It was a feature on the annual Bach festival in Bethlehem, PA. It's worth a listen to this 8-minute piece, which you can do here, or you can access it at this link, which provides additional info and sound samples.

I got tears in my eyes toward the end of the story. But then, I'm a sensitive guy, as all my friends know. Anyone who can listen to this and think that Bach is boring, stuffy, or irrelevant is either a cretin or dead. No, I take it back. Only cretins think that - the dead know how great Bach is, because he provides the music in Heaven (with Robert Shaw as assistant conductor, but that's another story).

OK, I exaggerate (slightly). Nevertheless, I hope you'll take the time to listen to the story. Maybe it'll increase your desire to hear more Bach. Take especial note of the lady who says of Bach's music, "It's there to help us when we have times in our life when we need comfort, or when you just want to burst for joy. It's all there for me, it really is." Maybe that's idolatry, but there are worse ways to sin.