Changing a City's Culture from Violence to Peace

Whether it is listening to the testimonies of people who have come to faith before a baptism service or reading the biographies of people, it is thrilling to hear the stories of changed lives leading to changed families, work spaces and culture. Here's another one of those kind of stories. the source is Kairos Journal.

Misery to Hope; Through the Church!—Rodney Stark (1934 – )

Leading sociologist of religion and professor at both the University of Washington and Baylor University, Rodney Stark, has written a number of important books on Christianity and culture. In The Rise of Christianity (1997), Stark describes how, in the first few centuries A.D., Christianity grew from being an obscure Jewish sect, to becoming the dominant ideology in the West. One major reason was the impact of the church’s life. Amid the chaos of cities like Antioch, in what is now Turkey, the Church was a glorious force for urban renewal. Acts 11:26 reports that it was at Antioch that believers were first called Christians, which literally means “little Christs.” Stark’s research shows that long after that first designation the Christians continued to live up to their name by letting their good works speak for themselves.

[Antioch was] a city filled with misery, danger, fear, despair, and hatred. A city where the average family lived a squalid life in filthy and cramped quarters, where at least half of the children died at birth or during infancy, and where most of the children who lived lost at least one parent before reaching maturity. A city filled with hatred and fear rooted in intense ethnic antagonisms and exacerbated by a constant stream of strangers. A city so lacking in stable networks of attachments that petty incidents could prompt mob violence. A city where crime flourished and the streets were dangerous at night. And, perhaps above all, a city repeatedly smashed by cataclysmic catastrophes: where a resident could literally expect to be homeless from time to time, providing that he or she was among the survivors . . .

Christianity revitalized life in Greco-Roman cities by providing new norms and new kinds of social relationship able to cope with many urgent urban problems. To cities filled with the homeless and the impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachments. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by violent ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity. And to cities faced with epidemics, fires, and earthquakes, Christianity offered effective nursing services.1

^{1. Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries, (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1997), 160-161.}

Financial Reform: Let's Hope So, but Keep Praying

Finding voices you can trust in our culture is not always easy. Chuck Colson is one who I have learned to trust will tell me the truth, even sometimes when the truth is hard. I may not always agree with him. But he always tries to point to the way of wisdom and then I have to decide how I will handle reality. Thanks Chuck for another fine piece on the needs of our culture. 

BREAKPOINT DAILY TRANSCRIPT (Chuck Colson)
Special Interests or the Common Good? The Finance Reform Bill
May 3, 2010

On Friday’s BreakPoint, I said passing a “sensible, effective finance reform bill” is a “moral and economic imperative.” The lack of moral restraints, which has turned financial markets into a kind of casino, has made regulation necessary and politically inevitable.

But the question is: What kind of regulation?

The Senate hearing involving Goldman Sachs didn’t inspire much confidence. There were the pontificating senators, who were among those who, stuffing campaign contributions in their pockets from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in turn pumped all the money into those agencies which created the crisis Wall Street exploited.

Watching the hearing, I wanted to scream, “A plague on both your houses!” And when the various sweetheart deals in the finance reform bill came to light, I became disgusted. Between Democratic Senator Nelson’s attempt to aid billionaire Warren Buffet and Republican Senator Corker’s bid to protect payday lenders, I concluded that it was “business as usual” on Capitol Hill.

But then something started to change. There has been some tentative progress toward a decent bill. Whether out of embarrassment or wisdom, the Senate scrapped the Warren Buffet deal. The permanent $50 billion bailout for banks and underwater businesses—an absolutely awful idea that will simply provide a tax-funded safety net for irresponsible behavior—may be on the ropes as well.

It looks like, just maybe, what’s good for the country is starting to drive the debate. If so, the disgust that most Americans feel at the actions of our elites may have finally had an effect.

So, what’s next? As I record this, nobody knows what the final bill will look like—it’s over a thousand pages to read. But as Phillip Swagel wrote in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, there will be a lot of amendments to the bill over the next few days. Getting rid of that bailout fund is the place to start.

One thing we know for sure: Just like the health care bill, the finance reform bill will be monstrously long and filled with all kinds of pitfalls that nobody can anticipate. That’s good news for the lobbyists, not for the public.

Americans are angry over the malfeasance of our political and financial elites. In the short run, this anger can motivate our leaders to do the right thing. But if they don’t, the present dissatisfaction will continue to boil and turn into cynicism, which would only strengthen the hand of special interests and elites.

I talked on BreakPoint recently about Augustine’s City of God. It got me reflecting on the Christian roots of our political order -- from representative democracy to the balance of powers, to the respect for human dignity and the rule of law.

We Christians must hold our leaders to these high standards. As Augustine wrote, we must seek the welfare of the city -- or, in this case, country -- where God has placed us. We need to pray that both houses of Congress will do the right thing by the country.

And when the debate is over, I’d like to say we saw Congress embrace reform that reflects the best of our democratic and biblical heritage -- creating a financial environment where the poor are not exploited but may “glean” from the fields, as the Scripture says; where merchants use honest scales; and where justice prevails, yes, “rolls down like living waters.”

All for the sake of the common good and what the Hebrews called shalom -- the necessary condition for human flourishing.

We Christians know one thing. Our job is clear. As good citizens, we are supposed to insist upon righteousness in the halls of power.

Copyright (c) 2010 BreakPoint

Jesus, You Saved Us From Sin, Please Save Us from Our Government

I Have grown to really like Michelle Malkin for her "take no-prisoners" writing style and perspective. This article is yet another reason and example. What concientious, hard-working census workers are telling about how the monies devoted to the Census are being used, mismanaged and how workers are being deliberately trained to not work hard and waste the taxpayers dollars is another portrait of why we can't trust government with healthcare or nearly anything else.

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

True Confessions from America's Census Workers

by Michelle Malkin

Obama's politicized, profligate U.S. census drive is so desperate for positive press that it has now recruited former Bush senior adviser Karl Rove to do public service announcements. Rove pleads on video: "Please answer the 10 easy questions. They're almost the same ones Madison helped write for the first census back in 1790." Message: If you don't join the census bandwagon, James Madison will have lost!

Sorry, Mr. Rove. Playing the Founding Fathers card isn't going to quell conservative criticism of how the Obama administration has exploited the census boondoggle for both economic and ideological gain.

For the record, I have no beef with the constitutional mandate. I complied by filling out my census form and sending it back -- with "American" in the blank for race/ethnicity to register my opposition to government racial classifications. Despite apocalyptic suggestions by census officials and some Republican politicians that conservatives are recklessly boycotting the decennial head count, analysis by both the right-leaning Daily Caller and left-leaning Plum Line websites shows that return rates from conservative counties are in line with national averages.

So, what makes the Obama census campaign different from other census programs? First, its naked, left-wing special interest pandering. The White House is championing a "Queer the Census" movement by pro-gay marriage groups, for example, and the Commerce Department is working with open-borders leaders who want to use the census as leverage to stop all immigration raids.

The electoral stakes are high. Some $400 billion in federal funding and, most importantly, the apportionment of congressional seats are up for grabs. Instead of straightforward enumeration of the American population, Obama and the left's identity politics-mongers are turning the $1 billion, taxpayer-subsidized census public relations drive into a government preferences lobbying bonanza.

More galling: the White House manipulation of census worker employment to goose the jobless rate. Last week, the government touted employment figures bolstered by the hiring of temporary workers for Census 2010. The Census Bureau anticipates it may add nearly 750,000 workers to its payroll by May. Liberal economist Heidi Shierholz exulted in The Hill: "This is the best-timed census you could ever dream of." And Team Obama plans to milk it for all it's worth.

Over the past several weeks, I've received e-mails from census workers across the country describing the directive from their managers to slow down, stall, waste time and stretch out their work unnecessarily. As a counter-public service announcement, I'm reprinting some of their letters:

-- "…I have been working with the census for two weeks, and every day I shake my head at the blatant inefficiency and deliberate misuse of taxpayer money. Specifically, we have been doing enumeration for those who do not have a home, the homeless in shelters, soup kitchens and in targeted non-sheltered outdoor locations, such as parks, subway stations, etc. I personally have been sent to check on shelters that were already determined to be day programs during the preceding round of quality control, yet they pay me the mileage and hourly wage to go back and make sure that they are still only day programs. I walked through parks and parking lots looking for homeless people to enumerate, not even by talking to them, but just by observing their race, sex and approximate age. …

"…The way the process has been set up by government bureaucracy is so backward and prevents a person who is industrious and efficient from being able to work freely… This is the first job where I am encouraged to be slow and inefficient."

-- "Last summer I participated in the 'address canvassing' (AC) project. What this entailed was walking around a neighborhood, literally door to door, with a little handheld computer. My job was not to enter addresses so that these people could receive their form, but to make sure that the addresses that the first wave of people put into the system and appeared on the computer were actually there… Mostly, it was me getting paid $15.25/hour plus mileage to take my dog for a walk and push a few buttons.

"In an average suburban neighborhood where the houses are somewhat close to each other, it was no problem to do about 35 to 40 addresses per hour once you learned how to quickly enter data into the computer. The census said that I should be doing about 12 to 15 per hour. My direct bosses told me that I should NOT be doing 35 to 40, because it was making them and other people look bad. So instead of walking at a snail's pace, I just did my 35 to 40/hour and doubled my time when I submitted my hours. Again, sorry for the tax dollar grab, but I was told not to be so darned efficient or else I'd be cut!"

-- "I had the great pleasure of working for the address canvassing last spring. I was hired in early April for a job that was to be completed by the first week of July. I have a military background and a background in human resources, and the whole process left me with blood squirting from my eyes… I worked in the field for four days so that I would know what to do. The remainder of my time was spent sitting in a McDonald's to have a daily progress meeting with each of the enumerators. I was paid from the time I left my house to the time I got home … plus mileage. I was told to pad the time or mileage to cover my McDonald's food, since I was camping in a booth all day. For all that, I was paid $11.75 an hour. …We had a really good crew and were done by the second week of May... Philadelphia was going nuts because our region was getting done so fast, but there was nothing we could do to slow it down another two months.

"… I never saw such a mismanaged outfit in all my life. I just shook my head in total disbelief. Our work could have been done with half the people. We did have those that quit right after training, to the tune of $800 spent on nothing. I earned approximately $3,000. I will say, to be quite honest, it was the easiest money I ever made. On the exit interview, I was asked if I wanted to be called back for further work. I wrote 'NO' in big letters. I didn't want to take any further part in what I saw to be a racket."

What would Madison think now?

About The Author

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Michelle Malkin makes news and waves with a unique combination of investigative journalism and incisive commentary. She is the author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild .

Social Justice and the Gospel

Justice and mercy always need to travel together. When they don't our gospel has a hole in it. This curriculum will help churches explore how to marry the two and make their evangelism more effective and give God greater glory.

BreakPOINT
Seek Social Justice: Foretastes of Heaven
By Mark Earley
March 5, 2010

Want a foretaste of heaven? Love your neighbor and seek justice. Find out what it’s all about.

When you hear the term “social justice,” what comes to mind? Perhaps for you these words are intertwined with the social gospel movement that emphasized good deeds without the power of the Gospel. Well, if that’s the case, it’s time to revisit social justice, and I’m thrilled to tell you about a new resource, which is going to be a tremendous help for you and your church.

The Heritage Foundation and the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society have worked to create a six-part video small-group study called Seek Social Justice. The study features an all-star cast: Marvin Olasky of World Magazine, Al Mohler of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Sean Litton of the International Justice Mission, and our own Chuck Colson, to name only a few. Still better, the videos and the curriculum are available completely free online.

In this series, you’ll hear that social justice is no small concept. It’s about “shalom”—man at peace with God, his fellow human beings, and creation. Or as Marvin Olasky puts it: “It’s about human flourishing. The sum total of millions of acts of relational justice.”

The curriculum emphasizes that poverty isn’t simply limited to physical poverty, but also encompasses spiritual poverty. Broken relationships, both with God and with family, are often at the heart of the matter. But how can broken relationships be restored? And better yet, how can we prevent brokenness in the first place?

The second lesson in this six-part series shows an inspiring example of how one Christian couple reaching out to another struggling family transformed everyone involved. It also underscores the surprising role that a healthy marriage and personal friendship can play in seeking social justice.

In the third lesson, we see how the local church can be involved in the work of social justice. It offers a dynamic example of how one Baptist church in Leesburg, Florida, is transforming their community through the holistic evangelistic outreach of their social justice ministry.

In lesson four, the curriculum explores something we know all too well here at Prison Fellowship: how important a job is to providing dignity and a future for the least of these. For prisoners, it can be the difference between a successful transition to the outside and the revolving door. And in this part of the curriculum, we see that a key dimension of human well-being is the freedom and ability to work, to earn, and to give.

Finally, a lot of confusion about social justice stems from misunderstanding roles and responsibilities. Who is responsible for bringing social justice? The government? The church? The individual? Lesson five shows that government plays an important role in a just society, but it doesn’t bear the only—or even primary—responsibility for justice.

Through the story of a victim of human trafficking, you’ll be able to see what government does well and what it should leave to the other spheres of society.

I want to encourage you to visit us at BreakPoint.org to find out how you can use this wonderful curriculum. As one commentator in the video says, social justice is “the activity of Christians who are yanking foretastes of the kingdom of heaven into reality.”

That’s something we should all want to be a part of.

Copyright (c) 2009 Prison Fellowship

Incarnating the Gospel This Christmas

The following is from Chuck Colson and breakpoint. I want to encourage all who read this to do what Chuck suggests. It will cost you very little but it could make all the difference in the world to a family who needs the overflow of your bounty this Christmas season.
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BREAKPOINT DAILY TRANSCRIPT
God With Us : Us With Them?
November 24, 2009

I can’t sing the words of that familiar Advent song “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” without remembering a young boy -- a child of a prisoner. Every year, Patty and I deliver Angel Tree Christmas gifts to the children of prisoners.

And I’ll never forget one year in particular, when Patty and I drove into a housing project to deliver our gifts. We saw broken windows and grim-faced gang members lounging in doorways. After parking our car, we found our way to an apartment and knocked on the door. A boy, about 9 years old, cautiously opened the door.

“Merry Christmas,” I said, holding out the presents. “These are from your Daddy.” Immediately, the door swung wide open to let us in. The boy’s mother was on her way home from work, and as we waited for her, we saw that the apartment inside was a wreck.

The furniture was torn, the stuffing falling out. A scraggly Christmas tree leaned up against the wall, bare of any presents. When I asked the boy his name, he replied, “Emmanuel.” “Emmanuel,” I said, “Do you know what your name means?”

I opened my Bible and read from Matthew: “And they shall call him Emmanuel -- which means ‘God with us.’” Just then, his mother came to the door. Emmanuel threw his arms around her thighs, crying, “Mama, Mama, God is with us!”

In Emmanuel’s clear voice, I heard the message of Christmas afresh: that God is indeed with us always -- and in a special way at Christmas, when He entered history through Jesus Christ. I was particularly reminded that He came for the prisoner who turned His back on Him. He came for the mother who can’t make ends meet.

And He came for the child who cries himself to sleep at night because he’s never known His daddy. God is with us. And He has given us the rare chance to be with those who desperately need Him.

Each year, Angel Tree brings this message of hope to hundreds of thousands of children of inmates. Church volunteers deliver Christmas gifts—and the Gospel message -- in the name of the incarcerated parent. Think what this means -- not only to the children, but to the moms and dads in prison as well. But this year we are facing an unprecedented crisis.

Although churches have committed to delivering gifts to some 300,000 children, due to the slow economy and some other factors, there are 50,000 children as of today who remain unclaimed. They have no sponsors. And so I’m doing something I’ve never done before.

Please go to our website, AngelTree.org (http://www.angeltree.org/sharethegift), as soon as you’ve heard this broadcast, and sponsor one child for a donation of $35.20 -- enough to send a gift, Gospel materials, and a message from mom or dad to that child. Or maybe you could take two or three, or more, as God leads you.

And you could ask your church to help as well. Maybe they can adopt a group of children in an area. The thing is, we must not fail. No child should be forgotten this Christmas. God showed us that first Christmas that He is with those who have no hope. And we have the rare privilege of taking that message to these children.

Sign up, please, at AngelTree.org (http://www.angeltree.org/sharethegift) today. Please, we need your help desperately.

Copyright (c) 2009 Prison Fellowship

Lockerbee Lessons

Unintended consequences when we haven't thought things through from a biblical worldview cause so many problems in the world. Here's another example.

BREAKPOINT DAILY TRANSCRIPT
Lockerbie Lessons
True Versus Misplaced Compassion

August 27, 2009

Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship president Mark Earley.

Last week a Scottish judge released Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only man ever convicted of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Because al-Megrahi is dying of cancer, the judge, on grounds of compassion, sent him back to Libya so he could spend the remainder of his life with family.

Naturally, news of al-Megrahi’s release -- and his triumphant return to Libya -- stunned and angered many here in America and across the world. Kathleen Flynn, whose son was killed in the 1988 bombing, asked, “Did Megrahi, as he planted a bomb on a US airliner, reflect on compassion for the people he was about to blow up? I think not.”

Although I am an advocate of compassionate early release for prisoners under the right conditions, I was horrified at the decision to release the Lockerbie bomber. First, there’s the heinous nature of his crime -- and the fact that al-Megrahi served a mere 11 days in prison for each of the 270 people killed. Then there’s his lack of remorse, or even admission of guilt. And finally, there’s the pain that this decision is causing the victims’ families.

But I’m also concerned that this notorious case will make it more difficult for compassionate release to be used in situations which truly merit it.

In 2007, the U.S. Sentencing Commission issued guidelines for compassionate release. Among the “extraordinary and compelling reasons” were if the prisoner were suffering from a terminal illness, if deteriorating health made self-care impossible, or if death of a family member left the defendant’s minor children without care.

Ideally, this kind of compassionate release would involve the input of victims, and would be coupled with the remorse of the offender. The release of the prisoner should also not injure justice or cause a threat to the community.

This kind of compassionate release is desperately needed in this country, where the population of geriatric prisoners is growing rapidly, and where the costs of caring for aging and terminally ill prisoners are passed on to taxpayers. Sadly, very few federal prisoners are released early -- each year only about a dozen of the 200,000 federal prisoners have their sentences commuted for health reasons.

These are prisoners like Michael Paul Mahoney, who in the last stages of terminal lymphoma, lay in prison bedridden and incoherent. He was first convicted in 1980 for selling methamphetamines, and after his release, went clean. He bought a pool hall in Jackson, Tennessee. Every night he would deposit the day’s earnings at a bank, carrying a small gun for protection. But when he reported his gun stolen, he was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm and received a mandatory 15 years.

Although his family and the judge who sentenced him petitioned for the dying man’s release, he died in prison -- needlessly, and at great public expense.

So there are indeed cases where compassion, justice, and public welfare are best served by releasing dying prisoners early. The al-Megrahi case was not one of those. And we should all hope that the early release of an unrepentant mass murderer won’t make impossible the compassionate release of the Michael Paul Mahoneys of this world.

Copyright (c) 2009 Prison Fellowship

Hunger Corps and Hands of Love America

Pastor Yugo Kobari is on the left. He is Japanese pastor of an American church and the executive director of Hands of Love America (HOLA). Hands of Love links American churches with leaders of third world churches in order to bring about total transformation of communities for the Kingdom of Christ. In the center is a M.D. from the Japan who is doing a remarkable work of bringing medical care to crisis and relief situations throughout Asia and Africa. Next to him on the right is a professor from Seoul Korea. he has come up with a barcode system that will allow supermarkets to incentivize the purchase of food closer to its expiration date by offering the consumer discounts of from 10-40%.


His system was developed after he learned two facts. Four percent of grocery market food worldwide (think western industrialized nations) is wasted because of expiration dates. One percent would feed the hungry of the world if it could be saved.

I took this picture of four Hunger Corps workers in a small Methodist church serving the barangay in Manila---three Philippino women and one Canadian. 16 of the 20 Hunger Corps workers in the the Philippines are women and they are brave, sacrificial, compassionate warriors for Christ. Each of these women are being used of God to transform lives for Jesus.

My picture of the Philippino pastor centered in the heart of the ghetto was too blurry to include here but he is a soldier for Jesus. More on their work tomorrow.

A Sobering, Humbling and Challenging Look at Poverty

On the way to Bangkok, I made a stop in Manila to see one of the sites of a Food for the Hungry project.

The picture is of the water underneath the stilted homes of at least 15,000 people in just one of the barangays of Manila. Look at the two white pipes in the upper half of the picture. Notice how they disappear at the water line of the water.

The homes in which people live are about the size of a small American living room and have an average of 6 people living in them. I asked one pastor how many people lived in a one mile radius. "50-60,000." he said. Imagine people living in squalor that no respectable rat would dwell in. Come to think of it, I didn't see one rat.

But these aren't rats, they are men and women, boys and girls, infants and toddlers made in the image and likeness of God. Among them are myriads of people for whom Christ died. Our brothers and sisters in Christ living in desperate need.

Tomorrow I'll share some of the pictures of the children on the barangay and the heroes who are making a difference there.

Social Justice and Personal Responsibility

One of the things I can do in a blog like this is indulge my fancy for history and my belief that the modern church has much to learn from those who have gone before. So often we are enamoured of all things new and we forget that the Spirit of God has been working for centuries in the people of God through the preaching of His word. Perhaps this story will help us to remember that we didn't invent a concern for justice. (The article is from Kairos Journal)

John Bradford’s Restitution
Sitting at the king’s court under the proclamation of God’s Word in autumn 1547, John Bradford felt decidedly uncomfortable. The preacher’s words on integrity and the need for personal and national financial probity stirred up his conscience. He left court that day knowing that change was required, change that would be both public and costly.

Bradford was born c.1510 in Manchester. As a young man he worked as paymaster for Sir John Harrington, the commander of Henry VIII’s army in Boulogne during the 1544 French campaign. In this period, Bradford was implicated in a transaction in which the king was defrauded. It appears that public money, intended for the army, found its way into Harrington’s pocket. No one is clear quite how involved Bradford was. It is possible that he was simply an observer, although given his position he may well have been personally active in the affair. Whichever is the case, Bradford certainly kept quiet about what had happened. The incident appeared to be forgotten, until, in 1547, shortly after the accession of Edward VI, he entered London’s Inner Temple as a student of Law.

At about this time, Bradford was converted and came under the preaching of Hugh Latimer. Latimer was embarked on a series of sermons at court and in London churches; these contained a strong emphasis on social criticism, and particularly on financial abuses that were rife in the nation. Few of Latimer’s
sermons from this time survive, and we cannot be sure which it was that had such a marked impact on Bradford. Nevertheless, one of his friends, a certain Sampson, describes the effect of Latimer’s preaching on the young convert:

Master Latimer . . . did earnestly speak of restitution to be made of things falsely gotten. This did so strike him to the heart [as a result of his part in Harrington’s crime] that he could never be quiet till by the advice of the same Master Latimer a restitution was made.1

Such was Bradford’s zeal to make restitution for his crime that he pleaded with Harrington to repay the money, sacrificed some property he had inherited from his father, and even offered himself as a bondservant so that he could make restitution himself. Under this pressure from Bradford, Harrington was finally forced to make restitution to the king in two payments in the years 1549 and 1550.

Thanks to Latimer’s faithful exposition of God’s Word, Bradford recognized that Christian duty goes far wider than mere personal religious beliefs. True repentance involves concern for public justice and the reversal, wherever possible, of previous wrongs. Taking a stand as salt and light may lead to suffering, as the lives of unbelievers are impacted by God’s demands, but the ripple effect of personal righteousness may also lead to social transformation, as biblical injunctions are worked out in public life.

May God give us many ripples for justice in the world through the God wrought holiness He produces in our hearts.

Footnotes:
1 Cited in J.C. Ryle, Five English Reformers (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1960), 122.