Two realities here in South Korea seem unknown or underappreciated in the U.S. First is the fact that the Korean War has not ended. There’s no treaty, and no permanently recognized peace — only an agreement 60 years ago to cease actual hostilities.
If you went to church after Charlottesville, DACA, or the latest racial violence in your community, and were disappointed your pastor didn't speak, then it's time for you to act. Sitting and not liking what’s going on matters as much now as it did to stay in a segregated church back then. It’s time for you to find others in the congregation who are also disappointed. It’s time for you to go to your pastor and other leaders in the church. It’s time to insist he/she begin to speak justice — gospel — from the pulpit. (Pastors, it’s time for you to find those in your congregation who will stand with you as you do the same.)
1. The Juggalo March Is Not a Joke
"What's unique about Juggalos is that they embrace and throw their class status in everyone's face—they’re flaunting their own disenfranchisement. ...They've recognized that the American dream is unattainable and made new dreams for themselves. That scares people. That scares the FBI. This is not what poor people are supposed to do."
It seems that the message people in the pews are hearing is deliberately divorced from Jesus’ values. Being a disciple no longer means sitting at Jesus’ feet, hearing his passionate, God-filled words, and trying to live them.
Rescue workers pray before walking out from the Emergency Operation Centre after the area was hit by Hurricane Maria in Guayama, Puerto Rico September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
As creation cries out to us, let us listen, let us learn,
let us open our hearts to those devastated by the storms
and open our minds to care for creation.
Image via Simon & His Camera/Flickr
whether we listen to the numerologists who count the days until Armageddon or to the storms hurtling toward us and the daily violations of justice, it is healthy to remember that our days are, indeed, counted.
The first element that gets blown up by the parable is the motive of the landowner. Sometimes preachers, trying to fill in the gaps in the story, will surmise something like, “So the landowner, needing more laborers to work the vineyard, went back to the marketplace,” but this distorts the parable.
Image via mother! trailer
mother! is a disturbing portrait of God that says nothing good about God's followers. Immediately after watching the visitors kill her child, mother hears Him say that these people must be forgiven — that they didn’t mean to do it, that they only want to be close to Him. The Christian theory of redemption is supposedly one of forgiveness and sacrifice, predicated on Christ’s death and resurrection, but the death of this child doesn’t read at all triumphant. From the mother's point of view, the visitors were never supposed to be in the house in the first place — if they hadn’t intruded on her life, they wouldn’t need forgiveness for killing her child.
Faith communities can play a powerful role in preventing violence and supporting survivors, but collectively we’re falling short. Two-thirds (65 percent) of pastors say they speak once a year or less about sexual and domestic violence, with 1 in 10 never addressing it at all. This failure has a deep and lasting impact.
Image via Whose Streets / Facebook.
As filmmaking, Whose Streets is dramatic and powerful. As a historical document, it holds even more weight.
Image via Shutterstock.com
"It always requires two people, two separate actions, to launch, steal, sabotage, or tinker with an atomic warhead," Peter Zimmerman, nuclear physicist and State Department consultant wrote for USA Today. "This is the inviolable two-person rule intended to prevent misuse of a nuclear weapon."
Image via Shutterstock.com/arindambanerjee
Please, America! Do not revert back from unbelievable acts of love shown throughout Hurricane Harvey-ravaged Houston, to the hate-filled spirit of violence in Charlottesville.
Image via Shawn/Flickr
The level of polarization is the worst I’ve ever seen in my 30 years as a Jesuit. And I think a lot of it has to do with the pushback, opposition, and downright contempt for my fellow Jesuit, Pope Francis. His emphasis on mercy, on accompaniment, on encounter and, especially, as in (his apostolic exhortation) “Amoris Laetitia,” on discernment, has driven some people into near hysterics.
Jemele Hill TED Talk
When asked about the tweet, Sanders replied, “I think that’s one of the more outrageous comments that anyone could make, and certainly something that I think is a fireable offense by ESPN.” There’s a revealing irony in this statement. I’m sure that Donald Trump and Sarah Huckabee Sanders do not think they are involved in white supremacy. I’m sure that they are not card-carrying members of any white supremacist group. But I’m also sure that they are unconsciously guided by white supremacy.
Image: (L) White supremacists march in Charlottesville. Credit: Heather Wilson / (R) Irene Fitzgerald exits a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter after Hurricane Harvey inundated Houston, Texas. Credit: Nick Oxford/Reuters
The remarkably human and loving response to imperiled neighbors in Houston stands in stark contrast against the hateful racial ugliness that paraded through the streets of Charlottesville earlier in the month as angry white supremacists — KKK, Neo Nazis, “alt-right” members — marched publicly and proudly without sheets shouting anti-black and anti-Semitic assaults, and ultimately led to the death of Heather Heyer. The lighted torches, fear, hate, and violence of Charlottesville was such a shameful juxtaposition to the self-sacrificial love and service across racial lines that the disasters caused by Hurricanes Irma and Harvey evoked from people.
Image via RNS/Reuters/Carlo Allegri/File Photo
“It is preposterous to claim that justice for immigrants isn’t central to Catholic teaching,” wrote Rogers. “It comes directly from Jesus Himself in Matthew 25, ‘For I was hungry and you gave me food … a stranger and you welcomed me.’ Immigrants and refugees are precisely the strangers we must welcome. This isn’t Catholic partisanship. The Bible is clear: welcoming immigrants is indispensable to our faith.”
It’s my prayer that the loudest voice in the room will become the voice of sanity. That the voice is a collective voice that can only come from a gathering of people humbled before God’s love and not from a Facebook post gone viral. This is the greatest hope we have, that we are not alone and we can face each other with dignity and respect. This way of thinking shifts the focus of our faith from internal to external, from institutional to missional. To borrow from Dr. King, none of us know what will happen to us, but we’ve been to the mountaintop and seen what’s around the bend. It is costly grace that will lead us home, into the very heart of God in which we all dwell together. Cheap grace will divide us as the lure of acceptance without repentance turns us inward to only forgive and to sanction what is most familiar while rejecting those whom are cast outside our circle of care.
It is easy to slip from defending the weak to attacking those Paul describes as the "weak person,” those who are attached to rituals and rules that are unnecessary but benign. If I allow myself to be drawn into self-righteousness, I find myself casting judgment for every little disagreement. I want to stop thinking of my opponents as my siblings in Christ. I want to do exactly what Paul cautions against when he says, "let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother" (Romans 14:13.)
Since the beginning of the year
I've had a fear of flying.
So much white anger in the air.
I can't breathe.
Enough of the church voted for a president that made such a decision among others, and those same churches, those same Christians, still uphold those decisions. As people who wish for a better America, we are called to remind one another that we belong to each other, no matter what race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.