I wasn't able to pay close attention to news updates yesterday as I had the previous couple of days. The fires continue, but the weather has begun a more helpful turn, so hopefully that will give the firefighters an edge. Nothing new to report on our immediate family and friends. Everyone is safe and sound, and as far as we know, they're all back home . . . which is more than can be said for a lot of others, in particular, those who have lost their homes.

O.k., time for a rant or two.

RANT ONE:
In the national as well as local (San Diego) news coverage of this event, over and over, I have heard little off-hand comparisons of this situation with the hurricane Katrina disaster. Perhaps its the scale of evacuations, perhaps its the fact that many evacueess are at a major stadium. Whatever the case, with my one lone voice in the blogosphere, all I can say is this: PLEASE STOP. These situations are most definitely not the same. There are a ton of reasons why.

First, the evacuation is different because a huge number of people have had family and friends within the same region to stay with. There was a ton of traffic, but not for hundreds of miles in every direction, like with Katrina. Second, given that San Diego went through this just four years ago, people are extremely well rehearsed for this, and the relief work was done in an impressively organized way . . . which, by the way, is markedly different than the last go round. City/county officials know how to run the show without merely hoping that FEMA can handle everything. Third (this is the one that may open a can of worms), the economic realities of most of the people affected by these two scenarios couldn't be more different. Many of the areas devastated by Katrina were the poorest areas of the city . . . which was already a very poor city, mind you. In San Diego, the damage done by the fires has primarily been done in upper middle class to wealthy areas. I don't say this in any way to take compassion away from the people who have lost homes to fire - it's an intensely difficult thing for them, and I hurt for them. Having lived through a little piece of this myself, I know it's going to be hard, but the difference in economic starting places is different. Trust me, I'm also well aware that some poorer folks have lost their homes - no insensitivity to them intended. My point is not class warfare here, but to say that San Diego wildfires and Hurricane Katrina are just not the same.

For the record, my San Diego and fire disaster credentials are already on record, and I've been to New Orleans twice since Katrina, so I'm not completely ignorant (perhaps unintelligent, but not ignorant).


RANT TWO:
Jason and Brooke, and their housemates in San Diego are part of a really great effort to aid the migrant workers who have been displaced by the fires. Dangit, I love those people. Michelle mentioned to me just a minute ago that 1/3 of California's avocado trees were lost in the fires - think for a minute about the people that work those groves, and pick those delicious guacamole gems. That makes me actually very disturbed at reading this story this morning. Talk about adding insult to injury.


Sorry to be cranky this morning. I just want to think and pray with a clear head about these things, and help others who don't know the situation to do the same.

UPDATE, 10:10am - Now I'm really pissed. Read Jason's latest update on his family's efforts to support the migrant worker volunteers. Speechless.

Labels: culture, family, friends, politics, San Diego, social action

Over the past ten to fifteen years, my denomination has engaged in a discussion of how to read the Bible. This has produced a "victory" for those who favor a view of inerrancy. The Bible is literally God's word, and is completely without error. Meanwhile, those who take even a slightly moderated view of this position are described as liberals and borderline wack-jobs.

Among many issues that these liberals get taken to task on is a sense in which they approach scripture with an agenda in their back pockets, and read those agendas into the texts in order to get them to say whatever they want them to say.

Given the "victory" of the biblical "conservatives" over their left-leaning conversation partners, imagine my surprise at reading a report regarding a poll recently taken by one of the denomination's agencies. An outside polling group was contracted to take a survey of our views regarding the use of alcohol. I won't waste time listing all the questions and responses here, but when asked to respond to the statement, "Scripture indicates that people should never drink," a full 41% of pastors agreed. Come again? 41%. Ummmm, where exactly did they get that?? I must have a bunch of copies of the Lutheran Bible or something, because none of the ones I've read say that.

My point here is that in the middle of our fight to save the Bible, we've gotten so conservative that we've turned liberal. People have approached scripture with an agenda in their back pockets, and chosen to believe that the texts say what they want them to say.

Look, we all do this to some degree. For example, some use "grace" texts in order to go on with selfish, greedy ways without remorse because the sin's already covered. But 41%? Of pastors? I just wonder what kind of uproar there would be if 41% of pastors in my denom were found to have a biblical position opposed to the war in Iraq. Or if 41% believed that scripture teaches that women should be ordained.

So perhaps my denomination is more liberal than I thought. No wonder I was beginning to feel a little more comfortable around here.

Labels: culture, denomination, politics

I don't blog politics much. It's not that I am apathetic, but rather that I'm quite ambivalent and distrustful of political parties and their agendas of power - I think most politicians may start their careers with the best of intentions, but inevitably get sucked into the gamesmanship and insider dealings far too easily. I'm totally not ready to jump into the 2008 presidential election coverage yet - wake me up when two things happen: 1) We're LESS THAN twelve months away from election day. 2) There are less than about four viable candidates from each party to choose from. As things stand now, I'm pretty sure that everyone from Hillary Clinton to George Clooney to Don Imus to my soon-to-retire mailman are in the race.

I remember the days when the Republican party was all about reducing the size of government. Nowadays, of course, our Republican president has developed a juggernaut government.

At the local level here in Seattle, we're facing some silliness at The Purple Door with the city. I won't bore you with details, but we've recently had to respond to a complaint filed by one irrational, disgruntled community member. The complaint refers to a city ordinance that is entirely redundant to other laws and ordinances, has no definable community service purpose, and requires a city office of bureaucrats to monitor and police. Oh, by the way, it's quite possible that the ordinance is straight up unconstitutional. We're talking violation of the freedom of assembly and religious practice here - pretty basic, obvious stuff. One of the city staffers we've talked to about this issue told us that they recently shut down a house church based on this ordinance. Wha? Come again? Yep.

I'm NO FAN at all of the Christian groups that sue government because a school official won't let a kid wear a "God hates liberals" t-shirt to school. So I'm not looking to call them anytime soon. But this case actually sounds like something that those godless, left-wing-extremist, gay-and-lesbian-loving wackos at the ACLU would take on. Not like I've got lots of time or energy to fight this one out in a courtroom. But we're pretty frustrated at this point.

Well, enough whining for one day. Maybe this will all blow over quickly and we'll look back and laugh at all this. Maybe.

Labels: politics, Seattle, the purple door

Charles Marsh, a professor at the University of Virginia wrote a devastating article (actually, an adapted chapter from his new book) in the Boston Globe a couple weeks back. Here are a couple of snippets:

These past six years have been transformative in the religious history of the United States. It is arguably the passing of the evangelical moment -- if not the end of evangelicalism's cultural and political relevance, then certainly the loss of its theological credibility. Conservative evangelical elites, in exchange for political access and power, have ransacked the faith and trivialized its convictions. It is as though these Christians consider themselves to be recipients of a special revelation, as if God has whispered eternal secrets in their ears and summoned them to world-historic leadership in the present and future.

and

If only holiness were measured by the volume of our incessant chatter, we would be universally praised as the most holy nation on earth. But in our fretful, theatrical piety, we have come to mistake noisiness for holiness, and we have presumed to know, with a clarity and certitude that not even the angels dared claim, the divine will for the world. We have organized our needs with the confidence that God is on our side, now and always, whether we feed the poor or corral them into ghettos.

The article makes note of the fact that evangelicals in the U.S. chose conservative national political alliances over global spiritual alliances. Christians from around the world overwhelmingly opposed the war in Iraq . . . Christians in the U.S. overwhelmingly supported it.


Via: Fast Company Expert Blogs

Labels: books, Christendom, culture, politics

Labels: culture, friends, missiology, politics

I'm going to withhold my own commentary (good, bad, and indifferent) on the death of Jerry Falwell. You want to know what others are saying, though? Digg has a story with close to a thousand comments . . . brutal.

Labels: Christendom, culture, politics

I'll just admit it - I'm an addict. I am a faithful fan of public radio's This American Life. I'm a week or two behind schedule on my podcast listening, but this morning, I tapped into their episode "Habeas Shmabeas 2007," which was an updated version of an episode they did a year ago - an episode which won them a Peabody Award. It talks about the detainees in Guantanamo Bay, detailing some of their stories.

Now, I don't care what you think about the war on terrorism, but this stuff is just outrageous. I'm not typically very politically active, and I greatly dislike the rhetoric of the major political parties, but I will say this - after listening to this show, I'm all of a sudden sympathetic to some of the cries for impeachment of the president and vice-president (to be clear, sympathetic doesn't mean endorsement . . . just sympathetic, for now).

I tried really hard to listen to this show with objectivity, taking a devil's advocate position in my mind. But ultimately, I was won over. I'm more than willing to listen the other side of the story, too. I have a hard time believing there are many convincing points in favor of the practices described. Enough of my ranting already - go listen!

Labels: podcasts, politics

BBC News is reporting on a concrete wall being built in Baghdad:

Once the 3.6m (12 ft) wall is finished, people will enter and leave Adhamiya through a small number of checkpoints guarded by US and Iraqi forces.

The US military says the barrier is the centrepiece of its strategy to end sectarian violence in the area but insists there are no plans to divide up the whole city into gated communities.

U.S. taxpayer dollars hard at work to re-create a situation that clearly didn't work well in Berlin? Decide for yourself . . . this just seemed a little on the ironic side to me.

Labels: politics