Nigeria Trip Update

Well…. I’m a little bumbed, but our trip has been bumped back five months or so.
Apparently there are still a number of logistical issues that haven’t been solved.
I guess that happens when you’re trying to move a two ton wrestling ring overseas. So Rob and Tim are planning on going in October to scout locations and see about having a ring built in Nigeria and the rest of us will now plan to go in March of 2007.
I’m really bumbed about this, but I guess this is for the best. It will help us be better prepared and hopefully have any and all issues ironed out will in advance.
I’ll still be collecting donations for the trip and have an additional five months to do so.
Also, as a reminder, all the advertising revenue from this site goes towards the trip, but I don’t get paid for it unless purchases are made. So if you do any shopping online, please try and click through the ads here on the site and a small percentage will go towards our trip.
You can also make donations directly online through the button on the right hand side of the page.
Thanks for your prayers and support.

NYTimes.com links to Iranian letter


The NY Times has posted a link to the letter from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to President George Bush.
It’s an interesting read to say the least.

State Department officials who read the letter suggested that it offered an interesting window into the mentality and thinking of Iran, especially because it seemed to reflect a inclination to dwell on myriad grievances of the past rather than on the problem at hand, namely Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program.
Although American officials said they intended to use the letter to make the point that Iran deserved to be isolated internationally over its alleged intransigence over the nuclear issue, they seemed sobered by the letter’s tone as an indication of the uphill battle to change attitudes in Tehran.
The letter has been described as the first direct communication from an Iranian leader to an American president since 1979.

More on Da Vinci

From the e-mail files (Sojourner):

Brian McLaren on The Da Vinci Code
An interview by Lisa Ann Cockrel
With The Da Vinci Code poised to go from bestseller list to the big screen on May 19, pastor and writer (and Sojourners board member) Brian McLaren talks about why he thinks there’s truth in the controversial book’s fiction.
What do you think the popularity of The Da Vinci Code reveals about pop culture attitudes toward Christianity and the church?
Brian McLaren: I think a lot of people have read the book, not just as a popular page-turner but also as an experience in shared frustration with status-quo, male-dominated, power-oriented, cover-up-prone organized Christian religion. We need to ask ourselves why the vision of Jesus hinted at in Dan Brown’s book is more interesting, attractive, and intriguing to these people than the standard vision of Jesus they hear about in church. Why would so many people be disappointed to find that Brown’s version of Jesus has been largely discredited as fanciful and inaccurate, leaving only the church’s conventional version? Is it possible that, even though Brown’s fictional version misleads in many ways, it at least serves to open up the possibility that the church’s conventional version of Jesus may not do him justice?
So you think The Da Vinci Code taps into dissatisfaction with Jesus as we know him?
McLaren: For all the flaws of Brown’s book, I think what he’s doing is suggesting that the dominant religious institutions have created their own caricature of Jesus. And I think people have a sense that that’s true. It’s my honest feeling that anyone trying to share their faith in America today has to realize that the Religious Right has polluted the air. The name “Jesus” and the word “Christianity” are associated with something judgmental, hostile, hypocritical, angry, negative, defensive, anti-homosexual, etc. Many of our churches, even though they feel they represent the truth, actually are upholding something that’s distorted and false.
I also think that the whole issue of male domination is huge and that Brown’s suggestion that the real Jesus was not as misogynist or anti-woman as the Christian religion often has been is very attractive. Brown’s book is about exposing hypocrisy and cover-up in organized religion, and it is exposing organized religion’s grasping for power. Again, there’s something in that that people resonate with in the age of pedophilia scandals, televangelists, and religious political alliances. As a follower of Jesus I resonate with their concerns as well.
Do you think the book contains any significantly detrimental distortions of the Christian faith?
McLaren: The book is fiction and it’s filled with a lot of fiction about a lot of things that a lot of people have already debunked. But frankly, I don’t think it has more harmful ideas in it than the Left Behind novels. And in a certain way, what the Left Behind novels do, the way they twist scripture toward a certain theological and political end, I think Brown is twisting scripture, just to other political ends. But at the end of the day, the difference is I don’t think Brown really cares that much about theology. He just wanted to write a page-turner and he was very successful at that.
Many Christians are also reading this book and it’s rocking their preconceived notions – or lack of preconceived notions – about Christ’s life and the early years of the church. So many people don’t know how we got the canon, for example. Should this book be a clarion call to the church to say, “Hey, we need to have a body of believers who are much more literate in church history.” Is that something the church needs to be thinking about more strategically?
McLaren: Yes! You’re exactly right. One of the problems is that the average Christian in the average church who listens to the average Christian broadcasting has such an oversimplified understanding of both the Bible and of church history – it would be deeply disturbing for them to really learn about church history. I think the disturbing would do them good. But a lot of times education is disturbing for people. And so if The Da Vinci Code causes people to ask questions and Christians have to dig deeper, that’s a great thing, a great opportunity for growth. And it does show a weakness in the church giving either no understanding of church history or a very stilted, one-sided, sugarcoated version.
On the other hand, it’s important for me to say I don’t think anyone can learn good church history from Brown. There’s been a lot of debunking of what he calls facts. But again, the guy’s writing fiction so nobody should be surprised about that. The sad thing is there’s an awful lot of us who claim to be telling objective truth and we actually have our own propaganda and our own versions of history as well.
Let me mention one other thing about Brown’s book that I think is appealing to people. The church goes through a pendulum swing at times from overemphasizing the deity of Christ to overemphasizing the humanity of Christ. So a book like Brown’s that overemphasizes the humanity of Christ can be a mirror to us saying that we might be underemphasizing the humanity of Christ.
In light of The Da Vinci Code movie that is soon to be released, how do you hope churches will engage this story?
McLaren: I would like to see churches teach their people how to have intelligent dialogue that doesn’t degenerate into argument. We have to teach people that the Holy Spirit works in the middle of conversation. We see it time and time again – Jesus enters into dialogue with people; Paul and Peter and the apostles enter into dialogue with people. We tend to think that the Holy Spirit can only work in the middle of a monologue where we are doing the speaking.
So if our churches can encourage people to, if you see someone reading the book or you know someone who’s gone to the movie, say, “What do you think about Jesus and what do you think about this or that,” and to ask questions instead of getting into arguments, that would be wonderful. The more we can keep conversations open and going the more chances we give the Holy Spirit to work. But too often people want to get into an argument right away. And, you know, Jesus has handled 2,000 years of questions, skepticism, and attacks, and he’s gonna come through just fine. So we don’t have to be worried.
Ultimately, The Da Vinci Code is telling us important things about the image of Jesus that is being portrayed by the dominant Christian voices. [Readers] don’t find that satisfactory, genuine, or authentic, so they’re looking for something that seems more real and authentic.
Lisa Ann Cockrel is associate editor at Today’s Christian Woman.

Accident Scenes

From Andrew, across the pond:

I witnessed a terrible accident last night. It was really dark and a pedestrian was hit by a car overtaking our public bus. The guy was still alive when the ambulance took him but i have been praying for him all today. The bus driver was really shaken up and i think God had me there at the scene to be a source of comfort to him. The ticket lady at the terminal let me tell my story to her – she became my minister. we all minister to each other.
By reading these words, you are ministering to me.
Accident scenes witness the amazing self-organisation of emergent theory. A group of strangers become an instant team of helpers, suddenly collaborating, stepping in to lead with giftedness and talents, stepping back when not needed. One knows first aid. Another stops traffic. One calls the ambulance [that was me] No one under orders and yet order emerges within seconds. Its a frightful, horrible, terrible thing to be at the scene of an accident like this and I wish it on nobody. And yet it is moments like these when people become their best and the human community under God finds wind, finds love, justice, hospitality, selfless giving, and acts like the community that God desires.

Clean up issues

Clean up issues
So yesterday I had a bit of a Monday morning rant.
Someone called me on it and I think they had a valid point.

I think it is funny that you got on a rant over a simple statement that a speaker was going to give some information out to better inform those who were interested, about what all the issues involved were. I see no reason for people to not be informed about something, if they wish to be. I guess I don’t care enough to actually find out more about it, so I can not speak intelligently about it. However, I can see how Christians could get upset if the character of Christ is attacked, whether it is fiction or nonfiction…makes no difference. When you love someone, you don’t care who makes the attack or how they do it….it makes you angry. I think that is the real issue here.

I believe I misunderstood what was going on. I’ve seen several churches in the area advertise special sermons on de-bunking the DiVinci Code. I feel they’ve been using it only as a marketing gimmick. Which still may not be that bad – it gets people in the church. So I apologize for my rant yesterday.
Also:

I personally think Christians ARE more concerned with helping others than they are about this book/movie. They just want to be educated about what all the stir is about. Perhaps some do go overboard, but they are people, and people tend to go overboard at times when they feel strongly about something……kinda like you and your ranting!! 🙂

So with that, I stand corrected.
And there’s one more… maybe I should just delete most of yesterday ;-). No wonder my visit count was so low yesterday. Good thing I had a great evening with Grilled Salmon and Zinfandel.

I imagine if you check, most people’s birth certificates are filed a month or so after their birth. Hospitals are so slow.

The writer went on to say that a birth certificate for someone they knew took almost six months to be filed. I just thought it was funny that mine was filed two months late and thought I’d poke some fun at my mom. Sorry on that too.

More on the Da Vinci Code:

“In the end, what Dan Brown has revealed to us is not that we’re so much short on faith, but he has revealed to us that we may be weak in church history,” Rev. Ken Whitten said. “It gave us a great opportunity to teach doctrine, to teach truth and sharpen our skills about what our story is.”
“For me the idea that this is a controversial book is really silly,” Westin said. “There’s no controversy because there’s really no side that’s saying Dan Brown is right other than the people who are trying to sell books or Dan Brown. It’s a little bit like professional wrestling. Most people know that it’s not real.”