So I knew about this…
Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp is my fifth cousin thrice removed.
But according to Geni.com…
Elvis Presley is my first cousin 9 times removed’s husband’s fifth great niece’s husband’s second great niece’s ex-husband’s brother’s ex-wife’s father.
President Barack Obama is my first cousin 8 times removed’s wife’s great aunt’s husband’s 10th great nephew.
Former President George W. Bush is your fourth cousin 6 times removed’s wife’s 8th great nephew.
Rene Marshall shared a great reflection on the recent violence in Jos, Nigeria and the youth that were involved.
Isaiah – a youth being cared for by ECWA that I met while in Jos
“The spiritual decision I made this year in camp was not to steal, no fighting, and no lying. May God give me understanding and love to people, not to be bad to any people in this community.†–Jos ECWA Camp Youth Alive Camper
Two youth campers
Two youths at ECWA CampAs I read over this evaluation the other day, I could not help but wonder about the camper who wrote it. Was he involved in the recent Jos crisis? Did he have an opportunity to retaliate and involve himself in violence? Did he choose not to in the name of love and Christ-like humility? Has he been an agent of peace and comfort to those in his community now in the wake of the crisis? All of these questions started swirling around in my head and I started to have a new perspective of the situation we’re living in.
Like the rest of the Jos population, the events of late November 2008 set me back on my heels and made me take another look at the city and community I live in. As someone who has devoted her life towards working with youth, specifically, Nigerian youth, my heart ached when I heard that youths were the ones carrying out many of these atrocities.
Rene wonders how different the riots in Jos would have been if more of the youth would have had the chance to learn about real grace.
What if they memorized scriptures like 2 Corinthians 4:8,
“We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed and broken. We are perplexed, but we don’t give up and quit. We are hunted down, but God never abandons us. We get knocked down, but we get up again and keep going…Yes, we live in constant danger of death because we serve Jesus, so that the life of Jesus will be obvious in our dying bodies.â€
Or James 1:2-4,
“Whenever trouble comes your way, let it be an opportunity for joy. For when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be strong in character and ready for anything.â€
Christian author Shane Claiborne has said, “grace is contagious, just like violence.†What if we were able to channel the passion and energy of the youth into spreading grace and not violence?
I have to also think back to my backyard and the neighborhood/city I live in – even the state and country I live in. Are we quick to return violence for violence. Are we so set on revenge that we’ve completely forgotten that God says, “Vengeance is mine.”?
What if as Brian McLaren says, we’re known for an “insurgency of love” rather than an insurgency of shock and awe? Wouldn’t that be the greater shock and awe – if we turned the other cheek – if we sought non-violence rather than revenge?
I still think back to Bush’s Ungiven Speech that McLaren wrote. What if?
Since I hold to the ancient beliefs that vengeance is not a human prerogative and that pride goes before a fall, I have no desire to take our nation down that bitter road. I have become convinced that if we follow a course of war, the results will be undesirable at best and catastrophic at worst. But if we refuse to return violence for violence, if we decide on a response that is at once courageous and peaceful, we can seize this tragic moment as an opportunity not to return evil with evil, but rather to overcome evil with good.
Since September 11, America has experienced an outpouring of emotion from nations around the world. It has been said that on September 11, everyone became an American because all shared our grief and shock. And we Americans learned and felt what so many people in other nations experience on a daily basis: vulnerability, danger, and fear. So in a sense, the whole world has been caught up in a moment of global empathy since that tragic day. I would like to seize upon this moment.
So I am today proposing a plan of peace and security, not through war and revenge, but through cooperation and justice. My plan could be called a plan of courage, character, and cooperation…
If we launch a massive military response to terrorist attacks, we make ourselves appear aggressive and intrusive globally, which plays into the image of us terrorists want to paint, enabling them to recruit more terrorists, launch more attacks, and plunge us farther and farther into their vicious downward cycle. Instead, we must refuse to be drawn into their trap. We must defeat terrorism through broad and multi-faceted international cooperation, dealing collaboratively with its causes and reaching broad international consensus on how to respond when terrorist actions arise.
Martin Luther King Jr wrote ::
Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
Through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder.
Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can’t establish truth.
Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate.
Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that . . .
We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the positive affirmation of peace. We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody, that is far superior to the dis-chords of war.
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.
Love wins! Now what can you do to prove it to the world?
I finished reading Stephen Mansfield’s (author of The Faith of George W. Bush) latest book, The Faith of Obama last week. In my opinion, it’s a great, well-balanced look at the 2008 Democratic Presidential Nominee, Barack Obama.
While Mansfield has said himself that he’s not a fan of Obama’s politics, he argues that there’s much more to Obama’s faith than others have previously suggested. There’s no doubt in my mind that everyone has different ideas, stereotypes or viewpoints on Obama and his faith.
This past Sunday, as I sat with “my tribe” awaiting our weekly gathering, a friend noticed the book I was carrying.
He paused as he read the title. “The Faith of Obama?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“So he believes in God?”
“Yes,” I replied.
He leaned in as to almost whisper a secret.
“So he believes in our God?”
“Yes,” I replied again realizing where this conversation might be headed. “He’s a follower of Christ – just like you and me.”
My friend walked away seemingly amazed.
Another story I’ve recently heard is of a local men’s Sunday School class spending the entire Sunday School hour discussing the “liberal” politics of Obama.
And again, later in the week I received an e-mail criticizing a former pastor for supporting Obama’s bid for the presidency.
It appears that after the uprising of the Religious Right, liberal politics and Christianity just don’t mix.
Perhaps that’s what intrigues so many (and scares so many others) about Obama’s faith — that he can vote against bills that are rooted in traditional conservative values (abortion, gay rights) and yet still claim to “serve an awesome God in the blue states.”
For me, two of the most intriguing chapters in the book discuss Obama’s pastor of 17 years, Rev. Jeremiah Wright and a later comparison between Republican Presidential Nominee, John McCain, former Democratic Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton and current President George W. Bush.
Of course like many of Obama’s politics and religious views, these issues are each complex and the chapters themselves would not stand well on their own. However, Mansfield does a great job of laying out the complexity of Obama’s roots and looking beyond the 10-sec YouTube clip of Rev. Wright.
Mansfield does more than just simply recant Obama’s upbringing under an atheistic mother and a father and step-father rooted in the Islamic faith — he is careful to explore how this upbringing could be detrimental as well as beneficial to the future politician.
“His life was a religious swirl. He lived in a largely Muslim country. He prayed at the feet of a Catholic Jesus. He attended a mosque with his stepfather and learned Islam in his public school. At home, his mother taught him her atheistic optimism…
Only through a steely shielding of the heart, only through a determined detachment, could a child of Barack’s age be exposed to so much incongruous religious influence and emerge undamaged. Perhaps, though, the damage was in the detachment itself.”
This lack of congruity would appear more and more as Obama grew.
“I had no community or shared traditions in which to ground my most deeply held beliefs,” Obama writes in his book, The Audacity of Hope. “The Christians with whom I worked recognized themselves in me; they saw that I knew their Book and shared their values and sang their songs. But they sensed that a part of me remained removed, detached, an observer among them. I came to realize that without a vessel for my beliefs, without an unequivocal commitment to a particular community of faith, I would be consigned at some level to always remain apart, free in the way that my mother was free, but also alone in the same ways she was ultimately alone.”
It was this detachment that eventually led him to Rev. Wright’s church. And it was one of these early sermons by Wright that led Obama to a lifetime of discovering God’s truth.
Mansfield writes, “Seeing biblical content was overlaid against social commentary and all brought to bear on the sufferings and promised victories of each individual life in the congregation. At sermon’s end, he found himself in tears.”
Obama later explained, “It came about as a choice and not an epiphany; the questions I had did not magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side of Chicago, I felt God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.”
And yet despite (or in spite) this explanation, “Critics of Obama and, certainly, of Jeremiah Wright wonder whether anything approximating the traditional Christian Gospel is preached at Trinity Church.”
“It’s that lack of understanding and often ignorance than brings about much of the fear/issues people have with Wright and Trinity Church. A fear that this church is preaching a Gospel that’s not in sync with the “born again, new birth, blood washed, Spirit-empowered Christianity that evangelicals know.”
Yet Mansfield points out that for Obama, religious commitment did not require him to suspend critical thinking, “he was pleased that his faith would not require ‘retreat from the world that I knew and loved.'”
“For Obama, faith is not simply political garb, something a focus group told him he ought to try. Instead, religion to him is transforming, lifelong and real. It is who he is at the core, what he has raised his daughters to live, and the well he will draw from as he leads… Obama seems to be sincere in what he proclaims. He embraced religion long before he embraced politics. Indeed, it was his faith that gave him the will to serve in public office, and the worldview of that faith shaped his understanding of what he would do once he came to power.”
Understanding Obama’s faith means understanding the religious trends of our times and what may come to shape America in the future. So regardless of your political leanings, this book does a great job of giving added insight and understanding into not only Barack Obama, but possibly how “the other side” views God and their understanding of the Good News of Jesus Christ.
related ::
something beautiful :: free preview of the faith of barack obama
Amazon.com :: promo video for the faith of barack obama
SSL :: sen barack obama on faith
SSL :: obama’s speech on race
SSL :: james dobson doesn’t speak for me
SSL :: FOTF prays for a blessing on obama
SSL :: quote the whole dang thing
Hillary has a new TV ad out… reminds me a certain one a Senator from Texas did….
So much for being against fear mongering.
update: NPR also shares this ad:
A local columnist, Nathalie Guyol, had this to say about the I-35W bridge collapse.:
This week President Bush offered his condolences and prayers to victims of the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis. He assured the citizens of that city that the federal government would see that the bridge is rebuilt as soon as possible.
“We in the federal government must respond, and respond robustly, to help the people there not only recover, but to make sure that lifeline of activity — that bridge — gets rebuilt as quickly as possible,” he said.Meanwhile, back in New Orleans . . .