…..links for your linking pleasure 16……

1.  The Wall Street Santa:

2.  Mark talks about using IM as a professor.  I applaud anyone in higher eduction who is using technology to help their students.

3.  What would you think of adding an Hindu Snowman in a Nativity scene?

4.  Tim Keller on the one gospel.

5.  I think that Americans need to think before they act:

6.  James McGrath’s review on The Religious Case Against Belief.

7.  Was it a Silent Night?

8.  What do you think of Caroline Kennedy going for the Senate Seat (what is her platform)?

9.  Brandon talking about the Christian response to shoe throwing.

10.  If you are in the area, you should think about going to Common Root 2009.  I can’t make it because of school and the distance.

11.  A good post on Sex and Money.

12.  Obama talks about how to judge his success.

And Remember:

…..links for your linking pleasure 2……..

1. Some thing that Joe Biden will play good cop while Obama’s new chief of staff will play bad cop.

2. One person writes on why Obama should include McCain in his cabinet. I think this is the BEST idea I have head in a while and hope that others will encourage Obama to do the same.

3. Will females be represented on Obama’s Cabinet?  This is question we all should be watching closely for in the announcements next week.

4. With the holidays coming up, Jonathon brings up the catch-22 involved with retailers this Christmas.  On the one hand, we don’t want to be consumed by consumeristic tendencies, but on the other hand not buying will hurt our economy overall.  See the New York Time Article on the economy for more.

5. Over at FP Passport, I am happy that Obama is considering a regional approach to Afghanistan, but am still angry that he is considering a bailout for automakers (Jordon Cooper seems to share my anger…while you’re there also look at what Starbucks would look like if it were a church).  I would encourage everyone again to read about the famine in Afghanistan and get president-elect Obama to help fix the conditions which lead people towads terrorism in Afghanistan.

6. Lord, we pray for Wilmington and the 7,000 who have lost their jobs in this unfortunate layoffs at DHL.  Please help Clinton County recover this and get them back on their feet.

7. The New York Time also deals with the catch-22 of foreign policy having to do with Pakistan and the Taliban.  Now that Pakistan is actually taking action, the times reports that it is much more difficult for Pakistan than they originally thought it would be.  They have to destroy elaborate tunnel system to get to the Taliban.  This would not be so difficult if they could resort to what the times calls “the scorched early policy,” but this type of fighting alienates the neutral Pakistanis and throws them further into the hands of the Taliban.  If we support Pakistan by giving them more resources, they will use it for more money in a war that, even with full sustained military action as in the region they are in now, is much more difficult to “win” because of the elusive nature of the enemy.  The soluation?  Humanitarian aid and decisions made by non-western leaders from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Taliban.  This is the only way to get the aid in to the people who need it most.

8.  The extreme home make over Haifa Street Edition.  At least there seems to be some good news in the world. =)  Read the essay on it here.

9. The president of Iran sent a letter to congratulate Mr. Obama upsetting conservatives and receiving praise from moderate politicians.  It will be interesting to see how things turn out for Ahmahenjad in the upcoming election in Iran.  Lord, we ask for your divine presence to be in Iran.  We ask for your spirit to speak to these people.  We ask for your power to present in all of these situations.

10. Father Stephen quotes Kallistos Ware’s Cosmic Christ and it is worth reading to get an Eastern Orthodox perspective on creation.

11.  More talk about Shane Claiborne at Evangelical Political Analysis.

12. Alan Creech gives a timely post on St. Martin in the midst of veterans day.

Afghanistan: A Christan Response?

Map of Helmand Province

With the era of good feelings coming with the election of Barack Obama, there are some good things like the beginnings of electricy coming to the Helmand Province.

While, such good things are happening, thanks to google blog search I was also able to find out through Michael’s blog that there is an humanitarian crisis going on in Afghanistan as a result of a coming winter famine.  Approximately a third of the country will be without food and water.

The LA Times has shown that there is an increasing call to abort central government and begin working with tribal warlords:

Confronting the prospect of failure after seven years in Afghanistan, the U.S. military is crafting a new strategy that is likely to expand the power and reach of that country’s tribal militias while relying less on the increasingly troubled central government.

The solution seems relatively simple: give them food.  What’s the problem?  Well, taliban leaders and other people within Afghtanistan keep killing humanitarians aid workers.  Michael explains further on his blog that:

Part of the reason for the increase [in humanitarian aid worker deaths] has to do with the fragmented nature of many conflicts since the end of the Cold War. In places such as Afghanistan, Darfur and Somalia, there are a bewildering array of warlords and armed groups, and community acceptance isn’t much of a security guarantee if bandits control the surrounding roads…Furthermore, many Western aid agencies have agendas, such as support for women’s rights, which put them directly at odds with religiously motivated insurgents like the Taliban – who, for instance, go to great lengths to attack girls’ schools.

What’s more? These aid workers are considered part of the occupying western forces.  It is very difficult to combat these types of things in our world.  There is very little you can do except try to make deals with the warlords that kills the least amount of people, but what should the Christian response to this conflict be? Over at the council on foreign relations they say:

“[David Patraeus calls for] possible government reconciliation with the Taliban; and cooperation with neighboring countries, including Pakistan and Iran. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, speaking on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Budapest in October 2008, said he favored some form of reconciliation in Afghanistan, though he acknowledged not knowing “how it would evolve.” A week later, during a speech at the U.S. Institute for Peace in Washington, Gates was unequivocal in his support of bringing tribal elements into the fold. “At the end of the day the only solution in Afghanistan is to work with the tribes and provincial leaders in terms of trying to create a backlash … against the Taliban,” the defense secretary said.”

It appears that our duty as Christians is at is has always been: to serve Christ in all things.  If we go as workers to Afghanistan we will give our two cloaks until we have only one, we will take any form of persecution and return it with love, and we will LISTEN.  I cannot overemphasize that we will listen instead of talking so much.

Is ‘change’ really what we need?

Brittian said something really interesting over at his blog today:

Walter Brueggemann spoke about in The Prophetic Imagination.  He said that the Empire of control and competition, is constantly co-opting people’s revolutions.  In other words, when was the last time a revolutionary didn’t eventually become Emperor?  Think Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler…but maybe even more unfortunate are those true believers like the French revolutionaries whose ideas of liberty and equality eventually turned into a reign of terror.  Why?  Brueggemann points out that it is because those revolutions and revolutionaries bought into a critical deception.  The immediacy of their hope.  Anytime, he comments, the hope is too “here and now” it becomes prime real estate for imperial control.  The tangible, touchable, manageable realities of linear thought and rational process are Their domain.  Finally he councils us not to be Managers of change but rather to be Imaginers…  Poets, provocateurs, singers of songs, artists, prophets, painters, sculptors, wordsmiths, etc… Envision a new world, live into that new reality…but don’t necessarily engage in the dangerous assumption that CHANGE is the end all solution.

Brittian specifically is talking about the new ‘green revolution’ that seems to be taking place and how the same big companies are changing their marketing tactics to market to this target audience.  Rob Bell and Don Golden say someting similiar about the oppressed becoming the oppressors from Egypt to Jerusalem in their new book Jesus Wants to Save Christians (44-45):

God gives power and blessing so that justice and righteousness will be upheld for those who are denied them…

To forget this, to fail to hear the cry, to preserve prosperity at the expense of the powerless, is to miss what God had in mind…

Exile is when you forget your story

Exile isn’t just about location; exile is about the state of your soul.

Exile is when you fail to convert your blessings into blessings for others.

Exile is when you’re a stranger to the purposes of God

We have to be careful that we do not buy into ‘change’ as an idea simply as a cool ‘alternative.’  Otherwise, when things ‘change’ we will somehow believe we have reached our goal.  This new green revolution has become ‘the norm’ and the world has begun capitalizing off the label.  Ryan Bolger has a good graphic that I would like to borrow.  The image is a table of the difference between the ‘green’ revolution and the way that perhaps we should respond as Christians (labeled as ‘blue’).

He asks the important question, does the church need a color?  Over at Jesus Manifesto as well there has been an important discussion going on about language.  Who are we leaving out and who are we including based on our language?  It is easier than people sometimes think to learn a cultural language or a certain theological bent and to extol that theological bent to your congregation, but the danger is that the theology begins trumping Jesus Christ and the particular plan and revelation of God throughout time and space–the one that transcends cultures.  It is actually very easy for big companies to read this “cultural language” and create products which they can capitalize off of to “co-opt” the revolution (as Brittian said earlier).

The questions then are large: How does Christianity stay focused on Christianity and avoid being eaten up into a larger mass culture created by the media and big business?  How do we deal with the major environmental movements in a way that is true the particularity of Christ?  Which direction is the church going and is it the right direction? Are we following Christ or are we following culture?  If we are following culture, to what extent to we dwelve into it?  Over at emergent village one person argues that almost nothing is off limits.  Do you agree that Christians can go anywhere and do anything in the name of Christ?  Are there limits on our freedom as Paul often talked about, for the sake of our brothers?