God's Answer

So, I've started reading Exodus 6, and this is God's response to Moses:

"Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh:  Because of my mighty hand he will let them go; because of my mighty hand he will drive them out of his country.'

God also said to Moses, 'I am the LORD.  I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but my name the LORD I did not make myself known to them.  I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they lived as aliens.  Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant. 

'Therefore, say to the Israelites: "I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.  I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgement.  I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God.  Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.  And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob.  I will give it to you as a possession.  I am the LORD.'"

-- Exodus 6:1-8

As usual, God is pretty long-winded.  Haha.  Moses asks a 2 sentence question, God gives a 12 sentence response.  Typical.

Even though I'm still processing His answer, and what it means for Moses and me, I am willing to concede that it's a pretty powerful answer.  Basically, God is saying "I AM."  His response to Moses' frustration and confusion is a re-iteration of his character, his promises, and his power and desire to bring them to life.  "I AM, therefore..."  

And though I don't know what to do with this response just yet, I have become convinced that it's okay to question God.  That actually, it's more than okay.  He WANTS us to question.  In Isaiah he invites us to reason with him (Isaiah 1:18).  I mean, Moses was a pretty cool dude, and God used him to do some amazing things (come on, he split the red sea, made water come out of a rock, wrote down the Law, and the list goes on...).  But Moses wasn't afraid to ask God the "why" question.  And when the Israelites were in the desert, Moses talked with God, face to face, as a man speaks with his friend (Exodus 33:11).  That's pretty sweet.  And David was definitely real with God.  He expressed his anger to God towards his enemies and asked God lots of "why" questions in the Psalms.  I mean, he danced around in his underwear before the Lord, for goodness sakes... you don't get much more real than that.  I think God longs for us to be real and honest with him.  He sees it all anyway...

More Thoughts on the Exodus

I've been moving along rather slowly through the book of Exodus, and I've stopped at chapter 5.  There's a question that Moses asks at the end of this chapter that is one that I've found myself asking lately:

"O, Lord, why have you brought trouble upon this people?  Is this why you sent me?  Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble upon this people, and you have not rescued your people at all."

Right on, Moses.  Go ahead.  Call God out.  

God had spoken into Moses' brokenness, called him to be a part of rescuing the people of Israel, and the only thing that had been accomplished was the increasing difficulty of their work.  Instead of being freed from their chains, more chains were added.  Understandably, Moses was confused and angry.  He had just been introduced to this new God, who at least claimed to care about His people and had convinced Moses to do crazy things to help free them.  And what did he get in return?  The Israelites threw curses down on him, and the suffering continues.  Some loving, caring God.

In a lot of ways, this is where I am right now.  My whole life, and especially in the last few years, people have been trying to convince me that God loves me and cares about my suffering.  And I have wanted to believe that so badly.  But in light of recent events, recent "boxes" that I've been packing (remember the Moving Day analogy?), I ask the same question as Moses: why?  If you care, then why?  If you love me, then why?  Some of the pieces just don't seem to fit.  

And what's interesting about chapter 5, is that Moses' question is the last verse.  In the NIV, the section is entitled "God Promises Deliverance," but unless you keep reading, the deliverance never comes.  I only printed out the text of that chapter, and haven't moved on yet.  I wonder if God ever directly answers Moses' question.  And I wonder if that answer is enough to satisfy him... or me?  I guess I'll have to let you know when I get around to chapter 6.  

Perfection Redefined

Whenever I talk about anything in the sense of the grass being greener on the other side, I am always warned to be careful.  "No one's perfect, you know" they say.  But I think that, over the years (I say that as if I'm some wise old woman), I have come to redefine the meaning of perfection.  Here are some of my thoughts on this new definition:

• Perfection isn't never making mistakes, it's owning your humanity and learning from the ones you inevitably make.

• Perfection isn't being perpetually happy, it's a willingness to wade through the not-so-happy times with patience and grace.

• Perfection isn't always being right, it's the willingness to admit when you're wrong.

• Perfection isn't finally reaching the highest of heights, it's having the perseverance to get back up when you fall.

• Perfection isn't always having your priorities straight, it's being open to seeing when you don't, and at least putting yourself on the road to getting them where they need to be.

• Perfection isn't never hurting the people you love, it's being willing to admit when you do and doing everything possible to make it right.  

• Perfection isn't having all together, it's recognizing the beauty in the mess that you are.  

• Perfection isn't having everything you need, it's doing the best you can with the cards you've been dealt.  
  

These things seem like a much more attainable goal than the commonly used definition of perfection.  And for people who at least attempt to "perfect" these characteristics in their lives, I think the grass is, in fact, a little bit greener.  

Moving Day

I was eating dinner with a friend tonight, and we hammered out this pretty amazing metaphor.  Well, maybe just I think it's amazing, because I'm freaking in love with huge metaphors.  But anyways, I thought I'd share it.  

So here's the deal.  You know when people talk about dealing with issues or brokenness, and the need to process through things, and the language that is often used is "unpacking"?  Well, we kinda went crazy with that and made this whole box and moving metaphor.

We all have some kind of brokenness in our lives, big or small.  Some of us have some pretty intense issues that have affected us in profound ways.  And at some point we decide to really dig into those issues and try to move beyond them - it's moving day.  You're not okay with your old reality, and you want to move to a healthy, more beautiful place.  You get a nice little box and start packing stuff in it.  You start looking at your life and your experiences, trying to understand them and how they have affected you.  You put all that stuff in a box, and try the best you can to "label" those experiences - family issues, insecurity, guilt, shame, eating disorders, depression... toiletries, shoes, etc.  You put them in the box as neatly as you can, and then comes the time to process them and begin to move past them.  You get those boxes in the moving van and take them to your new place, your new life.  Your new place is different, an alternate reality than what you were living in before.  But your issues and broken places aren't gone.  They're still there, they're still a part of who you are.  And in your new life, in your new reality, you have to unpack those boxes.  You have to figure out where all of the experiences fit into this new place.  But ultimately you decide where to put them.  And it's going to look different than it did before.  But the glorious thing is that the contents of the "box," that used to be ugly and broken, can actually make your new reality a beautiful place to take up residence.  

I hope that made some kind of sense.  It made sense in my head, anyways.  Any thoughts?

Thoughts on the Exodus

I've recently started reading through the book of Exodus. There's some good stuff there, friends, and definitely some stuff that I never saw before. When I was reading the first few chapters of Exodus, I started looking at them through the lens of race and ethnicity, and reading with those things in mind has radically altered my view of the book and of Moses, the "hero."

I've never really thought about Moses' racial/ethnic identity before, but the dude had a pretty complicated life.  He was born Hebrew, sent off in a basket by his mother, found by the Pharaoh's daughter, nursed by his birth mother, and then raised by an Egyptian.  He lived a life of privilege, but was bothered deeply by the mistreatment of "his people."  He tried to correct an injustice against a Hebrew by killing an Egyptian, was run out of Egypt by his racist adopted Grandfather (Pharaoh), and eventually settled down in Midian, where he married a Midianite woman, gave birth to mixed Hebrew/Midianite babies, and lived out most of his days as an alien in a foreign land (he actually named his first born Gershom, which sounds like Hebrew for "an alien there"... poor kid).  Ethnically Hebrew, raised as an Egyptian, yet ostracized by both communities.  He had to be confused about a few things.

And on top of all of this, he is asked by the God of the Hebrews to free "his people" from the hands of the Egyptians.  Talk about being put between a rock and hard place.  I'm assuming that Moses was more culturally Egyptian than Hebrew, could never fully identify with the Hebrew's experience of slavery, and had already encountered the resentment that many Hebrews felt towards him because of his life of privilege (see Exodus 2:11-14).  By the time he was 80, he had left both cultures behind and had created a new life for himself in a foreign country.  He was undoubtedly the least likely person that God would choose to fulfill this task.  But, in His usual fashion, God does the unexpected.  

There is one passage in particular that stood out to me in a new way, and that makes me think that this story might be about a little more than freeing Israel from bondage.  Picture this:  burning bush, there's a voice coming from it that just happens to know Moses' name, and it tells him to take off his shoes.  And this is what the voice says next:

"I am the God of YOUR FATHER, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."  

God is clearly saying to him, "You are a Hebrew, you are a part of my people."  But Moses just doesn't get it.  As far as he's concerned, he doesn't have a "people."  And so his response when God tells him that he is going to rescue the Hebrews from the hands of Pharaoh:

"Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?"  

In essence, he's saying "Um... hello?!  I killed an Egyptian, the Hebrews hate me, my own Grandfather kicked me out of Egypt.  I never want to go back there again.  You've got to have the wrong guy."  And so God responds again, with a more subtle, but just as powerful, statement that solidifies Moses' identity as one of the people of God:

"I will be with you (singular you... God is promising this directly to Moses, the individual).  And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you (plural) will worship God on this mountain."

"YOU will worship."  In this promise, God is claiming Moses as His own.  He is breaking through all of the clutter and confusion of Moses' past and telling him who he is.  "You are a Hebrew, Moses.  You are mine.  I see you, and I know you, and one day you will worship me on this mountain with your Hebrew brothers and sisters.  You are part of the people that I have chosen to reveal my glory, even to the ends of the earth.  You are my son, my love, my own."  

But Moses still doesn't get it.  He comes up with excuse after excuse, and God replies with promise after promise, until finally Moses breaks down and begs God to send someone else.  

Not me.  Please, anyone but me.

Finally, God loses his patience with Moses.  He has a purpose for him, He's calling Moses to have faith in who He is, He's trying to convince Him that He loves him and will be with him.  But Moses won't have it.  He is weighed down with insecurity, confusion, pain, loss.  Just like He is trying to free the Hebrews from the palpable chains of Pharaoh's oppression, God is trying to free Moses from his personal chains.  And when Moses won't let Him do that, God finally gets angry.  

Whenever I encounter a moment of God's anger, my initial reaction is negative.  I don't like to see God get angry.  That completely dashes the Sunday school picture of happy, smiling Jesus on a hill with a bunch of sheep.  But I think sometimes that image needs to be dashed.  God gets angry when His children are hurting.  Moses may not have experienced the slavery of the Hebrews, but he's been living in his own kind of bondage.  God was offering him an out, and he refuses to take it.  God so desperately wants to free him, but Moses is unwilling.  This time, the anger of God is, ironically, an expression of deep love for His child.  

All of us have chains of some kind.  We suffer under the weight of insecurity, confusion, pain, and loss, just as Moses did.  And although most of us who call ourselves believers can talk about the grace and love of God until we are blue in the face, most of us have failed to fully claim the promises of God for us.  He told us to take his yoke upon us, because it is easy and light.  He told the weary to come to Him, and He would give us rest.  He told us that He came that we might be free, that we might have life and have it to the full.  But how many of us are holding on to our chains?  How many times does God speak to us, calling us to find freedom through service to Him, and all we can say is "Not me.  Please, anyone but me."  

And I believe that angers the Lord.  Not because He is disappointed in us, but because He desperately wants us to be free.  But we're too stubborn to just let go of the chains.  He's angry because He loves us and wants more than anything for us to be free children of God, reflecting His glory to a broken world.  

Fridge-Based Communication

I've come to realize recently that I am really, really bad at dealing with conflict.  I don't know if I can even say that I'm bad at it, because if I'm honest, I don't really deal with conflict at all.  

But I've also come to realize that I am not alone in being conflict-challenged.  Actually, I'm in good company.  

For the first month and a half of this summer, I lived in a house that operated mostly out of what my friend Ashleigh called "fridge-based communication."  From the very start there seemed to be a lot of conflicts arising, over using each other's stuff, cleaning (or not cleaning) our dishes, over unexpected guests, and yes, even toilet paper.  But I personally only witnessed one face-to-face conversation about any of these issues, and that happened way before any of it became a huge problem.  From then on, our conflict "resolution" consisted of a series of notes left on the refrigerator, each with carefully chosen words that hid the extent of our frustration, but always had a hint of testiness.  By last week, our communication had deteriorated to the point of there being a different note on the refrigerator everyday, responding to the one left the day before.  The house was split into two groups of people who had known each other prior to moving in, venting our frustrations to those within our group, but never did the two groups meet.

Seriously?  This is NOT the way to deal with conflict and frustration.  Fridge-based communication is a TERRIBLE way to communicate, if it can even be called communication at all.  

Now, I am speaking about this from a position of fault.  I have been a part of the problem.  And all of this has really opened my eyes to how horrible I am at engaging conflict.  This certainly isn't the first time that I've experienced conflict, and it's also not the first time that I have avoided dealing with it like the plague.  But I heard a statistic a couple of years ago that scares me a little, and tells me that I need to learn how to deal with conflict in a healthy and productive way:  The number one reason why missionaries leave the field is... conflict.  Not spiritual burnout, not family problems, not culture shock or even health reasons.  Conflict.  We need to learn how to engage conflict, friends.  If we don't, it will destroy us.  

And I have experienced that destruction first-hand.  I can't even count the ways that failing to deal with conflict has caused pain and hurt in my family.  The words "I'm sorry" aren't heard too often in our house, and I think that has a lot to do with why I don't deal with conflict well.  You do what you see, and I never saw people engaging with conflict in a constructive way.  The hurt and frustration has been building up in all of us and has caused unbelievable damage in each of our hearts.  I don't know if we will ever see the full extent of that damage.  I'm just beginning to dig into myself.  

About a year ago, I was hurt very deeply by a good friend of mine.  We had dealt with conflict before, and apologies had been given on both sides.  But nothing seemed to change, and they continued to hurt me in profound ways.  I haven't shared with them just how much they hurt me, and our friendship is basically non-existent at this point.  And here I am, a year later, and the hurt and anger is rapidly getting worse rather than better.  Whether we can ever salvage the friendship or not, leaving it unresolved is slowly eating away at me and turning my heart black.  Forgiveness becomes more and more difficult with each day that passes, and I don't like the person that I am becoming.  One conversation, or even several, is all it would take to turn this situation into something that could benefit both me and this friend of mine.  Just one conversation.  

I have only recently come to realize how much my aversion to conflict-resolution has affected my experience in Vietnam.  I never told the Vietnamese-Americans on my program how much it hurt me when they constantly left me out of what they were doing, or how isolating it was for me when they talked about Vietnam as "their" country and "their" culture and never tried to include me in that.  I and the other Americans never talked to our Vietnamese roommates about the things that they did that were frustrating and hurtful to us.  We just talked about it with each other, letting the frustration build, never even attempting to resolve the issues with them.  One of my biggest problems in Vietnam was a lack of community and feeling very isolated from the people around me.  I'll never know what might have been had I been willing to lean into these hard situations and work through these conflicts.

But I'm not completely without hope.  Over the past year, I've also been able to meet conflict head-on with a couple of people in my life.  Although I didn't approach them at the onset of the conflict, I wasn't willing to leave my frustrations unsaid and kiss our friendship goodbye.  So I shared with them how I was feeling, and they did the same for me.  And we were able to get past those conflicts and move on.  Now, I will say that both of these resolutions happened over the phone and email, and I really think that face-to-face communication would have been ideal.  But dealing with it over the phone and email is better than not dealing with it at all.  And now I'm starting to see the fruits of resolving those conflicts, and it gives me hope.  Hope that I'm not a completely lost cause when it comes to dealing with conflict.  

Most people that I know would say that they avoid conflict at all costs.  And most of us would probably say that it is just part of our personality.  But I am slowly coming of the opinion that this aversion to conflict is a part of our collective personality that we need to weed out.  At our core we are relational beings, and that has its benefits and its setbacks.  We can gain so much from being in relationship with each other, but we also have the potential to hurt each other in very deep ways.  We need to learn to communicate with each other about those wounds.  We need to have the humility to call each other out in the spirit of reconciliation instead of condemnation, and also the humility to admit when we are in the wrong.  

This is the way of life, friends.  

Revisiting Jericho

So, a few posts ago, I wrote about the fall of Jericho and how that story parallels our lives, that each of us has a "Jericho" moment.  And I'd really like to expand on that metaphor, and add in a little more personal info.  

Basically, the generation of Israelites that saw Jericho fall had to spend their whole lives in the desert because of the sins and lack of faith of their parents.  They grew up hearing the stories of how God delivered their people from Egypt and all the ways that He provided for them in the desert.  They grew up hearing about the land flowing with milk and honey that they had been promised, that their parents feared to take.  They probably saw the disappointment and shame in their parents faces as they recounted the stories and the promises, the regrets they felt on a daily basis for not trusting God to give the land to them.  I'm sure there was a sense of regret and hopelessness in the lives of their parents as they toiled through their life in the desert, knowing that they had passed up the rich , abundant land that God had offered them.  And eventually, this new generation's time came.  Moses passed away and Joshua was called to lead the nation.  God told Joshua that it was now time to take the land that was promised to their forefathers.  Here was their chance to leave the desert behind.  And not just the desert, but also the shame, the regret, the disappointment, and the hopelessness.  Now was their chance to take God at His word and claim the land that He had promised, and the life that He had for them.  

They took the first step by crossing over the Jordan and setting up their tents between the river and the formidable walls of Jericho.  There they committed themselves to the Lord through the right of circumcision, a practice which had been denied them in the desert.  

So here they were, camped outside of Jericho, so close to the Promised Land they could taste it.  They had plenty of reasons to turn and run, to cross back over the Jordan and continue in the desert-life that they inherited from their parents.  But they also had plenty of reasons to trust the Lord and claim the blessings that He was waiting to give them.  They had a choice to make.  They could run or they could trust.  They could settle for the status quo or demand something more.  

They chose the higher, but more difficult, road.  They chose trust.  And God rewarded them.  He was faithful.  They marched around the city for 7 days, blowing their horns, something that seemed insane and a little bit ridiculous.  But it is what God asked them to do, and the way that He chose to give the city into their hands.  And because they were faithful, the walls of Jericho came tumbling down.  The victory was theirs.

But that wasn't the end of their journey.  Jericho was only a small part of God's promise for them.  There were many more battles to be fought and enemies to be overcome.  And the Israelites weren't always as faithful as they were in this first step.  They made a lot of mistakes, and the scriptures are full of stories of their falling away and coming back to the Lord.  But in the midst of their unfaithfulness, the Lord remained faithful.  He punished them for their sin, but always loved them and never let His anger linger for long.  And one day, from among their own, He brought the Savior.  The One who would reconcile all of mankind to the Father.  Despite the imperfections of His people, God continued to fulfill the promise He had made to Abraham to bless all the nations through Him.  And we are now seeing the fruits of that promise and blessing, in the faces of people from nations all over the earth now praising the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  And one day, the promise will be fulfilled, utterly and completely, and people from every tribe, nation, and tongue will be found before the beauty of the Lord, praising Him forever.  

It is amazing how clearly this story reflects my experience.  In a way, I grew up in the "desert," daily reminded of the sins, regrets, shame, disappointments, and hopelessness of my parents.  And most of that is due to their choices and experiences from long before I was born, or even thought of.  And the ways that those choices and experiences shaped them were passed down to me.  But because I grew up in a church, and had people of deep faith in my life, I grew up hearing about hope, and grace, and love, and the abundant life that God has promised His people.  I knew that I was a part of that, but I was trapped in the desert that I had been born into, trapped by the shame and regret and hopelessness.

But as I got older, God began to call me out of that.  As I became more and more independent from my parents, the message of hope and the promise of abundant life became louder and began to drown out the message of death I had heard from birth.  God called me to "cross the Jordan" to begin the journey of claiming the life He has for me.  The last 2 years of college have been that process for me.  Recognizing the lies about who I am and who God is, and how they have kept me in chains that God wants to free me from.  But also recognizing the truth that needed to replace those lies, and coming to fully understand the life that I was created for.  

Crossing the Jordan was only the beginning.  I finally had to come to a breaking point, a point of decision to truly leave the desert behind and claim the land God has promised.  I committed myself to Him, giving Him my brokenness and asking Him to somehow make me whole again.

And now He is asking me to do my part in that process.  He is asking me to march around Jericho, to follow Him in ways that seem insane and ridiculous to many.  But these walls of Jericho are in between me and a life of love and grace.  And this very city is what kept my parents from claiming that life.  And now I have to make a choice: to run like they did, and camp in shame and despair, or to swallow my fear, trust God, and take the hard road to deliverance.  He is calling me to trust Him and be a part of bringing down that wall, piece by piece.

But even if this process takes 1 year, 2 years, or even 10 years, that will only be the beginning of the journey.  There will be many more battles to fight to fully claim the life of freedom.  Like the Israelites, I will have moments of faithfulness and moments of falling away.  But just as He was with them, God will be faithful in spite of my unfaithfulness.  And somehow, some way, He will call the nations to Himself through me.  And one day, I will be there with them, before the beauty of the Lord, praising Him forever.  

This is my story.  

Jericho

The story of the fall of Jericho as been in my thoughts a lot recently (hence the new name of my blog).  And I was thinking that all of us come to a Jericho moment in our lives, and sometimes more than once.  

After the Israelites had been rescued from Egypt, they wandered around in the desert for a bit, and then found themselves on the brink of the land that God had promised their forefather, Abraham.  They sent in a few spies to check out the land and to help plan their next course of action.  They saw that the land was good, but feared that they couldn't defeat the peoples that were already living in it.  And so, the Israelites decided not to take the land that God had promised them, and they wandered in the desert for 40 years, until all in that generation had passed away.  

So here they were, the next generation, on the banks of the Jordan with the massive walls of Jericho in the distance.  They knew that the Promised Land was just beyond those walls, but it seemed impossible that they could ever get past them.  The Israelites would have to make a choice.  Would they turn back in fear as they fathers had done?  Or would they trust in the promise of God and claim the land that He had for them?

So here's the deal.  God has a promised land for all of us.  He created us to be in relationship with Him, to live in the freedom of His love and His grace.  But all of us seem to have something that keeps us from this life that God has for us.  Each of us has this huge wall of Jericho that needs to come down in order for us to live in the freedom and grace that God offers us, a wall made up of lies about ourselves, about God, about the world.  Eventually we find ourselves at a crossroads.  We find ourselves, like the Israelites, on the banks of the Jordan with the walls of Jericho looming in the distance.  And we have to make a decision:  Are we going to turn back in fear, and let these lies keep us from the life that we were created to have?  Or, will we make the harder choice, to trust God to bring down the wall of lies and to usher us into a life of freedom? (Thanks Alex).

Under the leadership of Joshua, the next generation of Israelites decided to claim this land that God had promised.  They sent in spies and saw that the land was good, and then decided to trust God to give it to them.   The Israelites chose the way of trust.  And through the power of God, the walls of Jericho were reduced to rubble.  

Are we willing to follow in their footsteps?  

It's time for the walls to come tumbling down.  

A Long Way to Go

Never a dull moment at the Copy Center.

We had a man come in today to work on one of our Xerox machines, and he had some interesting things to say. He was working on the printer and I was putting some brochures throught he folding machine (one of the coolest things that you can do at the Copy Center). He asked me how in the world I could be wearing a jacket, and he was sweating. I told him that I thought that the work he was doing was a little more difficult than what I was doing.

• "I guess it's just my large, superior male mind..." At first I just laughed it off, thinking that he was just joking. But then when I turned back to what I was doing, I realized that he hadn't been joking, and I started to get a little angry. The way that women are viewed and talked about as inferior is a new arena of thought for me, and this is one of the first times that I've really gotten angry about a comment that someone made to me. But, as my criticism of this is new, I was able to let it go.

But then another wind of ignorance came blowing through.

• "Anthropology. That's an interesting subject.... Maybe you could explain to me why those people blow themselves up." I don't know much about Islam, but I tried to explain to him what I did know. So when I told him that I thought that it was really a small sect that believed that if they died a martyr they would automatically go to heaven, he proceeded to tell me that he didn't believe that. "It's a part of their culture." And when I explained that I had heard that most people didn't actually agree with it, he responded with "Well, those are the people you call 'secular Muslims.'" Really? I never knew...

Yet another wind of ignorance. He asked me how many languages I could speak, and I told him that I had taken Spanish in high school, one semester of Chinese...and that's when he stopped me. After talking about how hard Chinese must be, he asked another question:

• "Now, what is that language like? I mean, is it caveman-like?"

Wow. That is definitely NOT something that you say to an anthropology major...or to anyone who has any interest or love of culture at all. And, unfortunately, I don't think that his views are in the minority.

Yet another reminder that America has a long way to go. And for the first time in my life, I think I'm willing to stick around and be a part of helping us along.

"One, we are religious. Two, we are right."

A quote from Terry Fox, former pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Wichita, Kansas.

The religious right: A buzz word that shows up most often in election years. Also the group that supposedly was one of the most important voting blocs in the 2004 election, often given credit for handing President Bush the White House for four more years.

Way to go. Obviously, that's worked out real well.

But, maybe not. I guess that depends on how you look at it. If you're thinking about the issues of gay marriage and abortion, which apparently are the two issues that will either have the angels singing or send the world straight to hell, then maybe the last 8 years weren't a complete waste.

But that's not how I look at it. What I'm looking at is a world where people are dying of hunger while others are falling off the wagon of yet another diet plan. What I'm looking at is a world where I hear more people complaining about outrageous gas prices than worrying about the effect that the exhaust from their over-sized SUVs is going to have on the lives of their children and grandchildren...and maybe sooner than we all think. What I'm looking at is a country that is running scared from terrorists, and instead of trying to solve the problems at hand, we're shooting at everything that moves...that has a darker shade of skin. What I'm looking at is a country that is ruining its image and influence abroad as it wages war and threatens war, forcing our neighbors to accept our agenda or face the consequences, and calling it "freedom." What I'm looking at is a country where, in the same day, one family decides not to go to the doctor because they can't afford it, while another buys another BMW, and no one seems to have a problem with the contradiction.

But, worst of all, what I'm seeing is a Church unwilling to change, unable to see beyond what single-minded leaders are saying should be the issues of our time. What I want to know is, when was it decided that the key issues on God's mind were abortion and gay marriage? When did He tell us that He cared more about whether or not a gay couple could have a joint bank account than the kid in the hood who is denied a good education because all the money goes to the school that the rich kid from the suburbs goes to, or the man working two jobs but still can't afford health insurance? When did He tell us to care about the unborn child and do everything to save it, but to make the starving child in a slum in Nairobi second, third, or even last on our list of priorities? When did he tell us to spend all our money on bombs to destroy our enemies (they're all heathens anyway), and not to worry about the droughts and the natural disasters and the air pollution (the earth will eventually fix itself...plus this gives Me extra ammo to punish this sinful world with...hey, it worked on New Orleans)?

When are we going to wake up and look around?! Our world is in trouble, and we're too busy arguing over the morality of a couple of US laws to do something that could actually affect change.

What would it look like for the Church to stop being the moral police and actually start living out an holistic gospel? The fall of man was about so much more than a couple of humans breaking a rule, and therefore the cross of Christ is about so much more than making us behave. That fateful day in Eden did more than destroy our relationship with God. It destroyed our relationships with each other and our relationship with our planet. When are we going to see that? And when are we going to start living out the FULL gospel in our lives, in our nation, and in our world?