Prevailing Winds "For the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom . . ." 2 Cor. 3:17, TNIV

August 22, 2008

"Todos Somos Vecinos"

Filed under: Uncategorized — keelyem @ 11:41 pm

Someone asked me awhile back what the license frame on my car means by “Todos Somos Vecinos/The Poor Are Not The Enemy.” Other than establishing that no flat surface is immune from my opinions, it also has another significance.

Back in 1989, I began my ministry to Mexican immigrants in the Monroe-Snohomish area of rural Washington State, an area about 45 minutes northeast of Seattle. I worked alone, supported by my wonderful husband, and developed as a “motto of ministry” the phrase “Todos Somos Vecinos,” which is Spanish for “We Are All Neighbors.” I called my teaching/pastoring/evangelism/service ministry “Vecinos” to reflect the Biblical idea of loving one’s neighbor, and my goal was always Service, Empowerment, Relationship, and Advocacy, the acronym of which, conveniently, spells “sera’,” or “will be,” in Spanish.

I taught English classes in Spanish, bought cases of bilingual New Testaments, translated at schools and clinics, helped nine women deliver their babies, advocated for my friends when their bosses withheld paychecks or otherwise treated them unfairly, and for a year and a half, until 2000, I co-pastored a small congregation in Duvall, Washington. I worked with a couple of hundred people, and everything I did, I submitted to the idea of service, empowerment, relationship, and advocacy for the glory of God. Those were the hardest, best, and most blessed times of my life. Even now, I would like to think that I consider all I meet to be my neighbors, and nothing else matters a bit if I fail to treat someone kindly.

In ministry to poor people, one begins to understand the scapegoating effect that comes from a society’s introduction to the “other”: in this case, poor, largely undocumented, generally sub-literate Mexican immigrants whose back-breaking work kept Snohomish County dairies, farms, and factories going, and whose buying power kept afloat small stores and apartment complexes, auto dealers and laundromats. Monroe, Washington, experienced an enormous increase in the number of Mexican residents during the 1990s, and the willful ignorance of the influx of new neighbors and the resolve to not become involved with them soon gave way to bitter resentment. Ignorance and avoidance began to spill over in complaints that “their” stores took up all of downtown (which had been in decline previously), or that “they” held up the line at Rite-Aid, or that “no one spoke English.” Even the youth pastor of the largest church in town, a light-skinned man named Ortiz who was born in Mexico but had lived in the states since birth, professed to have no idea that there was such a large community of Mexican workers in town, which conveniently absolved him from ever having to extend his youth ministry to their children. Other Christians dutifully bought Christmas presents for the little ones, and then complained the rest of the year about hearing Mexican music blaring from cars driven by their older siblings.

I began to see in Monroe what I had seen in other places and what I knew was true from history — when a relatively homogenized population experiences a sudden change, when people with strange names, dark skin, and a different language pour into a community, battle lines often are drawn in a war that doesn’t, and needn’t, exist. I realized that my Anglo neighbors were filtering their observations of Monroe’s demographic changes through a screen that guaranteed a barrier between themselves and these new, poor, foreign people. That barrier, sinful in its inception, became a shield; the shield then became a weapon of offense, wielded against those whose “otherness,” whose need, made them not neighbors, but enemies. It was heartbreaking; it was lamentable. And it was sin.

Poor people are not poor, generally, because they’re lazy (an assertion that I find mind-boggling, given the inhuman conditions under which many of my friends worked at jobs that were as dangerous as they were exhausting). This isn’t an Old Testament or even a first-century tentmaking or agrarian society where the causes of poverty might be viewed more precisely as the fault of the one who simply doesn’t choose to make tents or farm fields. The people I worked with, and loved deeply, came here to work, laboring to feed their families and establish a home here while prospering the people most bent on oppressing them. Their poverty was a burden they were born with and one they endeavored to escape from, and they came here not to piss off Americans or even take their jobs. They came here to try to live like you and me.

One could argue that they should, perhaps, aim higher than to try to duplicate a lifestyle that offers comforts and security unknown in much of the rest of the world but nonetheless allows for the vitriolic condemnation of those less well off, and my guess is that they’ll succeed — if the churches would lead the way in proclaiming that there is, indeed, an enemy among us. But his language is not Spanish; nor is it English. It’s the language of racism-as-religion, profit-before-people, and favor-to-the-familiar, and woe to the church, people, or nation that revels in their fluency.

August 21, 2008

Quote of the Day

Filed under: Uncategorized — keelyem @ 12:02 am

“Tolerance is only complacence when it makes no distinction between right and wrong.”
Sarah Patton Boyle

August 20, 2008

A Little Swamped These Days . . .

Filed under: Uncategorized — keelyem @ 11:36 pm

I won’t be posting much of anything other than “Quote of the Day” for the next few days as I entertain houseguests (juggling? karaoke?) and spend Thursday and Friday in downtown Lewiston on business. Feel free to organize your spice racks or something while I’m gone. Better yet, come do mine.

I do, however, want to make note of a book I just got, “The Federal Vision and Covenant Theology” by Dr. Guy Prentiss Waters, a Reformed author and theologian. Our local FV’ers are well represented — which is to say that their theology is much-discussed, and while I believe they are accurately represented, Waters’ conclusions pronounce those theologies unwell indeed. I’ve spent much of the summer reading the Knox Colloquium/”The Auburn Avenue Theology,” which presents pro-con essays on the FV from Wilson, Leithart, Steve Wilkins, John Barach, and Steve Schlissel and six anti-FV theologians; Wilson’s “Reformed is Not Enough;” Schlissel’s “Christian Culture in a Multi-Cultural Age;” and “Calvinism, Hyper-Calvinism, and Arminianism: A Theological Primer,” by Drs. Kenneth Talbot and Gary Crampton. I even held my nose and read Reconstructionist Gary North’s “Backwards, Christian Soldiers” and David Chilton’s odious “Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators,” because I’ve wondered about the link between the Recons and the FV’ers. Looks like Waters will develop that, and further comment will be following.

And from the “comments” section, here’s my response to John Lofton, the Reconstructionist who still takes me task over my assessment of Rushdoony’s theology and application — Lofton calls it “bearing false witness” when I say I think Rushdoony and the Recons are wrong, based on Scripture. I said:

“A good place to start, in reference to Rushdoony’s insistence on instituting Mosaic law in current-day society, might be the account in the Gospel of John wherein Jesus absolves the woman found in the act of adultery. My reading of this suggests that He offered, and established, a new way of looking at sin that, while failing to satisfy Mosaic law (which He in His perfect sinlessness did fulfill), more than fully — redemptively — satisfies the law of love that reached its apex in the Gospel. Further, even if I were to embrace Rushdoony’s call for reinstitution of the Law, I find that he is less than even-handed in its execution (no pun intended). His theonomy calls for the maintenance of societal (gender and class) distinctions obliterated, I believe, by the Gospel. His is not the way of Christ on either account. Thanks for your comments.”

I believe Reconstructionism to be entirely wrong, and I disagree vehemently with Federal Vision theology. It’ll be interesting to see where any marriage of the two began . . .

Quote of the Day

Filed under: Uncategorized — keelyem @ 12:31 am

“There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.”
William James

Sorry, But I Won’t Be Doing That

Filed under: Uncategorized — keelyem @ 12:23 am

Commenting on my definition of Reconstructionism in my “Definitions” post, the editor of a Reconstructionist journal demands that I repent of having borne “false witness” in saying that I thought R.J. Rushdoony’s theology of patriarchy, devotion to an unfettered free market, and call for the institution of Mosaic Law in modern-day society was an un-Biblical distortion of the Gospel.

Well, I can’t.

Now, if I had said that Rushdoony was Satan, that would be bearing false witness. If I had said that his every theological belief was the product of LSD, that would be bearing false witness. And if I called him any sort of nasty names, that would simply be uncalled for — but I didn’t do that, either. I said that I thought Reconstruction bore little resemblance to the Gospel of the New Testament, and I stand by that assertion. Not defiantly, not stubbornly, but because I believe it to be true. I appreciate my reader’s concern, and unless he’s suggesting that Rushdoony is not a major contributor to, if not the founder of, Christian Reconstruction, I’ll remind him that my opinion is just that — opinion. Now, if Rushdoony somehow had nothing to do with the horror that is Christian Reconstructionism, it would be slanderous of me to connect him with that.

I think, however, that wasn’t his point, and so I stand by mine.

August 18, 2008

Defining Terms (Or "What Is She Talking About?")

Filed under: Uncategorized — keelyem @ 11:05 pm

A reader notes that I sometimes use terms and phrases that are not terribly familiar to some people — and I’m sure T. would agree that it’s not because I’m really smart, but only because my interests, specific as they are, make some terms wearingly familiar to me. So I thought I’d include a brief definition of some words or phrases you’ll find in Prevailing Winds:

The Gospel — The truth that humankind is separated from a perfect God by our sins, but reconciled to Him through the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, in whom all who receive are counted innocent before God and receive eternal life.

Ontology — The inherent state of essence or being; for example, I am ontologically female. I am not ontologically a leader or a follower, Democrat or bluegrass lover.

Christian — Someone who has devoted her life to worship of and service to Jesus Christ, having accepted the Gospel message and thus been reconciled to Him. I am a Christian.

Trinity — The Christian belief that God exists equally and eternally in three Persons (three expressions of consciousness and being, not “three people”), the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all of whom are “Lord” and worthy of devotion. It’s an extremely difficult concept, but the idea of one “What” and three “Who” comes reasonably close in describing it. I am a Trinitarian.

Evangelical — Sociologically and historically, Christians who represent that sector of the faith that believes in the necessity of a personal decision to accept Christ, a reliance on Scripture as our primary means of meeting Him, and the responsibility to share the Gospel throughout their communities and the world. If “evangelical” describes my relationship to Christ, then I am an evangelical. If it describes the behavior of most of His followers in the U.S., then I’d rather just say “Christian.”

Fundamentalist — Historically, one who adheres to the seven fundamentals, or foundational truths, of Biblical Christianity. These are generally thought to be the Deity of Christ, the primacy of Scripture, the Incarnation, the virgin birth, the atonement, the resurrection, and Christ’s personal second coming on this earth. I believe those things, but “fundamentalist” these days means all of those plus an ultra-conservative view of Scripture, disengagement with the world (unless through conservative politics), and a suspicion of “modernism” and academia.

Christianity — Sociologically, the religion of devotion to Christ and His teachings, often described as a five-point scale representing, in order of “conservative-to-liberal,” fundamentalism, evangelicalism, mainline denominations, theological liberalism, and what used to be called the “Death of God” movement, more correctly represented today by those who value Christ’s teachings, but distance themselves from the spiritual truth claims He made in the New Testament.

Reconstructionism — That movement within conservative theology that seeks to exercise “dominion” over all of the world’s institutions and structures in the name of Christ, generally to prepare the world for His second coming after a literal or metaphorical 1,000 year millennium (post-millennialism). Hallmarks of reconstructionism are a proud intolerance of “liberalism” and diversity, strict patriarchy, a fervent belief in the legal implementation of Mosaic Law, strict adherence to an unfettered free market, an emphasis on academics, and an a-millennial (millennium as metaphorical) or post-millennial eschatology (Jesus appearing after the millennium period ushered in by “dominionist” Christians). The founder of reconstructionism is generally thought to be R.J. Rushdoony, who, along with D. Chilton, Gary North, Greg Bahnsen and others, have greatly influenced Doug Wilson and the ministries of Christ Church. I am not a reconstructionist; in fact, I believe it to be a dangerous sort of fanaticism that bears little resemblance to Biblical Christianity.

Eschatology — The doctrines of the end times. Pre-millennialists believe that Christ will come, with or without a rapture of the Church, before the millennium begins. A- and post-millennialists are described above. Some pre-millennialists believe the Church will be raptured before the great Tribulation, others do not. I tend to be a pre-millennial, post-tribulationist (Jesus coming after the tribulation, before the millennium), but this is a mystery I’m frankly content to not fully understand. Which is good, because I don’t.

Egalitarian — Those who believe in the full equality of all people; i.e., that all people are equally beloved of God. In the Church, “egalitarianism” generally means those Christians who believe that the Gospel calls for full and complete access to positions of leadership by both women and men in church, society, and home. Based on my study of Scripture, I am an egalitarian and a feminist.

Complementarian — Christians who believe that men and women, while equal, have “complementary” roles (leadership and submissiveness, respectively) that are instituted in the Book of Genesis for all time. Those who believe that elders and pastors cannot be female, and that men and women have different roles in the home (again, male leadership and female submissiveness), are complementarians. I am not a complementarian, again based on my study of Scripture.

I hope this provides a good foundation for my discussion of faith and society in the 21st century, and I’m happy to answer any questions that I can.

Quote of the Day

Filed under: Uncategorized — keelyem @ 11:04 pm

“Hope has two daughters; their names are Anger and Courage.”
Augustine, Bishop of Hippo

August 17, 2008

Quote of the Day

Filed under: Uncategorized — keelyem @ 9:23 pm

“Perfect love may cast out fear, but fear is remarkably potent in casting out love.”
P.D. James, Time to be in Earnest

On Being A Weightlifter and a Woman

Filed under: Uncategorized — keelyem @ 8:02 pm

Last night, I was watching the Olympics when the super-heavyweight women’s powerlifting event came on — the “clean and jerk” where women struggle to hold 370-plus lb. barbells over their heads. Every one of the women was huge, not with the musculature we generally attribute to athletes, but huge in a way we tend to find unattractive — thick thighs, big bellies, broad necks and shoulders and arms that look like solid, well-wrapped hams. They were sweaty, grunting, and not likely, any of them, to have spent their training reflecting on the good ol’ days of being Homecoming Queen.

And it was wonderful.

These women were given certain body types by a God who loves them — and who desires to be glorified in their every endeavor, including the physical. I’m not a real sports-oriented kind of gal, and I loathe the idea that a boxer can pummel the snot out of his opponent, with, like Evander Holyfield, a verse from Philippians embroidered on his trunks, and then take to the mike to proclaim his devotion to Jesus. I hate boxing, especially church-sponsored boxing, because it consists of the kind of violence people are rightly arrested for in bars. And, even though it involves lifting weights, I dislike bodybuilding, an exercise in narcissistic and excessive erotica that I find entirely off-putting. My point here is that I’m wary when athletic endeavors that involve primping, posing, and punching, not to mention steroids, are seen as a means to glorifying God. But these women took their healthy, God-given bodies, found a sport in which their body structures would be advantageous, and worked hard to master it.

It occurred to me that with skewed definitions of health and femininity submerging our culture in floodwaters of confusion and contempt, I was witnessing the beauty of bodies working, bodies being made ever-stronger, in the ways they were intended and for works that glorify God. It was a beautiful thing. These women, unattractive by most of our standards, took the physiques God gave them and achieved something great. They didn’t let society decide for them that they were fat and ugly, destined for failure and open to mockery with true femininity a dream destined only for the slim, pretty girls. No, they set their eyes on a goal, worked hard to achieve it, and are deserving of my admiration.

When I was a girl, one of the best ways to earn my dad’s applause was to not “throw like a girl” in softball, or “dribble like a girl” in basketball. And, in my athletic days, I threw as well as my brother and dribbled and shot and passed better than most of my teammates. It was a wonderful day when I was able to re-define “throwing like a girl” as something that meant that I, a genuine girl, had mastered some sports technique, and I was good on my own terms, not because I threw a breaking curve better than my brother.

Quote of the Day

Filed under: Uncategorized — keelyem @ 4:04 am

“I would like to achieve a state of inner spiritual grace from which I could function and give as I was meant to in the eye of God.”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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