A teenager steals a man’s wallet by knife-point in the subway. The man offers the thief his jacket as well. Next thing you know the victim is taking the mugger out to eat and eventually gets his wallet back. Then he gives the teen $20 and asks for the knife in exchange.
That’s the story of Julio Diaz as told on NPR (link via kottke).
It’d be an incredibly cheesy sermon illustration if it weren’t true. Luke 6:27-38—them’s some hard words.
This Jeremiah Wright thing just gets weirder and weirder. Today I was listening to NPR and heard a story about Barack Obama trying to raise support in Pennsylvania. Reporter Joel Rose interviewed one person who said they wouldn’t be voting for Obama because of his ties to Jeremiah Wright:
“That actually really upset me, being a gay man and hearing like anti-gay and anti-all kinds of things … it disappointed me that he didn’t get up and go, ‘You know what, I just don’t want to be a part of this.'”
At the time I thought, “Wright is anti-gay on top of everything else? Wow, this is nuts.” But then I started doing some more research on Jeremiah Wright. And I found the opposite.
No matter what you want to believe you can find someone who backs you up. Pick a topic–any topic. Whether you think global warming is a crisis or a hoax, whether you think second hand smoke is harmful or just fine, whether you think ‘sucks’ is a bad word or not, whether you think God hates homosexuals or not–whatever position you want to take you can find someone who holds that position, usually with more than flimsy rhetoric (OK, that last one is a bad example).
And it breaks my heart.
I’ve talked about this before concerning politics during the 2004 election and about the Jena 6 trial. Everyone is so completely biased that you can hardly trust them as sources. And if you trust them, someone else will discredit them. Whatever new detail comes out each side has to put their own spin on it so they come out ahead. It’s like every issue has turned into the aftermath of a presidential debate where both sides claim victory no matter what happened.
Even the supposedly non-biased news media have their slants and whether or not you want to trust a source like Fox News or the New York Times depends on your slant. It’s completely polarizing to the point that we just end up segregating into camps of like-minded people with our like-minded news and entertainment outlets.
And it’s OK if you disagree with me. I’m biased, so you can just write me off and ignore me.
One of the Compassion International Uganda bloggers named Carlos shared this story. Carlos has an adopted son from Korea and as he was showing a picture of his son, Losiah, to a group of children, a boy named Butewas looked confused.
Carlos: “Do you know what it means to adopt?”
Butewas’ eyes lit up.
Butewas: “Yes”
Carlos: “I adopted Losiah because his mother could not care for him.”
long pause…
Butewas: “Do you think you can adopt me?”
This kind of interaction kills me. Carlos didn’t share how he responded. And I don’t know how you do respond.
I love that Compassion International is doing this blogger’s trip to Uganda. I applaud them. But it also raises a lot of important questions for me. As I read through the entries and the comments, almost everyone responds with tears and a broken heart and an eager need to sponsor a child. That’s great. But I hope it’s not all. I hope there’s more to it than emotionalism.
I hope we still ask the tough questions. I’ve been doing that—though I sound like a heartless bastard—and Anne Jackson has been gracious enough to respond.
My first question was if the disparity between sponsored children and unsponsored children causes problems. Anne explained that the benefits a sponsored child receives extend to their entire family. She also said that culturally it’s understood differently:
“the way the sponsorship impacts the child, the child’s family, and the community is something to celebrate. when all you have is god and your fellow man, it comes a lot easier when someone you love is blessed.”
Update: Shaun Groves also weighed in on my comments, offering further insight. The most encouraging bit he offered is the fact that local Compassion projects are run by local people: “Let’s, first of all, trust that they know what works best in their own communities.” That makes sense.
I mentioned about a week ago that a group of bloggers were going to Uganda to experience Compassion International‘s child sponsorship program. They’ve been on the ground this week sharing their stories.
It’s pretty eye-opening.
we spent some time at a project yesterday with some of the brightest kids. this is a photo of henry and me. henry is in 7th grade. he is articulate, bright, and athletic. … he told me about his sponsor family in the states.
“mr. and mrs. james peterson,” he said. “do you know them?” he asked with a spark of familiarity and hope in his eyes. (from Anne Jackson)
And I’ve barely scratched the surface of what these 15 bloggers are talking about. But I also find it difficult.
Continue reading You Can Do So Much More Than the Least You Can Do
I used to think obnoxious but true statements were a great way to tell people about my faith. I’d buy T-shirts plastered with them, bumper stickers proclaiming them, even music centered around them. I was very proud of my boldness.
But I didn’t realize how completely ineffective it was. I didn’t realize that instead of opening a door of conversation, I was kicking in the door and slapping the owner in the face–and expecting them to be grateful.
It’s kind of embarrassing when I think back on it. I’ve since realized (and am continually reminded) that is no way to change minds.
Continue reading You’re Not Always Right; or Humility Rules!
Stop the Traffik, an organization that fights human trafficking across the world, is collecting signatures to present to the UN in February urging them to do more to stop human trafficking. If they can collect one million signatures then they can get matching funds from outside donors and set up a fund to fight human trafficking.
It’s pretty simple. You don’t have to donate. You just have to give your voice and say that human trafficking is something that should have ended hundreds of years ago with the slave trade.
So visit their site and sign your name. (It’s a bit goofy, but a blue screen will come up on top of their web page where you can sign up.)
So 8:00 p.m. on Christmas night is not the best time to find something to eat. Since we’d been gone for four days there wasn’t much to eat in the house that didn’t require lots of preparation (thawing chicken at 8:00 p.m. seemed kind of stupid).
So I did the only reasonable thing and drove up and down the nearest major thoroughfare to see what was open. And what’s open at 8:00 p.m. on Christmas night? One Mexican restaurant, three Chinese buffets and Walgreen’s. We went with frozen pizza from Walgreen’s.
Walgreen’s was packed with people buying last minute gifts when they really shouldn’t have bothered (though I didn’t see any taking advantage of the large Chia Head/Clapper display near the front).
The woman in front of me in line spent $111–at Walgreen’s–on gifts including Christmas boxers that came with their own gift bag, a combo chess/backgammon game pack and some kind of My Little Pony set. I kept trying to imagine what sort of situation would require spending $111 at Walgreen’s at 8:00 p.m. on Christmas. Wasn’t coming up with much.
Apparently the entire continent of Africa is banning plastic bags. (Sidetrack: I think it’s kind of weird that we refer to all of Africa as one entity–AIDS in Africa, orphans in Africa, poverty in Africa, government corruption in Africa, etc. I guess you get some of that with Europe or Asia, but it seems like we do it disproportionately to Africa. End sidetrack.)
At first it seems kind of silly. But then as you imagine billions of plastic bags floating around, I can see how it’d be quite the problem. I always try to reuse my plastic bags (excellent for dog poop), but we always have way more than we’ll ever use. Seems like it should be fairly easy to ween ourselves from plastic bags. Ikea does a nice job of that by simply charging you 5 cents for each bag you use.
The more I think about it, banning plastic bags starts to sound pretty rational and wasting plastic bags for the two things you bought at Target sounds kind of silly.