Archive for the 'justice' Category

The Color of Law

Published
by
Mike
on November 28, 2006
in Books, Salt and Light and justice
. 26 Comments

After ten years in a large Dallas law firm and after making partner, Mark Gimenez has moved with his family outside Ft. Worth to write.

But after eleven years in a large Dallas law firm and after making partner, A. Scott Fenney had no such plans. His future was money. Green, it turns out, is The Color of Law.

Fenney, a former star running back at SMU who married Miss SMU, has been on the fast track with a Dallas firm. But after he gives a rousing speech to colleagues about the nobility of law, invoking the memories of his mother reading to him about Atticus Finch (a speech which he later admits he didn’t believe), a federal judge appoints him to represent a black prostitute from East Dallas who is being charged with murder.

And, we learn, the man she supposedly murdered after he picked her up on Harry Hines Boulevard is the son of a powerful, wealthy Texas senator with aspirations for the White House.

Representing her holds the potential for career suicide since the powerful senator will do anything to keep the name of his son from being raked through the mud — which would be required since the son had a history of slapping around prostitutes and dates.

He comes to a critical fork in the road: will he continue with the dream life in “the Bubble” of Highland Park, or will he provide the counsel for this young mother?

As the Texas Monthly said, The Color of Law is “an unbeatable legal thriller with a lot of heart.”

It would be a great novel for a group of university students to work through along with To Kill a Mockingbird, which it continually refers back to. (Fair, warning, however: If Grisham is PG and Turow is R, Gimenez’s first novel is maybe a PG-13. Or, say, PG-16.)

I won’t be surprised if sometime I find out that “Mark Gimenez” is a pen name for Larry James. For through the events of the story, Gimenez forces us to think about the gap between a place like Highland Park and a place like East Dallas. How could two places be so close and so far?

I liked knowing the city where the action is set. I’ve driven down those roads (Lover’s Lane, Mockingbird, Preston Road, etc.) and seen those shopping centers.

But at the same time, there is discomfort. Here are some passages:

“A concrete-and-steel landscape as far as the eye can see, all the way to the brown haze of pollution that perpetually rings the city above the loop, treeless and barren, the city’s master plan obvious — to pave over every square inch of green . . . . Which might explain Dallas’s ranking as the ugliest major city in America. Other than women, Dallas has no natural beauty whatsoever. No ocean or lake or water of any kind except the Trinity River running west of downtown, used for decades as a natural sewage system and today as a big drainage ditch. No Central Park, no Rocky Mountains, and no Miami Beach. No wonderful weather. Nothing other great cities have. All Dallas has is a white X on Elm Street marking the exact spot where an American president was killed. But then, you don’t live in Dallas for any of that; you live in Dallas to make a lot of money fast.”

“Grammar skills notwithstanding, she was a fine example of what Texas men most want — a gorgeous Texas girl. Texas myths were many, but one was no myth: the most gorgeous girls in the world were found in Texas. Dallas, Texas. Girls like her, they graduate from high school or maybe junior college, and from small towns all across Texas they had straight to Dallas like moths to light. They come for the jobs, they come for the nightlife, they come for the single men making lots of money, the kind of money that buys big homes and fancy cars and fashionable clothes and glittery jewelry guaranteed to bring a smile to any Texas girl’s face. Girl wants to marry a refinery worker and live in a double-wide, she moves to Houston; girl wants to marry money and live in a mansion, she moves to Dallas.”

“Developed in 1906 on thirteen hundred acres of high land above downtown Dallas, Highland Park today is a sanctuary of elegant homes, landscaped lawns, and broad avenues canopied by towering oak trees. On its wide sidewalks European nannies and Mexican maids can be seen pushing the heirs of the great Texas fortunes in strollers while their fathers — billionaires and millionaires and the lawyers who tend to them — work in the downtown skyscrapers and their mothers play tennis at the country club and shop at Anne Fontaine, Luca Luca, and Botega Veneta in the Highland Park Village shopping center, its Spanish Mediterranean architecture and quaint stucco buildings with terra-cotta roofs and decorative wrought iron harking back to a distant time and place when great wealth was reserved for people of a certain class, not just anyone who could dunk a basketball. Visitors from California say the town reminds them of Beverly Hills, and with good reason: the same architect who designed Beverly Hills designed Highland Park. Only difference is, the founders of Beverly Hills did not file deed restrictions that legally limited home ownership in their new town to white people only; the founders of Highland Park did. Almost a hundred years later, the Town of Highland Park is a two-square-mile island entirely surrounded by the 384-square-mile City of Dallas. It’s an island of white in an ocean of color: Dallas, a city of 1.2 million residents, is now only 39 percent white; while Highland Park, a town of 8,850 residents, remains 98 percent white, with not a single home owned by a black person. It’s an island of wealth — on any given day over a hundred homes in Highland Park will be listed for sale at prices exceeding $1 million. It’s an island immune from the crime and social ills that affect Dallas — Highland Park kids call their hometown “the Bubble,” happy to be insulated from the outside world that beckons at the town boundary — albeit an island without a river or stream or even a moat to keep the outside world out, only the highest home prices in Texas, a well-armed police force, and a long-standing reputation that if you’re black or brown and don’t live there, you’d damn well better be passing through.”

“Thirty-six years Scott Fenney had lived in Dallas and not once had he driven into South Dallas. White people drove south of downtown three times each year and only for events held within the gated Fair Park grounds — the State Fair, the Oklahoma-Texas football game, and the Cotton Bowl game — being careful to stay on the interstate, to take the Fair Park exit, and to drive directly through the park gates without detour or delay. White people never drove into South Dallas, into the neighborhoods and mean streets of South Dallas, into the other Dallas of crime and crack cocaine, prostitution and poverty, drive-by shootings and gangbangers, into black Dallas . . . .”

When he continues to represent the woman on trial, his senior partner says to him:

“When I graduated from law school, Scotty, a wise older lawyer gave me some good advice. He said, ‘Dan, every new lawyer must make a fundamental choice from which every other decision in his professional life will flow. And that choice is simple: Do you want to do good or do well? Do you want to make money or make the world a better place? Do you want to drive a Cadillac or a Chevrolet? Do you want to send your kids to private schools or public schools? Do you want to be a rich lawyer or a poor lawyer?’ He said, ‘Dan, if you want to do good, go work for legal aid and help the little people fighting their landlords and the utility companies and the police and feel good about it. But don’t have regrets twenty years later when your classmates are living in nice homes and driving new cars and taking vacations in Europe. And you have to tell your kids they can’t go to an Ivy League school because you did good.’”

Well, I have so many other passages marked. It is about Dallas, but it far transcends one city. It’s about lawyers, but it moves far beyond that.

It’s about justice, isolation, racism, materialism, law, service, courage, character, and beauty. (”Rebecca Fenney was still remarkably beautiful, still the most beautiful woman in Highland Park, still able to compete with a twenty-two-year old for her lawyer. But the day would come for her, she knew; and with each passing day, Rebecca Fenney was a day older and a day less beautiful.”)

It’s about Atticus Finch. Even before he was Gregory Peck.

At a critical moment when Fenney is explaining to his senior partner that without good representation his client would unfairly be put to death in Texas, the older man got a puzzled look and replied, “And how does that affect your life?” For anyone who’s read the gospels, they know how important that question is.

It’s a question that hits him hard in the nose when his former secretary doesn’t seem too torn up by his leaving. She says:

“For eleven years I’ve fetched your dry cleaning and coffee, run your personal errands, paid your personal bills, shopped for gifts for your wife and child and clients, lied to clients for you . . . Did you care about me? About my life? You never once asked about my life. Do you know I have a handicapped child and that’s the only reason I’ve put up with you for all these years? Because I needed the money? You didn’t know and you didn’t care. Did you care when Mr. Walker got fired? No. Like every other lawyer here, you care only about yourself.”

The ending is not as strong as the rest, I thought, but, heh–it’s a first novel. And quite a good one at that. I look forward to more novels from Gimenez.

Reading it makes me very thankful for those who are working to bridge the gap between haves and have nots, and it makes me grateful for those lawyers I know who still understand that the color of law is not green. They are, indeed, salt and light in the world.

Does God Want You to Be Rich?

Published
by
Mike
on September 21, 2006
in faith and justice
. 123 Comments

I hope you got a chance to read the excellent, balanced cover story in Time Magazine entitled “Does God Want You to Be Rich?” The cover description says: “Yes, say some megachurches. Others call it heresy. The debate over the new gospel of wealth.”

Seriously — how did the Evangelical church get here?

The basic movement of the gospel is clear (Phil. 2:5ff): self-denial and self-sacrifice rather than self-fulfillment. We follow one who had no place to lay his head, who warned us that life does not consist in the abundance of things, who told a wealthy man to sell all and give to the poor, who insisted that we cannot have two masters (God and $$). Followers of Christ in other cultures have often lost all as a result of their faithfulness to him.

But walk into Christian bookstores and there is a different gospel. The gospel of Joel Osteen.

And does it sell! Your Best Life Now has sold over 4 million copies. It finds a welcome audience in the consumerism of America.

The authors of the article write:

“What remains is a materialism framed in a kind of Tony Robbins positivism. No one exemplifies this better than Osteen, who ran his father’s television-production department until John died in 1999. ‘Joel has learned from his dad, but he has toned it back and tapped into basic, everday folks’ ways of talking,’ says Ben Phillips, a theology professor at the Soutwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. That language is reflected in Your Best Life Now, an extraordinarily accessible exhortation to this-world empowerment through God. ‘To live your best life now,’ it opens, to see ‘your business taking off. See your marriage restored. See your family prospering. See your dreams come to pass . . .’ you must ’start looking through the eyes of faith.’ Jesus is front and center but not his Crucifixion, Resurrection or Atonement.”

Does that tell us something?

The book is full of “illustrations of how the Prosperity doctrine has produced personal gain, most memorably, perhaps, for the Osteen family: how Victoria’s ’speaking words of faith and victory’ eventually brought the couple their dream house; how Joel discerned God’s favor in being bumped from economy to business class.”

Insightfully, the authors go on to talk about the basic for criticism of this Prosperity Lite movement: “Most unnerving for Osteen’s critics is the suspicion that they are fighting not just one idiosyncratic misreading of the gospel but something more daunting: the latest lurch in Protestantism’s ongoing descent into full-blown American materialism.”

Rick Warren, who by his words and life is becoming an incredible leader in the worldwide church, said: “This idea that God wants everybody to be wealthy? Baloney. It’s creating a false idol. You don’t measure your self-worthy by your net worth.”

Ron Sider, author of Rich Christians in a Hungry World: “They have neglected the texts about the danger of riches. Prosperity Gospel Lite is one of the most powerful forms of neglect of the poor.”

And Ben Witherington, an incredible Evangelical New Testament scholar at Asbury Seminary: “We need to renounce the false gospel of wealth and health — it is a disease of our American culture: it is not a solution or answer to life’s problems.”

The “internet monk” (Michael Spencer) has written:

“He’s being sold to us by people who want to make money off his success, and they are counting on us to be sheep, ‘baaing’ quietly, but going along to the slaughter. Any analysis of Joel Osteen’s theology is going to have a hard time saying he is proclaiming the Christian message. The most popular preacher in Christianity is proclaiming a theology that is neither Christian, nor Jewish, nor Muslim, but is pragmatically pagan. Pagan in the sense of finding ways to gain the favor of god so he will do good things for you. Manipulating the deity to give you blessings. This is the ultimate example of Luther’s ‘theology of glory’ chosen over the ‘theology of the cross.’ I would rather a non-Christian hear John Shelby Spong a hundred times than hear this. Spong denies it all- outright. Osteen is presented as a Christian, but his message isn’t going to bring you to Christ, the Kingdom or heaven. It’s spiritual cyanide disguised as candy. If there is a hell, Osteen’s message won’t stop you or the people you love from going there, because the savior in his messages is YOU and the salvation he offers is a NEW ATTITUDE, and some resulting real estate. The question becomes, will evangelicals do anything? Will they say anything? Will they register their objections to Osteen’s reshaping of the Reformation gospel into a positive thinking message that makes Robert Schuller look like John Calvin in comparison?”

Yesterday I listened to Dan McVey talk about the advancement of Islam in North America. It is the fastest-growing religion in North America. (On a global scale, protestant Christianity is by far the fastest growing religion, however. It outpaces Islam in growth by 3-1, I believe Dan said.) In this culture of ease and consumerism, Islam offers a faith of discipline and serious devotion. Of course, Christianity does too (along with a framework of grace and a God who has come near in Christ) — just not in the versions that have become so popular in “Christian” bookstores.

Touch a Life

Published
by
Mike
on September 7, 2006
in General, justice and missional
. 28 Comments

If you get a chance check out “Touch a Life” ministry, which my brother and sister-in-law, Randy and Pam Cope, started to minister to orphans in Cambodia, Vietnam (where my niece and nephew are from), Nicaragua, and Haiti.

Even in their grief over their son’s death in the summer of ‘99, God has made them compassionate advocates for some of “the least among us.” Here’s how they describe it on the website:

Jantsen was our beautiful fifteen year old son. He was atheletic and loved life — living it to the fullest.

He died suddenly of an undetected heart defect. As a family, we were able to use Jantsen’s Memorial Fund to start Touch A Life Ministries. We strongly felt that Jantsen’s legacy needed to be helping children.

Through a series of events which led us to visit Vietnam and Cambodia, we felt God’s calling on our lives to cry out for the children whose voices are not being heard.

God allowed Touch A Life Ministries to be birthed when we allowed Him to show us the great needs of His children who so desperately need us to be Jesus in their lives. We have a passion to share the news of James 1:27 so that we will have a better understanding of intimacies of God’s heart for His people.

Here are the kinds of beliefs that God our Father accepts as pure and without fault.

When widows and children who have no parents are in trouble,

take care of them.

And keep yourselves from being polluted by the world.

~James 1:27

(Update on 2/9/07.)

- - - -

After a final brain-storming session with the Zoe worship leaders yesterday, I’m really looking forward to this year’s conference called “Closer.” Lauren Winner, author of Girl Meets God and Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity, and Jeff Walling will be speaking at the leadership conference, while Randy Gill and I will speak for the worship conference. I haven’t yet heard the new Zoe CD to accompany the conference. Can’t wait. You can find more info here.

Jim Wallis on the Wider Call of Being Pro-Life

Published
by
Mike
on April 5, 2006
in justice, missional and politics
. 50 Comments

From Jim Wallis at sojo.net:

For more than a decade, a series of environmental initiatives have been coming from an unexpected source - a new generation of young evangelical activists. Mostly under the public radar screen, they were covered in places such as Sojourners and Prism, the magazine of Evangelicals for Social Action. There were new and creative projects such as the Evangelical Environmental Network and Creation Care magazine. In November, 2002, one of these initiatives got some national attention - a campaign called “What Would Jesus Drive?” complete with fact sheets, church resources, and bumper stickers. The campaign was launched with a Detroit press conference and meetings with automotive executives.

Recently, more establishment evangelical groups, especially the National Association of Evangelicals, also began to speak up on the issue of creation care. Leading the way was Rich Cizik, NAE Vice President for Governmental Affairs, who, on issues like environmental concern and global poverty reduction, began to sound like the biblical prophet Amos. Cizik and NAE President Ted Haggard, a megachurch pastor in Colorado Springs, were attending critical seminars on the environment and climate change in particular and describing their experiences of “epiphany” and “conversion” on the issue. Cizik was quoted by The New York Times as saying, “I don’t think God is going to ask us how he created the earth, but he will ask us what we did with what he created.” In 2004, the NAE adopted a new policy statement, “For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility,” which included a principle titled “We labor to protect God’s creation.”

When the same New York Times article, written in March 2005 by Laurie Goodstein, noted that “A core group of influential evangelical leaders has put its considerable political power behind a cause that has barely registered on the evangelical agenda, fighting global warming,” the politics of global warming changed overnight in Washington, D.C. Previously, advocates around climate change and other environmental issues were simply not a part of George Bush’s political base and their concerns were not on Washington’s political agenda. But the NAE constituency is mostly part of the Republican base and the new environmental concern was not unnoticed by the White House - the very day the article came out the White House called the NAE to ask what policies they were most concerned about.

The next year saw NAE participation at many major climate change and environmental meetings - both domestically and internationally - and a series of press stories about the new evangelical environmentalists, including a full page interview with Rich Cizik in The New York Times Magazine.

In January, the Religious Right reared its head. In a letter addressed to the NAE - signed by 22 of the Right’s prominent leaders, including James Dobson, Charles Colson, Richard Land, and Louis Sheldon - they said, “We have appreciated the bold stance that the National Association of Evangelicals has taken on controversial issues like embracing a culture of life, protecting traditional marriage and family.” They then went on to say, “We respectfully request, however, that the NAE not adopt any official position on the issue of global climate change. Global warming is not a consensus issue.” It was a clear effort to prevent the NAE from taking a stand on environmental issues and even to veto the whole effort. Stick to our core issues they implied - meaning abortion and gay marriage. Five years ago, so powerful a group of conservative Christian leaders probably could have tamped down this new evangelical effort that served to broaden the range of moral values and issues of biblical concern. But not this time.

A month later, on Feb. 9, a full page ad appeared in The New York Times with the headline: “Our commitment to Jesus Christ compels us to solve the global warming crisis.” The striking ad announced the Evangelical Climate Initiative, and was signed by 86 prominent evangelical leaders, including the presidents of 39 Christian colleges. I was speaking at one of those schools shortly after the ad came out and talked to their president who was one of the signers. “I’m tired of those old white guys telling us what to think and do,” he said. He is a younger white man who decided to take a stand, even if it was against the old guard of the Religious Right.

The Evangelical Climate Initiative is of enormous importance and could be a tipping point in the climate change debate, according to one secular environmental leader I talked to. But of even wider importance, these events signal a sea change in evangelical Christian politics: The Religious Right is losing control. They have now lost control on the environmental issue - caring for God’s creation is now a mainstream evangelical issue, especially for a new generation of evangelicals. But now so is sex trafficking, the genocide in Darfur, the pandemic of HIV/AIDS and, of course, global and domestic poverty. The call to overcome extreme poverty abroad and at home, in the world’s richest nation, is becoming a new altar call around the world - a principal way Christians are deciding to put their faith into practice.

In places such as the U.K., Christians are rallying around the call to “Make Poverty History.” Many are comparing that call to the cry of British Parliamentarian William Wilberforce and an earlier generation of evangelical revivalists in the 18th and 19th centuries who changed history in England and America by their steadfast commitment to end slavery. For many, poverty is the new slavery. Again, this is especially true for a new generation of Christians. The connection between poverty and all the other key issues - the environment, HIV/AIDS, and violent conflicts around the world are increasingly clear for many people of faith.

The sacredness of life and family values are deeply important to these Christians as well - yet too important to be used as partisan wedge issues that call for single issue voting patterns that ignore other critical biblical matters. The Religious Right has been able to win when they have been able to maintain and control a monologue on the relationship between faith and politics. But when a dialogue begins about the extent of moral values issues and what biblically-faithful Christians should care about, the Religious Right begins to lose. The best news of all for the American church and society is this: The monologue of the Religious Right is over, and a new dialogue has just begun.

Interview With Jerry Taylor

Published
by
Mike
on February 13, 2006
in justice
. 12 Comments

Today I’m interviewing Jerry Taylor, a member of the Bible faculty at ACU and the new associate preaching minister for Highland. How can I say this simply? THE GUY CAN PREACH. In fact, he’s giving a keynote address this year at the North American Christian Convention (the annual gathering of leaders of the Christian Churches).

Jerry, would you tell us a little about the New Wineskins Retreat that you helped start? How did it begin?

The New Wineskins Retreat came into being as a result of an initial meeting of several young African American ministers gathered together to prayerfully discern as clearly as we could God’s direction for leadership in our generation. Most, if not all in attendance, were those who had been marginalized by the power structure of African American churches of Christ because of views we had publicly espoused or because of questions we had raised in honest evaluation and critique of our religious heritage. There were no existing public forums within African American churches of Christ that provided an open environment that welcomed or embraced the thinking and questioning minds in our fellowship. Many of us had gone to graduate schools that trained us in the area of critical thinking. We soon discovered that our national church viewed critical thinking and evaluation of long standing cherished doctrinal beliefs and practices as being heretical and blasphemous. We received the message loud and clear that such attempts to lead people into rethinking, questioning and evaluating their socially inherited religious belief system would be veiwed, exposed and treated as a threat to the core identity of African American churches of Christ. We were often the subject of brotherhood web sites, books, letters, emails, and publications. We were made to feel unwelcomed and unwanted at the national events of African American churches of Christ. More and more we felt like outcasts that had been unofficially withdrawn from and rejected. It was as though the most trained ministers among African American churches of Christ had become a colony of lepers evicted from their own community of faith and relocated to an emotional location of isolation.

What are its purposes?

The purpose of the retreat is to create a safe and welcoming place where ministers and church leaders can come without hidden agendas and find encouragement, spiritual nurture and fellowship. Our intention is to serve as a non-threatening environment wherein persecuted church leaders in our fellowship can experience spiritual formation as well as intellectual stimulation. The New Wineskins Retreat is a City of Refuge for the persecuted who speak prophetically about the legalistic dogmatism that runs rampantly throughout our national fellowship. The retreat serves as a haven of hope for those who feel the only option they have is to totally disconnect from churches of Christ. It serves as one place within the fellowship of African American churches of Christ that people who engage in critical thinking and sound reasoning can feel at home. The retreat started out as predominantly African American men in 2000. Since then we have sought to become more racially and gender inclusive. This year’s retreat at Pepperdine will have all women presenters who will speak for themselves to a majority male audience. We hope that the retreat will serve as a mechanism in the creation of a genuine annual fellowship that will model for the churches of Christ both black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, etc. what the body of Christ should look like. We believe that the retreat is a national event that serves as a good starting point for leaders within churches of Christ to experience at a spiritual and intuitive level a small community given to the practice of authentic racial and gender harmony.

Have you seen any progress in race relations within Churches of Christ?

I have seen a greater degree of mixing and mingling on a superficial or social level. We have made some progress in that we are finding it safe to be in one another’s physical company. The challenge before us is to progress beyond the physical realm of relating. We are now called to progress into the area of spiritual intimacy and soul connection at a spiritual, emotional, and intuitive level with those who are racially different from ourselves. In order to genuinely relate racially we all must be willing to die to the lordship of our race and cultural conditioning. We cannot serve two masters, we cannot serve both God and race/culture. It will not be until we are connected to one another in Christ at the level of soul that we will no longer separate from each other on the barren grounds of race.

I think we have made some progress in that we are now committed to what Peter Senge calls the “espoused theory.” The social and political climate in our nation makes it safe for us to publicly espouse the theory of racial harmony within churches of Christ. Senge makes it clear that the “espoused theory” is very different from the actual “theory in use.” He maintains that it is the actual “theory in use” that governs our interactions with other people, and not the “espoused theory.” It is the split between “espoused theory” and “theory in use” that tempts us towards hypocrisy. We are tempted to preach, teach and sing about a theory of racial harmony and inclusion while simultaneously racially conducting ourselves according to a theory that is totally contrary to the one we espouse.

How can readers assist the goals of New Wineskins?

We meet annually. Many of the participants are working with small ministries that they have started in an attempt to plant healthy congregations. Their small struggling congregations are unable to send them to the retreat. Many of them, including the retreat presenters, have attended the retreat at their own expense. We are forever thankful to the Richland Hills church of Christ for serving as a host congregation last year and for giving a grant of $10,000.00 which paid for the travel and lodging for 50 ministers and church leaders who would have otherwise been unable to attend. We had 75 to 100 people in attendance. This was a tremendous encouragement. We ask readers to pray that we will be blessed with the resources to help others attend this year as well.

Sunday, February 12

Published
by
Mike
on February 12, 2006
in General and justice
. 1 Comment

Please be sure and find Clint’s comment in yesterday’s blog — along with some of the responses from others. He’s an amazing man of God whose life took a sudden turn in a minor, freakish motorcycle accident with major consequences.

- - - -

The “Invisible Children” presentation tonight was convicting. If it comes anywhere near you, please be sure to go. The one-hour documentary was amazing enough, but the ten-minute clip that followed with some of the responses of high school and university students is stunning.

Standardized Tests

Published
by
Mike
on January 20, 2006
in justice, missional and politics
. 30 Comments

The idea behind merit pay scales for teachers is that we want the very best teaching possible for our students. We’ve all known teachers (though, truthfully, I haven’t known many) who were failing their children.

However, when the pay increases are tied to students’ performance on standardized tests, there is a huge problem. It encourages teachers to gravitate toward classrooms with fewer kids who are challenged–challenged socially, culturally, emotionally, and intellectually. In other words, if you can find a classroom full of kids from gated communities, your chances for increased pay skyrocket.

I like what Denver is doing: tying pay scales to teachers’ willingness to teach in classrooms with students who from the poorest families and those who are English-language learners.

Another possibility is to base the performance NOT on standardized tests but on the attainment of goals that have been agreed upon by teachers, parents, and school district representatives.

Having said that, I’m so thankful today for the (mostly) wonderful teachers my three children have had here in Abilene. It was very important to us that our kids go to school with students from other races and other economic situations.

- - - -

From Ben Witherington III, one of my favorite NT scholars:

We are not owners of this world; we are only stewards and caretakers of it, for God’s sake. The Bible does not support either a godless communistic philosophy of property and use of the world’s resources, nor does it support a godless capitalistic vision of the same. The Bible suggests there is neither private nor public property, only God’s property, of which we are all stewards. The whole modern theory of ownership is faulty, for we brought nothing with us into this world, and we will take none of it with us. It also follows from this theology of stewardship that since it belongs to God, we have an obligation to use and dispose of it all in a way that glorifies God and helps humankind. The theory of charity too often has as its essential premise “what’s mine is mine, but I may choose to share it with you.” The problem with this thesis is that the earth is the Lord’s and all that is therein. We have simply been entrusted with a small portion of it to tend and use for the good of God’s dominion while we are here.

“Glory Road”

Published
by
Mike
on January 15, 2006
in justice and movies
. 7 Comments

The weekend before the Martin Luther King holiday was a fitting time to watch “Glory Road.”

It is, of course, a great sports movie. Josh, Chris, and I did all we could not to stand and yell for the guys from El Paso–even though we knew the outcome. Chris said he wanted to scream “he stepped out!” when Jo Jo White’s heel went out of bounds.

There is also the humor that we locals can appreciate when these young men are traveling through West Texas for the first time. One of them wants to borrow a quarter to call his mom so he can tell her he’s the first black man on the moon.

But the hard part is watching the horrible racism the team faced at home and as they traveled. There is a powerful scene where the black players are huddled together in a room trying to figure out whether Dr. King’s way (of nonviolence) is the right way.

I’m sure the vicious racism they received all over the country is accurate. Whether Coach Rupp’s racism (as depicted in the movie) is accurate or not, I just don’t know. I’ve read that in his forty years of coaching, he only recruited one African-American player to play at Kentucky and that was at the very end. But maybe all that means is that he missed an opportunity to be remembered as the guy who helped break the barrier.

It’s a good weekend to read again this essential speech from American history.

Religious (?) Bookstores

Published
by
Mike
on November 8, 2005
in justice, missional and sports
. 40 Comments

There’s a wonderful piece by Tom Smith in Relevantmagazine.com. It begins . . .

I love experiments. A few years ago I wore my Jabez T-shirt in Colorado Springs. It said, “I prayed the prayer of Jabez for thirty days and the only thing I got was this lousy shirt.” The reactions I got were truly amazing. Some people were furious while others thanked me.

A few weeks ago I embarked on another one of my ventures. The laboratory I chose was the local Christian bookstores in Johannesburg, South Africa. The experiment was really simple; I would browse the store in search of books on helping the poor and fighting AIDS. After I saw a million, ‘Here’s how to use Jesus to make you more successful’ titles, I would then ask the sales clerk or manager if they stock books about helping the hurting and helpless.

The first store’s clerk looked confused when I asked the question, and the manager intervened and said, “If you find a book on the subject you should immediately buy it.”

Two days later I took my science to a bookstore in another mall. I walked in with one of my seventeen year old friends, who happened to be someone who was on the receiving end of apartheid. I asked the clerk if they had books on poverty or AIDS. Nothing could have prepared me for the answer she gave me.

“No sir, this is a religious bookstore. I think you should try the secular bookstore around the corner.”

In utter shock I asked her if she didn’t think that helping the poor or sick had anything to do with religion. I only got a blank stare. Now it’s easy to harp on this poor girl but to tell you the truth, if you asked me the same question a few years ago, I probably would have had the same confused look, and I’m a pastor! I often wonder why I never made the link between my relationship with Christ and my responsibility towards people who suffer and are poor.

To read more, you can find the full article here.

- - - -

“The one principle of Hell is — ‘I am my own.’” - George MacDonald

- - - -

Yes, that’s right. I said it in this morning’s post: Joe Montana is the greatest QB ever to play the game. A few years from now, I expect that to be edited to Peyton Manning (who stars in some of my favorite commercials on TV).

Health Care and Social Justice

Published
by
Mike
on November 6, 2005
in justice and missional
. 41 Comments

I appreciate Larry James’s words about a conference Matt helped organize in his blog today. I can’t imagine anyone better than Larry to encourage and challenge that crowd.

Movement and Hope

“Breaking Barriers to Health Care: Working for Social Justice” was the theme for the 2005 American Medical Students Association Regional Conference in Houston at the Baylor College of Medicine over this weekend.

Matt Cope, son of my good friend Mike Cope, is President of the local chapter in Houston and led the organizing efforts for this gathering of some 300 medical and pre-medical students from across the South. Thanks to Matt, I had the privilege of speaking to the group twice on Saturday, once in a plenary session and once in a smaller breakout group.

Talk about bright people!

I always enjoy the opportunity to speak to the group here in Dallas at UT Southwestern Medical Center where I observe the same level of smart coupled with amazing heart for those left behind.

It is very clear that these students are on a mission. Simply put, they intend to change the world! Gives an old man hope, I tell ya!

On Friday evening among the first events of the conference was a rally for universal health care for the nation. Later on Saturday, the students planned a mass “call in” to contact their congressional representatives about the Global AIDS Fund and the role of the United States in fighting HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria around the world. These young people are serious.

What I observed while among them was nothing short of the beginnings of a movement toward a more just society. These students believe we can do better as a nation and as a people. I have no doubt they will help us get there.

A new moment has arrived. Hope lives!

Thanks for the invitation, Matt. I needed to be with you.