Category Archives: Living

Live chat the Obama-Romney town hall debate, October 16, 2012

Welcome to the Kingdom in the Midst chat room for tonight’s town hall-style debate at Hofstra University between president Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney.

In true two-party dominance and pansy Presidential Debate Commission style, no third party candidates will be allowed. This ensures most actual ideas will remain sidelined. Despite this sad occurrence the Democratic and Republican contenders will have an audience of about 80 undecided voters selected by the Gallup Organization. CNN’s “Complaining Candy Crowley” will select from among questions on foreign and domestic policy submitted by the audience, and most likely try to insinuate herself into the debate as well. As she is on the record for hating Mr. Romney, it is unlikely she will issue any substantive challenges to the president.

The debate will begin at around 9:00pm Eastern Time (8:00CT) and last until around 10:30ET. For a refreshing change, watch the debate on C-Span which seems to be much less shrill than Fox and MSNBC.

RULES
1. Be clear.
2. Stay on topic. Romney/Ryan and Obama/Biden, their policies and performances are inbounds. Their families are not.
3. Try to be concise. If you try to write a novel the comment to which you are responding will be gone.
4. When appropriate use the name of the person to whom you are responding. For instance, “Terminator1: I think you are misinformed.”
5. NO SWEARING. If you cannot express yourself without stooping to gutter language go back to the SPIKE movie you were watching.
6. Please share the post via social sharing buttons at the top. The more the merrier.
7. Have fun!

You can login below under a username and your Facebook or Twitter accounts. The latter two will use your avatar; comments will not post to your timeline or Twitter feed.

The chat is now closed.

Eight sure ways to keep your kids from serving God

Years ago I heard a preacher say this:

When I was a young pastor–before I was married with children–I used to preach a series called, “Ten Sure Fire Ways to Get Your Kids to Live for God.” Now that I’m older and have kids of my own I changed it to, “Here’s a Few Things You Might Want to Try When Raising Your Kids. They Might Work and They Might Not.”

I can appreciate the sentiment.

After quite a number of years pastoring a few different churches I think that approach, though humorous, sees the issue from the wrong direction. Perhaps a question we could ask is, “What can I do to ensure my kids will have little interest in following God?” Though the question sounds backwards and unproductive, it will lead us to a number of truths.

If you want to make sure your kids do not follow Christ, I recommend the following:

1. Never even attempt to apply what the pastor teaches week after week. Your kids will readily pick up that it is not that important. They will eventually wonder why you bother to go, and, when old enough, will not go themselves.

2. Pick apart the pastor’s sermon every week. Your kids will soon figure out that you are not expecting God to speak to you. They’ll soon conclude that the message probably does not apply to them either.

3. Fight and argue all morning, and in the vehicle all the way to the service. But, when you get to the service be all smiles and laughter. Act as if the morning fighting never happened. Repeat this ritual every week.

4. Pay more attention to what people in attendance are wearing, how they look, how they smell, etc, than to the message, music and mission. Doing this will train your kids to be distracted from God’s activity by focusing on trivial matters.

5. Be more concerned with making good citizens of your kids, but not so much with making disciples of them. Teach them to be good, to mind their manners, make good grades, etc, but never about walking with God.

6. Make Sunday is the only important day in the religious ritual. Never pray before meals, never pray together as a family, never pray with your kids about issues they face: tests, romances, jobs, life decisions. Let them learn to handle things just like their unbelieving friends.

7. Talk about God’s power, but worry about everything as if He has none. Make sure to express uncertainty about the future as if God has turned His back on you.

8. Never participate in the mission of God apart from church attendance, and hinder your kids from the same. Complain about the cost of mission trips, ministry events, or the difficulty of getting them to service opportunities.

If you do these things you will doing more than enough to assist the evil one in his efforts to destroy the spiritual lives of your children and keep them from serving God.

Live Chat the Biden-Ryan Vice-presidential debate (VP debate)

Welcome to the Kingdom in the Midst Live Chat for the Joe Biden-Paul Ryan vice-presidential debate. Vice President Biden and the man on the Republican ticket, Paul Ryan, will be debating the issues in a 90-minute session at Centre College in Danville, Ky. The event begins at 9:00ET.

Below you can login with either your Facebook or Twitter accounts, or simply choose a “Guest” username and login to participate.

joe biden paul ryan debate

Vice-president Joe Biden (l) and Vp candidate Paul Ryan [Image credit]


RULES
1. Be clear.
2. Stay on topic. Romney/Ryan and Obama/Biden, their policies and performances are inbounds. Their families are not.
3. Try to be concise. If you try to write a novel the comment to which you are responding will be gone.
4. When appropriate use the name of the person to whom you are responding. For instance, “Terminator1: I think you are misinformed.”
5. NO SWEARING. If you cannot express yourself without stooping to gutter language go back to the SPIKE movie you were watching.
6. Please share the post via social sharing buttons at the top. The more the merrier.
7. Have fun!

Chat is closed.

Who are America’s poor?

An October 7, 2012 cover story in the Christian Science Monitor explores the issue of America’s poor. The provocative article is entitled “Below the line: Poverty in America.”

Correspondent Jina Moore explores via narrative, history and facts what it means to be poor in America. Or at least what some people claim about poverty, and a few who reject the term. She writes:

[Who is poor] turns out to be a very difficult question to answer. How you answer may depend as much on who you are – liberal or conservative, city-dweller or rural homesteader, low-wage laborer or salaried middle class – as on any single set of criteria. Even the government isn’t sure how to think about the question: In some states, making $1,000 a month might qualify you for food stamps but could be too much income to qualify for Medicaid.

A presidential election year only makes the issue of the haves and have-nots more divisive. President Obama took heat for admonishing entrepreneurs that their businesses relied on tax-supported infrastructure and that “You didn’t build that.” Republican candidate Mitt Romney has been caught up in controversy over his statements at a fundraiser that nearly half of Americans don’t pay income tax and “feel entitled” to government “handouts.”

Americans know poverty exists and may agree on its broadest outlines, but when it gets down to the specifics, they often can’t agree on exactly who “the poor” are.

Among the stories she tells is one of Linda, who

steals her fruit.

No one at King’s Daughters Day Care, where she works, would begrudge her an orange or an apple, of course. This isn’t that kind of workplace. When she grabs a piece of whatever the kids are having that day, she’s welcome to it. But the simple staple is also something she can’t buy on her own.

“I can’t afford fresh fruit or low-fat meat. I can’t get cauliflower or green peppers,” she says. When she does buy food, “I buy things that stretch longer.” She opts for whole roasted chickens that she spins into four or five meals. She can stretch a tomato, grown in her home garden, across an afternoon salad and an evening BLT sandwich. Until the first frosts come, and the plants die, that is. Then she waits until summer to eat tomatoes again.

Ms. Criswell’s stoic self-sufficiency isn’t always enough to get her through. “I’ve eaten food that’s seven, 10 days old.” She gestures toward a reporter’s notebook. “You can [write] that down.”

Criswell works full time, with no benefits, and she hasn’t had a raise in three years. After taxes, she brings home $1,030 a month – enough, if she’s careful, to meet her expenses, with little wiggle room. “What I feel,” she says, “is anxiety. I felt it just this morning. It’s constantly in the back of my mind: ‘Am I going to have enough to pay the bills?'”

The “poor” in America are not stereotypical no matter what stereo one might wish to type. The inhabitants of poverty are as deep and wide as the stories that comprise the government’s numbers.

An enormous number of those in poverty work. Many of them work full time. Many others want to work, but cannot find the jobs. And, new estimates tell us, the high paying jobs are not coming back any time soon. This means, to paraphrase one Jesus Christ, “The poor will be with us always.”

Moore’s article continues:

Peter Edelman, a former Clinton administration official and now director of the Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., agrees: “There are literally millions of people … out there working … not getting out of poverty.”

He says the numbers show that there are “people who are in low-wage jobs and get some income supplement. Nobody wants to really admit that’s going on.”

In fact, most of the new jobs seen since the economic crisis – and most of what will come in the next decade – are low-wage, according to the National Employment Law Project. More than 40 percent of the jobs added to the economy between 2008 and 2010 – the first two years of the recession – were low-wage jobs, the project reported in August. Six of the 10 jobs projected to see the most growth by 2020 are also low-wage jobs.

Most people outside of Washington, DC, realize the current “recovery” is itself on life support. We are currently financing not only our own faux-recovery, but helping float the world’s economy. Likely this attempt will continue suppressing our own economy.

John Shmitt and Janelle Jones of the Economic Policy and Research Center found in their September 2012 paper, “Bad Jobs on the Rise,”

[W]e define a bad job as one that pays less than $37,000 per year (in inflation-adjusted 2010 dollars); lacks employer-provided health insurance; and has no employer-sponsored retirement plan. By our calculations, about 24 percent of U.S. workers were in a bad job in 2010 (the most recently available data). The share of bad jobs in the economy is substantially higher than it was in 1979, when 18 percent of workers were in a bad job by the same definition.

In other words, if you are a single-income family of four with $37,000 per year salary, paid health insurance and some kind of 401(k) or other retirement, you are considered by Shmitt and Jones to have a good job.

Personally when I think of that scenario, I think of “working poor.”

Remember Linda? Jina Moore asks whether she is poor:

The government says no, because she makes “too much” money [$12,000/yr/net]. Yet if she needs to go to the mall or the grocery store, she hitches rides with her 35-year-old daughter, to save gas. When her brother gives her a gift card to Big Lots, a discount store, for her birthday, she buys towels and toilet paper.

While other Americans watch the stock market, she watches the grain prices. Grain feeds livestock, and Criswell stretches meat across multiple meals. She’s worried. “Grain is going up,” she says. “I don’t know how much longer I will be able to afford my roast chicken.”

Georgia restaurant owner Charles Sheehan-Miles has witnessed the same thing. On his blog in May 2012 he relates these observations:

Imagine a typical waitress. She works 35-40 hours per week. If she’s lucky, here in Georgia, here hourly wages will be between 2.50 and 3.50 per hour. Yes, you read that correctly. So, after, a weekly paycheck at the very best might be $80 or so dollars. Figure in another $200 in tips, which is pretty typical for a casual restaurant. That works out to about 280 per week.

Imagine a cook, a job which generally pays minimum wage or slightly higher. Maybe 8 buck per hour for a really experienced cook, or even 9 in some cases. Again, for a 40-hour work week, after taxes you’re looking at less than $250 per week.

Imagine supporting a family on that kind of money.

These are folks who are on their feet 8 hours a day, running back and forth, delivering food, taking orders, scrubbing and cleaning, and sometimes putting up with the worst indignities from customers who think it’s funny to be nasty to waitresses, who think it is generous to leave a 50 cent tip after typing up a table for two hours. And yes, some of them are young, and it is their first job. Some of them are there because they didn’t finish college, or they made some choice earlier in life that led to this kind of work. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that they work harder than anyone sitting in an office, any day of the week. That doesn’t take away from their humanity. And personally, I’m sick of seeing the working poor portrayed by politicians and pundits as the dregs of our society. Because they are more honest and hard-working that most anyone else I know.

What is really and truly galling, aside from so many being in the same boat as these, is the calloused indifference–or blind ignorance–of those who think the Linda Criswells of America should not even be able to vote simply because they make too little to pay federal income tax.

‘Religiously unaffiliated’ on the rise says Pew Research

The number of Americans who do not identify with any particular religion continues to increase rapidly according to newly released data from Pew Research. One-fifth of the U.S. public–and about a third of adults under 30–are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling.

In the last five years the unaffiliated have increased from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. Among them are more than 13 million self-described atheists and agnostics (nearly 6% of the U.S. public), as well as nearly 33 million people who claim to have no particular religious affiliation. That number represents 14% of the population.

What makes this even more troubling for followers or Christ is that 88% of the “nones” are not looking for any kind of religious system.
religious preference from pew research“Overwhelmingly, they think that religious organizations are too concerned with money and power, too focused on rules and too involved in politics,” says Pew.

The report continues:

While the ranks of the unaffiliated have grown significantly over the past five years, the Protestant share of the population has shrunk. In 2007, 53% of adults in Pew Research Center surveys described themselves as Protestants. In surveys conducted in the first half of 2012, fewer than half of American adults say they are Protestant (48%). This marks the first time in Pew Research Center surveys that the Protestant share of the population has dipped significantly below 50%.

The decline is concentrated among white Protestants, both evangelical and mainline. Currently, 19% of U.S. adults identify themselves as white, born-again or evangelical Protestants, down slightly from 21% in 2007. And 15% of adults describe themselves as white Protestants but say they are not born-again or evangelical Christians, down from 18% in 2007. There has been no change in minority Protestants’ share of the population over the past five years.

religious affiliation trend chart

Thinking about the religiously unaffiliated people you know, what are their reasons for not seeking God? Or, is it God they seek outside of a religious connection?

Failed prophecies from ‘Focus’

In October of 2008 the Focus on the Family organization published the “Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America.” As you might imagine it was not friendly to the then-candidate for the presidency.

Sixteen pages long with 34 separate prediction points Focus laid out in deep, horrifying detail how the U.S would look in 2012. How did they do?

Look at it this way: the oft cited Old Testament standard for prophetic accuracy was 100%. A single errant prophecy would sound the end-of-life bell for the so-called prophet. If we were still under the Mosaic law it would be time to load up the rocks and descend on Colorado Springs.

A few of the predictions are still up in the air. One of them was half-right. Still others could possibly happen. One or two of Focus’ guesses would likely have happened no matter who was elected. Most, however, were just plain, old-fashioned fear mongering. They are so wrong as to be laughable in retrospect. These have been edited for length, but the original can be read at WND.com.

1. The Boy Scouts no longer exist as an organization. They chose to disband rather than be forced to obey the Supreme Court decision that they would have to hire homosexual scoutmasters and allow them to sleep in tents with young boys.

2. Elementary schools now include compulsory training in varieties of gender identity in Grade 1, including the goodness of homosexuality as one possible personal choice. Many parents tried to “opt out” their children from such sessions, but the courts have ruled they cannot do this, noting that education experts in the government have decided that such training is essential to children’s psychological health.

Many Christian teachers objected to teaching first-graders that homosexual behavior was morally neutral and equal to heterosexuality. They said it violated their consciences to have to teach something the Bible viewed as morally wrong. But state after state ruled that their refusal to teach positively about homosexuality was the equivalent of hate speech, and they had to teach it or be fired. Tens of thousands of Christian teachers either quit or were fired, and there are hardly any evangelical teachers in public schools any more.

focus on the family headquarters

Focus on the Family headquarters [Image credit]


3. There are no more Roman Catholic or evangelical Protestant adoption agencies in the United States. Following earlier rulings in New York and Massachusetts, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 ruled that these agencies had to agree to place children with homosexual couples or lose their licenses.

4. All businesses that have government contracts at the national, state or local level now have to provide documentation of equal benefits for same-sex couples.

5. The Bible can no longer be freely preached over radio or television stations when the subject matter includes such “offensive” doctrines as criticizing homosexual behavior. The Supreme Court agreed that these could be kept off the air as prohibited “hate speech” that is likely to incite violence and discrimination.

6. Physicians who refuse to provide artificial insemination for lesbian couples now face significant fines or loss of their license to practice medicine

7. All other professionals who are licensed by individual states are also prohibited from discriminating against homosexuals. Social workers and counselors, even counselors in church staff positions, who refuse to provide “professional, appropriately nurturing marriage counseling” for homosexual couples lose their counseling licenses. Thousands of Christians have left these professions as a result.

8. Church buildings are now considered a “public accommodation” by the Supreme Court, and churches have no freedom to refuse to allow their buildings to be used for wedding ceremonies for homosexual couples. If they refuse, they lose their tax-exempt status, and they are increasingly becoming subject to fines and antidiscrimination lawsuits.

9. While churches are still free to turn down homosexual applicants for the job of senior pastor, churches and parachurch organizations are no longer free to reject homosexual applicants for staff positions such as parttime youth pastor or director of counseling.

10. In the first week after his inauguration, President Obama invited homosexual rights leaders from around the United States to join him at the White House as he signed an executive order directing all branches of the military to abandon their “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and to start actively recruiting homosexuals. [Partially true, but….] As a result, homosexuals are now given special bonuses for enlisting in military service (to attempt to compensate for past discrimination) [Sorry, no sexual orientation signing bonuses.]

11. High schools are no longer free to allow “See You at the Pole” meetings where students pray together, or any student Bible studies even before or after school.

12. Tens of thousands of young churches suddenly had no place to meet when the Supreme Court ruled that public schools in all 50 states had to stop allowing churches to rent their facilities — even on Sundays, when school was not in session.

13. Campus organizations such as Campus Crusade for Christ, InterVarsity, Navigators, Baptist Campus Ministry, and Reformed University Fellowship have shrunk to skeleton organizations, and in many states they have ceased to exist.

14. Public school teachers are no longer free to lead students in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States.

15. [F]ederal law immediately nullified hundreds of state laws that had created even the slightest barrier to abortion. States can no longer require parental involvement for minors who wish to have an abortion, waiting period, informed consent rules, restrictions on tax-payer funding or restrictions on late-term abortions. The act reversed the Hyde Amendment, so the government now funds Medicaid abortions for any reason. As a result, the number of abortions has increased dramatically.

16. Nurses are no longer free to refuse to participate in abortions for reasons of conscience.

17. Doctors who refuse to perform abortions can no longer be licensed to deliver babies at hospitals in any state. As a result, many Christian doctors have left family medicine and obstetrics, and many have retired.

18. It’s almost impossible to keep children from seeing pornography. The Supreme Court in 2011 nullified all Federal Communications Commission restrictions on obscene speech or visual content in radio and television broadcasts. As a result, television programs at all hours of the day contain explicit portrayals of sexual acts.

19. It is illegal for private citizens to own guns for selfdefense in eight states, and the number is growing with increasing Democratic control of state legislatures and governorships. This was the result of a 6-3 Supreme Court decision in which the court reversed its 5-4 decision that had upheld private gun ownership.

20. Parents’ freedom to teach their children at home has been severely restricted…the Supreme Court declared that home schooling was a violation of state educational requirements except in cases where the parents (a) had an education certificate from an accredited state program., (b) agreed to use state-approved textbooks in all courses, and (c) agreed not to teach their children that homosexual conduct is wrong, or that Jesus is the only way to God, since these ideas have been found to hinder students’ social adjustment and acceptance of other lifestyles and beliefs, and to run counter to the state’s interest in educating its children to be good citizens.

21. President Obama fulfilled his campaign promise and began regular withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, completing it in the promised 16 months, by April 2010. All was peaceful during those months, but then in May 2010, Al-Qaida operatives from Syria and Iran poured into Iraq and completely overwhelmed the Iraqi security forces. A Taliban-like oppression has taken over in Iraq, and hundreds of thousands of “American sympathizers” have been labeled as traitors, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. The number put to death may soon reach the millions.

22. President Obama directed U.S. intelligence services to cease all wiretapping of alleged terrorist phone calls unless they first obtained a warrant for each case.

23. In early 2009, [Russia] followed the pattern they had begun in Georgia in 2008 and sent troops to occupy and re-take several Eastern European countries, starting with the Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

24. President Obama has also moved to deepen U.S. ties and U.S. trade with communist regimes in Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia, regimes that had long enjoyed the favor of far-Left factions in the Democratic Party. Several other Latin American countries seem ready to succumb to insurgent communist revolutionary factions funded and armed by millions of petrodollars from Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

25. In mid-2010, Iran launched a nuclear bomb that exploded in the middle of Tel Aviv, destroying much of that city. They then demanded that Israel cede huge amounts of territory to the Palestinians, and after an anguished all-night Cabinet meeting, Israel’s prime minister agreed. Israel is reduced to a much smaller country, hardly able to defend itself, and its future remains uncertain.

26. The new Congress under President Obama passed a nationalized “single provider” health care system, in which the U.S. government is the provider of all health care in the United States, following the pattern of nationalized medicine in the United Kingdom and Canada. The great benefit is that medical care is now free for everyone — if you can get it. Now that health care is free, it seems everybody wants more of it. The waiting list for prostate cancer surgery is 3 years. The waiting list for ovarian cancer is 2 years.

27. Because medical resources must be rationed carefully by the government, people older than 80 have essentially no access to hospitals or surgical procedures. Their “duty” is increasingly thought to be to go home to die, so they don’t drain scarce resources from the medical system. Euthanasia is becoming more and more common.

28. Tax rates have gone up on personal income, dividends, capital gains, corporations, and inheritance transfers. The amount of income subject to Social Security tax has nearly doubled. The effect on the economy has been devastating. We have experienced a prolonged recession. Everyone has been hurt by this, but the poor have been hurt most. In dozens of cities, there are no jobs to be found. [Do these folks know nothing at all of wider economic issues?]

29. The federal budget deficit has increased dramatically under President Obama, in spite of higher tax rates.

30. In 2009, Congress passed and President Obama quickly signed a “card check” program that nullified the requirement for secret ballots when voting on whether workers wanted a union shop.

31. World demand for oil continues to climb, and prices keep going up, but President Obama for four years has refused to allow additional drilling for oil in the United States or offshore. Gas costs more than $7 per gallon.

32. The FCC quickly implemented the “Fairness Doctrine,” which requires that radio stations provide “equal time” for alternative views on political or policy issues.

As a result, all radio stations have to provide equal time to contrasting views for every political or policy-related program they broadcast by talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Dennis Prager, Janet Parshall, Michael Medved and Hugh Hewitt, and broadcasters like Dr. James Dobson. Every conservative talk show is followed by an instant rebuttal to the program by a liberal “watchdog” group. Many listeners gave up in frustration, advertising (and donation) revenues dropped dramatically, and nearly all conservative stations have gone out of business or switched to alternative formats such as country or gospel or other music. Conservative talk radio, for all intents and purposes, was shut down by the end of 2010. [*COUGH *COUGH]

33. After the Supreme Court legalized same “sex marriage,” homosexual-activist groups targeted three large Christian book publishers that had publications arguing that homosexual conduct was wrong based on the teachings of the Bible…As a result, several Christian publishers have gone out of business.

34. In his first week in office, Obama followed President Clinton’s precedent and fired all 93 U.S. attorneys, replacing them with his own appointments, including the most active members of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). President Obama argued this was not a selective political action like what President Bush had done, because Obama had fired all of them, conservatives and liberals alike. The Justice Department soon began to file criminal and civil charges against nearly every Bush administration official who had any involvement with the Iraq war. During his campaign, Senator Obama said, “What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that’s already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued.” In order to facilitate these proceedings, President Obama rescinded President Bush’s executive order that had prevented presidential papers from being released, and millions of pages of previously secret White House papers were posted on the Internet. ACLU attorneys have spent four years poring over these papers looking for possible violations of law. Dozens of Bush officials, from the Cabinet level on down, are in jail, and most of them are also bankrupt from legal costs. [What have these people been smoking??]

The issue at hand–besides the fact that they really, really need to avoid the prophecy business–is why this letter was published in October 2008. There was one and only one reason: to scare evangelical voters into voting for the Republican candidate, John McCain. (Okay, maybe also to raise money but let’s stick with the most obvious one for now…)

Of all voters Christians should be the least ones motivated by fear for any reason. We are encouraged, commanded, cajoled, challenged (pick your verb) to have not fear, fear not, to let the peace of God rule in our hearts. We are promised a peace that passes understanding. Why, then, when election time rolls around do Christ’s followers allow the fear of what might happen control how they vote? It has, it does, and it is again during this election cycle.

Regardless the candidate for whom you vote, if fear dictates it you are not approaching the election how God would have it. He is sovereign. He is in control. There is no reason to fear, so do not vote like there is.

[HT: Libby Anne]

Learning from Turkish Muslims

My friend Joel Rainey recently returned from a trip to Turkey. Joel has been a pastor and church planter, is an author, blogger, husband and father. He currently is the Director of Missions for the Mid Maryland Baptist Association.

This week he blogged about his trip to the nation of Turkey; a trip he took with several pastors from his area. It is an illuminating story with truths that benefitted me, and I hope will benefit you, too. He has given me to publish, “What Turkish Muslims Taught Me About our Changing World” in its entirety. The original post is at his blog, themelios.

My job sometimes requires pretty extensive travel, and through my service to our churches, I’ve had the opportunity to, literally, see the world. But I’ve just returned from a trip that I think has had a greater impact on me than any other trip I’ve taken.

Turkey trip

Joel Rainey (back left) and team in Turkey

From September 21-30, six area pastors and myself traveled throughout the Republic of Turkey with members of the Muslim community. This journey actually started more than a year ago with a call from one of our state legislators who is a member of one of our churches. The Governor of Maryland had included her in a trip to Turkey as part of an eventual “sister-state” agreement that was signed between my state and a province in that country, but once the leader of the Turkish organization discovered that this representative was an evangelical Christian, he expressed hesitation, because, as he put it, “I always thought evangelical Christians hated Muslims.”

Seeking to put this false rumor to rest, I reached out to the members of this community, and got a warm embrace in response that has lasted more than a year. I’ve been in the company of people from nearly every tribe and tongue, but when it comes to hospitality, no one does it better than the Turkish people! They are some of the finest and most gracious people I’ve ever met! Eventually, this new relationship resulted in their invitation for us to join them in their home country last week.

Let me say that again. Muslims openly invited more than a half dozen Baptist preachers to the middle east, and even covered a significant portion of the cost of the trip!

During our time abroad with our new friends, I have never experienced such hospitality! We toured sites together that were important to both Christians and Muslims. We visited schools, newspapers, and hospitals built by this group in the hopes of improving the lives of others in their home country. We visited the homes of influential Turkish business leaders and learned of their own involvement in trying to improve conditions, not only in Turkey, but throughout the middle east. One young pharmacist we met near the border with Syria told me “I want to take what we have done in this city, and spread that peace across the border and throughout this part of the world. I want my city to be the starting gate for peace.” I love that guy’s heart!

It is unfortunate that nearly everything about this part of the world that is broadcast on American news media focuses on extremist elements. To be sure, those elements are very present (as was demonstrated after our departure with the Syrian violence crossing the border into Turkey), but the so-called “Muslim world” is full of good people who are trying to make a positive difference, and its working!

All of this probably sounds very strange coming from the mouth of an evangelical Christian, and to be sure, my convictions have not changed. I still believe the Bible is the Word of God. I still believe Jesus is God, that He was crucified as a substitute for sinners, that he rose bodily from the dead, and that nothing short of repentance and total faith in His death and resurrection will save. But these convictions don’t hold me back from the relationship I now have with my Muslim friends. On the contrary, they propel me more deeply into relationship with these precious people!

This experience is but one example of how the way we engage the world as followers of Jesus needs to change, and I’ve addressed that issue in more depth here. But as we explore further ways to walk together with the Muslim community here, I’m taking several things away from our recent trip that will continue to inform our ongoing relationship.

1. The sincerety of their faith is motivating them to change the world, starting with the region where they live. Our Turkish-American guide for this trip told me that years ago he asked the question, “why is it that when it comes to science and technology, education, and health care, that the Muslim world seems to lag behind everyone else?” According to his own testimony, he found mentors within his own faith who believed that Islam should actively engage all these areas, and contribute to the global community. In short, he and others like him who live in Turkey have found meaning and purpose that they believe is anchored in their faith.

2. The Movement we witnessed in Turkey is cross-generational. While many young people are “out in front” seeming to make positive waves, older generations are seeing their passion and responding with financial support and other things necessary to accomplish their goals. Inspired by Imams of centuries past who encouraged Muslims to invite “outsiders” in, they have taken one step further and are taking the initiative to introduce themselves to the non-Muslim world. They are disheartened by the way the media have focused almost exclusively on the radical elements of their faith, are weary of being automatically identified with those radical elements, and are eager to share the good that is happening throughout the middle east and among Muslims worldwide which is so under-reported. It was not uncommon for us to visit a home where three or four generations of Turkish Muslims spoke of their commitment to these goals.

3. They speak boldly and loudly to the violent elements in their faith, and so should we! Though the media pay them little attention (honest appraisal of the positive elements of a movement or religion rarely sells a lot of newspapers or increases viewer ratings), they are quick to condemn violence committed in the name of Islam. We had barely landed when our guests openly and forcefully condemned the recent attack on our embassy in Libya in response to the “Innocence of Muslims” film made in the U.S., and apologized to us for the way their faith was represented in that violence. (We responded by condemning the film itself. The language and sexual content alone should make that film as offensive to Christians as it is to Muslims. We also acknowledged that idiots are entitled to their 1st amendment rights also!)

Call it propaganda if you want, but the truth is that Muslim critics of violence abound, we just don’t listen for their voices. (Harris Zafar is but one example in our own country.) Instead, we tend to suppress our awareness of the violent tendencies present in ourselves. Sure, we Christians don’t have anyone flying airplanes into skyscrapers. But when was the last time you heard a Christian openly condemning a violent attack on an abortion clinic, or the bullying of a homosexual? Our new Muslim friends agree with us that ALL people are created in God’s image and likeness, and when violence is done to any of them, the reason doesn’t matter. Such violence should be condemned.

4. This new relationship is a new platform for the very kind of “public square” evangelism in which Paul participated. You could spend years as a “traditional” missionary in a Muslim country and never achieve the level of access we achieved in a single week! From the beginning, we have been up front with our Muslim friends regarding what we believe, and told them our greatest desire is for them to come to know Jesus as we know Him. But we have also stressed that our continued friendship is not contingent on whether they become Christian. After all, “forced conversion,” is not conversion. It is conquest, and both Christians and Muslims have already given each other too much of that in our history together.

At the same time, I can’t help but think that if Paul were alive today, this is precisely the platform he would leverage in order to spread the Gospel. On several occasions, our group had this opportunity, and we seized it with the blessing of our hosts, most of whom were and are curious about Jesus. In general, Muslims have great respect for Jesus. They just don’t know much about him, and recognize that Christians spend much more time focusing on Him. So when they encounter Christians, they are often anxious to hear a story about him. Though most seminary textbooks on the subject claim that Muslims reject the doctrine of penal substitution, the truth is that many Muslims have never even been offered the opportunity to consider the concept. In one of my conversations this past week, one man asked “tell me again what you mean by ‘Jesus paid the price.’ I’ve never heard that before!”

5. In our current North American context, walking in close relationship with Muslims is the epitome of being “counter-cultural.” Let’s face it. Most Americans, even Christians, are afraid of Muslims. We are conditioned by our media, and even most of our political leadership to keep our distance. So what could possibly be more counter-cultural than our willingness to to walk together with these precious people, and do it publicly?

6. If the Gospel is truly “the power of God unto salvation,” then what on earth are we afraid of? I still believe Romans 1:16-17 is true. And because I believe this, I want to walk closely with those who have yet to accept its claim. Our new friends are anxious to talk about faith, and there is much that we hold in common! But in the midst of discussing those commonalities, I have, and will continue to challenge them concerning the basis for forgiveness, and a sure hope of eternal life. And I’ll do it because they are my friends.

Our group learned much while traveling with our friends, and we look forward to learning more, to engaging them in matters of common interest, and to consistently present the Gospel of Jesus to them at every opportunity. God is at work in places we too quickly brush off as “lost.” I saw it for myself, and I look forward to experiencing all that He has in store in the future for us, and for our new friends.

I will just add that Joel’s strategy for meeting and learning from members of the Islamic religion is also needed for any area where you and I differ from others. We cannot claim to “know” about Islam if we do not know any Muslims. We cannot claim to know the needs of the homeless unless we talk to them and ask. Those in the racial majority cannot claim to know how racial minorities are affected by government policy unless those in the majority are friends with minorities. Wisdom requires nothing less of us.

Your guide for tonight’s debate

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Tonight the major networks will host a debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. (Third party candidates have been asked to stay home. Upsetting the accepted narrative is frowned upon by the Presidential Debate Commission.)

Of these few things you can be sure:
1. Both men will say something good.
2. Both men will make gaffes.
3. Even if Barack Obama falls off the stage, drops an F-bomb, and lights up a Marlboro while talking about healthcare, Democrats will proclaim him the winner within a nanosecond of the host’s “Goodnight and thanks for watching.”
4. Even if Mitt Romney breaks out a roll of thousand dollar bills as thick as Andre the Giant’s fist, introduces his two other wives to America, and calls for dispersing the Social Security Trust Fund among the Forbes 400, Republicans will shout down the Democrats in proclaiming a win.
5. Both men will be unswervingly bold in their promises and incomprehensibly vague in their substance.
6. Mitt Romney will say Obama has gotten almost nothing right.
7. Barack Obama will say Romney would get almost nothing right.
8. Obama will say “47%” enough times for an entire frat house to be drunk from beer pong.
9. Romney will mention “unemployment” enough times for Joe Biden to realize his four year burden comment was actually a slam on his boss.
10. No Democrats will change their minds.
11. No Republicans will change their minds.
12. Anyone who decides to vote based on a debate should probably have their voter registration card revoked.

Good night, and good luck.