As I was writing that earlier post on Apple's new MacBook, drooling over a product I want but absolutely do not need, I got a timely dose of reality. My Twitterific updated itself and showed me a long series of tweets from the folks at Blog Action Day, who were announcing progress on this today's annual blogfest for social justice. (Twitter--yet another tool for holy conviction.)
The topic of this year's Blog Action Day is poverty. Bloggers, podcasters, and videocasters around the world--11,000 strong and counting--are approaching the subject in myriad ways, and the B.A.D. site
offers 88 ways (some ways more well advised than others) to be the change for poverty's sake.
I never knew poverty as a child, but only because of the care of local churches that surrounded my family in each place we lived. For reasons I won't go into here, we moved constantly until I was 13, and could barely afford any of the places we lived--and some years, only had a place to live because of the kindness of friends or strangers. I remember bags of groceries showing up at our door, timely envelopes with cash delivered just as the pantry went dry. I don't think I ever missed a meal, because the people around us took seriously
the biblical injunction to care for those in need.
Poverty is an issue that is so astoundingly complex in causes and solutions, and so broad and unknowable in terms of scope, that those of us who haven't devoted our lives to the cause usually think and act very little for poverty's sake. But for Christians, thinking about poverty, praying for the poor, and reshaping our lives for service to the poor should
be basic, elemental, natural parts of our witness.
Tom Davis, the president of the orphan care organization Children's Hope Chest, recently wrote
a quick list of ways to care for the needy (accompanied by a gauntlet-throwing essay,
"Why Christians Suck," about how so few of us do these things). As Tom admonishes us to remember, actions on behalf of the poor shouldn't be something we have to rally ourselves to perform; they should be the very reflexes of our faith.
One of the most unshakeable reading experiences I've had in the last year is Don Lattin's
Jesus Freak: A True Story of Murder and Madness on the Evangelical Edge. Taking a cue from Jon Krakauer's
Under the Banner of Heaven, Lattin uses the story of a freakish murder-suicide as the occasion to research the nature of cultish religious belief. Lattin's sect is a little less known than Krakauer' fundamentalist Mormons--in
Jesus Freaks we follow the founding and flourishing of the Children of God/Family International. The group was initially an offshoot of sorts from the Jesus Movement, the evangelical hippie revival of the 1970s. But under the apocalyptic teaching of a self-described messiah and "End-Time Prophet" named David Berg, the Children of God became a corrupted, sexualized regime that drove its decedents to murderous acts.
When I spoke with Don about his book--read the interview after the jump--we focused quite a bit on his title. How can an outsider group like this be described as "evangelical"? I admit that I went into the book with a chip on my shoulder, because I'm always frustrated when the strangest, most radical elements of Christianity are made to represent mainstream faith. (IOW, "How can the New York Times think of Pat Robertson as a typical evangelical leader when every evangelical I know is embarrassed by him?") But I came away from Jesus Freaks thinking of it as a warning cry. More after the jump. And I'd like to know what you think of Lattin's thesis about this story as an indication of what can happen to those who follow strong religious leaders.
Categories: Bible,
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The sidebar over yonder tells you all you need to know about the readiness of this here blog. I have not had time this week to get things up and running as they should be (and just think of all the things that aren't being said about Sarah Palin! How I long to fill the void!). But I'm going to start posting today, and we'll take down the yellow tape as we're able.
So, welcome to Text Messages. This blog is going to be about a range of things, and it'll likely be a reflection of the state of my mind--sometimes scattered, sometimes obsessively focused. The smorgasbord is sure to include the Bible, Christian cultures, movies, TV, music, gardening, trail-running, and family matters. I'm especially fascinated by how the issue of Bible interpretation makes its way into public life, which happens
every single day.
I'll also be your very own Beliefnet aggregator, pointing each week to my favorite stuff happening on our ever-expanding lineup of blogs and in our channels. And, as bloggers are wont to do, I'll link to other
delightful,
random web discoveries.
But I'm going to stop doing by telling and start doing by showing. Like growing in spiritual disciplines, becoming a better cook, getting through Moby Dick, and not being a butt-head to one's spouse and kids, the only way to blog (I imagine) is to stop thinking about it and actually do it.
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