Revisions Vol. 4 Issue 1, Spring 2007

Revisions A Journal of Christian Perspective

vol IV, issue 1, fall 2007

The Least of These

Revisions A Journal of Christian Perspective EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Richard Lopez ‘09 EXECUTIVE EDITOR Joung Park ‘08 MANAGING EDITOR Li Deng ‘10 COPY EDITOR Chenxin Jiang ‘09 EDITORS EMERITI The Rev. David H. Kim John Montague Andrew Matthews ‘06 David Matthews ‘05 Matthew Nickoloff ‘04 CONTRIBUTORS Brian Brown ‘07 David Chen ‘05 Ephraim Chen ‘09 Lisa Frist ‘06 Jonathan Hwang ‘09 David Kwabi ‘10 Teng Kuan Ng ‘05

Opinions expressed in articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or of Manna Christian Fellowship. Manna is a 501(c)(3) corporation. Copyright, 2007.

The printing of this journal is made possible by gifts from friends and alumni and by a grant from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

Revisions, c/o Manna Christian Fellowship PO Box 577, Princeton, NJ 08542 revisionsonline@gmail.com www.revisionsonline.com

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From the Editors’ Desk...

At the 2006 National Prayer Breakfast, Irish rock star Paul Hewson—known simply as “Bono”—remarked passionately and insightfully on the prevailing poverty that plagues so many lives in the 21st century. Bono commenced his homily with the shrewd observation: “It’s not a coincidence that in the Scriptures, poverty is mentioned more than 2,100 times. It’s not an accident. That’s a lot of air time. You know, the only time Jesus Christ is judgmental is on the subject of the poor. ‘As you have done it unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me’” (Matthew 25:40).

Christians on college campuses throughout America should frankly be terrified

by Bono’s citation from Matthew’s gospel. Nestled into complacent niches of campus life, we know not the taste of incessant physical suffering. We routinely stuff our bellies with franchise pizza and four-dollar caramel macchiatos. We have the great blessing of permanent shelter, but still take out mortgage upon mortgage to increase the size of our homes and our ego, ad infinitum. In the West we believe ourselves to be, or at least pretend to be, rich (Proverbs 13:7), but so often are blind to the reality that our hearts are spiritually parched, maybe even lifeless.

But wait a minute. In the crisp comfort of our air-conditioned homes, we already donate a good deal of money online to the Red Cross, WorldVision, and other reputable organizations. Isn’t this sufficient? Perhaps. Nevertheless, the Gospel is much bolder.

In the beginning of Luke, Christ triumphantly echoes the words of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed…” (4:18). Indeed, this is good news, a Gospel worth preaching. Here, the only Son of God who previously reigned forever in the heavenly realms, has condescended His being to a mere man, and has declared his role as the Servant-King who will definitively bring about justice and redemption to mankind.

Impoverished and grieved hearts will finally and eternally know liberty; “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1).

It is all well and good to cognitively grasp a “messianic complex,” as Bono terms it.

But it is worth absolutely nothing if the concept does not translate into blatant Christlike love, humility, and service to our fellow man. After all, as children of God we are called to “…not love in word or talk but in deed and truth” (1 John 3:18). In this issue of Revisions we encourage you as the reader to not only contemplate the weighty topics of poverty, social justice, and intense human suffering, but also to be moved to act in response to the numerous injustices that occur daily at all levels in society. This does not mean you have to single-handedly resolve the Crisis in Darfur. By the power of God’s Spirit, Gospelrooted change can and will happen in any relational sphere of human society: schools, universities, small towns, churches, families, governments, etc.

Now, some food for thought. Here are some beautiful remarks by John Grier Hibben, ordained minister, educator, philosopher, and longtime president of Princeton University: “There comes to you from many quarters, from many voices, the call of your kind. It is the human cry of spirits in bondage, of souls in despair, of lives debased and doomed. It is the call of man to his brother...such is your vocation; follow the voice that calls you in the name of God and of man. The time is short, the opportunity is great; therefore, crowd the hours with the best that is in you.”

The Mission of Revisions Revisions is an ecumenical journal of Christian thought committed to the process of “faith in search of understanding.” Through re-visioning the world in light of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we hope to invigorate the intellectual possibility of a worldview centered on the Gospel, both at Princeton University and in the world at large. In developing and articulating distinctively Christian perspectives on the whole of life, we seek to revive the rich Christian tradition of vibrant intellectual engagement with and critical reflection on the social, cultural, philosophical, political, and scientific issues facing a pluralistic university community.

Revisions / Fall 2007

Contents The Least of These The Lack of College Christian Humanitarianism............................4

David D. Chen Who Are You?...........................................................................................6

The Rev. Matthew Connally God’s Justice in the Social Sphere.........................................................8

Jonathan Hwang The Importance of Being Hurt..........................................................12

David Kwabi

Features

Christ-less Morality?.............................................................................14

Joung Park This Article Will Not Be on the Internet........................................17

Anonymous Two Testaments, One Word, One God............................................18

Ephraim Chen Guilt Trip, Ego Trip, or Mission Trip?.............................................20

Lisa Frist

Light of the World...............................................................................22

Brian Brown From the Blogosphere..........................................................................25 Two Worlds at Once............................................................................26

Li Deng

In Their Own Words...........................................................................28

David D. Chen

Art/photography credits: front cover and page 12, Peter Suh; Back Cover, Manna Christian Fellowship, Office of Communications, Princeton University; Unless otherwise noted, images are taken from public-domain online databases.

Revisions / Fall 2007

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The Lack of College Christian Humanitarianism David D. Chen What is the tradeoff between spiritual and physical care? How can an organization be culturally sensitive while adhering to a set of religious beliefs?

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had the opportunity to interview several students in Manna Christian Fellowship [MCF] about their involvement in community service during their time at Princeton. All of them said that they spent less time doing community service in college than in high school, and most of them said that they felt disappointed or even guilty that this was the case. All of them had difficulty articulating why this shift had occurred. No one claimed a lack of opportunity or motivation. They said that the predominant factor—as seems to be the case for most stresses in college life—was simply a lack of time. Another student noted that extracurricular activities, even the service-oriented ones, tended to be so organized and structured that they required lots of time to participate; it seemed hard to find a service project that didn’t entail a weekly or regular commitment. Some said that social activities within the Christian fellowship consumed most of their scheduled time for extracurricular activities with the unfortunate consequence of squeezing out community service. One student said that he felt schoolwork was so intensive and pervasive that he “needed all the down time he could get” in order to maintain sanity and that, while community service was a good and worthwhile extracurricular, it wasn’t the best way to relax. Time spent with people in the Christian fellowship served a cathartic purpose in helping to de-stress with friends, focus on developing spiritually, and restore a proper perspective and context for academics.

It should not come as a surprise that many college students feel a vague sense of dissatisfaction when it comes to the issue of “compassion.” In the university, we become acutely aware of how unaware we are about the world’s condition. We hear about a new humanitarian crisis or global tragedy nearly every day.

Our knowledge of the world’s needs grows tremendously and yet our available time for addressing those needs seems easily exhaustible. We feel guilty over not doing or caring “enough” about the throngs of causes and crises crying out for our attention, but when pressed for a response we sheepishly (or angrily) confess that we don’t even know where to begin. What is compassion and what does it mean to live compassionately? To whom should we show compassion? How should this discipline relate to our everyday lives? How much time can we afford to spend exclusively on acts of compassion? Our spiritual instincts sense that mere participation in a fundraiser or attendance at a lecture is woefully inadequate, yet no one can tell us exactly what “adequate” means.

In addition to these struggles with personal conviction and

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time management, a college Christian also faces issues with the underlying philosophies behind humanitarian practice. MCF sponsored a fundraiser for victims of the Southeast Asian earthquake and tsunami, sending money to the explicitly Christian humanitarian relief organization World Vision. During the fundraiser, several people approached the coordinators and expressed relief at being able to donate to a Christian organization. One person said, “I don’t mind donating to a secular organization, but it somehow feels better to give to an organization that shares the same faith.” As one of the organizers, I asked myself, “What’s the difference between secular and faith-based groups if they’re doing the same thing? Do you need to be a Christian to hand out food and medical supplies? Can’t we all just work together?”

All of these questions and struggles probe the complex issue of college Christian humanitarianism.

Wikipedia.org defines humanitarianism as “an informal ideology of practice, whereby people practice humane treatment and provide assistance to others…based on a view that all human beings deserve respect and dignity and should be treated as such.”1 We colloquially use the term “humanitarianism” to describe the general spirit behind the charity work that goes on in the world, but we must recognize that doing so ignores the fine distinctions between the philosophies that motivate such work.

At first blush, these differences seem trivial or even unnecessary. We think, “Surely we can lay aside our prejudices and work together for a common cause.” There is an innate belief in our culture that charitable actions are—or at least can be—transcendent over differences, whether in race, culture, or religious belief. The chorus of the Nickelback song “If Everyone Cared” puts it starkly: If everyone cared and nobody cried / If everyone loved and nobody lied / If everyone shared and swallowed their pride / Then we’d see the day when nobody died. After all, does a person who is sick care about the ethnicity of the person administering medicine? Does a person starving to death care about the religion of the person handing out food? Probably not.

We tend to assume that acute need is blind in the same way that justice should be blind: unbiased, unassuming, and “fair” to all people and all needs.

But if need is indeed blind, are those seeking to meet those needs equivalently nonpartisan? If the hungry person receiving bread doesn’t care whether the provider is Catholic or Muslim, black or white, a celebrity seeking publicity or simply a wellinclined citizen, should we—the donors and the aid workers— care as long as the job gets done? What influence does motivaRevisions / Fall 2007

tion play in the distribution of aid?

Suppose that we, as potential donors, have highlighted two different humanitarian organizations that we like and would like to donate money to. Both have an excellent track record in terms of financial accountability. One is a Christian organization that intends to ship Bibles and other religious material to afflicted areas (with no coercion involved in the distribution), whereas the other organization is strictly secular and utilizes all funds for emergency supplies. Because of the secular organization’s specialization, it is significantly more efficient with its aid distribution than the Christian organization. Which organization would a Christian be more inclined to fund? The answer depends on personal preference and priorities. The Christian may choose to fund the Christian organization to support a perceived deficiency in spiritual care. Or, the Christian may fund the secular organization in order to more specifically alleviate a particular acute crisis. One would be hard pressed to claim that either choice is superior. However, this example demonstrates that though need may be blind, the donor often is not. We who act are influenced by our religious, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, resulting in different (and often conflicting) sets of priorities. Note that this example also applies to campaigning for support: should a campus Christian fellowship that desires to help alleviate a current crisis put most of its support and resources in a common and secular campus movement to gather funds or should it pioneer support for an explicitly Christian organization? Is it more important to present a unified campus front or to address specific needs that others may not deem significant?

As mentioned before, this is not a hypothetical dilemma; these issues were the same ones MCF faced when confronted with the after-effects of the Southeast Asian crisis of 2005.

What is the tradeoff between spiritual and physical care? Is it possible to separate the two domains into independently funded organizations, or are they so interrelated that we need religious organizations that specialize in physical care (and vice versa)?

How can an organization be culturally sensitive while adhering to a set of religious beliefs? How does an organization that focuses on disabled children compare with one that specializes in emergency disaster relief? Should we (or can we) make these comparisons? Again, the answers seemed to boil down to a matter of priorities. We—as individual donors, campus organizations, churches, and other communities on campus and in our culture—are inclined to believe that the best solution is for each donor to give to the cause that he or she or they feel most inclined towards and allow the organizations to sort themselves out in Darwinian fashion.

But such a response means that we must accept a partisan approach to humanitarian aid, one where different organizations, though well-meaning, must compete with one another for scarce resources, where organizations are not equivalent even if their goals are similar, where the philosophy of an organization subtly but directly influences its effects. Such a conclusion is certainly more nuanced than—if not completely contradictory to—the conception of “humanitarianism” as a general spirit of charity and this is especially visible when competing humanitarian organizations have conflicting goals and motivations.

What, then, should be our response as a campus, a religious community, or individuals? The questions behind community Revisions / Fall 2007

service and humanitarian relief are not ones that we encounter often—or perhaps are encountered often enough to desensitize— and thus are easy to ignore. Some have said that a systematic discussion or action on the questions of social justice and action in the context of Christian fellowships skews established political neutrality and that it is therefore better for individuals to pursue these answers for themselves. Yet most Christian fellowships on campus teach a particular perspective on sensitive topics such as gender roles, dating and relationships, and homosexuality. If we can establish a well-reasoned, biblical and reasonably “neutral” perspective in these areas, surely we can do so in the area of Christian humanitarianism as well.

As members of the university, it is our responsibility to encourage intellectual exploration and examination. As Christians, we are called to do this in the context of a “gospel worldview,” or the interpretive effect of Christ’s redemption of humanity on all the effects of humanity. It is simpler to shrug our shoulders and walk away or donate a few dollars and deal with a vague sense of discomfort. But a more appropriate response to the lingering questions of Christian humanitarianism is to begin finding their resolutions in the university and with the full blessing, endorsement, and systemic support of the Christian community.

For what students are equipped with the time or resources to perform such an endeavor only as individuals? And how nuanced can such an endeavor be if there is no systemic support for or encouragement to—ideologically, philosophically, or spiritually—for these questionings? If the religious community is a place where students can find balance and perspective for life, shouldn’t that restorative power be brought to bear on the area of service as well? f David Chen ‘05 graduated from the Department of Electrical Engineering and is currently attending medical school.

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Humanitarianism. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanitarianism>.

Accessed 1/1/07.

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Who Are You? The Rev. Matthew Connally For if there is to be any justice at all in life, if that word is to have any meaning whatsoever, then someone has to pay.

B

y 2010, Africa will have 18 million AIDS orphans. Meanwhile malaria claims the lives of over 3,000 African children every day. Add to that sex slavery, war, and famine, and it all becomes rather meaningless to us. We numbly look around this dark and fallen world and it takes faith to believe in God. So where is He? Throughout the Bible many people ask God that question.

And just as we can slow down, look at a family in Africa, listen to their story, and mourn; so also if we slow down, look closely at God’s revelation in the Bible, and listen intently to His words, we can have hope. For His very identity is revealed as the cause of justice for the entire world.

To understand who He claimed to be, we must go back to the first time that question is asked of God in the Bible. It came from a shepherd named Jacob early in the second millennium B.C. “Please tell me your name.”

Jacob was the son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham, the father of the Jews. Jacob’s name was later changed to Israel, and his twelve sons’ names became the names for the twelve tribes of the nation of Israel. The name Jacob means, literally, “one who takes by the heel” or, by derivation, “one who supplants.” Jacob was a trickster.

Although from before his birth God had promised to bless him greatly, Jacob had a very hard time taking God at His word. As a young man he swindled both his older brother and his father, and then left home to seek his fortune. He then attempted to swindle his uncle out of several herds of sheep by using some silly folklore magic. He was willing to try anything and everything except to simply trust God, with whom he struggled to give credit or thanks for his prosperity. He preferred to rely on his own shrewdness, and even give credit to magic if he had to.

According to the Bible, leading such a life will either harden a man’s pride or break him. Jacob broke. It happened when one day God showed up in person: And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.”

But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

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And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.”

Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”

Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.”

But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?”

And there he blessed him.

So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel1 saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.”2 Now this is a rather cryptic account of a spiritual transformation in Jacob. As wealthy and prosperous as he had become, he finally realized that nothing else would satisfy him but God Himself.

And though he had a reputation for tricking others he still had the boldness to ask God for His blessing. So God gives him a new name, Israel, which means either “he strives with God,” or “God strives.” He is the God of a people who struggle to surrender their pride and ask for abundant life rather than try to earn it by their own strength.

Then Jacob, a.k.a. Israel, responded, “Please tell me your name.” He was asking for some kind of introduction—in effect, “Who are you?”

God’s answer: “Why is it that you ask my name?” What name could Jacob possibly understand? He had no context whatsoever that would give any meaning to any name. He did not even have a language for it. For example, if when you first meet someone and he introduces himself as Joshua, that name will already carry some weight. But consider that it would mean something different if he introduced himself as Иисус, 约 书 亚 记, Ἰησουσ, or ‫عوشي‬.

So what difference would it make what God said? Jacob and his family would have to wait about 400 years to get a better understanding of who He was. It would be four centuries of extremely significant historical context orchestrated by God. At the end of it the Hebrews would be called a nation. Israel had started as a single man, a shepherd who changed from a life of swindling to a life of worship. His descendants would be a holy people—a light to the world, the stewards of God’s testimonies to the nations.

That all started when Jacob’s twelve sons cruelly sold one of their youngest brothers, Joseph, into slavery in Egypt. Later, due to outrageous circumstances, all eleven brothers joined him there Revisions / Fall 2007

along with their families—70 persons in all. They grew rapidly over the generations, but they also fell victim to heinous racism and were forced into slave labor for the Pharaoh.

The Egyptians oppressed the Israelites for about 400 years before God stepped in again. That was when He told a shepherd named Moses to lead the Israelites to freedom. In response, as had Jacob four centuries earlier, Moses asked God His name.

“What is His name?”

The only things Moses knew about God were His dealings with his ancestors Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. He had no other context for understanding what was happening. So when this God began speaking to him through a burning bush, telling him to march into Egypt to ask that the Israelites be allowed to worship, Moses asked a very understandable question: Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.”3 God says that His name is “I AM.” In Hebrew, a proper noun is formed from the third-person masculine singular verb prefix of the root for HWH/HYH, “be, happen, become.”4 In English, we translate it Yahweh or Jehovah.5 What’s in a name? That depends on what the name represents—what the person says or does. So, according to the Bible, God introduces Himself to the world as the savior of the oppressed and afflicted, and the language in which He reveals His name—the language in which it is spoken, in which it is written, and from which it is translated—is the language of a people born in slavery.6 Consider the imagery. Just as a child begins as a single cell in the womb, so the nation of Israel began as a single man in Egypt.

Just as a child is delivered through a series of painful and violent contractions, so also Israel was delivered out of Egypt through pain and violence. And they who had been born in slavery were then born again into God’s promised blessings. Whereas their days had previously been defined by the misery of making bricks for their oppressors, now their lives had a whole new meaning.

They were the people God chose to create in order to reveal His name and His salvation to the world.

Many centuries later, Jesus would say that His followers are slaves of sin and therefore “must be born again.”7 That is to say that if we look at the world and ask why there is so much evil, then we must also look at our own hearts and ask why we do selfish and proud and rebellious things. For example, why do we sometimes lie? Is it God’s fault? The message of the gospel is that it is not, but that He created us and loves us, and He will take all of the blame.

That is why Jesus took up the cross, scorning its shame, and lay down His life. If we believe in Him, He will make us free.

For those who do not let Him take the blame, however, they will have to bear it themselves. For if there is to be any justice at all in life, if that word is to have any meaning whatsoever, then someone has to pay. The Bible says that when God looks at the world, He sees, among other things, a lot of wickedness—the gas chambers, the killing fields, the rich getting richer and the Revisions / Fall 2007

poor getting more diseased, the deception and oppression and agonizing loneliness. No Ivory Tower is tall enough or beautiful enough to provide an escape from this fearsome truth: someone has to pay…

“Behold the Lamb of God” At the center of the nation of Israel, inside their Temple, inside the Holy Place, inside the Holy of Holies, on top of a golden ark that contained the promises and the laws which told them how to be holy, there was the Mercy Seat. Once a year a lamb was slain and its blood sprinkled over the Mercy Seat, symbolizing how some day God would provide a way for the people’s sins—their unholiness—to be paid for. So at the center of their identity and their relationship with Yahweh was the exaltation of both His perfect holiness and His perfect mercy. Holiness, because God desired His people to be holy as He Himself was holy; and mercy, because God provided an alternative way for His people to attain this holiness, first through the sacrifice of animals, and ultimately, of Jesus Christ His son.

That mercy was going to be important, for the Bible said they were, like all peoples, rebellious, persisting in both worshipping idols and oppressing the poor. (The two activities always went hand-in-hand for these acts are all about gratifying the self—an idol being something we create with our own hands.) No matter what God did to provide for peace and prosperity, the people would corrupt it. He kept chastising them for their wrongdoing as a loving father with his children, but the rebellion continued until most of the nation had been destroyed by war or exile and only a remnant was left. They were a small, oppressed vassal state of the Roman Empire.

That was when a poor carpenter started a preaching ministry around the Sea of Galilee. He said and did the most outrageous things. Yet as uncommon as He was, He made the most common of people feel comfortably welcome, including traitors and prostitutes and lepers. He taught about God’s holiness and His love for a sinful world, but the religious leaders could not stand Him. They asked Him who in the world He thought He was. He answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am”8 (See also John 6:35; 8:12; 10:9; 10:11; 11:25; 14:6; 15:5). f The Rev. Matt Connally is the English pastor of Princeton Christian Church. He received his M.Div from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

Peniel means the face of God Genesis, chapter 32, verses 24-30.

3 Exodus 3:13-14 4 Or I AM WHAT I AM or I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE. The verbe tense is ambiguous, perhaps hinting at timelessness.

5 Instead of using “Yahweh” or “Jehovah” many English translations use “Lord.” However, the title “Lord”, meaning master, is also common in the Bible. So to distinguish the name “Lord” from the title “Lord” small caps are used.

6 Instead of using “Yahweh” or “Jehovah” many English translations use “Lord.” However, the title “Lord”, meaning master, is also common in the Bible. So to distinguish the name “Lord” from the title “Lord” small caps are used.

7 John 3:1-21 8 John 8:58 1 2

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God’s Justice in the Social Sphere Jonathan Hwang The best way to understand justice itself is as “righteousness”… in other words, justice is the right way of things.

You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor (Exodus 23:3).1 I know that the Lord will maintain the cause of the afflicted, and will execute justice for the needy (Psalm 140:12).

Praise the Lord! Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments! Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever (Psalm 112:1,3).

W

hat exactly is social justice? Thrown about in all channels of media and communication, the term has become a powerful weapon for any cause whatsoever; after all, who can stand against justice?

Surely, then, social justice—a specific application of justice— can in no way be objectionable. However, Christians must object to social justice as understood by contemporary society, for it stands in large part in strict opposition to the Biblical definition. Our task, therefore, is to discover how God defines social justice, and how we can achieve it in our own lives.

As understood by today’s society, social justice is synonymous with the elimination of every sort of inequality, especially financial inequality. Any type of inequality is assumed to be unjust, and those who have more are assumed to have necessarily acquired it at the expense of those who have less. The Green Party, in its position statement on social justice, supports “aggressive steps to restore a fair income distribution of income” by advocating “income tax policies that restrict the accumulation of excessive individual wealth.”2 Jim Wallis wrongly equates the poor and the unjustly oppressed when he says “the significance of the story of Zaccheus is that he was converted to Jesus and immediately made reparations to the poor. He acted to restore justice to those he had wronged in the exercise of his occupation…. The conversion of Zaccheus is a paradigm for rich Christians in the world today” (italics added).3 Furthermore, those who proclaim the message of social justice as so defined have declared that the elimination of inequality is the ultimate moral duty of the age, and that everything else is secondary. Such thinking has, for example, led Al Sharpton to say that “churches should turn attention to social justice issues like equal access to education and fighting

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poverty,” complaining that “we have been inundated in the faith community with bedroom sexual morality issues and not dealing with the broader moral issues of poverty, of injustice, and of healthcare.”4 The underlying assumptions behind these claims of victimhood and demands of forced redistribution not only are fallacious, but also actually harm their intended beneficiaries.

For instance, as Herbert Schlossberg says in his book Idols for Destruction, “the power behind the lever of modern humanitarianism is the state, that savior through which the apostles of ontological victimhood find a poor man in the slums and shower compassion on him in the form of other peoples’ property. That ensures that he will remain in the slums living off others, despising himself for it, and beholden to his humanitarian benefactors.”5 Such socialistic policy not only forcibly takes property from one man and gives it to another; it also forces the “victim” into a position of continued dependency. The removal of initiative and work ethic can easily evolve into an entitlement mentality, for the recipients assume that they deserve the received property­—and more.

Those responsible for the redistribution feel that once they have established such a system, their job is done. This mentality, of course, denies the truly needy of the help they require. And those who are labeled as victims—who are on the lesser side of the inequality equation—are harmed in another, less visible way: their very humanity is brought into question as society tells them that unless they are financially accomplished, unless they are equally represented in every group, unless they have equal power, they are unsuccessful and worthless. Any quality that does not lead immediately to financial reward is discounted as useless, and any social position that does not immediately advance secular standing is considered valueless. This is not justice.

However, there is another way to understand social justice: God’s way. The best way to understand justice itself is as “righteousness.” Isaiah 58:2 states, “They ask of me the ordinances of justice,” also translated, “They ask of me righteous judgments” (NKJV). The Hebrew word here, tsedeq,6 is elsewhere translated as “righteousness,” as in Jeremiah 23:6 (“the Lord is our righteousness”), and also means that which is right—naturally, morally, or legally right—in other words, justice is the right way of things.

God is always just: “The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, Revisions / Fall 2007

just and upright is he” (Deuteronomy 32:4). Justice is inherent in His nature and character. If there is injustice in the world, it is because of our own transgressions against the standards God has set. He asks Israel: “Is my way not just? Is it not your ways that are not just?” (Ezekiel. 18:25) Furthermore, He is a God who, because He is just, must punish unjust behavior: “When a righteous person turns away from his righteousness and does injustice, he shall die for it; for the injustice that he has done he shall die” (Ezekiel 18:26). God is exacting; justice will be rewarded, and injustice punished. Justice is served when the standards God established within the fabric of existence—in order to magnify His glory and maintain His holiness—are met. To act justly is to comply with these standards and to practice that which God has established to be good and right, while avoiding and punishing that which God has established to be bad and wrong. Our actions are just when we are accurate imagers of God, as we were designed to be.

If this is so, then social justice means God’s justice in the social sphere: that is, right relations and interactions between and among people. These may or may not be relations of complete equality. To be sure, there are ways in which we are all in fact equal: all are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). In these senses—the most important elements of our humanity—we are all indeed equal. But with regard to our gifts, talents, positions, natures, and all manner of other secondary characteristics, God has by no means made us equal. “Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers?

Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?” (1 Corinthians 12:2930). Of course not, and there is no injustice in this; we all are created with different purposes and abilities, and as such will reach different ends in our life courses. God does not consider inequality in this sense to be bad. We have each been given, in different areas of our lives, sufficiencies and deficiencies in accordance with God’s purposes for us. No particular set of talents, positions, or anything else is owed to any of us. All such attributes are gifts from God; we deserve none of them.

This is not to say, however, that we can use and abuse our gifts from God for our own personal benefit. The reason He gives us those gifts is so that we can glorify Him by using them to serve God and others. Our gifts may be gifts of money, of power, or of position, but they may also be gifts of heart, or of teaching, or of encouragement, any of which may or may not be accompanied by success as measured by the world.

Contemporary society is correct in identifying financial inequality and poverty as important issues relating to social justice. In fact, the poor are referred to numerous times in the Bible as victims of injustice. However, this is not to say that they were unjustly dealt with by God, or that they were necessarily made poor through the unjust actions of their fellow men (although if that were the case, the Bible would certainly agree with contemporary society in condemning such injustice). Instead, it means that their situation may not be the right way of things. Perhaps they are not being shown the love that the more affluent ought to be showing them: “As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, Revisions / Fall 2007

who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share” (1 Timothy 6:17-18). But perhaps the poor man himself is not fulfilling his duties: “Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits will have plenty of poverty” (Proverbs 28:1); “aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one” (2 Corinthians 8:14-15). In either case, increased poverty can result from a failure to live as we ought, a failure to live justly. As a friend of mine has observed, when Jesus saw the widow give her last two coins as offering at the temple, He did not tell His disciples to give her food stamps or enroll her in welfare.

He rather commended her for her faith that the Lord would provide for her needs.

In any case, injustice cannot be equated with mere possession of wealth, for the Bible tells us that “You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:18). Abraham and Job, both beloved of the Lord, were wealthy men. Rather, injustice involves the place of money in the heart: “for the love of money is as root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs” (1 Timothy 6:910). When money becomes an idol, therein lies the problem, and both rich and poor can be guilty of making an idol of mammon—though it is easier for the rich man since he has more to idolize. Both rich and poor must learn to be content, for “there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” (1 Timothy 6:6-8).

The important thing, then, is the motivation behind our actions (though of course right actions should follow from right motivations). Everything must be done both in the way that God would have us do it, and for the end that God desires.

The rich man who gives money to the poor man in order to assuage his own personal feelings of guilt is not acting justly, any more than justice is served by making the poor man a dependent. But if the rich man, out of love and concern for his fellow man, and in conformity with the commands and character of God, practices charity in whatever way he can— such as by donating his money, time, or talents as he is able— then he has acted justly. If the poor man works to elevate his position and makes the best use he can of the gifts God has given him, then he too is acting justly.

A person may do just acts without just motivations, but he does not thereby act justly. Whenever that which is right—as established by God—is done, whenever an end is achieved as God would have it, whenever we uphold the good, defend the weak, punish the bad, and act as God would have us, then justice is served. Wherever righteousness is practiced, there justice is done. It is therefore best for each of us to act righteously so that both our hearts and our actions may be just.

Social justice means more than merely helping the poor—it applies to any situation in which two or more

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people interact. Sexuality, criminality, charity, work, play, and war are all governed by the standards of social justice as established by God. These standards are not necessarily those of the “common good,” as understood by society, but rather those of God’s good—what God has decreed to be good (which is in fact the true common good, for only God truly and fully knows what is best for all). If properly understood, the two coincide in the end. But as long as the “common good” is viewed as synonymous with temporal gratification according to human standards, the two are not the same.

Justice does not demand ontological victimhood, punishment of the rich, handouts to the poor, enforced total equality, or a great financial redistribution and leveling. No, true justice requires service to God and others in His name, obeying His will and laws, and all for His glory. As fallen creatures, we cannot achieve this on our own strength; but God through His grace and mercy enables us to will and to act justly. Justice is righteousness, and we must act to preserve and promote it in every aspect of our lives. f

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

2 The Green Party. “Social Justice.” http://www.gp.org/ platform/2004/socjustice.html.

3 Wallis, Jim. “Betraying Jesus.” http://www.somareview.com/ betrayingjesus.cfm.

4 Associated Press. “Sharpton: Let’s Focus On Social Justice.” http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/02/politics/main2143859. shtml.

5 Schlossberg, Herbert. Idols for Destruction. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1993.

6 Strong’s Hebrew Bible Dictionary. http://www.htmlbible.com/ sacrednamebiblecom/kjvstrongs/STRHEB66.htm.

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Jonathan Hwang ’09 is majoring in Politics, with a certificate in Political Theory.

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Revisions / Fall 2007

The Importance of Being Hurt David Kwabi Our anguish and remorse for the injustices we are both responsible for and in many ways impotent to fix is neither some inscrutable reaction to an equally inscrutable offense nor a cruel conundrum of Nature.

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n the great inventory of human emotions, few pierce as deep as the heart-rending sympathy for a sick and dying man. There’s no denying it; huge bodies of music, art, and literature have been devoted as much to plight of the deathly ill as the glamour of wealth and prosperity. Even more obvious is the fad charity and international volunteerism have become. Maybe it’s a bona fide explosion of selflessness. But it could just as well be humanity being capable, once again, of turning the sweaty tedium of what it feels impelled to do—charity, in this case—into the glitz of what it can get fame and credit for.

The objective here is to make that pitiful, bloated African infant a footnote of history; but what of the verve that seems to endlessly compel us to abandon ship, and fly to his aid?

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Admittedly, the guilt-ridden chill comes to most, Christians included. But what of how the Christian must respond? To begin with, there is a motivational conundrum: should any assisting actions be primed towards helping for the sake of the helpless or palliating the angst of the helper?

The same means to different ends, one might say. Granted, doing nothing is not an option; Christ himself healed the sick and diseased, and obviously set a standard for believers to follow. Christians therefore have a God-given responsibility to all the impoverished of our world (people dying of disease, no less). In Matthew 25:40 (NIV), right after he emphasizes his role as an accountable steward of his gifts in the parable of the talents, Jesus makes clear the Christian’s obligation to care for the downtrodden and marginalized: “Assuredly, I Revisions / Fall 2007

say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to Me.” Yet taking a cue from this alone belies the complexity intrinsic to Christian’s duty to the world. Jesus’ last charge, The Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) was a call for the dissemination of the Gospel, and the implied corollary that “will include bringing every part of our lives, public and private, under the sovereign lordship of Jesus.”1 This realization illumines the Gospel; we can no longer see it simply as a neat collection of syllogisms about God and Man. It becomes a substantive life force, giving its light to the world in the wake of Christians who are willing not just to bring physical salve to others, but to illustrate Christ also. Indeed, far from diving into the surf of unfettered humanitarianism, the Christian is called upon to engage the world in God’s name.

On the face of it, this is precisely what Christians seem to be doing. World Vision, Christian Aid and other such organizations exist, ostensibly seeking to promote, and fight for not just the sick and dying, but the indigent as well. And, of course, not every self-declared Christian will jump on that bandwagon, at least not without a good deal of armwringing and sophistry anyway; after all, charity is but one way among many of living out the Gospel (Romans 12:6-8), and to demand that believers ignore how they could best serve Christ for the sake of a particular pressing need is perhaps to sacrifice one imperative of the Gospel for another.

But the Christian seldom rests in this realization; the pangs don’t go away, yet any attempts to ease that angst would be an unholy reversal of faith and works. After all, as is clear from Philippians, “it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13 NKJV).

So while we have real obligations to the suffering, they bind us only insofar as our efforts are “in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Colossians 3:17) and not our emotional needs for cleaner consciences.

Where, then, does this place that doomy reckoning with pain and suffering? Shall we deem it a crude, primordial riposte to an inequality that antagonizes certain age-old yet ill-understood moral sensibilities? Maybe, but this answer clearly fails the question’s appetite. To claim that angst over another’s suffering harks back to some basic, chemical trigger is to assert also that such angst should be properly universal, and we cannot say it is. What of the self-absorbed business executive or deflated bureaucrat who really couldn’t care less if a girl somewhere is sprouting tumors faster than doctors can cut them off? Moreover, granting that these morals do exist, it begs the question of how obedience to them varies so wildly. And on and on it goes.

Man, created in the likeness of God (Genesis 1:26), is properly hard-wired for a God-given sense of justice (Deuteronomy 32:4). Justice exists, but is scarred and emasculated by that reflexive rejection of God He acquired from the Fall (Romans 5:12-14), especially as sin and self are given free reign. And this is obvious from those who don’t care at all, and would rather avoid the global mess of AIDS, tuberculosis and poverty as they would a festering Revisions / Fall 2007

pile of vomit on the street to work. The Christian, however, finding salvation in Jesus Christ, must engage himself in a life that is imagistic of that justice and should be incensed at any aspects of creation that are obverse to God’s perfect standard of life and health for all2 mankind. Such ‘righteous’ fury, however, is as derivative of God, as depravity is of our original sin. It exists but can only be fully regained and understood as and when the other is no longer preeminent; a change made possible by faith in the God who himself is righteousness.

So it may be that those bitter, insufferable pangs of a guilt that cannot be quenched may well be, well, normal. And as long as we continue to view them through the corrupted lens of materialism- the one that preaches that emotional equanimity is always within reach and that our insufferable feelings could always be neutralized if the right things are done—we would never reach that happy medium, where our senses are numbed to reality. Even so, there could be no escape from the penitence of personal sin and failure. There will come a time when all fears will be still and trials will cease (Revelation 21:3-4), but not while our world is rotting in its sinfulness. Our anguish and remorse for the injustices we are both irresponsible for and impotent to fix is neither some inscrutable reaction to an equally inscrutable offense nor a cruel conundrum of Nature. It is rather derivative of how and why we exist; for we are not made from randomness, but in the image of a God whose sense of justice is more perfect than we can achieve, and far superior to our feeble protestations at the inequality we chafe at. f David Kwabi ‘10 is majoring in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He is from Peki Dzogbati, Ghana.

Stott, John. Why I Am a Christian (Leicester: InterVarsity, 2003), 129.

2 All without distinction and not without exception. See Pink, A.W. The Sovereignty of God (Swengel: Bible Truth Depot, 1918).

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Christ-less Morality?

Joung Park The secret of Christ-less morality is that it does not, and cannot, exist.

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or some people outside the church (and sadly, even within it), the concept of morality — properly defined as those set of principles governing right and wrong actions — has erroneously been conflated with the concept of Christianity. While Christianity would certainly lose its essence if reduced to a “collection of moral truths,” and the figure of Jesus grossly distorted if represented merely as a “great moral teacher,” there is some merit behind a link between morality and the Christian faith, because many of the key assumptions that morality implicitly relies on are Christian principles such as the Imago Dei, salvation by grace, and free will. As such, Christianity supports morality better than any other religion or philosophy. Without Christianity at its center, morality cannot stand, and the “good life” can only collapse into incoherent babble and empty talk.

Morality and Free Will Whenever one invokes a particular moral principle, such as “Do not steal,” or “Love your neighbor as yourself,” one is making a normative statement, which is a claim about something that one should or ought to do. Normative statements are unique in that they do not necessarily describe reality, but rather describe some ideal that we should strive to attain. Thus, normative statements encompass all moral principles, and implicitly ascribe to their audience the responsibility of fulfilling some duty to reach the ideal.

Now, wherever responsibility exists, the freedom to fulfill or reject that responsibility must also exist. If someone does not have this freedom to begin with, then we also cannot hold him responsible for his actions. This inextricable link between freedom and responsibility is made manifestly clear in our legal system, where we refuse to punish someone for an action that he did not choose to commit. For example, if the defendant is proven to have been mentally incapable of making decisions when he or she committed the crime (e.g. insanity plea), then the defendant is not punished for his or her actions.

However, in a purely physical universe, the freedom to choose moral or immoral actions cannot exist. This is because if humans are merely collections of physical particles governed by strict physical laws, then every action we take and every decision we make must have been determined by some physical cause(s).

After all, the laws of causality dictate that every physical effect must have a corresponding physical cause(s).

Moreover, these physical causes must have their own physical causes, with this cycle endlessly repeating, which

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means that our present actions are constrained by a causal chain that extends into the deep past before we were even born!

In short, the physicalist view of the universe implies that our actions are merely the latest dominos to fall in a chain reaction that began with the Big Bang. But if all our actions are bound by physical causes beyond our control, it is not clear how we would maintain our freedom to commit or refrain from moral action.

As philosopher A.J. Ayer describes the dilemma: For a man is not thought to be morally responsible for an action that it was not in his power to avoid. But if human behavior is entirely governed by causal laws, it is not clear how any action that is done could ever have been avoided. It may be said of the agent that he would have acted otherwise if the causes of his action had been different, but they being what they were, it seems to follow that he was bound to act as he did.1 The only plausible solutions to this dilemma would be to either, 1) accept that human beings have no free will and thus no moral responsibility whatsoever, or 2) show that the laws of causality do not apply to human beings. Obviously, morality presupposes that the second solution is true! But this second solution also implies that human beings must consist not only of physical matter (since all physical matter is constrained by the laws of causality), but also of non-physical matter.

Furthermore, it is precisely this non-physical component of human beings that must make moral decisions and force the physical body to act in accordance with this decision, since we cannot hold a person X responsible for an action that X cannot control. Therefore, it seems that for human beings to be morally responsible, some non-physical component within us must be a type of “prime mover unmoved”: able to both make decisions without being bound by physical causes, and also effect real change in the physical world.

This concept of a “prime mover unmoved” nicely dovetails with the Christian concept of an immaterial soul that exists within every human being and endows us with agency and free will. Indeed, without the existence of souls or something very similar within human beings, it seems that human freedom and responsibility, as well as any normative claims such as moral statements, are reduced to inconsistent absurdities.

Morality and the Imago Dei Two central moral principles in most cultures are the Revisions / Fall 2007

following: 1) Human beings deserve special moral consideration that other organisms may not necessarily warrant.

2) All human beings should be treated equally, without bias or favoritism.

The first principle seems obvious, as an offense committed against a human being is condemned much more severely than the very same offense committed against other animals such as a cat or a dog. The second principle is just a rephrasing of the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12),2 which is also taught by most of the world’s religions. The Golden Rule is a central tenet of morality, for living the moral life is primarily about suppressing one’s selfish desires and personal biases, and treating others in a fair and equitable manner.

These twin doctrines concerning moral respect for human beings are the cornerstones of Western culture, providing the groundwork for such key political concepts like inalienable rights, rule by law, and self-government. However, the problem is that if one tries to find justification for these two principles by focusing on the physical properties of humans, one cannot succeed. The attempts by contemporary ethicists to establish the moral status of humans by defining “personhood” clearly highlight this difficulty.

Quite a few moral philosophers, such as Peter Singer or James Rachels, justify the moral status of humans by pointing to certain physical characteristics exhibited by humans, such as self-awareness or future planning. Such characteristics grant human beings the status of being a “person,” and it is by virtue of this personhood that human beings are said to possess moral worth.

However, the problem with this method is that one cannot define “personhood” in such a way that all human beings are counted as persons while all non-human animals are excluded.

If we make the requirement for personhood stringent enough that all non-human animals are excluded (e.g. by fixing the requirement as “capacity to use symbolic language” or “ability to treat others morally”), then many human beings, such as the mentally handicapped or infants, will no longer count as “persons”, and thereby undeserving of moral respect.

On the other hand, if we loosen the requirement enough so that every human being can possess personhood (e.g. by fixing the requirement as “brain activity” or “sentience”), then we would have to give the same moral status to such low-level organisms as frogs or fish that we give to human beings. Singer would resolve this dilemma by concluding that some human beings (such as the handicapped or infants) do not deserve the same moral respect as other humans.3 However, such a radical conclusion conflicts with most people’s moral intuitions.

A further flaw in Singer’s reasoning is that most physical properties used to justify the moral status of humans differ by degree. One can be more “self-aware” than someone else, more “capable of future planning” than someone else, and more “rational” than someone else. Thus, determining humans’ moral status by their physical properties makes it hard to justify giving every person equal moral status, since it seems that the more self-aware, more future-oriented, and more rational people should have more moral worth than their lesser counterparts.

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This kind of thinking smacks of eugenics, racism, and apartheid, and helped to justify the Nazi regime’s euthanizing program for Jews, the handicapped, and other such “undesirables” in an effort to promote the purity of the “superior” Aryan race.

The problem with Singer’s reasoning, it seems, occurred in the very beginning, when he attempted to find some physical properties possessed by humans that would justify their moral status. There is none—at least none that would ensure that all humans would have moral status while animals that clearly do not deserve moral status are excluded from the moral community.

Also, basing a person’s moral worth on his physical properties, which undoubtedly vary from person to person, makes it hard to see why every person deserves the same level of moral respect.

It seems that the only reasonable way out of this quandary is to base the moral value of human beings on some non-physical feature possessed by all humans, since there is no physical property that can form an adequate justification. Such a nonphysical feature can be found in Christian theology, which states that all humans are created in the image of God, the Imago Dei. Thus, if Christianity is true, then all humans deserve special moral status on the basis of their possession of this Imago Dei. Moreover, since one cannot possess the Imago Dei to a larger or lesser degree than someone else, this means that one must treat everyone equally, as all humans possess identical moral worth.

Without the Christian doctrine of the Imago Dei, it is hard to see exactly how the equitable and special moral treatment for all human beings can be justified.

Why Be Moral?

For the Christian, moral behavior is a duty demanded by God because human beings were created to behave that way.

By being moral people, we are thereby following the correct instruction manuals for our lives provided by God in the form of the Bible and our own “inner voice.” But now, imagine that God, as the objective law-giver, does not exist. In that case, what could possibly motivate us to behave morally?

One possibility could be that to act morally is also to act rationally, and that moral behavior is justified precisely because it is reasonable. A prime example of this type of reasoning would be Immanuel Kant’s moral maxim of the Kingdom of Ends, which says, “Act in such a way that you always treat humanity…never simply as a means but always at the same time as an end.”4 Kant justifies this maxim by the logical law of noncontradiction, which states that one cannot be both A and not A at the same time. Kant viewed people as inherently possessing autonomy, which would be contradicted by using someone merely as a means and thereby depriving that person of his or her inherent autonomy. Therefore, Kant concluded that using someone merely as a means was irrational, and thereby immoral.

The problem with this Kantian line of thought is that it just passes the buck without settling the question. Instead of asking “Why be moral?” we instead find ourselves asking “Why be rational?” But without God, there is no good reason to take rationality, or anything else for that matter, as an objective good.

In a purely physical universe, there can be no universal law instructing us to act rationally.

In response, perhaps the atheist may point out that we

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should behave rationally because it enhances our chance of survival. In fact, this may be a more general justification for moral behavior: because it allows us to be more successful at life. However, such an egoistic justification would completely contradict what morality is all about. The essence of morality is to stop being so pre-occupied with our own welfare (which we do so naturally), and to be concerned about something bigger than oneself, about people external to oneself. The futility of justifying morality under an atheistic worldview is made clear

by James Rachels, who admits that “[W]hen further reasons are demanded for valuing the welfare of human beings, we cannot point to anything further to satisfy this demand.”5 The only viable justification for acting morally comes from the existence of God, who establishes objective moral laws for men to follow.

Morality and Grace-based Salvation What is the criterion by which we can judge an action to be moral or not? What is the definition of a good deed? Imagine that I accidentally dropped a $100 bill on the street, which a starving person discovered and used to buy some food. Did I do a good deed? Most people would say no. Conversely, imagine that I mailed a $100 check to a charitable organization, but that the check was somehow lost in the mail and never reached its intended recipient. Did I do a good deed? It would seem that in this instance, I still acted morally, even though it might have been even better if my check actually reached the charitable organization.

What these two test scenarios suggest is that when judging the moral worth of our actions, we do not only consider the actual consequences of our actions, but rather focus heavily on the intent behind our actions. The same principle seems to apply in our legal system, which more heavily punishes premeditated murder than manslaughter, since one crime involves the conscious intent to kill while the other is a tragic accident of circumstances. As Kant explains: The good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes or because of its adequacy to achieve some proposed end; it is good only because of its willing, i.e. it is good of itself … and if there remained only the good will, it would sparkle like a jewel in its own right, as something that had its full worth in itself. Usefulness or fruitlessness can neither diminish nor augment this worth.6 Now, consider that in most religious systems, such as Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism, one achieves salvation, Paradise, nirvana, or whatever else the blissful after-life is called, primarily by doing good deeds. Since these religions teaches that one’s deeds, or works, determine whether he goes to Heaven or not, we shall refer to them as “works-based religions.” Now it seems that under these works-based religions, the intention behind any good deeds could very easily be the desire to achieve salvation / Heaven, which is an egoistic motive. And since the intention behind a particular deed determines its moral worth, and morality is about being altruistic, not egoistic, it would seem that under such works-based religions, it is difficult to maintain a pure motive when doing good deeds, and ensure that these “good” deeds truly are good.7 In contrast to works-based religions, Christianity is a grace-

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based religion, meaning that a Christian goes to Heaven through God’s works and not because of his or her own good deeds (grace being defined as undeserved favors from God). As the Bible states, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9) No other religion, with the exception of perhaps Pure Land Buddhism, shares this unique doctrine of salvation by grace. It is only under a grace-based religion that a person’s motives can truly be about helping others, and not just himself. Thus, the Christian doctrine of salvation by grace sets the Christian free to really do good deeds with the right motivations, since his good deeds does not affect the status of his salvation, seeing that he has already been saved by grace through faith.

Without the solid foundation provided by key Christian concepts such as the soul, the Imago Dei, free will, and salvation by grace, morality as we have always defined it can no longer exist. This does not necessarily demonstrate Christianity to be true, but does show that those who reject a Christian worldview cannot have their cake and eat it too when it comes to morality.

Without Christianity at its center, it is difficult to see why we should treat everyone equally, how we can act morally with the right motivations, if we can even act morally, and indeed, why we should care to act morally. The secret of Christ-less morality is that it does not, and cannot, exist. f Joung Park ’08 is a philosophy major from Dallas, TX. A.J. Ayer. “Freedom and Necessity.” In Steven M. Cahn ed., Philosophy for the 21st Century. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pg.401-2.

2 All Scripture references from the New International Version 3 Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer, Should the Baby Live? : The Problem of Handicapped Infants. (New York : Oxford University Press, 1985).

4 Onora O’Neill. “A Simplified Account of Kant’s Ethics.” In Steven M. Cahn ed., Philosophy for the 21st Century. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pg. 587.

5 James Rachels. “Egoism and Moral Scepticism.” In Steven M. Cahn ed., Philosophy for the 21st Century. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pg. 608.

6 Thomas Nagel. “Moral luck.” In Steven M. Cahn ed., Philosophy for the 21st Century. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pg. 650.

7 This is not to say that it is impossible to do good deeds under a works-based religion, but rather to say that it is very easy for one’s motives for doing good deeds to become tainted under such religious systems.

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This Article Will Not Be on the Internet Anonymous Thanks to technology provided by American corporations, the [Chinese Communist Party] has the means to find other such underground Christians by tracking their e-mails and tracing their cell phone calls.

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he Chinese Communist Party, the ruling party in the People’s Republic of China, has openly resisted and persecuted the religious freedoms of Chinese Christians. Now, with greater economic and political prowess, the government has continued to persecute the mainland Christian Chinese community, but has altered its approach to make sure Western nations don’t find out. For the CCP, this particular fight has always been a battle to save face.

One might think that it might be easy for Christians to hide in the fourth largest country in the world with a population of 1.2 billion people and a government fearful of alienating the West.

After all, the difficulty of both tracking Christians among its massive populace, as well as hiding such persecutions from the watchful eyes of Western nations, seems considerable. However, in 1998, the CCP was able to find effective solutions to these problems under the leadership of Jiang Zemin.

Since 1998, the Chinese Government, in an attempt to weaken and monitor political and religious opposition instituted a little known project coined “金盾工程” or “The Golden Shield Project.” This project consists of a 3 step process for maintaining greater vigilance over the masses: block “seditious Internet sites”; release identification cards containing health records, grades since kindergarten, and place of residence; and, lastly, develop a nationwide surveillance camera network with facial recognition software to track the movements of select individuals across the nation. Ironically, it is through American corporations like Google, Oracle, and Nortel Networks that the Chinese government found the technological means with which to enact the Golden Shield Project. If articles such as this one reach the internet, they are blacklisted along with the author. Google’s technology, for example, is purchased so the government can search quickly for websites to ban.

Thanks to God’s influence in China, institutions like the Three-Self Church, the state-sanctioned church, have been a blessing for Chinese Christians. Now new and old believers can join together and worship God without fear of major government retaliation. Nonetheless, these churches are still bound by certain restrictions which make practicing their faith difficult and encourage the alienation of Christians from society. First, bans on topics such as the resurrection of Jesus Christ, foreign Christian reading material, and small group meetings, represent a lack of religious freedom for Chinese Christians. However, bans are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to persecution of churches.

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The Three-Self Church is riddled with government spies, making it difficult for Christians to feel safe and comfortable.

In response, some Christians have established house churches beyond the ever-watchful eye of the CCP. These individuals face imprisonment, seclusion, and ever-present fear of detection, but do so anyway because they desire to see fellowship.

In early September 2007, forty-one Christians in mainland China were sentenced to five years in prison for activities related to organizing house churches. They will be branded as criminals

by Chinese society for seeking greater religious freedom. And thanks to technology provided by American corporations, the CCP has the means to find other such underground Christians by tracking their e-mails and tracing their cell-phone calls.

In contrast, because the CCP seeks global credibility, most foreign missionaries are either deported from the country and placed on a blacklist never to return, or simply discouraged from employment through fines given for unsubstantiated reasons.

As for me, I had the “wrong visa”; I was supposed to have a visa that was impossible to obtain. After I received a 50,000元 (RMB) fine, the employer I worked for never wanted to see me again. I can’t blame him: The average worker in the province where I lived makes one-twentieth that much per month.

Chinese Christians need prayer more than anything else.

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world....” (Ephesians 6:12-18)1 Pray for the spiritual growth of our brothers and sisters in Christ who are still struggling in China.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” (Galatians 5:1) This article will never be on the internet because I don’t want to be on a blacklist. I enjoy the freedom to return to China and to support Christian friends face to face. f 1

All Scripture references taken from New International Version

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Two Testaments, One Word, One God Ephraim Chen The Old Testament is not irrelevant or displaced by the New Testament—the whole Bible reveals God’s truth.

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n the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1)1

I have observed that many in the body of Christ today do not value the Old Testament as much as they do the New Testament.

During the course of their walk with God, some Christians can be observed to dwell on the gospels or epistles without spending much time with the Hebrew texts. Others feel far more comfortable accepting principles found in the former rather than those from the latter. But the Old Testament should be treated by every one of us with the greatest value, reverence and enthusiasm, just as the New Testament should be.

To begin, we should agree that the original manuscripts of the 66 books in the Old and New Testaments constitute God’s inerrant written revelation to mankind (2 Timothy 3:16). As they penned the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts, the human authors were under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit to write nothing but God’s truth. Simply put, the Bible, in its entirety, is the Word of God. Second, if the entire Bible is the Word of God, then all of it accordingly deserves the reverence of those in the kingdom of God (Colossians 3:16). And third, the appropriate method for systematic interpretation of the Holy Scriptures is a literal, grammatical-historical approach: (1) Interpret each word in its normal, plain meaning; (2) Interpret each sentence according to the grammatical rules that were used when it was written; and (3) Interpret each passage in its historical and cultural context. 2 I believe that following these principles of interpretation, humbly under the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, will reveal truth (John 16:12-15). A study of how the Lord Jesus, the apostles Paul and Peter, and others interpreted Scripture will confirm that they used a literal, grammatical-historical approach (Matthew 22:31-32, 4146; Romans 3:10-20, 4:1-8).

These points clearly argue for the utmost respect of both Testaments in the Bible. But many in the body of Christ presently do not take the Old Testament seriously enough. People are satisfied with a cursory knowledge of the main Old Testament events like Creation and the Exodus, preferring to focus their time and attention on New Testament letters or gospels. How often do you hear sermons on the Minor Prophets or the books of Leviticus or Deuteronomy from the Torah? Instead you hear statements asserting that the Old Testament is outdated, or only for the Jewish people, or supplanted by the New Testament. In the end, we realize that the Old Testament has been treated lightly compared to the New Testament.

Multiple Bible-based reasons stand in support of the significance and inspiration of the Hebrew Old Testament. 3 First, we should

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venerate the Old Testament because that is exactly what Christ and His disciples did! The central focus of our faith is Jesus the Christ, the only Son of God who became flesh to come to the earth with all authority to preach salvation first to Israel and then to the Gentiles (Matthew 15:21-28). Did Christ have the New Testament epistles to refer to during his ministry? No! Jesus taught the Jews the good news from the Law, Psalms and Prophets—the Tanakh, or our Old Testament—and He called it the word of God (Matthew 15:6). The Lord’s supreme respect for the Old Testament is demonstrated when He responds to the rich young ruler’s question of inheriting eternal life by first bringing up obedience to the Word. “You know the commandments,” Jesus replied as recorded in Mark 10:19a.

And prior to encountering the rich young man, Christ employed the Word’s power when He repelled Satan’s temptations in the wilderness with truths from Deuteronomy. How many Christians today pore over Deuteronomy enough to use its truths to defend themselves from Satan’s attacks? The Lord was emphasizing the Old Testament’s importance, for “man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 8:3). Moreover, Jesus frequently used allusions to the Hebrew Scriptures in His teachings that He expected His audiences to recognize because He also expected their familiarity with the Old Testament. The Sermon on the Mount was a rich exposition of the Torah (Matthew 5-7), and Jesus punctuated His righteous anger with language from the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah when He cleared the temple of the merchants and buyers (Matthew 21:13). It is clear that the followers of Christ also fervently looked to the Old Testament when we consider the following: according to scholars, the letter of James, from a chronological standpoint, was probably the first New Testament book written. Recall James’ exhortation to be doers and not mere hearers of the Word: “But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does” (James 1:25). What was the word he was referring to? The Old Testament! There was no New Testament for James to refer to since his was the first New Testament book written, yet he was calling on believers to passionately adhere to God’s Word.

Second, not only were the Hebrew texts considered the divine and revered Word of God that was to be embraced and obeyed, but we also discover that our understanding of the New Testament expands as we comprehend the Old Testament more. Why would Abraham tell the rich man of Luke 16:19-31 that Moses and the Prophets were enough for the man’s family to repent and be saved?

Because when we humbly read and meditate upon the Torah and the Nevi’im, or Prophets, God opens our eyes to His message of Revisions / Fall 2007

faith in and obedience to Him. Accordingly, the apostle Paul states, “What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law…” (Romans 7:7a). What he means here is that the knowledge and pursuit of the Law should have revealed to the Israelites their wretched incapacity to actually keep them, thus driving them to a dependence on God’s faithfulness and mercy. So for them, the vital first step in the recognition of such depravity was study of the Old Testament. As believers in Christ, are we exempt from knowing the statutes and commandments of God that reveal our sinful nature just because we are under grace? Why do we need the grace of God at all? We find out why grace is so necessary by coming to a deeper understanding of how God wants us to act, as He revealed through the Old Testament.

Third, the Old Testament deserves the attention of every Christian because it justifies and authenticates the deity of Jesus Christ. A myriad of Old Testament prophecies are fulfilled through the life of Christ and the events surrounding His ministry. Isaiah 40 was fulfilled through John the Baptist’s ministry. Zechariah 9 predicted the mode of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem.

Moreover, it strikes me to my core to think that our Savior continued to prove His legitimate claim as deity with the cry of “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” (Matthew 27:46). By referring to Psalm 22, where David’s anguished cries of hopelessness perfectly foreshadowed the passion and current sufferings of the Messiah, the Lord was showing to the jeering onlookers at Golgotha—even as He hung on that cross, crucified for our sins—that the Old Testament pointed to Himself as Israel’s Savior. It predicted the Son of David’s rejection by the people (Psalm 22:7), His affliction at the crucifixion (Psalm 22:14-16), and even the casting of lots for His clothing (Psalm 22:18). Furthermore, the Old Testament animal sacrifices used innocent blood to atone for the sins of Israel before a holy God to illustrate the violence and severity of our sins’ consequences and to prefigure Christ’s self-sacrifice. Indeed, the Lord’s respect for the Old Testament’s system of sacrifices is exemplified by His instruction to the healed leper to go present his offering to the priest as a testimony (Matthew 8:4), in accordance with the Mosaic Covenant both Jesus and the leper, as Jews, were under.4 And fourth, reverence of the New Testament should be in union with reverence for the Old Testament because the God presented in the New Testament and the God presented in the Old Testament is One and the same. You will hear people say that the latter is a God of wrath while the former is a God of love, somehow rendering the two personalities completely disjointed. But God does not change, does He? No, He is the same yesterday, today and forever. Praise God, for He is our solid Rock upon whom we can depend in the midst of our fickleness and ephemerality.

Taken together, what the Old and New Testaments do is construct a complete picture of a great God who possesses both righteous fury (Psalm 90:11) and gracious compassion (Jeremiah 30:18). God’s character does not alter as human cultures come and go on the earth. Many Christians today think the stern Hebrew texts conflict with the messages of grace found in the New Testament. But all parts of the Bible are in perfect harmony, not limited by different time periods and cultures—all applicable, all inspired. If they were not, the universe itself would collapse. For “any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste...” (Matthew 12:25) and “…until heaven Revisions / Fall 2007

and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished” (Matthew 5:18). By keeping in mind the consistency of the Word of God, we realize that the Old Testament shows us God’s attitude toward our sins—trespasses against His commandments are so significant that the law of God puts forth a series of punishments to impart justice and to motivate Israel to obey Him (Deuteronomy 4:40; Romans 4:15). In the New Testament, God brought forth a New Covenant of grace through His Son and the Holy Spirit to His people Israel, then graciously extended his general plan of salvation to the Gentiles as well (Romans 1:16). But that does not nullify the commandments God wanted us to follow in the first place—indeed, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit empowers us to do just that (John 16:13)!

Some commonsense reasoning will also make us aware of the precious treasure we have in the Old Testament. The Law, Psalms and Prophets easily make up the majority of the Bible.

If knowledge and understanding of the Old Testament laws and prophecies are not pertinent to 21st century believers, why would the Lord preserve the Bible in its entirety for us in this present time?

Even though the ceremonial laws no longer apply because of their fulfillment through Christ, does that mean we do not take them seriously? If so, why are they recorded for us to read? I submit to you that the book of Leviticus should not be the most boring book in the Bible for Christians. The Lord Jesus came to fulfill the Law, not to abolish it (Matthew 5:17). Therefore, shouldn’t we have a hunger to know what He was fulfilling? For what He was fulfilling reveals the character of God. Remember that understanding of God’s truth is not of our earthly efforts but is heavenly revelation (Matthew 16:17).

Jesus told the Pharisees to “go and learn what this means…”

(Matthew 9:13) and referred to a part of the Bible. He also asked them, “[H]ave you not read what was spoken to you by God: ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?’” (Matthew 22:31b-32a). To His disciples, Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15). Is it any wonder that the longest Bible chapter, Psalm 119, exalts the value of the Word of God? Following the Lord’s commandments will reveal that the crippling effect of ignorance towards any part of the Bible is an incomplete portrayal and comprehension of our Almighty God. And how can anyone properly worship a God he or she does not truly know? f Ephraim Chen ’09 is majoring in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering. He is from New York.

All Scripture references from the New American Standard Bible.

2 Lindsey, Hal. The Road to Holocaust. New York: Bantam Books, 1990.

3 “Significance and Importance of the Old Testament” [article on Internet].

Fr Tommy Lane; c2001-2007 [cited 1 July 2007]. Available from http:// www.frtommylane.com/bible/enjoying_paul_old_testament/01_partc_ importance_ of_ot.htm 4 “The Importance of the Old Testament” [article on Internet]. Tim Hawes: c2001 [cited 1 July 2007]. Available from http://www.althusius.net/ theology/Messianic_Intermezzo/node43.html 1

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Guilt Trip, Ego Trip, or Mission Trip?

Lisa Frist Isn’t it demoralizing for a community to have to have a team come all the way from the United States to help build…a house?

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wo Christian friends from the U.S. who are doing an around-the-world mission trip for a year recently visited me in Mozambique where I’ve worked for the past year with a small non-profit through Princeton in Africa. As we sat one evening around a restaurant table during their visit, I could see my secular expatriate colleagues give pause and cock their heads in a look of polite but bemused wonder while my Christian friends explained that their world tour was funded through church donations. “You mean it’s almost all paid for by others?!,” was my colleagues’ wide-eyed response in a tone that equally meant “you are so lucky!” and “that’s not kosher!”

And if I’m right, which I think I might be, based on the many articles written on this topic and the questions I’ve been asked by fellow Christians, that’s how a lot of us feel about short-term mission trips. We’re not quite sure we like the idea of giving money to an untrained team traveling to do good works for a couple of weeks of the summer in a distant land with an unpronounceable name that we’re not sure refers to a city or country when all the team can say in the local language is “thank you” and, everyone’s favorite, “where’s the bathroom?” Even as I write this, my brother is in Bolivia on such a trip along with about fifteen other 13 to 19 year-olds.

Underlying our doubts, what we all want to know is: Will the team make a lasting positive change? Will they experience personal change? And most of all, is it worth all the change?—that is, the change in your (and your grandmother’s) piggy bank.

According to some wise development workers, missionaries, and Nicaraguans I interviewed for my senior thesis on this topic, here are some common misunderstandings about short-term missions that I hope to clarify.

Myth 1: Short-term mission teams take away more local jobs than they create.

One of the most common concerns about short-term mission trips is that we spend thousands of dollars to send an unskilled or semi-skilled team to build a house when local laborers could probably do the job ten times better, faster, and cheaper. What’s the point...isn’t this a waste?! How can local workers compete with this free imported labor? In truth, sometimes they really can’t compete, especially if local communities rely too much on mission teams to do work that the community is fully capable of. One pastor, for example,

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decided to wait several months for a mission team to arrive to fix the church’s roof, despite an adequate church budget that could have supplied a local laborer.1 In other cases, however, communities really don’t have the funds or resources to even begin a project. In these situations, the local laborers stand more of a chance of employment with the mission team than without it. Mission teams typically hire cooks, cleaners, guides, translators, drivers, and additional laborers, providing at least a brief opportunity for local employment, and perhaps longer term employment, depending on the type of project; a newly built school, for example, may provide stable teaching jobs.

The key is knowing the needs and resources of a community and incorporating local workers into a project where possible.

Myth 2: Tourism doesn’t belong on a mission trip: “We are here to do hard work, not to have fun.”

These statements sound noble and prudent, but are they?

Actually, a little bit of traditional tourism mixed into the trip not only provides the team with an often needed break, but also supports the local economy, gives volunteers a more complete and positive impression of the country, and provides the local population with a chance to proudly present their country’s treasures to their richer visiting counterparts. It can be a real boost to the receiving population to be able to give back to the team, and a bit of tourism is a simple way for them to do that. Plus the more tourism volunteers do, generally the more likely they are to return and to encourage others to visit. Of course, I wouldn’t recommend volunteers retiring to a five star hotel every night and flaunting their iPods as they relax on the beach, but a bit of modest tourism might do more good than you think.

Quick Tip: Small local handicrafts, stationary cards or coffee (if available) make great gifts for supporters back home.

And at the same time, volunteers are supporting local tourism businesses.

Myth 3: Big Check vs. Volunteers: “Isn’t it better to just send money?”

Underlying this thinking is the rationale that sending money is more effective than sending volunteers and that more money could be donated if the quite significant amount of money raised for the airline ticket, passports and visas, accommodation, local transportation, and meals was instead sent in one large check to the mission agency or community. But is Big Check vs. Volunteers really the choice? From my own Revisions / Fall 2007

observations and conversations with development workers, I think the actual options are Big Check vs. Bigger Check plus Volunteers. To illustrate this point, ask yourself—are you more likely to raise money for a project you are directly involved in or one that you have only heard about? Donation data from a non-profit in Nicaragua shows that donors who have visited or volunteered at projects tend to donate over twice as much in the long-run as donors who have not had such first-hand experiences.2 Generally, the more personal your connection to a good organization or community, the greater your trust and the more likely you are to raise money and also awareness for the cause.

The same applies to mission trip supporters. Aunt Sally, for example, wants to support her nephew’s trip to Mozambique, so she sends him a $100 check, not necessarily because she even cares a great deal about the cause or country, but because she wants to support her nephew. Without that very personal connection to a place or organization, it is unlikely that so much money could be raised.

Myth 4: The “mission trip effect” quickly wears off with little lasting impact on the mission team.

Sure, we think, volunteers may use water sparingly the first week they’re home from their mission trip or they might go on a shopping fast, but before long everyone slips back into their normal lives. The poverty of the world becomes once more a fuzzy dream.

I confess, this has happened to me. My mom can attest to my sudden enthusiasm for helping her with household chores fading just days after my return from a mission trip. On the other hand, a large reason for my commitment to working in international development long-term can be traced to my early experiences as a 13 year-old on a mission trip in Mexico.

Apparently I’m not the only one whose life has been changed by such experiences. In my research, over half of Nicaragua Christian Academy’s teachers joined because of a shortterm mission trip experience that inspired them.3 And nearly every missionary or development worker that I surveyed or interviewed said that a previous short-term volunteer trip had played a pivotal role in their decision to work long-term in Nicaragua.4 Myth 5: Mission teams diminish a community’s sense of self worth.

Isn’t it demoralizing for a community to have to have a team come all the way from the United States to help build….a house?

Sometimes, yes, a team’s know-it-all, valiant hero attitude can make a community feel like a helpless damsel in distress who desperately needs her American rescuer to accomplish anything. This is what’s called a dependency attitude and this develops when a community becomes so accustomed to financial help that it underestimates its own worth and capabilities and no longer seeks innovative ways to prosper.

To my surprise, though, the Nicaraguan leaders and foreign missionaries that I interviewed said that well-run mission trips are actually more like a vitamin boost to a community, providing the encouragement and financial support necessary to jumpstart and support community development. As one Revisions / Fall 2007

Nicaraguan translator explained to me, it is a tremendous encouragement to Nicaraguans to know that the rich Americans they see on TV care enough to leave their comforts and come live and work alongside of them.

When [mission teams] come along it’s more about others than themselves. It is noticeable from the community. They see how some of the teams sleep on foam mattresses on the floor, others [sleep] in people’s houses.

They can’t believe that a North American is getting all muddy walking up a hill just to go see an old lady 120 years old.5 Then, according to this same translator, the volunteerism spreads. “It’s beginning to happen,” he said. “I have seen in the last three years that more Nicaraguans are having the initiative to go out. They saw the example and now Nicaraguan churches are sending out teams both within Nicaragua and to other countries.”6 Most surprising to me, though, was my conversation with an accomplished Nicaraguan who is both a pastor and a doctor and has devoted most of his life to promoting healthcare in rural Nicaraguan communities. According to his observations, mission teams actually encourage civic engagement by going to build a school or clinic in a community where the government rarely steps foot. This triggers a process that the Brazilian sociologist Paulo Freire calls conscientization, in which the community becomes more aware of its needs, and in this case, realizes that if a North American team can help, their own government should too.7 Perhaps mission trips may not always seem like the most cost-effective and professional international development strategy, but as the Nicaraguan pastor and doctor summarized a mission team’s impact, “Anywhere when you have someone that shows interest in you, it really makes a difference in one’s life.”8 Which leaves me thinking: next time, my world-traveling missionary friends, your meal is on me. f Lisa Frist ‘06 graduated from the Woodrow Wilson School and is currently working for Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian NGO, in Mozambique. She is planning a short-term mission trip for UK businessmen visiting Mozambique.

Elisabeth Merritt, Email to author, 27 Feb. 2006.

Ibid.

3 Liam Starkenburg, Interview by author, Managua, Nicaragua, 4 Jan. 2006.

4 Lisa Frist, Volunteer Tourism and Sustainable Development, SeniorThesis (Princeton University, 10 April 2006), 64.

5 Emerson Diaz, Interview by author, Managua, Nicaragua, 7 Jan. 2006.

6 Ibid.

7 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, (New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1989), 19.

8 Gustavo Parajon, Interview by author, Managua, Nicaragua, 3 Jan. 2006.

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Light of the World Brian Brown Politics and religion are concerned with the order of the state and the soul, respectively, and together provide a framework for human interaction.

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his is not a self-help article. I do not imply (as so many modern Christian writers do) that if you read this and apply my methods, you will fix your life, or achieve “God’s politics.” This is an article that merely examines a few issues surrounding the immensely complex problem of politics and Christianity. I recognize that we cannot all be experts on theology or political theory, let alone both. But I believe we can still approach social and political issues in a way that glorifies God. To do so, we do not require expertise in anything—we only require God’s Word and common sense.

“I am not political,” some say. Sometimes this is motivated by apathy towards the political sphere, other times by the desire not to hurt our witness by alienating those of a different political bent. The second is a valid concern, but the first is not. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “Among all the practical sciences politics must be the principal one that directs all others because it investigates the ultimate and highest good in human affairs.” This quote can be found in the entry hall of Princeton’s politics department, a sign of the department’s unusual and wise respect for religious writers. Aquinas recognized that politics was to this world what theology is to the next—something which seeks the highest good in the affairs of that world. Politics and religion are concerned with the order of the state and the soul, respectively, and together provide a framework for human interaction. Disinterest in the latter indicates disregard for one’s soul, and in the former disregard for the well being of all humans, including the self. Short of a masochistic hater of goodness and happiness, it is difficult to imagine a person who can honestly attempt to justify total disinterest in either.

God commands his people to be in the world, but not of it: to be active members of the earthly reality in which we find ourselves, without being corrupted by its sinful tendencies. It is a Christian’s responsibility to do good in the world, and politics provides the mechanism by which God effects many of the world’s most sweeping changes. It is therefore irresponsible from a Christian perspective not to be involved at least to a certain level, not to mention counter to every conception we have of the citizen. Beyond that, it is silly. As Ralph Waldo Emerson is said to have phrased it, “It is impossible to extricate yourself from the questions in which your age is involved. You can no more keep out of

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politics than you can keep out of the frost.” We are daily affected by politics, and our decision not to vote or speak out, not to participate in our own self-government, affects things—where our vote might have put a good man in office, our non-vote can just as easily put an evil man in office. It is of little comfort to aborted babies or suffering children in inner cities to be told that Christians, the people given a direct command by God to help them, did not vote to help them because they were “not political.” As the saying goes, all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Political apathy is unjustifiable for the Christian.

What of the second reason for not being involved in politics at the level of the citizen? What if we care for our country and those suffering in other countries, but we avoid political involvement so as to not alienate potential converts?

Or because we see the actions of the “religious right” and believe that such violations of separation of church and state only harm God’s cause?

The first attitude is more valid than political apathy; we do not want to hurt our ability to speak to others about the Gospel. But let us take it to its logical conclusion. If you see a boy being beaten to death in the street by his father, should you ignore the situation, so as to not “hurt your witness” by making the man associate your Christianity with your interference with his “justice?” It sounds absurd, but many Christians make this decision every day at the political level, by not speaking up (or voting) for the biblical positions on issues. Throughout history Christians have been hated for their countercultural positions on social matters, yet great good was done by those who kept the faith even when it looked like it hurt their PR image—living the Gospel does more good than avoiding controversy for the sake of talking the Gospel. For a good example, watch the recent film Amazing Grace. Following God’s commandments and standing by our principles may appear to “hurt our witness” in the short run, but God’s ways are not man’s ways, and He has said that they will be blessed who hear His Word and obey it.

As for the separation of church and state question, “separation of church and state,” as currently applied by 21st century American secularists, is a principle found neither in Scripture nor in the Constitution. More importantly, Revisions / Fall 2007

attempting to separate the religious from the political is artificial and, in fact, impossible. As Gandhi put it in the last words of his autobiography, “Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.” Advocates of the “separation of church and state” approach hold to the illogical, unconstitutional, and incredibly unbiblical notion that religion should be kept private. And Christianity, more than perhaps any other non-theocratic religion, is devoted to the opposite idea. Christianity is an all-encompassing religion; God demands nothing less than our total devotion in every aspect of life. By what arrogance do we tell God, “Yes, I love you and trust you and serve you with all my heart, soul, mind and strength—but stay out of my opinions; you have no business there”?

It is true that we are Christians first, “political animals” second. Our primary identity is found in our relationship with God, so it is that identity which should inform our political beliefs, not vice versa. In other words, we should use God and His Word as a moral foundation upon which to build our political beliefs, not as an excuse by which to justify them.

For those of us who became Christians later in life than when we became Republicans or Democrats, this can present a challenge. Because of the very point Aquinas made, most of us feel very strongly about our political beliefs. We feel that our way is the best way to benefit humankind. But the Bible teaches that God’s way is the best way, that He works in mysterious ways, and that we must trust Him. “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope’” (Jeremiah 29:11). This means that no matter how strongly we feel about a particular issue, we must seek out God’s will in that situation and submit to it.

How do we go about this? How do we approach politics from a biblical perspective? We are fortunate, because the roots of democratic political thought are found in two sources: classical Western philosophy, and Christianity itself, both of which are based on the same two core principles regarding the nature of man and his place in the world. These two principles are: first, that there is a natural law, a system of right and wrong which exists independent of mankind; and second, that man, in his sinful nature, breaks this law (this idea is known in Christianity as original sin). At a biblical level, these principles represent the statement of a great twofold truth: that God sets a standard, and human beings on their own cannot meet it. This truth is the first thing to Revisions / Fall 2007

keep in mind when approaching a political issue from a biblical perspective.

However, by itself it is not enough to provide salvation in religion, or peace and prosperity in politics. It is a premise.

In Christianity, the premise reminds us that man needs a Savior. What does it mean in politics? Political systems that have rejected the premise, notably communism, have caused great tragedies both in loss of life and of liberty. What happens when a political system accepts it? We learn certain things; for one, we must make laws based on a distrust of human nature (both in government and out), since it is sinful. For another, we can refute the idea some secularists hold that we cannot legislate morality, because law and morality have the same source. If the secularists mean we cannot force people to be moral, or make the law the source of morality, they are certainly right. If they mean law has nothing to do with morality, they are as wrong as it is possible to be. Right and wrong exist independent of the law. They designate the boundaries of moral human behavior, which are what the law is supposed to apply in the legal context.

Thus, whenever we legislate the boundaries of human behavior, we are legislating morality. The only question is whether the boundaries we vote for are arbitrary (based on majority rule as an abstract source of right and wrong), or absolute (based on God’s commandments). When it comes to the great moral issues of our time, there is often no middle ground—sooner or later we have to vote for or against something. Since religious beliefs are just as valid moral grounds for political opinion as any other beliefs, we must choose whether or not we will cease to become Christians when we enter the political sphere.

This brings us to two quite obvious truths, ones that (much like the first one) most Christians accept in principle because of their clear biblical basis. Since laws should be consistent with God’s law, our second and most obvious truth to keep in mind is consult the Bible. Many questions that some modern Christians see as very difficult are addressed explicitly in the Bible, and others can be easily inferred based on biblical principles. But knowledge of the Scriptures is not enough to guarantee wise political decisions, any more than it is enough to guarantee expertise in chemistry. This does not mean all Christians need be political theorists. It simply means that a biblical approach to politics does not require us to check our brains at the door. We must be informed about the decisions we make. Just as in any other area of

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life, faith does not require stupidity, nor does involvement in the world around us require ignorance of God’s will. We need not have a Ph.D. to be involved in politics any more than we need have a M.Div. to be involved in religion. But neither do we need to think with our hearts instead of our heads to be Christian citizens. We need to keep both our minds and our spiritual compass handy. We need be, as Jesus said, “wise as serpents and innocent [or “harmless”] as doves” (Matthew 10:16). This is our third truth. Scripture advocates wisdom as well as compassion, and speaks highly of the men of Issachar who joined David’s army, because they “understood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chronicles 12:32).

We might be concerned, however, that in a system which accepts these three truths, the government might become a theocracy, in which people are forced to accept Christianity.

And indeed it might, except for one crucial fact, our final truth to keep in mind: that government has a distinct and unique role in God’s world. Like all the other truths, this one is fairly obvious upon reflection, yet for some reason we often seem to have difficulty with it. The Bible tells us that we have roles and responsibilities as individuals, the chief of which is to bring glory to God (Ephesians 1:11-12). Likewise, it tells us that the Church has roles and responsibilities, the chief of which is to bring the Gospel to the nations (Mark 16:15).

This does not mean all entities have these same roles. For example, using “what would Jesus do?” as a complete guide for human action would not work, since Jesus did things it would be inappropriate for us to do—e.g. call himself God. (Similarly, if the only legitimate justification for an action is that Jesus is specifically recorded as having done it, as some recent popular Christian political writers imply, then we cannot do many morally acceptable things—e.g. provide for a family.) Jesus had a specific role, as do we.

Therefore, since the government is neither a person nor the Church nor God, it seems logical that it has a role different from the Great Commission given to the disciples.

Do we assume that because Christ told the Christians to evangelize, that he told us the government should be in charge of it? Then why would we assume other commands given specifically to the Church are incorporated by the government? The government has a unique role, which, unlike Christianity itself, is not all-encompassing. For example, just because God instructed individuals and churches to help the poor with voluntary gifts of money, clothes, food, etc., does not mean he gave the government the power to coerce them to do the same. This does not mean it is biblically wrong to support welfare, but it does mean that it is not biblically mandated to support it or vote for politicians who do (despite the contrary assertions of some recent popular Christian authors). The government exists to serve certain particular functions, not to control our lives or solve all of our problems—if it were to do these things, it would be substituting itself for God. What, then, is the role of government, and how does it differ from that of the individual? Given that mankind

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is sinful, and cannot live together in peace and obedience to moral principles (read the first chapter of Judges to see what I mean), God institutes governments to act as the representative of God in the specific task of governing mankind. Because of this, the best governments are those that rule in a way consistent with God’s law (see 1 and 2 Kings). In America, since we have a vote and a voice, we have an unusually high degree of control over whether this happens (as long as we do not say we are “not political,” at any rate). But regardless of whether it does or not, we are commanded to submit to the governing authorities, for they have been placed in position over us by God for our overall good (Romans 13). They are to make laws to protect (e.g. police and army), to regulate (e.g. traffic laws), and to punish. They are explicitly given the power of the sword to “carr[y] out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (13:4). As sinful beings, humans (whether in government or out) need laws in order to live together in peace. The nature of right and wrong does not change when applied to government, but the government’s relationship to them is different.

In making and enforcing laws, the government’s role is distinct from that of the individual. If we retaliate against a wrongdoer, we take vengeance into our own hands; earthly punishment of wrongdoing is the job of the government, as God’s representative. By usurping its role, we disobey God’s express command in Romans 13. Why, then, would we favor the government usurping the role of the individual or the church in the same manner, by executing commands given specifically to them?

At a theoretical level, individually, each of these truths seems so simple to a Christian—“humans are sinful,” “read the Bible,” “don’t be stupid” and “God’s creations have unique purposes”—but each is surprisingly commonly ignored by sincere Christians when it comes to politics.

America’s political system allows for great freedom of ideas, and religious ideas have a special and protected place in that system. As Americans, we have a right to let God influence the way we think, and consequently the way we view any given political issue (otherwise we would put the lie to the First Amendment of the Constitution, which explicitly protects religion). As Christians, we have a responsibility to be good stewards of God’s creation, and to hear God’s Word and obey it. If we are indeed to not “hurt our witness” through politics, we must live what we believe, so that people can see a difference with our politics. As in any other aspect of life, we are called to let our light shine before men so that they may see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven. f Brian Brown ‘07 majored in political theory, and is now a Fellow at the John Jay Institute for Faith, Society and Law.

Revisions / Fall 2007

From the Blogosphere...

Newark Airport While staggering along in search of your departure gate you decide your laces are loose. You prop your leg on a row of chairs, and before you know it, that shadowy figure reclining at the corner stirs. Mister, could you spare me a dollar? I’m hungry.

Her lips are plump, pluckered, her voice a sad drawl, her eyes hollow, lonely. You smell a stench coming from her body and her clothes. It makes you retch, but you hold it in. You look at her, and recall, I was hungry, and you fed me, I was naked, and you clothed me...

Not daring to assume self-righteousness (but inwardly delighting at this opportunity for Christian charity) you potter along to get a ham/cheese croissant and coffee for her. And again.

“How long have you been homeless? Do you have family or friends? What are you doing about this?”

Immense arrest of helplessness—and fear. Helpless because you can’t do anything to improve her life substantially, fear because—in actuality—you can. You fear because it would take more of you than you’d like, than you can bear.

But even so, you know that your God cares for her much, much more than you do. In fact, you care so little about her that you have to battle the tendency to treat her words as mere fodder for your writing. No—they are the precious sentiments of a fellow human person.

You ask, “What do you normally think about?”

She sighs. A lot of things. How she wished she wasn’t born, how badly she wanted to be one of those people she sees boarding the plane, how she hated Newark and wanted to get out of this place. But she can’t, at least not for now.

Hopefully tonight she’ll be able to jostle for a bed at the nearby shelter.

You withhold another twenty dollars from her (she said she wanted to get a nice motel room) because it seemed that she was deliberately taking advantage of, encroaching upon, your apparent soft-heartedness.

Seek first His kingdom, and all the things that you need will be added unto you. Do these words not mean so much more to her than to you? Yet somehow there is a platitudinous ring as you offer them—how effectual were they? No, it is He who ensures that His word will not return void.

I hope to see you again someday, I really do.

-weblog post, Teng Kuan Ng ‘05 Revisions / Fall 2007

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Two Worlds at Once Li Deng Chesterton once wrote of the rain that to be in the midst of it is like moving in a world of mirrors, a world where the confusion of shape and shadow, of reality and reflection, becomes a metaphor for the duality of our lives.

I

read Rose for the first time after a friend of mine wrote Li-Young Lee a letter and received from him a handwritten reply. I was fifteen then, and had taken the thin volume she offered me out of curiosity about the poet whose hand could write letters as well as poems. I never got to read the letter itself (it was one girlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s treasure, not two), but I did read the poems. Even then, the poetry had struck with a power that awed me, one that I search for now with a hungry eyeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; the power of beauty mixed with sorrow, and images raw enough to taste. But I was too young, and the power was still pure and simple, in the way of exquisite words on a page, contained between two covers, read in solitude and childhood.

I am almost twenty now.

Half a decade later I find myself alone in a hotel room rereading the same words about ripe persimmons, about black hair falling like curtains, the weight of things descending. The book is the same, his very first, always older than I by one year.

But now, the beauty of the words is heavier, the way the sweetness of fruit becomes heavy with the passing of time until it is no longer the taste of sugar but of wine.

Water runs through Rose like a silver hair, threaded through and through in every direction, most often in the form of rain.

For Li Young-Lee, water is inseparable from mourning and death: the bloating water of sickness, water falling down on gravestones, the salt water of oceans and tears. Though I am younger than his words, the measure of pain that was mine drew me near to his. At seven, it was the violence of meeting

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a man I did not love or know; at twelve it was the milky white dandelion shining on an x-ray; at fourteen it was the amputation of the New York skyline and my own universe, spaced three sunrises apart. And now, it is the growing up into a world where my hands have been pried open, to receive, and then to let go, for the bloom of the rose also contains its dying.

But water itself is a curious thing, and it has followed me as it has followed the son of the rose lover. I remember one of the last afternoons of high school when the rain had come. Everyone else had gone home, and I was alone on a bench as the trees began to darken. Alone, I breathed in the drenched air until at last the rain had absorbed me, and even my inevitable thoughts about time and its passing had somehow taken on the rainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shape and smell. Hesitantly, painstakingly, I recorded that afternoon of water as a last farewell to whatever it was that the rain was washing away: the mistakes, the small heartaches, a certain number of years. I gave what I wrote to the school yearbook, but mine were passed over for other sentences, paragraphs. I never mentioned the afternoon of rain again. In the quiet, I mourned a little for the words, for their secrecy, but by then, adolescence and its disappointments were what had already begun to fade.

What I treasured, I have kept: the memory of rain itself. It was one of the unexpected, startling experiences born in solitude and kept mostly hidden, one of those moments whose main element becomes so ingrained, so much a fixture of the neurons, as to become a recurring life motif, whose significance is felt but not understood, and Revisions / Fall 2007

always accompanied by a trembling, almost painful sense of having a heartbeat. For me, the only response to those moments is to grope in words. Often, I myself have none, being dumbstruck as the saints were before the appearance of light. But there is always the old joy, joy upon joy, or joy upon grief, to which I turn: communion with the words of another, heavy as water, pungent as sweetness or sorrow.

Chesterton once wrote of the rain that to be in the midst of it is like moving in a world of mirrors, a world where the confusion of shape and shadow, of reality and reflection, becomes a metaphor for the duality of our lives. And in this way, rain is like words, like poetry, which also allows us to look down at the skies. For Chesterton, as well as for me, the paradox of peering downward to see the heavens is inseparable from a certain transcendental instinct that reality is far deeper than what is visible, even while it is the visible things that first allow us to perceive what is not.

And Lee’s understanding of this mystery of things is what makes the beauty of Rose so palpable and moving, the beauty of the unfurled indigo that lives in two worlds at once.

The images that pervade Lee’s poems are of water and blossoms, fruit and hair. They are the things we can touch, inseparable from the things we cannot. For in one hand, we have the symbol, and in the other we have the meaning. Here again is duality, the way symbol and meaning, peach and joy, hair and love, curl around each other like rose petals until at last the mind that sees them cracks with feeling, and the heart that feels them breaks with comprehension.

My own mind thinks more easily in pictures than in sounds or syllogisms, and my heart is quicker to feel with words than with music or colors, and so Rose has been like nectar to an old thirst. It pages are my companions in the loneliness of big cities and suspended relationship, give me some light in the numbing grayness of certain days, pierce my paralysis and fatigue in a world in which I both live and do not, with drops of “jubilance” and “arc” and “bruising” falling like flowers into the empty curvature of my hands, the shapes of need and youth and dying.

As the image of water runs through Rose (in fact, the corners of my used copy are water-stained), so does the image of hands. Sandwiched between the poet’s epistle and the parable of persimmons, there is the hand of father in the hand of son, lifting out a splinter of pain. This I understand, for I too have had pain lifted from me by a father, though he was also the one who allowed it. Early in the morning, there are the hands of woman pinning up her hair, for the hands of man to release like curtains in evening: what I hope for. Elsewhere, the hand of discipline is lifted up, the hands of love move quiet and horizontal, and the hands of mourning bend to lay down cold chrysanthemums.

Since I first read Rose at fifteen, the shapes of these hands have cast their shadows across my understanding of father, child, husband, wife. Over the years I have even come to love them with the tender vicarious love of one who peeks through the window panes. But now, so many years later, other hands have begun to enter my field of vision when Rose speaks, hands from outside the pages.

Revisions / Fall 2007

When I remember the afternoon of a crooked alley where the fruit and their venders sat side by side, I think of hands dyed purple with the stain of mangostene. It was mangostene, queen of the fruits, that I had never seen before, mangostene into whose thick rind my friend had dug his fingers to reveal flesh white as garlic cloves, sweet and soft like the kiss of lips, sweet mangostene which those brave purple hands offered me as a gift for tasting. In Lee’s words, death was nowhere in the background that afternoon. All I could think of at each bite was the ripeness of the fruit, the adoration in my hands, and the joy to joy and wing to wing and blossom to blossom to sweet impossible blossom of the moment unfolding. This I could not tell my friend of the brave hands, but sometime afterwards, I read him “The Weight of Sweetness” and the one after it. They were my only words.

There are others hands I think of when I think of Rose: hands of night, so differently colored from the hands of afternoon. In the closing lines of a letter I received was an excerpt from a poem. The white pages and their blue words are hidden away in my desk drawer half a world from where I am right now. But I see the lines of handwriting clearly, and I know the hands that wrote the fragment about time being mostly absences, oceans generally at peace...

He had been talking quietly about his father, his mother, his brother. As he talked, flesh gave way to granite—his hands had become gray with the dust he had gathered from the ground where we sat, and slowly let slip, in iambs perhaps, in rhythm with his words. When silence fell, it broke upon the verses, words from another man about father, mother, brother, and the pain. At his turn, my friend hesitated, but finally took the book from me, with fingertips, and turned a single page. There on that page remains the mark of hands, barely perceptible now, but vivid to eyes that know where to look. These also are hands I think of when I read the poems again. These are the hands of dust, to which I would offer a rose. And these are the broken hands of an angry one who heard Christ in the chrysanthemums.

When N. first lent me her copy of Rose (which was itself a gift), I did not anticipate the strength of its achingly lovely words, the beauty of its beauty woven like a thread through my life, and the people I have known with whom Rose will always be attached. I was very young then, at fifteen, and the truth is that I am very young still—young, stupid, naïve. The meaning of words like “wound” and “world” and “alone” I have only glimpsed, and I am afraid that someday I’ll know them too well. But there is beauty in the way that words, and knowledge, and years are part of the duality, the skies which we walk beneath and tread upon. And I trust that when it comes to certain words, it is not only I who read them, but they who also read me, so that with the knowledge of years and its grief there will come joy and consolation as well, fuller and sweeter than what I knew, and what I know now. f Li Deng ‘10 is from Los Angeles, CA.

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In Their Own Words David D. Chen Modern cynics have exchanged the pursuit of virtue and bad personal hygiene for something a little more practical: biting sarcasm, an unshakeable belief in human selfishness, and a tired frustration with our collective inability to change.

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Revisions / Fall 2007

T

he statistic is that roughly 18,000 children die each day from hunger and malnutrition alone. This does not include those who die from preventable diseases like rotavirus (which causes severe diarrhea and kills approximately 600,000 children a year even though it is vaccinatable, preventable, and treatable) and cholera, or the treatable ones like malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV. This does not include the children who are caught in the genocide of Sudan, or the vicious military crossfire of civil conflicts as in Iraq and Afghanistan, or those whose limbs have been blown off by landmines designed to look like toys, or those who have been conscripted into military service in Uganda or the Congo. It does not include those who are pressed into the sex trafficking industry, like the 100,000 or so children in Cambodia. It does not include those who die alone, cold, and friendless in the streets of Calcutta or New York City or those who are shot to death in the gang fights of Newark.

It does not include the upper-middle class teenager or celebrity that died from a drug overdose or drunk driving or any other death we might consider as a tragic consequence of wealth.

Some people have called me cynical for saying these things. They say that I am being bitter or despondent or a sourpuss and that it’s just “not natural” to look at the world that way. But the frightening truth is that it is natural because it gives us a piercingly accurate look at our human nature… perhaps more accurate than we would like to admit.

Cynicism has an interesting origin. It came from a group of Greek philosophers whose purpose in life was the pursuit of virtue. They took their calling so seriously that the ancient cynics neglected personal hygiene and scorned the norms of society, often congregating in the streets to insult and condemn those who were pretentious, self-important, materialistic, or evil. One ancient cynic described himself in this way: “I am Diogenes the dog: I nuzzle the kind, bark at the greedy, and bite scoundrels.”

We live in a society that is so cynical that it has become a form of entertainment. Stephen Colbert’s deadpan comedic style won him four Emmys. The television shows South Park and The Family Guy continue on air despite their numerous offensive vulgarities because of the huge audience demand for their acidic wit and social commentary. Modern cynics have exchanged the pursuit of virtue and bad personal hygiene for something a little more practical: biting sarcasm, an unshakeable belief in human selfishness, and a tired frustration with our collective inability to change.

When I was in college, a friend of mine started a humanitarian organization that dealt with a lot of the darker issues of poverty and war that I mentioned earlier. One day we decided to show a documentary on the genocide in Sudan in the student campus center. We reserved the main television and when I arrived to plug in the tape, I was Revisions / Fall 2007

relieved to see that the only thing people were watching were a few clips on SportsCenter from the previous night’s games. But when I changed the channel and announced what we were showing, a student angrily got up and stormed off, saying, “Who cares about all this stuff? This stuff happens all the time!” He did not use the word “stuff.”

And he was right. This stuff happens all the time, and our media saturated society is sick of hearing about it. We are tired of counting bodies in Iraq. We are tired of CIA leaks and government scandals. We are tired of empty campaign promises and embezzled funds. We are tired of FEMA and mismanaged bureaucracy in the Gulf Coast. We are tired of hurricanes and earthquakes and falling stock market prices. We are tired of HIV, AIDS, TB, and other acronymed diseases. We are tired of starving children and anorexic celebrities. We are tired of school shootings and inner city crime. We are tired of debating evolution in schools and abortion in the courts. We are tired of HMOs and insurance companies and a broken healthcare system.

We are tired of divorces in our homes and grappling for grades in our schools. We are tired of griping bosses and sniping co-workers. We are tired of searching for someone who will like us for who we are and not who we pretend to be. We are tired of hypocrisy and judgment in the church from whom we had expected to receive grace. We are tired of the disappointments that happen all the time.

What option is there left for us? We aren’t revolutionaries; we know the world too well to expect it to change. We aren’t saints; we know ourselves too well to expect change there either. The only truth we are sure of is a humanity and an identity that is so disgustingly and predictably selfish that we might as well poke fun at it. We’ll do anything except hope for change, because hope requires vulnerability. Hope demands that we have an expectation that can be disappointed and unfulfilled. Hope means that we must be certain of something we cannot see, that we must trust in something we do not understand.

This is a frightening prospect for a cynic.

This is a frightening prospect for me.

I would much rather describe the world than have hope for it. There is nothing to fear from a description: nothing to be surprised or disappointed by. And so I will stand here and tell you that 18,000 children die each day from hunger, that you can’t trust anyone else or even yourself which means that you certainly should never trust a politician, that you can’t get something for nothing, that you can’t find a good church or even good people these days, that justice is a joke and peace is a sham, that everything is broken, and that nothing is sacred or perfect or even mildly decent.

As a cynic, I can tell you what the world is, but I cannot tell you what to do with it. f David D. Chen ‘05 graduated from the Department of Electrical Engineering and is currently attending medical school.

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