WORLD Magazine Dec. 14, 2013 Vol. 28 No. 25

catching fire: katniss the un-kardashian

D ecem b er 14 , 20 13

daniel of the year

Antoine Audo and the Christians of Syria

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Contents D e c e m b e r 1 4 , 2 0 1 3 / VO L UME 2 8 , N UMBER 2 5

cov e r s to ry

36 Staying the course DANIEL OF THE YEAR: Bishop Antoine Audo and the long-suffering, war-torn, not-goinganywhere Christians of Syria f e at u r es

46 The other side of failure

Caretakers find solace and take stock after nine North Korean orphans are deported from Laos

52 The house that Steven built

A Charlotte megachurch pastor’s megamansion raises eyebrows and critical questions

56 Teacher on a mission Award-winning blogger Marilyn Rhames is a blunt Chicago teacher with an eye toward educational and spiritual reform

dispatch es

9 News 20 Quotables 22 Quick Takes

60 A room of one’s own

New York goes after Airbnb hosts in a first test of what rules will govern the new sharing economy ON THE COVER: Antoine Audo: Paul Jeffrey;

Aleppo (background): KARAM AL-MASRI/AFP/Getty Images; catching fire: Murray Close/LIONSGATE

revi ews

27 Movies & TV 30 Books 32 Q&A 34 Music

27

notebook

65 Religion 68 Lifestyle 69 Technology 70 Science 71 Houses of God 72 Sports

56

46

voices

6 Joel Belz 24 Janie B. Cheaney 44 Mindy Belz 75 Mailbag 79 Andrée Seu Peterson 80 Marvin Olasky

60

visit our website—wng.org—for breaking news and more!

world (ISSN 0888-157X) (USPS 763-010) is published biweekly (26 issues) for $59.95 per year by God’s World Publications, (no mail) 12 All Souls Crescent, Asheville, NC 28803; (828) 232-5260. Periodical postage paid at Asheville, NC, and additional mailing ­offices. ­Printed in the USA. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. © 2013 WORLD News Group. All rights reserved. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to world, PO Box 20002, Asheville, NC 28802-9998.

D ecember 1 4 , 2 0 1 3 • W O R L D

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Brand Penny World7.13.indd 1 Untitled-15 5

6/5/13 9:19:33 AM 11/21/13 2:57 PM

Joel Belz

Dealing with shortages

Demand will always exceed supply in healthcare, no matter what Washington does

>>

James

acobs, of

Photo/



WORLD • DECEMBER 14, 2013

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who gets served, and how soon. It may seem crass, but it only stands to reason that a very wealthy person enjoys the option of going to the head of the line—in either the waiting room, the operating room, or anywhere else in the system. If the infant I mentioned and the teenager and the senior citizen were all from wealthy families, the issues of ranking their care would be moot.

Health insurance is a second tool we’ve developed to sort out and resolve shortages. In a way, health insurance is simply a means to encourage us all—voluntarily—to save up for the medically related issues that are almost sure routinely to confront us in the future—or for the gigantic issues that we had no way of predicting. Health insurance is, in one sense, an extension of the market system in that it allows for significant ability to select the package that best fits your individual needs.

A third major tool intended to sort out and resolve shortages is simply to turn the assignment over to a supposedly strong, able, and fair entity like your government. That, of course, is the ultimate goal of President Barack Obama and his administration. In the course of the current fiasco, it may even be his short-term goal as he scrambles to find any tools possible to rescue his ill-fated Obamacare program. But all three adjectives—strong, able, and fair—have now in short fashion become suspect as applicable to our federal government. Through his own administrative misadventures, Obama’s whole idea of a “single payer” source of addressing shortages has become both scary and toxic in ways his ideological opponents could scarcely have imagined.

Until we reach God’s perfected kingdom, shortages will characterize the whole field of healthcare. Our longing for good health, coupled with the great advances God has allowed in the treatment of illness, suggests the costs will continue to be high. But if the last few weeks have taught us anything at all, they’ve been a warning not to turn hard assignments like these over to Washington. A

TOP: JON-MICHAEL SULLIVAN/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE/AP • MIDDLE: SANDY HUFFAKER/CORBIS/AP • BOTTOM: PAUL KUEHNEL/YORK DAILY RECORD/AP

I    discussion of who ought to be picking up the bill for healthcare in our society, and by what process they ought to do so, we tend to forget one terribly crucial question: Can we afford it?

Common sense says we can’t. Just yesterday afternoon, for example, I heard about three folks from my own little church who needed costly medical attention. An infant’s inability to assimilate nourishment had reached something of a crisis. A teenager struggles with severe intestinal issues.

A senior citizen had major surgery for colon cancer. I can only imagine the total cost of yesterday’s procedures. I know the families involved well enough to be confident none of them could just write a check for the bills that are sure to come.

Bottom line is: Who will ultimately sort all that out? What if there’s not enough to go around? What if we get to the end of the line, face the task of divvying up what resources are left, and find that either the infant, the teenager, or the senior citizen comes out on the short end of the stick?

For until we get a whole lot smarter than we are right now, we’re always going to be running short of healthcare somewhere, on some front. The law of scarcity is inexorably at work in the field of healthcare. Only a few people out of a thousand have the brains and the gifts to be great surgeons—which leads us to value them highly and typically to pay them well. Such shortages—among doctors and the structures that support them—are reflected everywhere.

You see them vividly in your having to make doctors’ appointments several weeks in advance, and then to sit in the waiting room after keeping your appointment. If there were no shortages, you could walk right in as you do at Walmart.

Sorting out and resolving such shortages is perhaps one of the main assignments we lay on our healthcare systems. Traditionally, we’ve let that happen several ways.

Dominant among those tools is the largely invisible “market system,” where the ability to pay determines

Email: jbelz@wng.org

11/25/13 1:05 PM

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Dispatches News > Quotables > Quick Takes

DREAM COME TRUE: “He wanted to be Batman,” said MakeA-Wish Foundation’s Bay Area director Patricia Wilson of -year-old leukemia patient Miles Scott.

His wish grew into a citywide caper involving the San Francisco police chief and a flash mob to help the “Batkid,” shown here with Batman on Nov. , rescue a damsel and capture the Penguin.

The San Francisco Chronicle joined in, printing a special edition of “Gotham City Chronicle” to cover the events.

JEFF CHIU/AP

DECEMBER 14, 2013 • WORLD

25 NEWS 1.indd 9



11/25/13 3:34 PM

Dispatches > News T h u r s d a y, No v.  

Typhoon graveyard

We d n e s d a y, No v.  

Admitted late

The Obama administration finally designated Nigerian extremist group Boko Haram and splinter group Ansaru foreign terrorist organizations, a decision human rights observers said was long overdue. In the past few years Boko Haram militants have killed thousands of their countrymen, targeting Christians and seeking to force strict Sharia law across Nigeria. They nearly killed Nigerian Christian Habila Adamu last year, shooting him in the face with an AK- and leaving him for dead after he refused to renounce his faith. Adamu pleaded for an end to religious persecution in written testimony before a House subcommittee: “I am alive because God wants you to have a message.”

Hawaiian change With legislative approval on Tuesday and Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s signature on Wednesday, Hawaii became the th state to legalize same-sex marriage.

In  the state helped launch the national samesex marriage debate when two lesbians applied for a marriage license (and were denied). The Hawaii Supreme Court later ruled a state law protecting traditional marriage discriminated against the couple, but allowed the law to stand. Under the new law, same-sex weddings can begin Dec. .

 

Obamacare Band-Aid Attempting to soothe the anger of Americans who lost their health insurance plans because of Obamacare, President Obama announced he would grant a oneyear extension to private plans affected by the law. Obama’s move came a day after his administration revealed only , people had successfully signed up for new health plans using the government’s glitchy insurance marketplace website during October, its first month of operation. As a result of the botched Obamacare rollout, the president’s disapproval rating among voters rose to  percent in a November poll, the worst of Obama’s tenure.

BOKO HARAM: SALISU RABIU/AP • HAWAII: CRAIG T. KOJIMA/ HONOLULU STAR-ADVERTISER/AP • TYPHOON: AARON FAVILA/AP • RADEL: LINDA DAVIDSON/THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES

Officials laid bodies in the first mass grave in Tacloban, a city in the Philippines crippled by Typhoon Haiyan. Six days after the disaster, they were still struggling to reach survivors and count the dead. Some Filipinos had still not received emergency aid.

Guilty U.S. Rep. Henry Radel, R-Fla., received one year of probation after pleading guilty on Nov.  to a misdemeanor charge of possession of cocaine. “I have no excuse for what I have done,” he told reporters. “I’m owning up to my actions.” But Radel, , does not plan to resign. Instead he said he will take a leave of absence from Congress to enter a drug treatment program in Florida. 

WORLD • DECEMBER 14, 2013

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11/25/13 4:05 PM

CHINA: IMAGINECHINA VIA AP • ETHANOL: JGROUP/ISTOCK • TORNADO: FRED ZWICKY/JOURNAL STAR/AP • MEVOLI: DAAN VERHOEVEN/BARCROFT MEDIA/LANDOV • SMITH: STEVE HELBER/AP

Suspected Boko Haram members are detained by the Nigerian military.

CHINA: IMAGINECHINA VIA AP • ETHANOL: JGROUP/ISTOCK • TORNADO: FRED ZWICKY/JOURNAL STAR/AP • MEVOLI: DAAN VERHOEVEN/BARCROFT MEDIA/LANDOV • SMITH: STEVE HELBER/AP

BOKO HARAM: SALISU RABIU/AP • HAWAII: CRAIG T. KOJIMA/ HONOLULU STAR-ADVERTISER/AP • TYPHOON: AARON FAVILA/AP • RADEL: LINDA DAVIDSON/THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES

S u n d a y, No v.  

Late twisters

F r i d a y, N o v.  

One-child tweak

Chinese Communist Party officials announced they would loosen a rule governing the nation’s one-child policy, allowing couples to have a second baby if one of the parents is an only child. Currently, a second child is legal if both parents are an only child, or in other special circumstances. The policy change should result in  million to  million additional births per year.

Western commentators said Beijing’s policy tweak would be too late to save China’s shrinking workforce from a demographic crisis. Nor would it end “gendercide” or forced abortions. In a separate policy change, Chinese officials also promised to abolish the nation’s “re-education through labor” camps, where political prisoners are often held without trial.

Biofuel backtrack For the first time, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed not raising but lowering the annual biofuel mandate. The agency argued that adding . billion gallons of mostly corn-based ethanol to the gasoline supply in  would be unreasonable since gasoline demand has been lower than expected. The new target: . billion gallons.

Libyan turmoil Militiamen occupying the Libyan capital of Tripoli fired into a crowd of reportedly unarmed Libyans protesting their presence. The resulting clashes left hundreds injured and  dead—violence that underscored the inability of Prime Minister Ali Zeidan’s government to take control of the nation.

Midwest congregations took to church basements on Sunday morning as powerful storms and at least  tornadoes tore through several states, including Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky. The twisters killed eight people, mangled trees, flipped rail cars, downed power lines, and damaged or leveled more than , Illinois homes. Two of the tornadoes were the most powerful to occur so far north during November in more than  years.

Deep water tragedy A competition featuring the increasingly popular sport of free diving turned tragic in the Bahamas when deep-water diver Nicholas Mevoli died attempting to set an American record. Mevoli reached his goal of diving to  meters ( feet) without fins or supplemental oxygen, but lost consciousness after returning to the surface, apparently suffering from burst blood vessels in his lungs. The Vertical Blue competition’s medical team was unable to revive him.

Honored Legendary former University of North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith,, , was among  Americans awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, by President Obama on Nov. . “Even as he won  percent of his games, he graduated  percent of his players,” Obama said of Smith, who was unable to attend the event and is battling a neurocognitive disorder. Obama also praised Smith’s efforts to integrate Chapel Hill, N.C. Other Americans honored at the event included Oprah Winfrey, former President Bill Clinton, and feminist Gloria Steinem.

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25 NEWS 1.indd 11

DECEMBER 14, 2013 • WORLD

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11/25/13 4:05 PM

Dispatches > News Tu e s d a y, No v.  

Pro-life defeat

M o n d a y, N o v.  

Crazy Canuck The Toronto City Council voted to strip Mayor Rob Ford of executive power and  percent of his office budget but he defied their calls to resign. After a video had emerged showing the mayor smoking crack cocaine, Ford admitted to illegal drug use and heavy drinking, while denying allegations he made sexual proposals to a female staffer. He insisted he was cleaning up his behavior. The bombastic mayor accused City Council members—who gave his staff permission to defect to the deputy mayor—of a “coup d’état.”

Cooked-up jobs?

Citing a U.S. Census Bureau employee and an unnamed source, New York Post columnist John Crudele charged the Bureau with fabricating household survey data used in government unemployment reports. The fake data, Crudele suggested, could have contributed to a sudden dip in the official unemployment rate just before Barack Obama’s  reelection. The column sparked a congressional investigation.

Trouble magnet

Florida police arrested George Zimmerman after his girlfriend called  and accused him of pointing a shotgun at her and shoving her out of the couple’s home in Apopka. Zimmerman, acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges in July for killing African-American teenager Trayvon Martin, faces charges of domestic aggravated assault, domestic battery, and criminal mischief.

Reaping the whirlwind JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay  billion, the largest company settlement in U.S. history, for its role in the  financial crisis. In an agreement with the Justice Department, the nation’s largest bank admitted to knowingly selling toxic loans to investors, behavior U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said “helped sow the seeds of the mortgage meltdown.” Government officials have at least nine other ongoing probes into the bank. JPMorgan employees could still face criminal charges.

Convicted A Methodist jury convicted Frank Schaefer, pastor of Zion United Methodist Church of Iona in Lebanon, Pa., of officiating a same-sex marriage and flouting church rules. Schaefer had presided over his son’s gay wedding ceremony in . Although some UMC churches have accepted gay and lesbian members, the denomination officially condemns homosexual practice and bars ministers from performing same-sex ceremonies. The jury suspended Schaefer from church duties and gave him  days to decide whether to follow church rules or resign. 

WORLD • DECEMBER 14, 2013

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FORD: AARON HARRIS/REUTERS/LANDOV • ZIMMERMAN: JOE BURBANK/ORLANDO SENTINEL/AP • ALBUQUERQUE: JUAN ANTONIO LABRECHE/AP • JPMORGAN CHASE: KATHY WILLENS/AP • SCHAEFER: CHRIS KNIGHT/AP

In a contentious vote that amassed more ballots than the mayoral election, residents of Albuquerque rejected,  percent to  percent, what would have been the nation’s first citywide ban on late-term abortions. The defeat stung pro-life conservatives, who hoped outlawing abortions after  weeks of gestation would curtail business at Southwestern Women’s Options, one of the only U.S. facilities performing them.

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11/23/13 10:26 PM

What are students saying about Life at BoB jones university?

Earlier this year our students grabbed their cameras and started recording. The resulting 13-minute documentary tells their story.

For graduation rates, the median debt of students who completed the program and other important info visit on.bju.edu/rates. (15609) 9/13

See what they have to say

www.lifeatbju.com

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11/21/13 3:31 PM

Dispatches > News T h u r s d a y, No v.  

Going nuclear Democrats in the U.S. Senate made good on long-standing threats by voting - to exercise the so-called nuclear option, ending the ability of a minority party to filibuster most presidential nominees. Use of the filibuster, a procedural tactic historically viewed as protecting the minority party, has increased sharply in recent years. Democrats used it to block the judicial and executive appointments of former President George W. Bush,

We d n e s d a y, No v.  

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn spared no fanfare when he signed a bill making the Land of Lincoln the th state to recognize same-sex marriage. For the ignoble occasion in Chicago, Quinn used the desk where Abraham Lincoln purportedly wrote his first inaugural address in , shipped up from the former president’s historical Springfield office. The legislation permits gay marriages beginning June  of next year and has very few religious protections, according to the Chicago-based Thomas More Society.

Anglican shift Members of the Church of England’s General Synod voted overwhelmingly in favor of a proposal that would allow women to become bishops. The action was a dramatic reversal from a year before, when a similar proposal failed by six votes. The measure will need final approval in coming months. Anglican churches in the United States, Australia, and Canada already permit female bishops, and the Church of England already permits female priests.

and Republicans have used it to block those of President Obama. Under new chamber rules, Senators may close debate on a nominee with a simple majority vote, rather than the previous threshold of . Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, angered by Republican efforts to stymie Obama’s appeals court appointments, said the change was necessary to fix a “broken” Congress. Republicans called it a power grab. For now, the rule change does not apply to Supreme Court nominees or to legislation.

Defended One of America’s famous political families is engaged in a high-profile feud: Former Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne, on Nov.  defended their two adult daughters who have clashed over same-sex marriage.

The statement came a day after Mary Cheney, , who is an open lesbian, criticized her older sister, Liz Cheney, , who is running in Wyoming for the U.S. Senate, for supporting traditional marriage. Dick and Lynne Cheney wrote that it’s acceptable for Liz to be kind to her sister while not embracing the idea of her same-sex marriage.



WORLD • DECEMBER 14, 2013

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ILLINOIS: SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES • REID: J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/AP • ENGLAND: PETER MACDIARMID/GETTY IMAGES • CHENEY: MATT YOUNG/AP

Midwest domino?

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Australia Chile England France Greece Italy Zambia

Spanning the globe At Harding University we don’t just talk about global experiences, we provide them. At seven international campuses spanning five continents, Harding students spend a semester studying outside the realm of a traditional classroom encountering different cultures, historic sites, foreign languages and amazing architecture. Nearly 50 percent of students in each graduating class have attended one or more of the international programs, which provide a Christian worldview.

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Faith, Learning and Living

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Harding.edu | 800-477-4407 Searcy, Arkansas

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11/21/13 3:03 PM

Dispatches > News S a t u r d a y, No v.  

F r i d a y, N o v.  

Bagpipers in Washington, D.C., and Dublin played a solemn homage to John F. Kennedy, the first Irish-Catholic president, on the th anniversary of his assassination. Kennedy was riding next to his wife Jacqueline in an open-air car as his motorcade drove through Dallas on Nov. , , when communist Lee Harvey Oswald shot him in the head from a window with an Italian bolt-action rifle. The murder stunned the nation, spawned conspiracy theories, and helped ensconce -year-old Kennedy as a near-mythic political hero. “In the Washington shop windows they displayed shrines to Kennedy with candles burning,” recalled retired Irish Commandant Leo Quinlan, who served in an Irish honor guard at the funeral, according to The Associated Press. “You could never forget any of that.”

Rebels unite As Syrian government forces pressed into rebeloccupied territory in the country’s ongoing civil war, six rebel groups announced they would form a new alliance, the Islamic Front. Their estimated , fighters declared a common goal of toppling President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and establishing “an Islamic state where the sovereignty of God Almighty alone will be our reference and ruler.” The alliance could overshadow the secular but weakened rebel movement, the Free Syrian Army.



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Died Two-time Nobel Prize winner British biochemist Frederick Sanger, , died on Nov. .

Fellow scientists hailed Sanger as one of the greatest scientists ever for his work with proteins and DNA sequencing. The group that funded much of Sanger’s work said it “laid the foundations of humanity’s ability to read and understand the genetic code.” Sanger, who won in  and , became the fourth two-time Nobel winner and the first two-time winner in chemistry.

freeze—for six months—work that could lead to nuclear weapons while continuing to enrich uranium for civilian nuclear power. Under the deal, the six powers will ease about  billion in sanctions against Iran.

President Obama hailed the agreement as “a new path toward a world that is more secure—a future in which we can verify that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful and that it cannot build a nuclear weapon.” He said the deal was the “first step” and that continued concessions would be necessary for any further easing of sanctions. Israeli leaders condemned the deal, saying it requires Iran to take only easily reversible actions. “What was concluded in Geneva last night is not a historic agreement, it’s a historic mistake,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters.

“It’s not made the world a safer place.

Like the agreement with North Korea in , this agreement has made the world a much more dangerous place.”

KENNEDY: IKE ALTGENS/AP • IRAN TALKS: CAROLYN KASTER/AP • SYRIA: AFP/GETTY IMAGES • SANGER: ASSOCIATED PRESS

JFK remembered

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NEW MEXICO: JIM THOMPSON/ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL/AP • OPCW: BAS CZERWINSKI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • SMAUG: WARNER BROS. PICTURES • WINAMP: HANDOUT • NEW YORK: SEANPAVONEPHOTO/ISTOCK HEALTHCARE.GOV: HANDOUT • MCCAUGHEY SEPTUPLETS: CHARLIE NEIBERGALL/AP

Iranian deal Iran struck a deal with the United States, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom that eases some of the economic sanctions against Iran while also limiting the Islamic nation’s nuclear development.

The deal calls for Iran to neutralize or

Dec. 10

KENNEDY: IKE ALTGENS/AP • IRAN TALKS: CAROLYN KASTER/AP • SYRIA: AFP/GETTY IMAGES • SANGER: ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW MEXICO: JIM THOMPSON/ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL/AP • OPCW: BAS CZERWINSKI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • SMAUG: WARNER BROS. PICTURES • WINAMP: HANDOUT • NEW YORK: SEANPAVONEPHOTO/ISTOCK HEALTHCARE.GOV: HANDOUT • MCCAUGHEY SEPTUPLETS: CHARLIE NEIBERGALL/AP

Leaders of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will be on hand in Oslo, Norway, to receive the  Nobel Peace Prize. The selection of the OPCW puzzled many prognosticators who expected Pakistani teen activist Malala Yousafzai to be honored.

LOOKING AHEAD S u n d a y, N o v.  

Change in the weather Winter weather came early for a part of the country not used to it—the Southwest. Heavy snow and sleet hit parts of New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, prompting the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport to cancel about  flights on Nov.  and another  on Nov. . “This is not Texas weather, man,” driver Ron Taylor told KTVT. “This is Alaska, or Idaho.”

The same storm system headed east, bringing severe weather to places like Mississippi and Georgia. Freezing temperatures— lower than normal for this time of year—also hit the Northeast and Midwest.

Dec. 13 The second of three Hobbit films is released today when The Desolation of Smaug hits theaters on Dec. . Martin Freeman returns to play the role of Bilbo Baggins in the series that has already grossed more than  trillion at the box office.

Dec. 21 High noon won’t be

so high today. The Northern Hemisphere’s long descent into shorter days and longer nights reaches its end on Dec. . New York City will see just  hours and  minutes between its : a.m. sunrise and : p.m. sunset.

Dec. 20

Today is the last chance to download Winamp, the media player software made popular during the advent of MP file sharing. AOL announced plans to stop offering downloads of the iTunes precursor beginning today after  years of playing music.

Dec. 23 If you have the time—and if the website

   . Find the latest reviews of holiday movies, continuing coverage of the nuclear deal with Iran, and more commentary

by Marvin Olasky, Janie B. Cheaney, Andrée Seu Peterson, and other WORLD writers.

works—Americans hoping to be enrolled in Obamacare health plans by Jan.  must have purchased insurance through state or federal exchanges by today. That may be difficult considering ongoing problems at healthcare.gov.

Turned The McCaughey septuplets turned  on Nov. . The seven, who live in Carlisle, Iowa,

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made history in  when they became the first known septuplets to survive infancy. They told The Des Moines Register they’ve been living mostly normal lives in recent years, although two of them, Nathan and Alexis, live with cerebral palsy. Parents Kenny and Bobbi McCaughey have kept their septuplets different in one way: The -year-olds don’t have cellphones.

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DECEMBER 14, 2013 • WORLD



11/25/13 4:31 PM

Dispatches > News

Democrats in disarray

>>

During the push to pass Obamacare in 2010, then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pleaded, “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.”

More than three years later America is finding out what’s in the mammoth new government program: a dysfunctional website, millions of canceled insurance polices, and higher premiums.

Despite the disastrous rollout, Pelosi on Nov. 17 refused to back away from Obamacare. “I will tell you this: Democrats stand tall in support of the Affordable Care Act,” she said.

But 39 House Democrats didn’t receive Pelosi’s message to stand tall.

Worried about the effect Obamacare may have on their reelection chances, those Democrats broke party ranks and voted for a Republican-led measure allowing individuals to keep their current insurance plans. It was the largest revolt of Democrats on a congressional vote this year.

Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., gave the Obamacare rollout a grade of F-minus.

“Heads should have rolled in my opinion,” he said.

In the Senate, Democrats lined up to sponsor bills changing the healthcare law many of them once championed.

Sens. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and Mark Udall, D-Colo., authored bills addressing the millions of canceled plans. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., wrote legislation delaying the penalty assessed to individuals who don’t buy insurance. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., has a bill extending the enrollment period beyond the current March 31 deadline. Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, pushed legislation creating a new “copper plan” healthcare option.

Many of the bills do little more than provide their authors political cover

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Landrieu Rahall

heading into tough reelection battles. But with their Senate leader, Harry Reid, refusing to bring their bills to floor, the maneuverings highlight a Manchin fracturing party. That fissure could burst open if Obamacare continues to falter and party leaders balk at changes.

Democrats saying they want to “fix” Obamacare surely have been reading the latest polls. Support for Obamacare dropped 16 points in one month among Democrats. Just 7 percent of Americans think the law is working. A Gallup poll seven years ago found 69 percent of Americans believed the government should be responsible for healthcare.

But a new Gallup poll now shows that 56 percent of Americans believe government should not be responsible for healthcare. The president’s approval rating dropped to its lowest ever in at least six major polls. A Nov. 20 CBS News poll pegged Obama’s approval rating at 37 percent, versus 57 percent disapproval.

Obama tried to help his fellow Democrats by offering a one-year reprieve on the canceled polices. But the National Association of Insurance Commissioners threw cold water on Obama’s effort, arguing that his late change would undermine the marketplace and lead to higher premiums.

Several states are declining to accept Obama’s option.

Meanwhile, Democrats are bracing for the next Obamacare bombshell. That

Udall

Shaheen Begich

likely will occur when a second Obama pledge crumbles. Despite Obama’s repeated promises that Americans could keep their doctors, there will be fewer choices in doctors and hospitals under Obamacare. In New Hampshire, 10 out of 26 major hospitals are excluded from Obamacare. A medical group survey of about 48,000 physicians this fall found that less than 30 percent would join the Obamacare exchanges.

And a second wave of policy cancellations is expected to hit next fall just in time for the midterm elections. The American Enterprise Institute predicts that as many as 100 million polices could be affected as business plans try to comply with Obamacare’s mandates.

A 22-page strategy memo given to Democrats in mid-November by the White House urged lawmakers to change the subject by talking about October’s government shutdown and the debt ceiling debate.

But Republicans are not going to let Democrats rewind the clock or hide their support for Obamacare: The Republican National Committee on Nov. 20 invited Democrats to a mock Obamacare press conference that included a photo opportunity in front of a banner reading “Eager and Proud to Run on Obamacare in 2014.” A

rahall, MANCHIN, BEGICH: J. Scott Applewhite/ap • landrieu: Douglas Graham/CQ Roll Call/getty images • udall: Karl Gehring/The Denver Post via Getty Images • sheehan: Allison Shelley/Getty Images

President Obama’s signature law threatens to fracture his party By Edward Lee Pitts

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11/25/13 2:38 PM

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11/21/13 3:05 PM

Dispatches > Quotables

‘A shock to the system.’

Minh Ta, chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., in an email message to other Democratic chiefs of staff, on the sharp price increases for older Capitol Hill aides under Obamacare. Ta and other congressional aides are trying to convince the House to allow older staffers to return to the heavily subsidized Federal Employees Health Benefits program.

‘I certainly will work really hard for Tim Scott.’

U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., when asked whether he would endorse fellow Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, also from South Carolina, in 2014. Analysts expect the moderate Graham to face a conservative primary challenger next year. Scott also faces a reelection campaign next year.

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‘There may need to be a … greater acceptance that they may have to step back and shut the whole thing down.’

Former U.S. Rep. Harold Ford, D-Tenn., on Obamacare and the political problems it is creating for Democrats.

‘I’d want to be talking about something else too if I had to defend dogs getting insurance while millions of Americans lost theirs.’

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in response to Democrats changing Senate rules to stop certain filibusters—also known as the “nuclear option.” McConnell said Democrats were merely changing the subject and cited a story about a dog that had recently received a letter saying he qualified for insurance under Obamacare.

Scott: Ron Sachs/picture-alliance/dpa/AP • Reinharz: Steven Senne/ap • ta: Kris Connor/Getty Images • ford: William B. Plowman/AABE/ap • McConnell: J. Scott Applewhite/ap

Gordon Fellman, a sociology professor at Brandeis University, on the $600,000 in salary and benefits paid by Brandeis to ­former university president Jehuda Reinharz. An investigation by the Boston Globe found that Brandeis, Tufts, Harvard, and Wellesley in the Boston area alone continue to pay former presidents hundreds of thousands of dollars, a practice critics say is ­symbolic of overspending in higher education.

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‘There is puzzlement from faculty about why he gets paid at all. His term as president ended.’

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Scott: Ron Sachs/picture-alliance/dpa/AP • Reinharz: Steven Senne/ap • ta: Kris Connor/Getty Images • ford: William B. Plowman/AABE/ap • McConnell: J. Scott Applewhite/ap

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Dispatches > Quick Takes

 

Every winter, artists and entrepreneurs come together in Sweden’s frigid north to build a unique hotel from blocks of ice hewn from the frozen Torne River in Jukkasjärvi. And every spring, the Icehotel melts away when temperatures finally rise. But this year, builders of the structure will have to include one more thing on their punch list: fire alarms.

According to local government officials, the Icehotel must comply with building codes. And despite being constructed entirely of frozen river water, the hotel’s owners must include a series of fire alarms.

  For wealthy foreigners looking to immigrate through the back door, some Maltese politicians have a proposal: citizenship for sale. Politicians on the Mediterranean island of Malta proposed selling citizenship to the EU member nation for , per person. Maltese citizens gain access to all  EU member states. The Maltese parliament passed the legislation in November, and it garnered a presidential signature. But in the wake of mass protests ginned up by the nation’s nationalist party, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat put the proposal on hold on Nov. . Critics declared the citizenship-for-sale scheme as improper while supporters in parliament said the plan could bring in more than  million in revenue to the cash-strapped country.

     When a clumsy break-in attempt awoke one Salt Lake City, Utah, man, he dialed --. But resident Pablo Solorio wasn’t phoning for police—not initially. On Nov. , an unidentified intruder broke through Solorio’s glass window ostensibly to pilfer some of the resident’s electronic gadgets. But during the break-in, the suspected thief severely cut his arm. Instead of attacking the intruder, Solorio phoned for paramedics and rendered first aid. Police say the -year-old suspect will be tried for burglary after recovering.

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If diamonds are a girl’s best friend, then the Nov.  Sotheby’s auction in Geneva, Switzerland, would have been the place to be. The auction house set a world record for priciest jewelry auction, summing nearly  million in sales— including more than  million for one stone. Collector Isaac Wolf of New York topped rivals by bidding  million for the plum-sized Pink Star diamond, a .-carat pink stone. “There is no stone of that size and color known, no other stone,” auctioneer David Bennett told reporters after the sale. That night, Wolf announced he would change the name of the gem to the Pink Dream.

ICE HOTEL: HAKAN HORT • FLAME: LONELYSNAILDESIGN/ISTOCK • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • PASSPORT: THEKEKSTER/ISTOCK, MODIFIED BY WORLD • SOLORIO: HANDOUT • DIAMOND: RAY TANG/REX/AP

It wasn’t so much what he stole, it’s how he stole it. Police say -year-old Michael Pusey stole a backhoe from a Chester County, Pa., construction site on Nov. . But instead of loading the , construction vehicle onto a trailer, Pusey fired the backhoe up, navigated it onto Interstate , and drove it into Philadelphia. Police believe the -mile trek took Pusey about . hours. Thankfully, the construction company had equipped the backhoe with a GPS tracker, making it easy for police to recover the vehicle and catch Pusey.

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CUBA: FRANKLIN REYES/AP • MUD SNAIL: US GEOLOGICAL SURVEY • DOOR: ZENTILIA/ISTOCK • GONZALEZ: HANDOUT • LINCOLN: ALEXANDER GARDNER/NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY/AP

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 

ICE HOTEL: HAKAN HORT • FLAME: LONELYSNAILDESIGN/ISTOCK • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • PASSPORT: THEKEKSTER/ISTOCK, MODIFIED BY WORLD • SOLORIO: HANDOUT • DIAMOND: RAY TANG/REX/AP

CUBA: FRANKLIN REYES/AP • MUD SNAIL: US GEOLOGICAL SURVEY • DOOR: ZENTILIA/ISTOCK • GONZALEZ: HANDOUT • LINCOLN: ALEXANDER GARDNER/NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY/AP

    What are China, Cuba, Russia, and Saudi Arabia all well-known for? According to the United Nations, it’s their record on human rights. The four nations— described by watchdogs as restrictive or repressive—all won three-year seats on the UN Human Rights Council in a November election at the UN’s General Assembly. Governments in Iran and Syria had also considered running for a spot on the council, but pulled back after international criticism.

Highlighting the quartet’s own human rights problems, Cuba announced earlier this year it may allow the Red Cross to access its prisons for the first time in a quarter century along with international officials to investigate allegations of torture.

They’re slippery. They’re slimy. They’re tiny. But they’re invading—albeit slowly. Dane County, Wis., officials say they’re worried about the discovery of New Zealand mud snails in local waterways. With no natural predators—and a tendency to reproduce quickly—the discovery of the snails in Black Earth Creek in October could portend ecological disaster for many Wisconsin waterways. Dozens of the snails can fit on the head of a dime, biologists say. That means the snails could potentially hitch rides to other waterways by attaching to fishermen and animals alike. “Once you have them,” University of Wisconsin researcher Tim Campbell told the Journal-Times, “it’s impossible to get rid of them.”

   If you like your knob, you can keep it. But beginning in March , the city of Vancouver, Canada, will begin its phased-in ban on all doorknobs in the city. Homes and buildings with doorknobs won’t have to change a thing, say city officials.

Instead, builders of new homes and buildings in the city will be forced to equip doors—and faucets—with lever-action handles. The move comes as city officials attempt to make the town more accessible to handicapped residents. Levers are easier to operate than knobs for people missing thumbs and with other disabilities.

  Police in Spain’s Catalonia region cracked down on one bicyclist in November when they cited him for reckless driving. What did Ivan Gonzalez do wrong? Police say he was eating a pastry while pedaling through the town of Sabadell. Gonzalez says he plans to appeal the charge, which carries a hefty penalty.

  It took  years, but finally one Pennsylvania newspaper has warmed to President Abraham Lincoln’s remarks at Gettysburg. A Nov.  editorial in The Patriot-News of Harrisburg, Pa., officially retracted the paper’s review of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in time for the th anniversary of the speech. In the  review of Lincoln’s famous speech, writers at The Patriot-News derided the president’s “silly remarks” and argued that they should “be no more repeated or thought of.” A century and a half later, the paper’s editors issued a mea culpa, calling the paper’s review “a judgment so flawed, so tainted by hubris, so lacking in the perspective history would bring, that it cannot remain unaddressed in our archives.”

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Janie B. Cheaney

Going to extremes An aggressive pursuit of ideological purity is misplaced— when applied to politics

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winning through moderation than on maintaining “ideological purity”?

During the last, terrifying days of the Kingdom of Judah, ca.  .., the Lord instructed his people through the prophet Jeremiah to surrender to the enemy. God’s decision was final; Jerusalem would fall to Babylon. It was no time to take a stand for national pride, but to cooperate with the plan and shorten the agony. King Zedekiah, swayed by whoever happened to be whispering in his ear, listened to the extremists of his day and decided to resist—a decision with terrible consequences for him and for the city (Jeremiah -).

I am by no means suggesting that conservatives “surrender” to moderates—only that it’s a thin line between ideological purity and idolatry. God’s agenda for the United States is not necessarily the same as ours, and if it’s time for the nation to be judged (a friend suggested years ago that President Obama is God’s judgment on us), then judged it will be. Civil government is not the ultimate battleground, and pragmatism in the pursuit of the best likely outcome (e.g., the least governmental interference, the more young men off disability, the fewest dead babies) is no vice. As we’ve heard ad nauseam since November , “politics is the art of the possible,” not the ideal.

Liberalism occasionally gets its comeuppance when liberal extremity is revealed—as in the spectacular mess of Obamacare.

With yet another crucial election right around the corner, I expect I’ll be holding my nose in the voting booth. But one place where extremism in defense of liberty is no vice is my daily walk as a Christian.

That’s where all-or-nothing, high-stakes, ideological purity actually works, even thrives. Political tides come and go, but the spiritual battle remains until the Lord comes again.

Like it or not, politics is indeed the art of the possible—no more, no less. The art of the impossible is faith in Christ. A

KRIEG BARRIE

N   , on a July night at a convention hall in San Francisco, a steel-haired, square-faced man in horn-rim glasses accepted his party’s nomination for president of the United States. His acceptance speech bulged with what we now call “red meat”—choice ideological morsels for true believers. Winding it up, he warned his supporters “not to be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels. I would remind you that extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.”

That one-minute applause line was manipulated into a landslide victory—for the other side. Barry Goldwater expressed a noble idea very similar to statements made by the late JFK. But he also tried to dignify an unfortunate word, a word that could be stretched, even then, as far as a rival dared to go. And that was pretty far: Within a month, a TV ad for the LBJ campaign pictured a little girl in a daisy field, counting petals in a lisping voice that morphed into a countdown for a nuclear missile. Then a mushroom cloud bloomed on the screen, fixing for the viewer the face of “extremism.”

That word remains a favorite weapon in the Democratic arsenal, locked and loaded whenever a candidate slightly to the right of center makes it on the Republican ticket. Unthinking and stupid as it is, it works. Americans don’t like “extremism”—not in , not in , not in . We’re told that was the lesson of the Christie and Cuccinelli campaigns in New Jersey and Virginia, respectively; moderate Republicans can win, but those plastered with the “extremist” label are sure to lose.

Perhaps the best a conservative can do is pull his party a little more to the right by voting for the farthestright candidate during primaries and then supporting the moderate choice in the general election. (That was my strategy in  when I voted for Todd Akin in the Missouri primary. We know how well that worked out.) But should we, as a victorious Gov. Christie and a host of talking TV heads advise us, focus more on

Email: jcheaney@wng.org

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Reviews Movies  TV > Books > QA > Music

Deep Hunger MOVIE: Catching Fire dares to ask some serious and uncomfortable questions

BY MEGAN BASHAM

MURRAY CLOSE/LIONSGATE

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D   about the violence and persistent secularism of the series, when it comes to young adult books and the movies based on them, you could do a lot worse than Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games.

Unlike Twilight’s Bella or the protagonists in a spate of similar but less successful films like Mortal Instruments and Beautiful Creatures, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is a fully-developed character with far more pressing concerns than deciding which boy she likes best. Among the problems crowding her plate: finding food for her family, filling in for an emotionally absent parent, and generally surviving a future in which the former United States is run by a homicidal dictatorship.

Email: mbasham@wng.org

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These dystopian elements serve as more than plot filler as Katniss waivers in her affections between the macho Gale (Liam Hemsworth) and the mildmannered Peeta (Josh Hutcherson). In the first film they provided a platform by which she tried to decide what kind of person she was: someone who takes her sister’s place in a state-mandated battle to the death or someone who does whatever it takes—including kill in cold blood—to survive. In the second adaptation, Catching Fire, Katniss’ struggle to first identify and then do the right thing becomes less stark yet all the more relevant for young audiences.

Picture a Kardashian-type star who is an unwilling participant in the making of her own fame. She knows that a populace rabid for celebrity gossip is being fed a false image of her, and she

knows it keeps them distracted from the greatest moral issues of their time.

From the parties she attends, to her engagement, to an announcement that she’s with child—everything her fans learn (or think they learn) about her life is timed to illicit a very specific response.

The difference between Katniss and Kim, of course, is that Katniss despises the self-worship of the Capitol elite and only smiles for the cameras to save her life and protect the lives of those she loves. When she lets her mask of glamorous warrior princess slip and expresses her disgust for the new kind of game she must play, President Snow (Donald Sutherland) decides to throw her back into the deadly ring.

Thankfully, though Catching Fire’s unflattering allusion to the Hollywood

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Reviews > Movies & TV TELEVISION media machine is too pointed to miss, the excesses of the Capitol don’t come close to matching real entertainment-industry decadence. The famous here amuse themselves with gluttony and outlandish costumes rather than drugs, sex tapes, and obscene displays with foam fingers, yet we still understand that they are sick, shallow ­people who primarily concern themselves with sick, shallow things. They tacitly approve injustice by giving it inoffensive names and shed crocodile tears over “necessary evils” like the sacrifice of children.

The glaring (and fairly unrealistic) missing ingredient in Katniss’ world is a standard by which she ON DISPLAY: can judge Hutcherson, the motivaElizabeth Banks, tions of her and Lawrence heart, as (from left).

The Preachers of L.A.

by Sophia Lee

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Who drives in gleaming Bentleys, struts in waxed Italian shoes, leads an entourage of butlers and chauffeurs, and performs to a weeping, enraptured audience?

If you’re thinking movie stars, you’re not too far away from the truth.

Six mega-pastors in Southern California star in the new Oxygen reality show The Preachers of L.A. They claim to live for God, His people, and His kingdom. But halfway into an episode, it becomes clear that they are the gods—though they sure do love the people for their adoration, and they’ve built a nice earthly kingdom for themselves. One preacher even has a guy who irons his shirts.

Reality television shows have been lapping up such colorful Christian characters. This year saw the debut of various new reality shows that revolve around Christian (particularly clergy) families, such as Preachers of L.A., Bravo TV’s Thicker Than Water, BET’s The Sheards, and National Geographic Channel’s Snake Salvation and Church Rescue. The surprise popularity of A&E’s Duck Dynasty enlightened networks and producers to the fact that they may have been neglecting a key demographic in America: the Christians.

Craig Detweiler, who teaches film studies at Pepperdine University and has a doctorate in theology and culture, said reality TV has “evolved to entire programs built around ­aiming squarely at the Christian subculture.” Compare that to 10 years ago, when you might see one contestant from the

Preachers of L.A.: Tim Brown/Oxygen • Catching Fire: Murray Close/LIONSGATE

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well as a source of comfort and hope to help her bear up under the Capitol’s atrocities. No one appears to believe in or even be aware of God in Panem, leaving Katniss only other fallible human beings like Peeta to provide her a model for righteous living. It’s a bleak proposition which serves to explain the ultimately bleak conclusion of Collins’ novels.

But we are not at the conclusion yet, and some PG-13 action violence and one nonexplicit scene of a woman disrobing notwithstanding, Catching Fire is a rare youth-targeted film that dares to ask some ­serious and uncomfortable questions. Namely, what do we, who live in one of the most affluent, decadent nations in the world, choose to invest our time and interest in? Justice and mercy or Kim and Kanye? A

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Preachers of L.A.: Tim Brown/Oxygen • Catching Fire: Murray Close/LIONSGATE

Bible Belt added to the cast “in the effort to get a broad sampling of the population.”

But here’s the question: Should pastors, pastors’ wives, and churches mix with a TV genre that is known for its over-the-top characters, scandalous fodder, and misrepresented facts?

Kevin Annas from Church Rescue told me he found his reality show’s network producers through another reality TV star, who informed him there’s a new “vibe” in Hollywood: “He had been hearing that networks there are interested to get introduced to the religious community, but without being sacrilegious or making light of any particular ministry.”

That fits right into the business mission of Annas and his two business partners (Anthony Lockhart and Jerry Bentley), all of whom served as church pastors. They own a consulting company, called Church Hoppers, which helps struggling churches balance three components: business, marketing, and systems.

“But what if the problem is theological?” I asked. In the first episode, the Church Hoppers visited a Bapticostal (Baptist Pentecostals) church. The service was four hours of writhing, weeping, tongue-speaking, and falling congregants, mostly women.

“We’re not going to go in and try to change their theology,” said Bentley, and he repeated their church business model. He then added, “I think churches are there in the community to meet the community’s needs.” The Church Hoppers want to help churches give “customers” what they want. They’re savvy entrepreneurs, with a Christian label to appeal to a ­certain TV trend.

The Preachers of L.A., meanwhile, will burn the eyes of some Christians with the church leaders’ gleam, bling, and hypocrisies. One pastor, Bishop Ron Gibson of Life Church of God in Christ, roars during his sermon, “You’ve seen my bling. You’ve seen my Bentley. You’ve seen my glory, but you haven’t seen my story.”

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His story: a gangbanger and drug addict-turned-minister, now living in a huge house with multiple luxury cars. Gibson visits his hometown in Compton to minister to other gangbangers “like Jesus goes back to Nazareth.” Somehow, he sees no irony in swashbuckling into an impoverished community in a flashy red convertible, all blinged out in gold accessories.

And then there’s Bishop Noel Jones, the Pentecostal leader of a 20,000-member congregation in Gardena, Calif. He lives in a hilltop mansion overlooking Malibu’s Pacific Ocean, and he sees nothing wrong with it: “When you get to my age, then you think about, ‘Why can’t I have some fun?’ I like to play chess. I like to go to exquisite restaurants. I like to go fast in my cars, I like it. It’s part of being successful.” He also very much likes women “throwing themselves” at him: “It’s the whole rock star thing … pictures, emails, just sticking numbers in your hand.”

Other shows such as The Sheards and Thicker Than Water portray similar stories of clergy opulence, while Snake Salvation follows two pastors in Tennessee who practice the century-old faith tradition of serpent handling. Some of these individuals seem truly sincere in their beliefs; most are likeable and sympathetic despite their shortcomings.

The two key producers behind The Preachers of L.A., Lemuel Plummer and Holly Carter, are both pastors’ kids.

Through a press release, Plummer said he has “respect and understanding” of pastors. He wants to “portray the human side of these pastors and the real world in which they live and work.” Carter, who also holds a doctorate of divinity with an emphasis on marketplace ministry, said the show “documents a journey of transparency” as the cast seeks “their own truth and self-discovery.”

The show reveals all: messy divorces, the loneliness of ­pastors’ wives, the clashes of theology (and ego). The L.A. preachers’ courage for appearing on national TV, whatever their motivation, is at least commendable.

“People will see how imperfect we are,” said Preachers of L.A.’s Deitrick Haddon, the youngest preacher and most vocal proponent of the show. “It’s a perfect way to reintroduce the Kingdom.”

Christians may bemoan the mutilation of their image on mainstream TV, but Detweiler said the increase of such ­programs, despite their flaws, could prove positive to the Christian community. “Frankly, I think it’s a great thing,” he said. “I may wish a different kind of show … but I see it as a step closer towards the kind of programming we hope to see.”

Television, of course, is drawn to extremes, and it’s not a perfect platform for preaching the gospel. Without dramatic and gossipy fodder to attract viewers, shows get canceled. But reality shows, even with their manipulated “realities,” ­represent some forms of truths that are worth debating. These shows raise questions—such as what is wrong about the prosperity gospel, what other denominations are like, how to be authentic Christians, and even racial stereotypes—that may not be answered within the show, but can be discussed and tested according to the Scriptures. A

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Reviews > Books

Stings like a bee A closer look at the works of novelist MICHAEL O’BRIEN BY MARVIN OLASKY

The hero of Plague Journal is a small-town Canadian editor who runs afoul of a local schoolmarm and other politically correct folks, and then has to run for his life. The editor sees the reality of Aldous Huxley’s prediction (in Brave New World Revisited) that future totalitarians will not be like Hitler or Revisited Stalin, but will attempt to create a society “painlessly regimented by a corps of highly trained social engineers.” O’Brien shows that “this kind of totalitarianism is the worst of all, the most inhumane, impossible to throw off because it can always argue that it’s not in fact what it is.”

In all these books O’Brien sprinkles insights. About abortion, he writes that young people don’t blame Herods: “They know that their absent brothers and sisters fell under a knife, not at the command of a malicious king, but at the word of

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S   I called Canadian Michael O’Brien’s Island of the World (Ignatius, ) one of the best Christian novels about forgiveness and grace I’ve ever read. I’ve relished since then his novel Theophilos, which plays off Luke’s research in writing his Gospel and the book of Acts, and The Father’s Tale, a ,-page search by a father for his prodigal son. (See WORLD, Dec. , , and July , .)

Now I’ve read three of his older works—Father Elijah (), Sophia House (), and Plague Journal ()— along with a just-published new one, Voyage to Alpha Centauri, all put out by Ignatius Press. Reading these three allows me to say that O’Brien is up there with Walker Percy and Flannery O’Connor in the pantheon of fiction writers from Roman Catholic backgrounds, but his style is in some ways the opposite of the sly and humorous Percy, who floats like a butterfly; O’Brien stings like a bee, or maybe a sledgehammer.

Father Elijah has as its protagonist a Jewish refugee from Europe who is upwardly mobile in Israeli politics until a terrorist kills his wife: He turns to Christ, becomes a priest, and years later finds himself, at papal request, suddenly thrust into a battle of wits and wants with an upwardly mobile antiChrist. Sophia House is the backstory, with the teenager who becomes Father Elijah hiding from Nazis in the home of a man with a troubled past and a Christ-like present.

their mothers and fathers. They have grown old too young.”

He observes, “Everyone in our era needed to be loved first. We poor men with our pathetic male egos—we needed women to love us so we could be strong enough to love them. And they needed us to love them in order to be able to love us. Somebody had to go first, and practically no one felt he should be the one.”

O’Brien’s new novel is a venture into science fiction centered on a -year trip aboard a sleek, huge spaceship, with the narrator learning of oppression in the heavens as on Earth.

O’Brien skillfully portrays a clash of worldviews without end, amen, with big brothers watching and demanding lying conformity.

Why Christianity?

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O’BRIEN: THE VALLEY GAZETTE

The colorful tales in Sandra Silver’s Footprints in Parchment: Rome Versus Christianity, - AD (Author House, ) make up for some general book disorganization, and the end result is an empathetic look at people who died for the freedom to say Christianus sum, “I am a Christian.” The importance of that statement becomes evident in James Anderson’s What’s Your Worldview? (Crossway, ).

Since each generation stumbles into its own ways to learn about God, Anderson simply but brilliantly appeals to those who grew up with Choose Your Own Adventure books, where the outcome depends on the choices readers make. He has readers answer basic questions about God and nature, and then shows how those answers lead to theological views readers may not know they had. —M.O.

Email: molasky@wng.org

11/21/13 10:27 PM

NOTABLE BOOKS

Four books with theological themes > reviewed by  

What Is the Meaning of Sex? Denny Burk Sex is a constant topic today, and Denny Burk bravely enters the conversation with this wide-ranging treatment of what the Bible says about sex and sexuality. Burk believes too many discussions on this topic focus on subordinate rather than ultimate purposes, and he carefully shows from the Bible how “[t]he ultimate purpose of sex is the glory of God. Sex, gender, marriage, manhood, womanhood—all of it—exist ultimately for the glory of God. The glory of God as the ultimate purpose of sex is not merely a theological deduction. It is the explicit teaching of Scripture.” This book is biblical, pastoral, and timely—a powerful treatment of a crucial subject.

Resisting Gossip Matthew Mitchell Gossip: Solomon warned against it, Paul admonished those who engage in it, and James compared it to a raging forest fire. Today, through the internet and social media, we have more access to it than ever. Resisting Gossip is “an attempt to arm followers of Christ with the biblical weapons we need to resist gossip in all its forms.” Mitchell defines gossip as “bearing bad news behind someone’s back out of a bad heart” and helps his readers identify gossip and gossipers, learn how to resist gossip, overcome the desire to engage in it, and even how to respond when they have been victims of gossip. Whether or not you consider yourself prone to gossip, consider reading this one. It will both challenge and equip.

Jesus > Religion Jefferson Bethke Jefferson Bethke is a YouTube sensation who exploded onto the scene in January  when he released a spoken word poem titled “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus.” Within three days it had  million views. As of today it has  million. Based on the poem, Jesus > Religion has quickly raced onto the bestseller lists. It’s firmly grounded in the gospel and goes toe-to-toe with the complacency and moralism that marks too many professed Christians. Bethke offers helpful insights into the joy and freedom of Christianity, identifies sin as treason against God, marvels at grace, celebrates forgiveness, and anticipates future glory. Written primarily for the YouTube generation, this is a book that will serve it well.

SPOTLIGHT “Gospel-centered” is a relatively new term, but an increasingly popular one in Christian publishing.

Authors have brought us a gospelcentered view of very nearly everything. We are told to live gospel-centered lives (Gospel Centered Life by Steve Timmis and Tim Chester), to teach and interpret the Bible in a gospel-centered way (Gospel-Centered Teaching by Trevin Wax and Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics by Graeme Goldsworthy), to form gospelcentered churches (GospelCentered Ministry by Tim Keller), to be gospel-centered parents (Gospel-Centered Parenting by Rick Thomas), to have gospelcentered marriages (GospelCentered Marriage by Tim Chester), and even to say goodbye at gospel-centered funerals (Conduct Gospel-Centered Funerals by Brian Croft). Such books remind and assure us that the gospel must be central to all we are and all we do. But let’s not allow the use and overuse of the term to cause us to grow weary of gospel-centeredness itself. —T.C.

Fierce Women: The Power of a Soft Warrior Kimberly Wagner

O’BRIEN: THE VALLEY GAZETTE

Kimberly Wagner is a self-professed strong woman: She has a strong personality, a strong faith in Jesus Christ, a strong knowledge of Scripture, and a lot of strong natural ability. Yet she came to realize that for much of her life and marriage she had misused these strengths. This book is about the beauty of fierceness and how women can use their God-given strength to honor the Lord by honoring their husbands. Part biography and part theology, Fierce Women exhorts women to identify that fierceness, to celebrate it, and to direct it toward the best and highest ends. Used poorly it can be destructive, but used well it can be an incredible blessing.

To see more book news and reviews, go to wng.org/books

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Reviews > Q&A

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Truth teller Award-winning author STEVEN JAMES is always on the lookout for stories where something goes wrong By Marvin Olasky

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Steven James has written 30-plus ­nonfiction books and novels, most notably the Bowers Files thriller series with its titles taken from chess pieces: The Queen won a 2012 Evangelical Christian Publishers Association Book Award, and three James novels won 2009, 2011, and 2012 Christy Awards (“honoring and promoting excellence in Christian fiction”). James lives in Tennessee with his wife and three daughters.

When you told your 5-year-old a story about sisters having a picnic, playing dress-up, dancing, and singing, she didn’t like it and complained, “Nothing’s going wrong!”

What did that tell you about writing? We don’t have a story until something actually goes wrong. I was at an elementary school after a vacation and the teacher said, “Write about what you did.”

The kids just listed stuff. So I said, “Please don’t tell me what you did over vacation. Tell me about something that went wrong.” A fourth-grade boy raised his hand and said, “My cousin came over to my house.

We had a contest to see who could jump the farthest off my bunk bed.” I thought, This could be good, and asked, “What happened?” He said, “My cousin jumped first and got pretty far. I said, ‘I can jump farther than that.’” I asked, “Did anything go wrong?” He said, “I backed up to the wall to get a running start”—that’s your first clue right there— “and I jumped off the bunk and the ceiling fan was on. I got my head stuck in the ceiling fan. It threw me against the wall, but I got farther!”

That’s the ceiling fan principle:

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HANDOUT

Always look for something that goes wrong.

So when you develop a plot, you’re always thinking how you can make things worse? In writing The Rook I thought about being chained to the bottom of a pool that’s filling with water. So I said to my wife, “I’m going to chain a woman to the bottom of the pool and fill it with water,” and she said, “I hope this is for your book.” For the next book I was thinking, What’s worse than being chained to the bottom of a pool that fills with water? I thought, Being buried alive! That’s good. I’ll use that.

For the next book I thought, What’s worse than being buried alive? Maybe being buried alive, strapped to a dead body —this is great! I said to my wife, “You’ll never guess what I’m going to do!” She said, “I don’t even want to hear it.”

You wrote this: “A lot of books we call Christian fiction tend to stumble because they’re messagedriven. They start with an agenda … and instead of a good story it becomes a lesson.” Dorothy Sayers said that when you try to tell a story as a sermon, you end up with a bad story and a bad sermon. One of the keys of great storytelling is that the end is both unexpected and inevitable. We don’t see it coming, but when it comes we say, “That makes sense.” If we can guess what the ending is, we’re often unsatisfied.

Do you have an example of how storytelling rather than sermonizing works out in practice? The Pawn deals with a serial killer. Instead of writing, “You shouldn’t do evil,” I asked, “What’s the difference between me and those who do the unthinkable?” I

Email: molasky@wng.org

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was able to interview one of the people who survived the  Jonestown massacre, when over  people committed suicide and murdered each other down in South America. He told me what it was like to stand there and have people lining up to drink Gatorade or Kool-Aid with cyanide in it. He said about Jim

selves. So I deal with darkness, with violence, but within the context of a broader story.

You dislike books that make it seem as if trust in Jesus means everything in your life will be easier. You wrote, “Christianity doesn’t teach that once you become a believer, life gets easier.

It teaches the opposite—

something deceitful? We believe you should follow something greater than your heart, that you need Someone else to inform your dreams.

We turn to God. You want to bring glory to God by telling the truth.

By showing the hopelessness and helplessness of humans, and the hope that’s available.

‘We believe you should follow something greater than your heart, that you need Someone else to inform your dreams.’

Jones, “I’ve never seen the look of pure evil before.” I asked him if he thought Jim Jones was possessed, and he said, “Without question.”

Should you and I, or these students here, content ourselves by saying, “He was a sinner. We are not”? I asked myself, What would I have done if I were there? Would I have squirted cyanide down the throat of my baby? What keeps me back from doing what these people did? We can say, They were in a cult, but as Christians we teach that evil is real. If I believe our world is a pretty good place and we are pretty good people, then we just need a savior to get us over the hump. But we believe and confess that we are desperately fallen people in need of a very big Savior. The way to show that is to show the reality of evil in our world, and the hope available from outside ourselves, not just from our-

that Jesus says it’s going to get harder.” Jesus said we’ll have many problems in our life, but He has overcome them. We Christians struggle with things, but we know where to take our problems, so we have hope. In his book Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton said, “Christians are more optimistic than the optimist and more pessimistic than the pessimist.”

Are non-Christian books and movies more often either manic or depressant?

Some movies and books say life is just terrible now: Slit your wrists. Disney on the other hand is: Follow your dreams and everything will be wonderful in the end. This whole idea of follow your heart—that’s not Christian either. Rapists follow their hearts. Pedophiles are true to themselves. Nazis pursued their dreams. The Bible says that the heart’s deceitful above all things. Why would you want to follow

Readers often object to violence, sex, and bad language. You pass that test on two out of three. I don’t use coarse language in my books and haven’t written any sex scenes. My wife says, “If you ever wrote a sex scene in your book, that would make me really uncomfortable because you only have one person to take your information from.”

Would you ever write a sex scene? If it worked to have a sex scene where it was vital to the story, I would write that. I don’t want to needlessly offend people, but I also want to tell stories with as much honesty as possible. And it’s difficult, because people in law enforcement don’t just say, “Oh shucks.” If they’re tracking a serial killer, they don’t say, “Oh phooey, we didn’t catch him.” So how do you render the honesty of what would happen, but do it in a way that doesn’t offend your readers? I struggle with that. A

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Reviews > Music

Holiday parade Nick Lowe leads a diverse group of  Christmas albums BY ARSENIO ORTEZA

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his own commercialized petard will widen the smile of anyone’s inner Grinch.

Listeners, meanwhile, who prefer the genuine martini-era article will enjoy Mad Men Christmas (Music from and Inspired by the Hit TV Series on AMC) (Concord). RJD (performing the futuristic Mad Men theme), Jessica Paré, and Nellie McKay are anachronisms included to appeal to Mad Men’s youthful demographic; but Johnny Mathis, Rosemary Clooney, Mel Tormé, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, and Darlene Love bridge the generation gap.

Even the various-artists omnibus Punk Goes Christmas (Fearless) provides tidings of comfort and joy. It kicks off with New Found Glory’s sentimental singalong “Nothing for Christmas,” peaks with Man Overboard’s sped-up cover of the Kink’s “Father Christmas,” and winds down with William Beckett’s imaginatively

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“The First Noel,” and “God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman/ We Three Kings.” Middle of the road Phillips, Craig & Dean may be, but so are Christmas parades. And PG&D’s leads to a tastefully spotlit public-square crèche.

But the best Christmas album of  belongs to Nick Lowe.

Lowe has spent the last -plus years skillfully promulgating everything from definitive pub-rock and power-pop to definitive neo-rockabilly and autumnal acoustic introspection, all with a gimlet eye focused on pinpointing both the log in his own eye and the splinter in his neighbor’s. And on Quality Street: A Seasonal Selection for All the Family (YepRoc), he reaps what he has sown.

More than anything, he and his jauntily rootsy combo sound relaxed, as at peace with both Santa and the Virgin Birth as C.S. Lewis in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Seamlessly blended cover tunes, traditional numbers, two thought-provoking originals—why, it’s nearly impossible to tell where the secular ends and the sacred begins. But begin the sacred definitely does. A

KRIEG BARRIE

F    of diversity, nothing truly walks that talk better than Christmas. And the proof is in the musical pudding: This year there really is something for everyone.

Consider Snow Globe (Mute) by the gay electronica duo Erasure. Two lumps of coal aside (“Bells of Love,” in which Andy Bell and Vince Clarke insist they don’t “believe in your religion,” and “Loving Man,” which is about what it says), the singing, instrumentation, and source material (especially the Latin carol “Gaudete”) treat the season and those who observe it devoutly with respect.

Then there’s Cocktails with Santa (Coverage) by the comedian lounge lizard Richard Cheese. Edgy humor and Christmas don’t always mix. But Cheese’s parodic stylings, reserved as they are for roasting secular chestnuts, could almost pass for sincere Rat Pack tributes. And the satirical title skit hoisting Santa on

reverent “Do You Hear What I Hear?”

But it’s not only hipsters who’ll get yuletide surprises or laughs this year.

Duck the Halls: A Robertson Family Christmas (EMI Nashville) by the Robertson Family of Duck Dynasty fame, will sound like gold, frankincense, and mirth to anyone heartened by the popularity of outspokenly conservative members of a Louisiana Church of Christ who look like ZZ Top. Corny jocularity abounds, but on “Silent Night” the Robertsons sound like serious carolers worth their cocoa. And, the contributions of Alison Krauss notwithstanding, it’s Willie Robertson’s -year-old daughter Sadie who shines on the sweet and creatively arranged “Away in the Manger.”

Speaking of creative arrangements, Phillips, Craig & Dean’s Hope for All the World (Fair Trade/ Columbia) finds the CCM trio harmoniously sinking their exuberant pop-vocal chops into freshly polished renditions of “Do You Hear What I Hear?,” “O Come, All Ye Faithful,”

Email: aorteza@wng.org

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NOTABLE CDs

Four (more) Christmas releases > reviewed by  

Musical Gifts from Joshua Bell and Friends Joshua Bell

Bell’s classical violin is on prominent display throughout these splendid performances of holiday favorites (yes, “holiday”—Bell includes nods to Hanukkah). But so are the vocalists Alison Krauss, Frankie Moreno, Renee Fleming, Placido Domingo, Gloria Estefan, Michael Feinstein, Kristin Chenoweth, and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City; the jazz instrumentalists Branford Marsalis, Chick Corea, and Chris Botti; the classical instrumentalists Steven Isserlis and Sam Heywood; and the comedy-instrumentalists Aleksey Igudesman and Richard Hyun-ki Joo. And, somehow, despite the pluribus, it’s unum that comes through.

SPOTLIGHT Kool & the Gang’s Kool for the Holidays (ATO) is misleadingly titled in that Kool & the Gang only sing of one holiday—Christmas.

And James “J.T.” Taylor, the lead singer of such ’s hits as “Celebrate,” “Ladies Night,” and “Cherish,” is not aboard. But the four founding members who are (the brothers Robert and Ronald Bell, Dennis “D.T.” Thomas, and George Brown) have made sure that the album lives up to the sophisticated, celebratory pop-R&B expectations of their

Morning Star David Friesen

One difference between this jazz Christmas album and other jazz Christmas albums is that it’s live.

Another is that it’s a carols-only affair. Yet another is that for the bassist Friesen and the pianist, drummer, and two saxes he both undergirds and unites, there’s no difference between jazz and Christmas. The quintet clearly states recognizable melodies, loses itself in exploratory improvisation, and returns with confident ease and elegant virtuosity. One has to order Morning Star directly from Friesen via his website, but the rewards repay the effort.

many fans.

It lives up to other expectations as well—first, that there be at least a few recognizably rendered standards (“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “The Christmas Song”) to ground the six original

Snowed In Mindy Smith

Even at a mere five songs, this gorgeous acousticfolk Christmas EP tells a yuletide story, albeit an elliptical one. The Santa-anticipating “Tomorrow Is Christmas Day” (a Smith original) provides the exposition. The Santa-preceding “What Child Is This?” introduces the conflict. The respite-from-conflict-seeking title cut (another Smith original) raises the tension. And “Silent Night” reveals the climax: Jesus wins. Smith leaves it to listeners to fill in the blanks for themselves—and to a tender “Auld Lang Syne” to supply the resolution.

Carols from the Old and New Worlds Theatre of Voices

KRIEG BARRIE

Originally released in , these  a cappella carols (no “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” here) comprise an aurally reverent journey into Christmas Past far as the curse is found. Maybe half a dozen are universal favorites, each with its original, politically incorrect masculine terminology (if not its best-known melody) blessedly intact. The rest, whether in English (“The Apple Tree”), Finnish (“Giv mig ej glans, ej guld, ej prakt”), German (“Susser die Glocken nie klingen”), or Latin (“Gaudete Christus est natus”), suggest it’s a big world after all.

To see more music news and reviews, go to wng.org/music

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songs and the funky, revisionist excursions (“The Little Drummer Boy,” “Winter Wonderland”); second, that there be at least one original composition capable of becoming a standard too. “Do Not Be Afraid,” in posing a series of questions for Gabriel, deftly recapitulates Luke . And it’s lovely.

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 of the 

stAYING THE COURSe Bishop Antoine Audo and the long-suffering, war-torn, not-going-anywhere Christians of Syria

BY MINDY BELZ AU D O : C A F O D • WO M E N : D U SA N V R A N I C /A P

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he air bites, a chill signaling winter is coming, as Antoine Audo sets off from his home in Aleppo. It’s important to take advantage of the daylight hours in Syria’s largest city, where in recent months electricity has been off more than on, and an unbroken blackout has persisted for the last five days.

A morning walk is no stroll for the 67-year-old Chaldean bishop of Aleppo. Rubble and cratered buildings are around nearly every corner he takes. The refuse from more than two years of civil war is so pervasive that even when the bombs aren’t ­falling, the stone and concrete dust is rising. On a day of bright sun and blue sky in early November, the air hangs thick with rubble debris, the crumbled buildings exhaling their losses so persistently that satellite imagery captures the dust clouds from space.

Syria may be a majority Muslim nation, but Aleppo, despite repeated pogroms, is a city that’s never outrun its Christianity—until possibly now. It has 45 churches. They range from an evangelical church and new Greek Orthodox congregations established only in the last decade, to the Armenian Cathedral of the Forty Martyrs founded in 1429. (It replaced a chapel believed centuries older.)

ed by s been and

AROUND EVERY CORNER: Damaged buildings in Aleppo, Syria, on Sept. 12 (left). Previous page: Women stand during a service in an Armenian Orthodox church in Damascus.

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Aleppo Media Center/ap

een Army ept. 12, er,

From the heart of Aleppo’s Old City to the suburbs beyond its ring road, these form an array of Middle East Christendom with its layers of history and conquest—Armenian Evangelicals and Armenian Catholics, Melkite Greeks and Greek Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox and Syrian Catholics, Maronites, Chaldeans, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, Baptists, and more.

Middle-aged churchgoers remember the city as onefourth Christian when they were young. Now Christians make up perhaps less than 10 percent of the population. But the churches, even the oldest ones, are far from relics—full for regular services and many operating schools and charities, and now with war, relief work and medical care.

Audo presides over Aleppo’s Chaldean church, a denomination that traces its roots back to the Church of the East and the Nestorians, a church that once worshipped—and in some places still does—in Aramaic, the trade language spoken by Jesus. Audo also heads nationwide the work of Caritas, the Catholic relief agency. As a lifelong resident of Aleppo and bishop for 25 years, he is one of the longest-serving church leaders in the country. And in time of war, he is not only a veteran but also a survivor.

At least six top Christian clergy have been kidnapped since Syria’s civil war began in March 2011, plus dozens more laymen. Rebel groups seized Aleppo’s Orthodox prelates in April—Syriac Orthodox Archbishop Yohanna Ibrahim and Greek Orthodox Archbishop Boulos Yazigi— both men Audo considers close ­colleagues and who leave the two large denominations leaderless.

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Hussein Malla/AP

daniel of the year

Hussein Malla/AP

Aleppo Media Center/ap

Audo knows there’s danger for him, too, but has changed little about his daily schedule—except that he no longer wears vestments on the street and avoids being alone. “When I walk, I walk without official dressing.

I’ve been advised and know that I have to be careful.”

Without formal security he moves freely every day, visiting parishioners, overseeing relief work that now serves thousands in the city, and holding a Eucharist celebration every evening at St. Joseph’s Chaldean Cathedral.

Twenty or 30 people come each evening, he said, even though the church at the moment lacks power and water.

The last time I spoke with him, by telephone on a Sunday evening in November, he had just returned to his home from officiating at a wedding.

Heat and lights were out, he said, forcing him to prepare “by candle” his sermons for the week ahead.

“I am not afraid. It’s a question of confidence. I am confident of God’s provision as I am doing my job, and I like to go in the streets to feel the situation and the suffering of the people.”

Recognized internationally, Audo normally keeps a brisk travel schedule with meetings in Rome, London, and elsewhere. War and wartime responsibilities make travel a challenge: The last four months, he says, he has not left the city.

As we spoke, fighting between rebel groups and the government army encircled Aleppo. On Saturday, Nov. 9, the army launched a barrage of pre-dawn artillery fire and air strikes, retaking a military base near Aleppo’s airport.

On Sunday a government rocket killed six civilians walking near a traffic circle in the city. At a vegetable market five more civilians were killed by a rebel mortar shell. As rocket fire

DECIMATED: The interior of a church in Judeida, damaged by mortar shell in February. Judeida and its neighbors, Yacobiyeh and Quniya, were some of the first Christian villages to be taken by the rebel Syrian army. The rebels stormed these hilltop villages in late January after the government used them as a base to shell nearby rebel-controlled areas.

punctuated the Sunday quiet, jihadi fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) killed and decapitated a man they claimed was an Iraqi Shiite fighter for the government. They held high his severed head to civilian onlookers, as a lesson, only to learn themselves that he was a rebel from another militant group fighting on their side.

On Monday the ISIS and six other Islamist rebel groups announced a new call to arms against Aleppo “to face off against the enemy which is attacking Islamic territory.” Those

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TARGETING CHILDREN: Men carry the coffin of one of six children from a Christian school in Damascus killed when a mortar round hit their school bus.

For Christians the stakes are not only to preserve a homeland but also to preserve Christianity in the land of its birth and early flourishing. Even as the desperation of Islamist groups fighting the government has intensified attacks, these believers remain determined: “It’s important for us as Christians to be alive in the original lands of our fathers,” said Audo. “And not only for us but for the church in the world.”

“We as Middle Easterners don’t want our Christian churches to empty,” said Dativ Michaelian, a priest in Aleppo’s Armenian Orthodox church. Other Christians—doctors, teachers, hotel operators, and business owners—say the same. Many have lost their livelihoods due to a civil war they never wanted, but are fighting on by holding on—fearing the war less

than they fear an Islamist future, a future where Christianity is banished from public life. With Bishop Antoine Audo, these Syrian Christians are WORLD’s 2013 Daniels of the Year.

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he Free Syrian Army and affiliated rebel groups moved into Aleppo—about 7,000 fighters—in February 2012.

Islamic fighters, most experienced in creating insurgency in Iraq, have overwhelmed their ranks.

Abu Omar is one such fighter. An Iraqi national, he was among hundreds freed when al-Qaeda militants staged a jailbreak at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad in July.

Quickly recruited to fight in Syria, Omar made his way there via Turkey, linking up with ISIS leaders who gave him a cellphone and $10,000, “meant for the mujahideen of Syria.”

In September Omar told reporters with Foreign Policy he considers jihad against the unbelievers (e.g., Christians) in Syria “holier” than jihad in Iraq.

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with a valid excuse not to fight, it said in a statement, “must supply weapons and money.”

As jihadist groups have taken control of the rebel onslaught in and around Aleppo, life for Christians has become, if possible, more hellish.

YouTube videos show Christians ­forcibly converted to Islam, and kidnappings and rapes are prevalent.

Attacks on Christian villages include reports of beheadings and dismemberments, even of young children.

In recent weeks rebels have targeted Christian schools in Aleppo and elsewhere. An attack on an Armenian school in Damascus on Nov. 11 left six elementary students dead.

Over 100,000 civilians have been killed since 2011. About 2 million Syrians have been forced to leave their country and another 5 million are displaced but still living in Syria. Those high numbers overshadow another statistic: the uncounted number of Syrians who choose to stay.

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daniel of the year

‘I am not afraid. It’s a question of confidence. I am confident of God’s provision as I am doing my job, and I like to go in the streets to feel the situation and the suffering of the people.’ —AUDO “The Quran and the hadiths already predicted that Satan will be defeated in Damascus,” he said.

Foreign jihadists like Omar are bringing grisly determination against an also-determined President Bashar al-Assad and government forces.

Rebel forces claim to hold about 35-40 percent of Aleppo, but the government in recent weeks has retaken some areas. The fighting has brought important industries, like pharmaceuticals, to a standstill. And it’s destroyed areas of the Old City, whose gates and Crusader-era Citadel are World Heritage sites. More importantly, it’s an area where Christians, Muslims, Kurds, and others over ­centuries of conflict, had found a way to live side by side.

A ap

nd the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east.”

The Scriptures speak of four rivers that watered the Garden of Eden, but we can locate only the Tigris and Euphrates. They poured down from the Taurus Mountains of modern-day Turkey into Syria and Iraq, and likely watered the ground from which God drew mud to form a man. In the cuneiform of the Sumerians and in Hebrew, he was called Adam, meaning “ground” or “earth.”

Adam lived only for a time in the garden, but the civilizations that grew in the fertile plains of the Tigris-Euphrates river system—the Sumerians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Babylonians—drove the earliest development of cities and empires.

These were landlocked people obsessed with water. The Chaldeans were skillful shipbuilders “and exulted in their ships,” wrote the prophet Isaiah. The Assyrians depicted a river and vessels in all the bas-reliefs discovered at Nimrud,

modern-day Mosul in northern Iraq.

By the time Terah the father of Abram took his family “from Ur of the Chaldeans” on a journey to the land of Canaan, it was sensible to travel along a network of canals and cities that grew up in the Tigris-Euphrates valley rather than make a direct trek across the desert. They headed north and then south along what would become known as the Fertile Crescent.

They settled in Haran (later in Scripture called Paddan-Aram), an important crossroads east of the Euphrates and not far from today’s Turkey-Syria border near Aleppo.

Clay tablets discovered in Syria in the 1970s confirm these settlements, and also make reference to Canaan.

Abram would eventually resume the journey, along the way acquiring a servant in Damascus named Eliezer so trusted that Abram named him his heir (Genesis 15:2).

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he same route would be taken by invaders from Mesopotamia against the tribes that descended from Abram (now Abraham): Assyrians captured Samaria in 722 B.C., then Babylonians captured Jerusalem in 597 B.C. They burned and destroyed it, along with Solomon’s temple, 10 years later.

In Babylonian captivity, the first Jewish Diaspora found bitter and sweet labor. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon weren’t Nebuchadnezzar’s only wonder: He built a bridge across the Euphrates supported by piers of brick covered with asphalt and designed to take into account river flow and turbulence.

Yet with their stores of Jewish teachings and law—plus their zeal to preserve both their history and their faith in a Messiah to come—the Babylonian Jews made the area the

center of Jewish scholarship. Near present-day Fallujah in Iraq sprang Talmudic academies that produced the best translations of Jewish law, and where religious authorities served out justice as the Sanhedrin once had in Israel. They adopted present-day Hebrew script. Jehoiachin, the captured king, built a synagogue using stones carried from Jerusalem, and Ezra the scribe opened a synagogue and an academy. All survived the fall of Babylon to Persia.

Astonishingly, with exile and the destruction of the temple, the “spiritual supremacy of Judaism removed to the Euphrates valley,” writes Baptist missionary and author C. W. Briggs.

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ome scholars speculate that the apostle Paul, who “went away into Arabia” after his conversion near Damascus (Galatians 1:1718), traveled to the Babylon academies to present the Jews of the Eastern Dispersion with the gospel.

The term “Arabians” by then had come to signify those Jews. These scholars argue that as a “Hebrew of Hebrews,” Paul would seek ways to testify to the truth of Christianity in a bastion of Jewish learning. (As Briggs put it: “Paul was not the man to seek to learn to swim by reading books about the subject, but by plunging into deep water.”) Paul later adhered to a similar pattern on his missionary journeys, they contend, entering first the synagogue in any new city before preaching to the Gentiles.

Whether Paul made the trek to Babylon or not, we know that Christianity spread rapidly east, buoyed by the trade routes and commerce that ran from northern Mesopotamia into central Asia. In Edessa, Christian scholarship fostered early Syriac Christian writing. South

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Oct. 25, 2012: Greek Orthodox priest Fadi Haddad, 43, was found dead in Damascus after he was kidnapped while trying to negotiate the release of a parishioner in Qatana. A bomb exploded at his funeral, killing two civilians and some Syrian soldiers.

Haddad Feb. 9, 2013: Armenian Catholic priest Michel Kayyal, 27, and Greek Orthodox priest Maher Mahfouz were kidnapped when rebel ­gunmen stopped their bus from Aleppo to Damascus. No word on their status.

July 28, 2013: Paolo Dall’Oglio, 58, an Italian Jesuit priest who worked for over 30 years in Syria, disappeared in Raqqa while attempting to negotiate peace between Kurdish and Islamist groups fighting the Assad government. Initial reports claimed he had been executed, but in October he was reported alive and Dall’Oglio seen in an area controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).

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n spite of the distortions, the faith of Christians in the Middle East, like the history of the Jews, has been shaped by removal and destruction. Within five years of Muhammad receiving a revelation from Allah, he unleashed his Muslim armies upon the ancient empires of the Near East.

The prophet of Islam divided the world into two spheres—Dar al-Islam (House of Islam) and Dar al-Harb (House of War). His armed followers went to war against all that was not in the House of Islam. Arabic replaced Greek (and Aramaic) as the language of the day, and Christians who by race were Assyrians or Chaldeans became—by force and by choice— Muslims and Arabs.

Muslim armies quickly moved toward Syria. Aleppo, influential as the end point of the Silk Road and surrounded by Christian centers of learning (with Edessa about 100 miles away), fell to the Arabs in 637, Damascus soon after. Christians in Aleppo, today Syria’s largest city, managed to remain a durable if declining demographic. In 1944 they made up 34 percent of the city population (then 325,000). Before the war began in 2011, they made up about 12 percent (of 2 million residents). By some estimates that number now may have dropped as low as 6 percent.

Audo argues that the risk of Christian extinction poses a danger for Muslims as well. The experience of Christians living alongside Muslims, even as second-class citizens, has made the church in the East what it is: “It is very important for us as Oriental churches to have this presence in the lands of revelation of our faith, for ourselves and for other Christians. … We as churches have the experience of living with Islam. It will be very negative if we go abroad, and if we no longer have the presence of Christianity with Muslims. It is important to give Islam the opportunity to live with another religion.”

haddad: handout • ibrahim and yazigi: sana • dall’oglio: VINCENT WARTNER/20 MINUTE/SIPA/Newscom

April 22, 2013: Armed men on the road between Aleppo and the Turkish border kidnapped Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Aleppo Yohanna Ibrahim, 65, and the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Aleppo Boulos Yazigi, 58, as they returned from negotiations to release Kayyal and Ibrahim Mahfouz. The gunmen, reportedly Chechens affiliated with rebels in Syria, murdered the driver.

Negotiations by UN-Arab League Syria envoy Yazigi Lakhdar Brahimi for their release have continued, with last word of their well-being coming in a six-minute phone call with alleged captors in late October.

far more than “white man’s religion” spreading through colonialist expansion.

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ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP/Getty Images

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in Tikrit, known widely now as the hometown of Saddam Hussein, Christianity dominated the city for hundreds of years after the coming of Islam. “Iraq was through the late Middle Ages at least as much a ­cultural and spiritual heartland of Christianity as was France or Germany, or indeed Ireland,” writes religion scholar Philip Jenkins in The Lost History of Christianity.

Yet for most Westerners it’s as though no legitimate eastward expansion of the church existed. The Bible maps we study in Sunday school show Paul’s missionary ­journeys around the rim of the Mediterranean, ever westward. We know “how the Irish saved civilization,” and how a German monk named Martin Luther wrested it from Rome, and how Reformers made their way to a Protestant New World.

But we know little about how the Babylonian academies and the Edessan patriarchs made possible a culture of Christian learning that would affect global Christianity in also profound ways. As Jenkins points out, as late as the 11th century at least onethird of the world’s Christians lived in Asia. Their ­culture ­dominated the arts and sciences.

Even the development of Arabic, the language of Islam, began as a branch of Aramaic.

Without this historical context, reports of contemporary persecution by the dominant Muslim culture dribble out of the region in isolation— treated as sectarian conflict or predictable oppression of minorities.

Given the length and breadth of Jewish and Christian influence that fanned out from the Tigris-Euphrates valley, the reductionist perspective distorts the enormity of presentday persecution—like writing George Washington out of the American Revolution. The notion of Christianity as a mostly Western inheritance leads to a poor understanding of its spread into Africa and Asia. And it ignores the historic diversity of Christianity—

daniel of the year

ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP/Getty Images

haddad: handout • ibrahim and yazigi: sana • dall’oglio: VINCENT WARTNER/20 MINUTE/SIPA/Newscom

a

udo in many ways is emblematic of the Christian’s journey in the Middle East.

His father migrated to Aleppo from Al-Kosh, a town in Iraq perched in the hills above the Nineveh Plains. Al-Kosh was the home of Nahum, who prophesied Nineveh’s destruction and the fall of the Assyrian empire. A tomb reportedly containing his remains rests in the middle of town above the ruins of a synagogue, surrounded by Hebrew inscriptions. The last of the town’s Jews left in the 1940s, but churches and a Christian cemetery predominate.

Audo was born in Aleppo. He trained as a Jesuit priest, and received his doctorate in Arabic ­literature from the Sorbonne. For 10 years he worked in Beirut as part of a Bible translation project, producing what’s now called the New Arabic Version, an Arabic-language Bible similar to the original New International Version in English.

Audo speaks haltingly in English, but only because it’s down his list of languages: He speaks first Arabic,

Email: mbelz@wng.org

25 DANIEL OF THE YEAR.indd 43

then French, Italian, and English, as well as being fluent in Hebrew and Syriac.

The church in the Middle East may be in “terminal regional decline,” according to Habib Malik, associate professor of history and cultural studies at the Lebanese American University. But the leadership provided by clergy like Audo is spurring spiritual renewal among youth and continuing interest in clergy vocation. This has been the case particularly in Lebanon and Syria, unlike places like Saudi Arabia, but is threatened by the outside Islamist groups now vying to oust the Assad government.

Malik admits of the three monotheistic religions in the region, “Christianity is most beleaguered.”

Muslims have captured territory and control political power. Jews have found sanctuary in the modern state of Israel. “But native Christians in the region have none of this. They tend to be weak and scattered communities … repeatedly subjected to pressure from oppressive regimes and Islamist groups.”

AUDO: “I respect everybody who chooses to leave. But I will continue.”

Audo is too busy to fixate on bleak outlooks. Through Caritas volunteers, his church is feeding 3,000 families every month and providing them stipends. They have organized ambulance care and medicine for the sick and wounded. And they are supporting over 3,000 students who need help with school costs and transportation.

Thousands of displaced Syrians arrive in Aleppo needing help, Christians and Muslims, plus many within his own parish have lost their homes and are suffering. Every necessity you can think of is in short supply, including bread, and more expensive by the day. “It is a big economic crisis,” Audo said. “People are becoming more and more poor and needy.”

“Will you stay?” I ask.

“Of course. It’s my country, the place I live, and I have to give a testimony. I respect everybody who chooses to leave. But I will continue.” A —with reporting by Kaitlyn Speer

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Mindy Belz

Helping when it matters most Millions of Syrian war victims wait in their hour of greatest need

>>

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WORLD • DECEMBER 14, 2013

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HANDOUT/MERCY USA

W    K  poured out of Iraq into Turkey in , the United States sent in military cargo planes loaded with food, blankets, and other supplies.

In one day six U.S. Air Force C- transports dropped  tons of aid. The U.S. also provided air cover as the UN brought a convoy of trucks from Turkey bearing tents and other supplies. Other nations joined to help, but the United States took the lead—and some argued should have for its role in the Gulf War. Today over  million Syrians out of a country of  million stand in desperate need of food and essential supplies. At least  million have left the country (see our Daniel of the Year coverage plus “Outside the camps,” Nov. ). Any visible show of America’s humanitarian side has come on the ground and by an army of nonprofits. Yet some will argue that the sudden and final withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq in December  created a vacuum for the armed uprisings that began the following month in Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere.

To be sure, the United States, according to the State Department, has agreed to fund . billion in humanitarian assistance for Syria. The State Department claims American taxpayers are “the single-largest contributor” of aid there.

But that billion-plus is only authorization to fund.

It will be paid out via multiple government agencies and nongovernmental organizations over multiple years—think of having your hungry -year-old son plead for dinner and offering to buy him a steak when he turns . It’s not the kind of U.S. rapid response we’ve seen even as recently as last month’s typhoon in the Philippines.

As we’ve covered this, now the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis, and watched the death toll mount to well over ,, WORLD readers have written us, vexed over how to help. More than several of you even have offered to take a Syrian family into your home.

Some of the best work we know of involves aid groups networked to local church groups. Peter Howard of Food for the Hungry told me this model has given his organization hope in an otherwise hopeless situation: “We don’t have to be operational there because we have such a strong church network we are working with. And the beauty of that is it’s more sustainable when we are gone.”

Howard pointed out that churches in Lebanon have been especially helpful because “they have come from war to war to war.” It’s a resilience you see among Middle East churches in general, he said: “They have a theology of suffering, and can live in the midst of it.

They know how to keep going, how to steward resources, and how to bless others.”

In addition to Food for the Hungry, Barnabas Aid Fund, Mercy USA, Samaritan’s Purse, World Vision, Open Doors, and Voice of the Martyrs are groups we know to be working with Syria’s most needy. The International Rescue Committee and Save the Children are working in refugee camps outside Syria’s borders. International Orthodox Christian Charities is providing aid via Syria’s predominant Orthodox churches, and Caritas and Catholic Relief Services are doing the same via Catholic, Chaldean, and other churches. Those in America looking to give might consider a group (or church) fundraiser with proceeds donated to one of these organizations.

Helping Syrian families resettle in America is more difficult. The United States in  has taken in only  Syrian refugees. It and  other nations agreed to take , but have yet to follow through.

Lebanon’s minister of social affairs Wael Abu Faour complained: “Nothing of significance has materialized so far. … We are more than disappointed. We are frustrated. It has been more than two years of advice, of lessons, of promises and nothing.”

What most Syrians want is a country they can return to. Once stood up, the Kurds returned, and today Iraqi Kurdistan is an economic marvel. Its  GDP was  billion, ranking it (as a region) ahead of Iceland. It’s pro-American and less violent than the rest of Iraq. For the Middle East, and for the United States, these aren’t bad dividends for helping when it matters most. A

Email: mbelz@wng.org

11/23/13 10:30 PM

You Can Help Indigenous Missionary Ministries Reach the Unreached 1953—Christian Aid Mission—2013

HELP THEM PREACH THE GOSPEL, HOLD CRUSADES, PLANT CHURCHES

HELP THEM FEED THE HUNGRY, CARE FOR VICTIMS OF DISASTERS

HELP THEM GIVE MEDICAL CARE, DIG WELLS, PROVIDE FOR THOSE IN NEED

Christian Aid Mission P. O. Box 9037 Charlottesville, VA 22906 HANDOUT/MERCY USA

434-977-5650 www.christianaid.org info@christianaid.org

Christian Aid sends support to hundreds of ministries (located in colored areas on the map) which deploy 80,000 native missionaries that reach more than 3,000 different people groups with the gospel.

They go where we cannot go. They reach the unreached ones. They are indigenous missionaries spreading the gospel among their own people. And we are here to help them.

Christian Aid Mission—a 60-year-old, non-profit organization— seeks out, evaluates and sends financial help to indigenous ministries based in lands of poverty and persecution.

You can join us, and 100% of your tax-deductible gift will be used to help them receive the tools they need to finish the Great Commission task our Lord has set before us. Give online at: www.caid.us/world/ Christian Aid Mission is a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability

facebook.com/CAM53

twitter.com/LoveTheBrethren

ChristianAid.org/blog

ChristianAid.org/linkedin WR-1213 61:076

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11/22/13 4:53 PM

The

other of sıde faılure T     of the nine North Korean defectors as tragedy.

In June the nine young defectors, all believed to be orphans between ages  and , followed a Korean missionary couple across the southwestern China border to Laos. That route is a well-used underground railroad; for years, the couple—identified only as Jang and Shin for safety reasons—used that path to guide many defectors safely out of China to South Korea.

This time Laotian authorities arrested them. They deported the nine—seven males, two females—back to China,

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where authorities sent them back to North Korea. They were last seen on North Korean state-owned television.

The story caused an international uproar. People assailed the Laotian and Chinese governments, blamed the South Korean government, and berated the missionaries for their failing to see the dangers. Everyone agreed someone had failed.

Shin said she was so heartbroken she couldn’t utter a word of prayer. “I don’t think I’ve cried this much before in my life, even after my mother died,” she said. “I asked God so many times, ‘Why, God? Why?’ I even told God, ‘I don’t

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HANDOUT PHOTOS THROUGHOUT

Caretakers find solace and take stock after nine North Korean orphans are deported from Laos BY SOPHIA LEE

HANDOUT PHOTOS THROUGHOUT

The North Koreans cross

think I can believe in You anymore.’”

Throughout the ordeal, the couple stayed media-silent. In September, they allowed an interview with CNN. But CNN told their story as a “this-iswhat-happened” tragedy—and without any insight into their faith.

Just before Thanksgiving, the missionary couple sat down for another interview with WORLD via Skype. It’s been five months since that incident, and they’ve had time to wrestle God with questions.

This is their story retold, with the one component that changes all things: Christ.

the Chinese border and

T   Lord of the Flies, the Oliver Twists, the Huckleberry Finns. But Koreans have a special term for these homeless, parentless children: kotjebi, or literally “flowering swallows”—frail birds wandering in the wilderness. The term became popularized after the great North Korea famine in .

These North Korean orphans were both conspicuous and invisible in a community used to such sights. With a chronic glower of hunger, they trolled the streets in gangs like rats. They scavenged, begged, and pitted gang wars over tossed chicken bones. Whatever

3

arrive at a guest house in

Laos.

scraps they collected, they boiled into watery porridge.

When Jang and Shin first started their ministry in , they found one kid running around with a ripped, dangling ear. Another had been beaten so badly by the border patrol guards that the back of his head was crushed, oozing pus sticky with blood-crusted hair. Many had worms; one kid had a two-incher sucking his buttocks.

Some of them had dead parents.

Others were abandoned or lost. Either way, they were parentless and alone, drawn to each other by a common gnaw of hunger and loneliness. Most

DECEMBER 14, 2013 • WORLD

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walked in to check on the children and stepped on a bed of nails.

And why should the orphans trust them? They were defenseless, profitable commodities to child and sex traffickers; several had already been sold before and escaped. Nobody had ever shown them love or kindness, so they didn’t recognize it when they saw it. To them it made more sense to feel like calves being fattened for slaughter than children welcomed into a family.

Taking care of these orphans was thankless, character-building work. Shin half-joked that she ran away from home a few times. Not only did the children watch them with ­distrustful eyes, they were wild, impulsive, and aggressive. Each day, they threw fists and curses at each other, tumbling until noses broke into bloody gushes. They lied and cheated about trivial things. When they didn’t get their way, they banged their heads on the wall.

It’s the strangest thing, Jang said, how quickly humans forget their hunger once their bellies are filled. After six months, the children developed picky eating habits like any other ­broccoli-hating kids in America. They flailed chopsticks at the best meats and scowled at plain rice. Apparently love for the Colonel’s 11 spices is universal; the kids demanded Kentucky Fried Chicken all the time.

“It was a daily warfare,” Jang said.

“The language they use! Take out all the swear words and you won’t even be able to comprehend what they’re saying.”

Yet, once Jang raised his voice, their eyes would water and their lips tremble.

“They may be extreme and wild in their behavior, but their psychological state’s so frail and sensitive.”

Jang said he would not have persevered without Christ’s impossibly ­limitless love. He and his wife bathed and scrubbed the children. They bought them fresh new clothes. They squeezed out the pus from their wounds, shipped medicine from South Korea for their tuberculosis and skin diseases, then rubbed ointment over their sores and rashes.

“We truly tried to take care of them as if they were our biological children,”

3

No JongYeon, Jang KukHwa, Yoo KuangHyuk, and Mun Chul upon arrival at the shelter (above); frostbitten foot and chopped-off fingers of Baek YongWon (right); life at the shelter (bottom).

waited until winter, when the Tumen River froze over, to cross over to China by foot.

“It seemed to me that nobody ever seriously considered these children’s future,” Jang said. “At most, a few passing strangers tossed them food— that was it.”

The couple tried to befriend them.

They visited them daily to chat, join their little games, and buy them hot food. Every winter the missionaries patrolled the river to help cross-­ border defectors. Sometimes they found the children huddled and trembling atop cardboard piled over the frozen river.

In 2009 Jang and Shin brought the first orphan home, an 11-year-old boy named Hajin. Jang first spotted Hajin as a dark blob wading across the polluted, freezing river. He rushed over to embrace the kid with his winter coat as soon as he emerged from the water. Despite the sight—a bundled, dripping boy and a coatless, anxious man—they managed to hail a cab and speed home to Jang’s wife.

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After Hajin, the missionaries continued to house more young defectors.

They sneaked many out of China through Southeast Asia; Hajin was one of several who made it safely to South Korea.

Even after the orphans followed them home, they required about a year to really trust Jang and Shin. For months, they pressed their ears against the wall to eavesdrop on the missionaries’ conversations, ready to bolt at any sign of betrayal. They even boobytrapped their room. One night, Jang

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Jang said. “And gradually, they came to understand our sincerity and heart.” The orphans started calling them ahbeoji and eomeoni—respectful, endearing terms for “father” and “mother.” They became so fond of the couple that they quarreled over sleeping beside them.

In the beginning, the couple had big plans for the children: read the Bible together, teach them Mandarin and perhaps some English, so they’re prepared for higher education in the real world. But these children couldn’t read Korean—or use the toilet. One thought the toilet was a basin and washed her hair in its water; another understood but then tried to scoop out his feces with bare fingers.

3

Such basic things can be taught quickly; minds and hearts take longer.

When Jang criticized North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during dinner, one child flung his spoon across the table and stormed out, screaming, “You think you would mouth such things if you were in North Korea?”

But the greatest challenge was sharing the gospel. None of the kids grasped the concept of God, much less of Jesus Christ. “They can’t see God, so how can they believe in something they can’t see with their own eyes?” Shin said.

Even the basic concept of sin was foreign, Jang said: “Growing up in North Korea means you have to lie, cheat, and steal to survive. These kids didn’t realize that it’s sin. They didn’t

Mun Chul, praying at the immigration station

think they were sinners. So to tell them that someone died for their sins? That’s just unbelievable to them.”

The missionaries had to start slowly. They taught them Korean, then read the Bible. They had Sunday school every day: Bible stories, Bible verse quizzes, worship sung in whispers. But Jang realized that such education had its limits—the kids were reciting indoctrinations without letting the gospel actually take root in their hearts. A majority of them flat-out told the missionaries, “I don’t believe in God.” But even through their doubts, the children prayed ­constantly—from asking God to overcome their worries and anxieties to asking for miracles during a life-threatening ­crisis—and God answered their prayers in sweet, visible ways. Gradually, God went from nonexistent to abstract to a concrete, living, interactive Being.

Jang chuckled as he recalled, “Gosh, we have so many stories! The moment we start sharing all of God’s answers to their prayers, we won’t be able to stop.”

“These kids are desperate enough to pray,” Shin added. “They were in constant danger of being deported, so they needed someone to lean on during a time of great fear.”

3

That’s why it also alarmed and disappointed the missionaries to see the children’s faith wobble soon after they settled into South Korea. Most of the children transition into schools and live in a dorm or institution. Free and safe in a nation of people who look and talk like them, many North Korean refugees still feel imprisoned by their inability to adjust and belong.

The younger refugees, particularly, lack mentors to guide them through the drastically different South Korean culture, no parent to admonish them when they make mistakes. Many of these youngsters, disillusioned by South Korean society and unfettered by parental authority, slip back into the same rambunctious, streetwise lifestyle they once led in North Korea and China.

They frequently asked Shin, “We experienced so many miracles in China. So why aren’t there any here in

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‘These kids are desperate enough to pray. They were in constant danger of being deported, so they needed someone to lean on during a time of great fear.’ —Shin

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At the immigration jail in Vientiane, Laos

South Korea?” Shin said it’s because they lost their sincere desperation for God. They may still lack peace and stability in their hearts, but all their basic needs are met. They no longer have to worry about being deported or fight over food. They stopped praying.

B   traveled with the last nine orphans to Laos, they offered a different prayer to God: “Lord, You know what happened to Your children. When they got too comfortable with their lifestyle, they lost their faith and forgot You. Please, don’t let these kids become that way this time round. ... If You really have a purpose for them, allow some challenges in their life.”

But the couple admitted that after the nine orphans’ deportation, they couldn’t accept that incident as an answer to that prayer. They wept, wailed at God, and pounded their chests in anguish. Why, when God had performed so many miraculous accomplishments, would He allow such devastating “failure”?

For months, they read the Scriptures, prayed, and finally listened, Jang said. Now, he says he believes “God delivered them to North Korea as martyrs and missionaries … and when God has called them for that purpose, who am I to

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‘God delivered them to North Korea as martyrs and missionaries … and when God has called them for that purpose, who am I to say no?’—Jang say no? Who am I to cry, ‘No, not my children! You can’t use my children!’

So I’ve come to accept God’s heart.”

Shin said the nine youngsters’ faith is stronger than the other refugees she’s rescued. This fact gave the couple assurance that the orphans are “Josephs who can implant the foundation of a gospel in a spiritually barren land.”

“Living comfortably in South Korea is a blessing. But the biggest blessing is being able to maintain your faith and fulfill God’s purpose in your life,” said Jang. “These kids may be in North Korea. I know they will suffer there. My human heart is tearing apart at that thought. But I also believe that God has a huge award ready for them.”

S    their prayer: “We pray that [the children] never forget that they are no longer slaves to sin. That even when imprisoned in darkness, the word of life that’s been seeded inside their hearts will help them overcome all hardships and fears. … We hope that one day, when we reunite, they can share many testimonies of how they guarded their faith.”

Through a secular viewpoint, the orphans’ sufferings seem senseless and devastating, and questions arise: Did the missionaries make a mistake? What went wrong? But a Bible-believing Christian can gain peace and comfort in the faith that the Christ who has risen makes no failure. A

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Email: slee@wng.org

11/25/13 4:50 PM

CREDIT

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THE HOUSE THAT

STEVEN BUILT



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A Charlotte megachurch pastor’s megamansion raises eyebrows and critical questions

by WARREN COLE SMITH in Charlotte, N.C.

  , Steven Furtick and his Charlotte, N.C., megachurch, Elevation, are roaring successes. More than , people attend Elevation’s six campuses each weekend. The budget for the church will likely top  million this year. Most significantly, the church says it has baptized more than , people since it began in .

The problem, though, is that the good Elevation and churches like it do may be undone by financial and organizational controversies.

One involves lifestyle. When a local TV news reporter started looking into the details of a new home being built by Furtick, the Elevation pastor launched what he thought would be a pre-emptive strike against what he anticipated would be a negative story. During a service he told his congregation the station had flown a helicopter over the house, suggesting the helicopter was an excessive measure OPERATION BUILD: Furtick’s home since “it isn’t under construction; Furtick; Elevation even that big Church at the Blakeney location; the a house, Code Orange revivals at Elevation really.”

Church (clockwise from lower left).

HOUSE & ELEVATION: CHARLOTTE OBSERVER/MCT/LANDOV CONCERT & FURTICK: HANDOUT

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But then the truth started coming out. Furtick’s house will be more than , square feet of heated space, with nearly that many more feet of porches, pavilions, and garages. It has five bedrooms and seven bathrooms. The station needed a helicopter because the house sits on a -acre lot surrounded by gated communities and similarly sized mansions, posted with no trespassing signs: A helicopter is the only way to get close enough to see it.

Neither Furtick nor Elevation Church spokesperson Tonia Bendickson would discuss the house or Elevation salaries—but the limited information available provides a glimpse into not just Elevation’s finances but also some organizational and financial trends likely to harm Christian witness in a secular world ready to pounce. (In November a federal judge in Wisconsin struck down a law that gives clergy tax-free housing allowances, a ruling that could have wider ramifications.)

Elevation, for example, has neither deacons nor elders. Furtick’s salary is set by a Board of Overseers made up of other megachurch pastors. According to Elevation’s  Annual Report, the board includes “Pastor Dino Rizzo (Healing Place Church—Baton Rouge, LA), Dr. Jack

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nickname “the peacock of the pulpit.”

In the aftermath of the controversies regarding his home, though, he has refused media interviews, including repeated requests from WORLD. Several years ago, though, before Furtick’s media blackout and before his rise to what radio talk show host and church watchdog Chris Rosebrough calls “rock star” status, I sat down with Furtick for an hour-long interview in which he talked about a “staff-led church,” one with no deacons, elders, or independent accountability.

He answered my questions then about a lack of oversight by describing the intimate relationship he had with his then small staff, a relationship characterized by “openness and accountability.” Today, however, Elevation’s staff totals more than  people, and the payroll is approximately  million.

Furtick’s claim that his multimilliondollar mansion is paid for by book and speaking fees and not his church salary is plausible, but impossible to verify.

Even if true, it raises ethical questions.

Should Furtick keep money from books sold in the church’s bookstore, promoted in sermon series from the church’s

HTB CHURCH

Graham (Prestonwood Baptist Church— Plano, TX), Pastor Perry Noble (Newspring Church—Anderson, SC), Pastor Kevin Gerald (Champions Centre—Seattle, WA), Pastor Stovall Weems (Celebration Church— Jacksonville, FL.), [and] Pastor Steven also serves on the Board, but does not vote on his salary.”

Many of these pastors have similar compensation arrangements, and some are engaged in questionable behavior of their own. Dino Rizzo, for example, resigned as pastor of Healing Place Church in  after an inappropriate relationship with a female friend.

Weems, Noble, and Gerald all were paid speakers at Elevation Church’s Code Orange event that drew thousands to the church and tens of thousands to an internet simulcast.

One thing no one disputes is Furtick’s media savvy. In  he posed for a “style file” article in The Charlotte Observer fashion section.

According to the article, “Steven Furtick’s accessories include Robert Wayne leather boots, a Diesel watch, and custom jewelry.” Regular features in the local media earned Furtick the

pulpit, and promoted by the church’s television broadcasts?

MinistryWatch’s Rusty Leonard says no: “Pastor Furtick could not sell books and earn royalties if donors to his church did not provide the financial resources to allow him to purchase the notoriety needed to sell his books.” Leonard says Billy Graham and Charles Colson, who “always had their book royalties go directly to their ministries and not into their own pockets”—provided good examples for other Christian leaders to follow.

John Piper also follows this pattern. Piper, the recently retired pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis and author of more than Furtick  books, formed the Desiring God Foundation in  and transferred all intellectual property from his books to the foundation. All of Piper’s royalties and speaking engagement fees go into this foundation.

Furtick and Elevation have numerous advocates. All the money in the church’s  million budget came from thousands of willing donors, and the church claimed to give away about  percent of its  budget—about . million—in “outreach” activities. But that number is not independently verifiable, and some of the money Elevation says it gives away appears to have been to Elevation’s own expansion efforts.

Furtick, for his part, remains unbowed. In November the church launched a campaign highlighting the stories of lives the church claims to have changed, and in a  sermon posted on the Elevation Church website, Furtick said, “We’ve got to become more comfortable with controversy.

We’ve learned how to tolerate it and move past it. Now it’s time for us to learn to view it as a gift, and use it to our advantage. Controversy is a precursor to promotion, and a training ground for greater things.” A

Email: wsmith@wng.org

11/25/13 1:29 PM

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Award-winning blogger Marilyn Rhames is a blunt Chicago teacher with an eye toward educational and spiritual reform

Teacher on a mission

by DANIEL JAMES DEVINE in Chicago                       /      

   - and eighth-grade students in Marilyn Rhames’ reading and writing class, and you’ll hear her read A Raisin in the Sun with the Southern drawl she picked up from her parents but usually hides. You’ll hear her compliment, encourage, and joke with students, calling them “friends”—or somberly warn how lying “ruins your reputation.” Or she’ll inform the class she’s out of patience with their goofing off.

“There’s a lot of talk,” she says during a class assignment to type blog entries on iPads. “That’s your last warning. … Thank you. You know I love you.”

Rhames, wearing mini braids and a black suit jacket, smiles and tells me: “They call me bipolar, because I’ll yell at them, and then I’ll be like, ‘But you guys are great!’”

On the June day I visited Rhames, a teacher at a brick K- charter school on Chicago’s South Side, she gleefully announced to a circle of eighth-graders that she was pregnant: “I wanted you to be the first group to know about it.” She had just told her own mother and two daughters, ages  and , the night before.

This fall, Rhames’ baby bump had grown round enough to wipe the dry erase marker off the whiteboard. Rhames is marking her th year teaching at Chicago Public Schools, but her influence



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hasn’t stopped there. She’s in her third year writing a widely read (and highly opinionated) education blog, Charting My Own Course (blogs.edweek.org/teachers/ charting_my_own_course/), hosted by the Education Week website. She recently became a co-host for Taboo, a new show on the BAM! Radio network about topics teachers are usually unwilling to discuss publicly—such as what to do when you dislike your students.

I



AWARD: HANDOUT • RHAMES: SCOTT STRAZZANTE/GENESIS

 S, BAM! Radio named Rhames the year’s top education commentator/blogger at its Bammy Awards ceremony in Washington, D.C. Asked what makes her blog so popular, the teacher shrugs and says, “I’m an honest person.” Her first post two years ago drew attention because she criticized fellow educators— another taboo practice in the profession—for treating students and staff poorly. Though Rhames calls herself an “education reformer,” she has even higher aspirations: promoting prayer among public school teachers through her nonprofit, Teachers Who Pray.

Rhames, , is a former journalist who covered the / terrorist attacks while working for a New York City newspaper. Her husband, Kevin, used to produce albums for the late thug rapper Tupac Shakur, but now serves in urban youth ministry. After the couple moved to Chicago, Rhames decided to begin teaching. But a few years into the profession, she became disillusioned by principals who flirted with strike this summer over the closing of  elementary schools married staff and ran schools with their own interests in mind. in high-crime neighborhoods. She laments that the closings— “People are not thinking about which the district said were necessary to stem a budget crisis— the kids,” she thought. are forcing some kids to walk  blocks to school, sometimes “They’re so selfish.” through rival gang territory. When Chicago Public Schools Those first years helped her announced it would lay off  teachers and staff in June, Rhames wrote, “The politics here are understand that when educators sickening. … I am fed up with my city.” misbehave, kids suffer. For the past six years TOUGH BUT REWARDING The charter teacher says her Christian she has worked at a charter school, and more CAREER: Rhames in the classroom (top); her faith influences her criticism (or praise) of recently begun writing about education policy Bammy Award.

Chicago education. Education issues are and her life as a Chicago teacher. Fellow educararely all-or-nothing propositions, she says, tors often comment on her blog, criticizing and “any reform needs to be done in a spirit of collaboration.”

Rhames for her support of charters or her opposition to union While some Chicago schools might have needed to be shut tactics. Others praise her. down this summer, she calls it “unethical” for Emanuel to Her views are not easily placed in a box. She has opposed close nearly  and expose school kids to danger. She both the Chicago Teachers Union and Mayor Rahm Emanuel supported Emanuel’s  effort to increase the length of the in turn. She criticized last year’s teachers union strike over school day, but not the cash bonuses he gave to schools and contract negotiations, but says she would have supported a

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teachers who waived union contracts to do so.

“It was basically a bribe,” she says. “As Christians we know we have to do things with grace and honesty. And if those things are missing, we do more damage.”

Besides politics, Rhames blogs about school mishaps (she accidentally sent her co-workers a romantic text message intended for her husband), the challenge of working with students from impoverished or violent neighborhoods, and the Bible’s influence on English literature. Some days Rhames wakes up at : to grade papers or write on her blog. At school she supervises dramatic readings, deals with frustrated parents, fights a broken printer, herds students through writing assignments, and catches some playing Minecraft on their iPads.

Over the years, the workload and teacher expectations have gotten heavier, and some -hour weeks are draining. “I really enjoy teaching,” she says. “And then there are times when I’m really burned out and I don’t know how much longer I can do this job.”

AWARD: HANDOUT • RHAMES: SCOTT STRAZZANTE/GENESIS

R

  teachers who are overwhelmed or burnt out, physically or spiritually, won’t be much help to broken students. From the moment Rhames stood in front of her first class of “bright-eyed third-graders,” she knew “I was doomed to fail them without prayer.”

That’s why she founded Teachers Who Pray, a network meant to encourage teachers to pray together weekly. There are  U.S. chapters so far. Although participants don’t have to be Christians to join a group, they must be seeking God and agree to pray to Jesus Christ. Rhames says the prayer groups are great evangelism tools.

“My mom passed away … and Marilyn prayed for her so many times,” said Rocio Tovalin, a fellow teacher at Rhames’ school. “My mom was a woman of faith, and I wasn’t,” but

Email: ddevine@wng.org

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Teachers Who Pray acted as a support system when she needed “patience and love.”

Rhames says her city upbringing by “two country parents” has influenced her perspective on students and education. Her parents came from Mississippi but met at a Chicago church.

They married and had eight children, raising them to “fear the Lord, or else.” Although her mother worked as a nanny for wealthy Jewish families and her father worked odd jobs (as a barber, a custodian, a truck driver), they still sometimes had to rely on welfare.

Rhames remembers what that was like: “You can get cornflakes. You can’t get Cap’n Crunch. You can get canned vegetables. You can’t get fresh vegetables.” She and her siblings wore hand-me-downs and sometimes got new clothes at Christmas or before the start of school. Family vacations occurred when they stuffed  people in a hot station wagon— with the air conditioning turned off to save gas—and drove to Mississippi for a funeral.

Some of Rhames’ outspokenness might come from her father, who didn’t like others telling him what to do, and rode a bus out of the segregated South when he was . He was adamant about owning a home and moved his family into a neighborhood rather than an apartment complex. Rhames’ older sister had many white classmates, but by the time Rhames was in school, they were all African-American—a symptom of “white flight.”

Today, Chicago remains the most racially segregated city in America, according to a study last year by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. Rhames says she sees evidence of racism every day, in the form of the Dominick’s grocery store in a black neighborhood that never gets remodeled, or in the occasional racial bullying at her school, which is - percent African-American (many others are Hispanic). After six years working there, Rhames remains the only AfricanAmerican teacher: “We don’t have a single black man working in our building. … I think that’s bad.”

The lack of a role model is worse for kids without a father in the home. Rhames, too, knows what that feels like: Her parents divorced when she was in high school. Her father, years later, asked the family to forgive him. He died from cancer in January.

Above Rhames’ classroom door hangs a fish-shaped wooden wind chime she brought home from a missions trip to Cameroon. With her faith and her firsthand knowledge of adversity, Rhames feels as if she’s “on a mission field right at school.” She doesn’t witness directly to students, but works to help them improve their futures. She’s formed bonds with their parents and shares the gospel with them.

Asked for the solution to the problems of American public education, Rhames replies the problem is too multilayered for man’s wisdom. She thinks the solution is divine intervention and prayer—and hopes her nonprofit will play a role.

On Nov.  the Chicago teacher and blogger gave birth by cesarean section to a -pound, -ounce boy. Looking to her future with a newborn, and to the future of U.S. school kids, she’s considering whether to end her own teaching career to build prayer networks and write about education full time.

For now, with Chicago’s new school closings in effect, “I’m just praying no child gets hurt, gets hit by a car, or gets shot walking to school.” A

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a room of one’s own New York goes after Airbnb hosts in a first test of what rules will govern the new sharing economy by emily belz in New York 60

Misty is a singer who lives in Spanish Harlem with a roommate. She sporadically travels from the city for gigs. The cost of rent in New York City is such that leaving an apartment empty, to her, seems “almost a crime,” and renting out her room for the few nights when she’s away is one way she makes ends meet. She uses the newly popular short-term rental website Airbnb to advertise her place, and has had half a dozen bookings over the last year.

“It’s been a third job for me—I don’t know what I would have done,” said Misty, sitting on a park bench as the two children she watches in her second job as a nanny had lunch.

Airbnb is a cleanly designed website where users can rent rooms by the night in their own homes, providing a secure experience for both guests and hosts. Reviews of both guests and hosts, and measures like withholding payment to hosts

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n

house proud: A room in the home of New York City resident Tama Robertson. She rents it out to visitors using Airbnb.

Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times/redux

for 24 hours after the visit begins, help keep everyone accountable and satisfied.

The site is popular worldwide. Since the San Francisco–based company’s launch in 2008, the site has expanded to half a million homes in 192 countries. In New York City, the site started in 2009 with 30 hosts; now it has about 15,000 hosts. According to the company, the city had 416,000 Airbnb guests in the last year and generated $632 million in economic activity.

The hotel industry is not pleased with Airbnb’s success, and neither are local governments that stand to lose millions in hotel taxes.

Misty’s last name is withheld because New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman may target with fines and prosecution the tens of thousands of hosts who have used Airbnb in the state.

Schneiderman has subpoenaed Airbnb for extensive personal records of all of the hosts who have offered their apartments for rent in the last three years.

The subpoena requests hosts’ names, addresses, guest history, revenue, and tax documents, but also bank account information to verify whether hosts are using ghost accounts. In New York the legality of these types of short-term rentals is iffy. Rules vary by jurisdiction across the country, partly because Airbnb is a new business concept.

Though the state isn’t going after Airbnb itself, Airbnb is fighting the subpoena in court and asking the state legislature to clarify the law. In October the company filed a motion in the state Supreme Court to quash the subpoena. “No matter how benevolent their intent, officials in the United States are not empowered to comb through any and all non-public records to root out perceived or suspected wrongdoing,” Airbnb’s lawyers wrote. A coalition of tech companies— including Facebook, Google, and Amazon—have filed in ­support of Airbnb.

Paul Avelar, an attorney with the libertarian law firm Institute for Justice, said the hotel industry is using a common tactic of existing companies that want to smother incoming competition. Economists call it “regulatory capture.” Avelar said, “They use the power of the government to prevent lower cost competition from entering the marketplace.” The attorney general’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

In post-recession America, individuals who live on tighter budgets are making it more common to share possessions like houses and cars. Airbnb, potentially a multibillion-dollar company if it goes public, is the behemoth of the emerging “sharing economy.” A sharing cousin is Lyft, where members pay to share car rides in their neighborhood. At their best, these companies are filling economic inefficiencies: A singer who leaves an empty apartment on a weekend in New York can find someone who needs a room to foot the bill. But ­individual hosts are a new category of business, and local ­governments aren’t sure how to regulate them. New York is a test of freedom in the sharing economy.

The Airbnb sharing economy has something hotels don’t; because transactions are based on sharing, they are more relational. Airbnb hosts, in striving for good guest reviews, will take hospitality beyond fresh sheets and a continental breakfast. One weekend this fall, I traveled up to the Catskills with three friends; we booked a middle-of-nowhere cabin on Airbnb. Our host chopped wood for the campfire and wrote out lengthy details about hikes and fishing spots nearby.

When the temperature dropped that night and we couldn’t figure out how to light the gas heater, my friend texted him and he quickly wrote back, walking us through step by step.

He told us to visit a farm stand down the road, which turned out to be a gem packed with fresh donuts, squash, and apples.

Hosts I interviewed in New York have taken guests out for drinks. Sometimes guests will leave thank-you gifts for them.

Guests can also be odd or frustrating; one host came home and found her kitchen cabinet and living room completely rearranged, and something broken. (Hosts can file complaints about guests, and get money for damages.)

“There’s that weird connection—you’re staying in my bed,” said Marion, a host on the Upper West Side. “My long-term goal was to have a home that was welcoming to people, even with Airbnb. … I don’t ever want it to become about the money.”

Marion keeps her Airbnb money in a separate account that she only uses for rent or home improvements. Using Airbnb, she has enough income that she doesn’t need a roommate and has been able to provide a place to stay for family and visiting missionaries. She said she is careful about how much she rents out her place. She wants to be considerate to her neighbors, and she emphasizes that in her “house rules” for guests.

With a recent public relations campaign in the face of its legal issues, Airbnb stresses that hosts offer something hotels never can; a home wherever they go. CEO Brian Chesky, at a recent keynote at the company’s gleaming San Francisco headquarters, mentioned that many New York hosts opened their homes for free on the site after Superstorm Sandy ­displaced many New Yorkers.

The talk about hospitality is warming, but Airbnb is a ­for-profit company; it has a financial interest in shielding the

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identity of its highest earners, who are likely renting out their places full time. For every transaction, Airbnb receives a small percentage from the guest and the host. The slice of Airbnb hosts essentially running full-time hotels out of their homes is escaping hotel regulations that make a night at a hotel more expensive.

The attorney general argues that hosts typically don’t pay New York City’s . percent hotel occupancy tax; but it’s not clear at what point Airbnb hosts meet all the conditions of a hotel and owe a hotel tax. Airbnb’s Chesky has said that the company would support figuring out a tax structure for hosts earning over a certain threshold in New York. On average, according to the company, New York hosts earn , a year using Airbnb.

Still, the Institute for RENT AWAY: Chesky; Justice’s Avelar said even Airbnb employees at work those full-time rentals should in San Francisco; a woman be permissible, from a propin Hamburg using Airbnb erty rights standpoint. (from top to bottom).

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CHESKY: JOHANNES SIMON/GETTY IMAGES • AIRBNB OFFICE: OLE SPATA/PICTURE-ALLIANCE/DPA/AP • CHRISTIAN CHARISIUS/PICTURE-ALLIANCE/DPA/AP



Property owners should be able to rent for two days, two months, or two years, he said.

Many of the New York City hosts don’t own their apartments, and they often share a building with neighbors who may encounter a stream of strangers. The usual neighbor arguments against Airbnb hosting are that guests are loud, leave garbage, or fill streets with cars. But Avelar said neighbors can typically address those complaints through any number of zoning ordinances; the state doesn’t have to go after anyone who rents out their home in the first place.

“So far there hasn’t been any real justification for blocking these rentals,” Avelar said. The laws are “horribly vague and shot through with exceptions,” he said, and the subpoena sweeps in “a lot of perfectly innocent behavior.”

The attorney general’s office met with Airbnb representatives this fall, before issuing the subpoena, but the two sides talked past each other. The attorney general said Airbnb was unwilling to collaborate on sharing information of users who might be breaking the law. As a third party, the company said it was not the attorney general’s “investigative arm,” and suggested the state investigate violations on its own. Airbnb said it had offered to issue legal guidance to its users for how to comply with state law but the attorney general provided none.

Meanwhile hosts continue to host, even if they’re a little bewildered. Misty stopped hosting when she first heard about the legal issues, but researched more and thought she was within the law. Airbnb has communicated regularly with its New York hosts about what’s going on, informing them about the legal proceedings but essentially telling them to carry on as usual.

“Of course, if I realized I was completely breaking the law, I would stop,” said Misty.

Marion said it’s unrealistic for New York to expect that hotels will fill the demand for temporary housing in the city.

And many of her guests, especially families, told her they could only afford to come to the city because of Airbnb; it allows them to stay for, say, a week. (“No one’s going to pay for a hotel for seven days,” she said.)

And guests can cook at home instead of eating out every meal.

Marion said she is willing to pay a tax for her guests, but it shouldn’t be “to punish people” for sharing. A

Email: ebelz@wng.org

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Notebook Religion > Lifestyle > Technology > Science > Houses of God > Sports

David Guttenfelder/ap

Suffering servants As the Philippines recovers from a massive typhoon, churches offer relief for the grieving

by Jamie Dean

Email: jdean@wng.org

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>>

On the Sunday after Typhoon Haiyan ravaged the central Philippines, killing at least 5,000 people and damaging or destroying more than 1 million homes, local churchgoers across the stricken islands did what they do most Sundays: They flocked to church.

At the Santo Nino Catholic Church in the hard-hit city of Tacloban, the scene was apocalyptic, but the tone was comforting: A priest standing on a mud-slathered floor used

a battery-powered microphone to encourage parishioners to seek strength in the sufferings of Christ.

As the official death toll rose to 5,200, at least 1,600 people were still missing after the monster typhoon (known as “Yolanda” in the Philippines) brought 174 mph winds and a 15-foot storm surge. The storm obliterated whole coastal towns, and displaced milshelter: A mother lions. The Philippine rests in a church pew government reported with her newborn the storm destroyed baby in a Catholic chapel in Tacloban. at least 600 schools

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Notebook > Religion and 500 hospitals or clinics, and ­estimated recovery could cost nearly $6 billion.

For now, many residents remained focused on surviving. And in a nation with one of the largest Catholic populations in the world, churches and other Christian groups became a primary source of relief.

Catholic churches became shelters, and evangelical churches delivered aid to hard-hit communities. Campus Crusade for Christ—which maintains a staff of more than 200 in the Philippines—continued to deliver aid to needy areas, and worked with the Christian group Global Aid Network to package relief supplies in Manila.

World Relief reported it would ­provide supplies to the relief arm of the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches. The local network of congregations planned to provide supplies to churches, while local pastors and volunteers provided manpower, facilities, and transportation to deliver aid to rural regions still waiting for help two weeks after the storm’s landfall.

primary source of relief: Typhoon survivors seek refuge inside the Redemptorist Church in Tacloban.

Though ­hundreds of thousands of s­ urvivors fled hard-hit cities, thousands of ­residents remained trapped in rural villages with few supplies and limited communication.

Meanwhile, governments from around the world sent manpower and supplies to the crippled region. The U.S. Marines used an MV-22 Osprey trans-

port plane to deliver tons of aid to the country each day. Other nations— including Japan and China—also poured relief into a country viewed as a critical player in Asian politics.

Beyond politics and reconstruction, churches prepared for some of the most difficult recovery work: Helping survivors cope with immense personal grief and loss. Back at Santo Nino Catholic Church in Tacloban, locals continued to gather for aid and comfort. Parishioner Nancy Callega told NPR she grieved the damage to her beloved church, but said her faith transcended buildings.

“I really trust in God,” said Callega.

“We cannot rely on our concrete houses and our powers. It’s nothing compared to God’s help through prayers.”

A secularist organization is threatening to sue public schools that participate in Operation Christmas Child (OCC), a Christian program that delivers holiday gifts to impoverished children around the world. The American Humanist Association (AHA) recently sent letters to two schools, warning them that “in order to avoid the necessity of litigation to end your unconstitutional practices,” they should immediately break off any involvement with the program.

OCC is the most visible ministry of the relief agency Samaritan’s Purse, led

by Franklin Graham. The program has given shoebox-wrapped gifts to more than 100 million children in over 130 countries in the past two decades. When Samaritan’s Purse distributes the gifts, it also makes a “creative gospel presentation by local churches and ministry partners” and offers an evangelistic booklet. This is the aspect of the program that raised the AHA’s ire, with AHA calling the toys a “bribe” to pressure poor children to embrace Christianity.

East Point Academy of West Columbia, S.C., was one of the schools ­targeted by the AHA. East Point’s principal, Renee Mathews, quickly informed parents that East Point would discontinue its shoebox collection in order to avoid a costly lawsuit. Mathews emphasized, however, that the program had been entirely voluntary, and that they had only accepted toys, not religious literature, for the project. —Thomas Kidd

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Philippines: Bullit Marquez/ap • Operation Christmas Child: Jim Wells/QMI Agency/ZUMA PRESS/newscom

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Wings and prayers

A volunteer pilot shares his faith with trauma patients

BY RIKKI ELIZABETH STINNETTE

>>

V A F MidAtlantic pilot Steve Craven glanced at the corkscrew curls of the Hasidic Jew in the co-pilot’s seat. As they taxied down the runway in Craven’s Piper airplane, he wondered whether he should pray for the man and his wife, who had just visited a specialist for her chronic pain.

Craven finally asked permission, the couple agreed, and he recalls, “I closed in Jesus’ name. They thanked me.”

Since he began in , Craven has prayed at the beginning of each of his  Angel Flight missions. Angel Flight and its parent organization, Mercy Medical Airlift, provide free flights to East Coast trauma patients who cannot otherwise afford transportation to major medical centers.

Craven wanted to fly ever since he was , when John Glenn orbited the Earth. However, flying was expensive, and he never found time for lessons. He

married and had five children, taking over his father’s small tire business in : “We tried to make the business as much of a ministry as we could.” He hired a chaplain for his employees and put a display of Bibles and tracts in each location.

The business grew so much under Craven’s leadership that in  he could afford to pursue his dream: He bought a plane and earned a pilot’s license.

A fellow church member introduced him to Angel Flight, and Craven went on his first volunteer mission two days after he earned his instrument rating. After he sold his tire company in , Craven devoted even more time to Angel Flight and developed a safety management system. This year he won the Virginia Governor’s Volunteerism and Community Service Award.

Craven only considered selling his plane once—when the economy slowed and flight restrictions tightened after /—but business picked up enough for him to keep the plane. He has never regretted the time and money he has spent: “I didn’t make many sacrifices at all to do this.” He remembers people he has flown, most of whom have cancer or are burn victims. He once helped a Gulf oil fire survivor to profess faith in Christ as they flew at , feet.

Craven said he is simply one of thousands of volunteer pilots: “It’s just being able to use the talent and resources God has given me for His glory.”

—Rikki Elizabeth Stinnette is a WORLD intern

The American way of celebrating Christmas—an overabundance of gifts, family gatherings, and overthe-top decorations—carries expectations that are often disappointed. Many books exist to suggest remedies: Slow down; simplify; keep Jesus as the reason for the season. In A Better December (New Growth Press, ), Steven Estes goes to the biblical book of Proverbs for insight into why we sometimes feel alone when surrounded by family. He shows how Solomon wrote about greed, perfectionism, covetousness, disappointment—the same kinds of issues that Christmas exposes. With humor and pathos, Estes tells little stories that point to the gospel story. —Susan Olasky



WORLD • DECEMBER 14, 2013

25 LIFESTYLE and TECH.indd 68

CRAVEN: RIKKI ELIZABETH STINNETTE

Have a better December

Visit our website—wng.org—for breaking news and more

11/20/13 10:29 AM

IPHONE: FRANCKREPORTER/ISTOCK • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE

Notebook > Lifestyle

Notebook > Technology

Dollar voting

Before you check out, you can check where your money may go

BY DANIEL JAMES DEVINE

CRAVEN: RIKKI ELIZABETH STINNETTE

IPHONE: FRANCKREPORTER/ISTOCK • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE

>>

Q: W   , McDonald’s or Burger King?

McDonald’s, according to a free new mobile app. For shoppers who don’t want their money even indirectly supporting liberal agendas, nd Vote, launched at the Values Voter summit in October, is there to help. The app tracks the employee policies or corporate donations of large companies and rates whether they lean liberal or conservative on a - scale. Company policies on the environment, gay marriage, abortion, gun rights, and even whether companies have accepted government bailout money all factor into a score. (For a starting reference, the pro-traditional marriage restaurant Chickfil-A earns a high score of .)

A browse through the app’s categories (Restaurants, Retail, Entertainment & News, etc.) is enlightening and sometimes surprising.

Companies that have already received attention for their support of same-sex benefits and abortion, like Starbucks, PepsiCo, and Google, get appropriately low scores—but so do others you might have overlooked. Costco, for example, earns a . for funding Planned Parenthood and supporting LGBT causes.

Ford earns a . for supporting same-sex marriage, cap-and-trade policy, and the pro-abortion National Women’s Law Center. UPS earns an abysmal , in part for donating , to the pro-homosexual Human Rights Campaign. (Shipper DHL scored higher, at ., earning a place as “passively liberal.”)

If you discover while browsing nd Vote that your favorite store or brand appears to be a raving supporter of abortion, population control, and homosexuality (such as Nike), the app will conveniently suggest a list of “better options.” In this example, the top suggested alternative is—perhaps surprisingly— Jockey. Lingerie-clad models aside, the company walks away with a . score, in large part for supporting adoptive families and signing the strongly pro-life former NFL

Email: ddevine@wng.org

25 LIFESTYLE and TECH.indd 69

quarterback Tim Tebow as an endorser in .

Judging by their scores, BP, Best Buy, and Avon are all more liberal than alternatives ConocoPhillips, RadioShack, and Mary Kay, which have at least remained generally neutral on the issues. The website version of nd Vote has hyperlinked references for those who wish to check out company policies firsthand.

Speaking in terms of corporate donations, the nd Vote ratings suggest conservatives are outnumbered. Although few businesses appear openly to support traditional values like heterosexual marriage, many support liberal causes. The companies that choose to remain neutral seem conservative by comparison.

“We vote every day with our dollars,” says Chris Walker, the executive director of nd Vote, the nonprofit maker of the app, which added nearly , downloads in its first month. Users can vote on companies they plan to support or boycott, and Walker says his organization plans to present those vote tallies to company executives. “You’d be amazed how a company who wants your money will listen to your voice.”

  High-school students who use Facebook and Twitter to broadcast their lives have a practical new reason to think twice before posting a nasty comment or questionable photo: Colleges may be watching. In a new survey from Kaplan Test Prep, a growing proportion of college admissions officers—  in —said they had checked an applicant’s Facebook or other social media profile to learn more about the person. The same proportion said they found info online that damaged an applicant’s chances of acceptance in the school. —D.J.D.

DECEMBER 14, 2013 • WORLD



11/21/13 9:33 PM

Notebook > Science

  

Federal regulators are on a warpath to rid the  states of trans fats

BY DANIEL JAMES DEVINE

>>

Many restaurant chains have already stopped cooking with oils containing trans fats, including McDonald’s, Krispy Kreme, Taco Bell, and KFC. Long John Silver’s has pledged to stop using them by the end of the year. Many manufacturers shun them: Although I’ve never consciously avoided trans fats while grocery shopping, a quick search of my fridge and cabinets turned up only one item containing trans fat: a halfused tub of vegetable spread.

With free-market pressure so effective, why do we need a nationwide ban?

Overall, manufacturers have reduced trans fat content in food products by  percent since . Those who still use trans fats complain the FDA’s ban would force them to reformulate tried-and-true brand recipes—a possibly difficult and expensive task.

New York City outlawed trans fats in restaurants in . Next, the city took aim at large soft drinks. Knowing the pattern of U.S. regulation, you have to wonder if it will be trans fats today—and sugar, salt, and saturated fat tomorrow.

Blinded by the pill?

Oral contraceptives have been linked to increased risk of blood clots, benign liver tumors, and heart attacks—and new research suggests they raise the risk of blindness. In a not-yetpublished study announced in November, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, and two other institutions found that U.S. women were twice as likely to develop glaucoma, a serious eye disease, if they had used any kind of oral contraceptive for three years or more. Another study published in  had found a smaller link between glaucoma and long-term oral contraceptive use.

It’s possible birth control pills influence the onset of glaucoma by altering estrogen levels.

More than  million Americans are estimated to suffer from glaucoma, the world’s second leading cause of blindness. —D.J.D.



WORLD • DECEMBER 14, 2013

25 SCIENCE and HOUSES.indd 70

FRIES: CARLOS OSORIO/AP • EXERCISE: ALLGORD/ISTOCK • EYE EXAM: DON BAYLEY/PHOTOS.COM

T    molecules known as trans fats, lurking in some snacks and margarine sticks, have likely met their inglorious end. On Nov.  the U.S. Food and Drug Administration proposed a nationwide ban on trans fat additives in food.

Eliminating trans fats, which health experts blame for raising bad cholesterol, would prevent , heart attacks and , deaths from heart disease in America each year, the agency claims.

The ban, awaiting a -day comment period, is likely a done deal. Public health advocates have been shouting about trans fats for years, and many restaurants and manufacturers have already stopped using them. In fact, the efforts to raise public awareness—including the FDA’s  requirement that nutrition labels announce trans fat content of . grams or more— have been so successful some might wonder whether a federal ban is even necessary.

Trans fats occur naturally in small amounts in beef and some dairy products.

Manufacturers create them when they add hydrogen to vegetable oil to solidify it, adding texture, taste, and shelf life to foods.

Certain brands of cookies, frozen pizzas, pancake mixes, microwave popcorn, and doughnuts contain trans fat additives.

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11/22/13 5:04 PM

JIM WEBER/THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL/LANDOV

Eat no evil

An encouraging word doesn’t just cheer the heart: It apparently increases physical endurance, too. An October study in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise found that young, active men and women coached in “motivational self-talk” (telling themselves things like, “You’re doing well”) performed better in a stationary cycling test than those without such coaching. Asked to cycle to the point of exhaustion, participants endured longer when they engaged in a personal pep talk. —D.J.D.

Notebook > Houses of God

a racially diverse congregation of about 1,500 people in Memphis, Tenn., outgrew its old meeting place and on Nov. 3 began worshipping in the Memphis Central Train Station.

JIM WEBER/The Commercial Appeal/Landov

fries: Carlos Osorio/ap • exercise: allgord/istock • eye exam: Don Bayley/photos.com

The Downtown Presbyterian Church,

D e c e m b e r 1 4 , 2 0 1 3 • W ORLD

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71

11/22/13 5:05 PM

Notebook > Sports

Johnny football, year two MANZIEL overcomes rocky summer for another stellar season

BY ZACHARY ABATE

>>

Rebel prayers Praying before football games, a somewhat common occurrence at “Bible Belt” public schools, is a violation of student religious freedom, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Yet many football coaches disagree. A recent poll published by the Times Free Press of Chattanooga, Tenn., asked public school football coaches their opinion on sports and religion. All  coaches who responded to the poll said they supported team prayer.

“We as coaches fail if we only teach football, so we try to set an example of how a Christian man handles any situation,” said Ridgeland High School coach Mark Mariakis. “I want the kids to remember that example more than anything they learn on the football field.” In response to the poll, the ACLU sent letters to  Tennessee school officials, telling schools to quit praying.

“Our experience is that many public school administrators and educators struggle with how the constitutional guarantees of religious freedom apply to prayer during their school-sponsored events,” said Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the ACLU in Tennessee. —Z.A.



WORLD • DECEMBER 14, 2013

25 SPORTS.indd 72

   Lance Armstrong reached a settlement with Acceptance Insurance just hours before he was scheduled to testify under oath about his use of performance-enhancing drugs. Acceptance Insurance sought to reclaim  million in bonuses that the company awarded Armstrong for winning the Tour de France in , , and . The case was settled to “the mutual satisfaction of the parties,” according to Armstrong’s attorney Tim Herman.

Last year, UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale) stripped Armstrong of all seven Tour de France victories and banned him for life after compiling evidence of the cyclist’s drug use. The disgraced cyclist is facing at least three other lawsuits in state and federal court. —Z.A.

MANZIEL: SCOTT HALLERAN/GETTY IMAGES • PRAYER: TOM HINDMAN/CHARLESTON DAILY MAIL/AP • ARMSTRONG: MARYSE ALBERTI/SONY/AP

T    . A young athlete becomes a national star, and soon drunk with fame, he makes poor decisions off the field. As public pressure mounts, his work ethic slips, his performance fades, and sports fans wonder “what might have been.”

Johnny Manziel appeared to be on this path. His  college season was historically brilliant—, total yards,  touchdowns—as he became the first freshman to win the Heisman Trophy, awarded to the most outstanding college football player. But in the offseason, Manziel made headlines for all the wrong reasons—partying, gambling, and fighting. Even Manziel’s parents expressed public concern about their son, and the NCAA handed him a brief suspension for violating NCAA rules.

Yet, as the  college football season approaches its end, Manziel stands out among college players, his performance unfaded. He has led the Texas A&M Aggies to an - record; has played about as well as he did in his Heisman-winning season; and, perhaps more important, has stayed out of trouble.

“If there’s a better player in college football,” said Louisiana State University coach Les Miles, “I’d like to know who he is.”

Manziel has already thrown more touchdowns and completed a higher percentage of passes this season than he did in . Although he is not considered the favorite, Manziel has a chance to win a second Heisman Trophy—a feat accomplished only by running back Archie Griffin of Ohio State in  and . The last player to have a legitimate shot at winning the Heisman Trophy in back-to-back years was Tim Tebow, who won the award in  and finished third in .

Manziel is expected to enter the NFL draft at the end of the season, but another Heisman Trophy will cement his career as one of the greatest Southeastern Conference quarterbacks ever.

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11/25/13 4:16 PM

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11/22/13 10:35 AM

Mailbag ‘The high cost of negligence’

Nov.  I have the highest respect for Jennifer Bicha. I too had a brother who sexually abused others. I know all too painfully well how family and churches would rather look the other way. The shame and embarrassment of sharing—expecting help yet being met with silence and disapproval—is enough to undermine one’s faith. Yet we serve a redeeming God of much grace.

—S S, Bird-in-Hand, Pa.

This excellent article was a stern warning. I have been in prison ministry for eight years and counseled many sex offenders, a shocking number of them pastors and Christians. I am alarmed by how little help there is for those struggling with sexual addiction and by the appalling way it is handled in both churches and the judicial system.

—T L, Georgetown, Texas

As a former abuse victim and a biblical counselor, I commend Jamie Dean for addressing this important issue.

Jennifer and her sister showed much courage. I pray that thousands of pastors and churches are blessed with wisdom as a result.

—R D, Ewing, N.J.

After practicing church law for  years, I believe the most effective step for reducing sexual abuse in churches is to eliminate the unbiblical practice of age-segregated activities that give sexual predators private access to children.

—M C B, Lodi, Calif.

a “small percentage” of child sexual abuse accusations are false troubles me.

Too many children are exposed to graphic sexual material, and those who want attention or revenge are finding that an accusation of inappropriate touching or worse against those they resent is a sure way of getting it.

MJ D, Trinidad, Colo.

‘Not bluffi ng’ Nov.  Thank you for the article on Jerry Jenkins and his gambling. I am appalled! The apostle Paul teaches that our freedom should not become a “stumbling block for the weak.” This article made me more aware of how subtly our enemy blinds the eyes of believers, helping them compromise with the world.

—C O, Denver, Colo.

I admire Jenkins for his willingness to talk about his gambling hobby. My single objection to his form of entertainment is that the money lost could have been spent to feed hungry people.

—P M, Littleton, Colo.

As a parent and grandparent, I too am angry at the lack of adult intervention in this case. But the statement that only

Send photos and letters to: mailbag@wng.org

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I am a graduate of Moody Bible Institute and to say I’m shocked is an understate-

ment. The more Jenkins rationalizes, the worse he looks. Reading that one of the men at the top is doing the exact opposite of the standards set in the student handbook hurts. What kind of message does this send to the students?

—B O, Marquette, Mich.

Jenkins is not just another person. He has put himself forward as a public Christian figure and been financially rewarded for it. With that standing comes responsibility.

—B L, Goldthwaite, Texas

Jenkins suggests there’s no biblical justification for prohibiting poker while allowing the spending of comparable money on golf or other hobbies. But gambling carries significantly greater risks, as it can lead to addiction, hurt a Christian’s testimony, and lead others astray—and it may break several commandments. I admire Pastor James MacDonald for giving up playing poker both in public and in private.

—M. L, Knoxville, Tenn.

‘Science supremacists’ Nov.  Thank you for this excellent column on the aggressiveness of scientism. I appreciated Janie B. Cheaney pointing out Steven Pinker’s contradictions and hypocrisy, but I doubt he would care. In my experience in witnessing, it’s not about the arguments.

Those who choose to believe will, and those who choose not to believe won’t.

—J B, Nashville, Tenn.

Those whose god is science, like Pinker and Dawkins, are so intent on their

DECEMBER 14, 2013 • WORLD



11/20/13 9:48 AM

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Nov.  The column about street preachers reminded me of Proverbs , where Wisdom raises her voice in the streets to all who would listen. I wish more churches would actively pursue the lost instead of waiting for the lost to darken their doorways.

‘Dead seriousness’ Oct.  Thank you for an insightful article. Innocent people have been executed under our system, but the alternative is also barbaric.

Subjecting prisoners to the horrors and sin of prison life does not really purge the evil from our society.

—P E. L, Pisgah Forest, N.C.

I found this article profoundly discouraging. Both the Old and New Testaments declare the death penalty to be the keystone of jurisprudence.

To undercut it only furthers our ethical devolution.

—R.E. “D” K, West Chester, Ohio

—E I, Kalispell, Mont.

Oct.  We have been procrastinating beginning a prayer book for our family, but this article and “Dead seriousness” made it happen. We are also praying for Saeed Abedini, imprisoned in Iran, who stirred us again to plead for the persecuted church.

Thank you for a thought-provoking article. You comment that there are no biblical instances of judges assigning a death penalty after a just trial. But there are no examples of judges assigning any penalty, except in an unjust trial. God granted the various exemptions from a death sentence mentioned, not human judges, and He deals with hearts in a way no human judge can approach. But I applaud returning to the biblical standard that the penalty for perjury is to suffer the penalty the accused had faced.

—K W, Everson, Wash.

—D C, Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia

‘Under conviction’ Nov.  I wish Pastor E.W. Jackson had been President Obama’s pastor.

—L K, Little Egg Harbor, N.J.

‘A long way from Tehran’

11/21/13 10:37 PM

The biblical standard for capital punishment did require two witnesses, but other protections for the accused today include juries of peers and multiple layers of appeals.

—P A. L, Ravensdale, Wash.

‘Covering tracks’ Oct.  I was reading Micah  about rulers who built with bloodshed and violent injustice. Then I picked up WORLD, read about Benghazi, and reflected on the statement in the death penalty article: “Lawyers I’ve spoken with cannot remember rich persons receiving the death penalty.”

Power can corrupt, and wise is the man who resists the corruption.

—J C, Richland Center, Wis.

‘A complete circle’ Oct.  Excellent column. We all need to accept God’s way of working in this fallen world and not expect Him to work in other cultures the way He has in our culture. This is His world—we are only passing through it and know so very little about it.

—H S, Albuquerque, N.M.

UNCOMPROMISING SUPPORT

for children and families struggling after adoption, divorce, remarriage

Globe Trot I was particularly refreshed by the worldview behind your online feature “Globe Trot.” I read WORLD growing up and attended WJI during college, but now as a journalism grad student I feel that dominant views have muffled my convictions.

I’m sorting out how to write for God’s glory, and Globe Trot models godly framing and agenda-setting.

(Yes, I’m in a media theory class.)

—R D, Columbia, Mo. Globe Trot, a summary of international news, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays on wng.org and is available by email.

LETTERS & PHOTOS Email: mailbag@wng.org Write: WORLD Mailbag, PO Box , Asheville, NC -

Cono Christian School

3269 Quasqueton Avenue | Walker Iowa 52352

Our students are young people who have experienced trauma. Because of this they are struggling. Strained family relationships and stalled childhood development as a result of trauma are a common story for Cono.

Changes in family systems such as divorce or remarriage can cause disruption in the development of children. In adoptive familes these kinds of traumatic events occurred earlier in a child’s life.

Cono provides families and their children a place that fosters hope and reconciliation. We offer a safe place for our students to move beyond current confusions and conflict, disruptive, aggressive and even violent behaviors, a community in which every child can discovers at a deep level that they belong.

Needs are met. Safety is found. Children are given voice. Healing begins.

Whether you need help for a child, or want to join us in this work.... Contact: Dave Toerper, Admissions: 888-646-0038 x250 or dave.toerper@cono.org Thomas Jahl, Headmaster: thomas.jahl@cono.org www.cono.org

Please include full name and address.

Letters may be edited to yield brevity and clarity.

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5/10/13 9:31 PM

11/21/13 10:39 PM

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Before the Mirror of God’s Word Susan J. Heck

ISBN 978-1-885904-04-1

Retail: $15.95

Here is the newest Bible study in Susan Heck’s “With the Master” series. The book of First John is a letter of selfexamination to see if you are in the faith and living the example of the life of Jesus Christ. Susan lovingly expounds on this book as a spiritual mother, with the same tone John used when he wrote this letter to “little children” of the faith.

KILLING SIN HABITS

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ISBN 978-1-936141-15-9

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Stuart Scott nails down the mortification of sin in his new book, “Killing Sin Habits: Conquering Sin with Radical Faith.”

Dr. Scott presents a Temptation/Lust Clock that demonstrates how easily Christians can fall into a familiar pattern of sin, and then in his usual practical approach, presents specific exercises to help you conquer sin habits.

Includes a “Battle Plan for Killing Sin Habits.”

1.800.913.6287

www.focuspublishing.com

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11/22/13 5:07 PM

KRIEG BARRIE

With the Master

Andrée Seu Peterson

The mouth is a country

When we fail to take up our God-given role in the body, others will feel the effect

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KRIEG BARRIE

I     at a Philadelphia dental school clinic. I will not be receiving my D.D.S. at the end, but expect soon to be as versed in the field as the Tank Gang members in Finding Nemo. Remember how they crowd at the chair-side end of the aquarium when Dr. Sherman has a patient?

Deb (humbug): What have we got?

Peach (starfish): Root canal, and by the looks of those X-rays, it’s not going to be pretty. [The patient screams as the dentist drills.]

Bloat (puffer fish): Rubber dam and clamper installed?

Peach: Yup. Gurgle (royal gramma): What did he use to open?

Peach: A Gator-Glidden drill. He seems to be favoring that one lately.

Deb [with a sigh]: I can’t see, Flo. Peach: Now he’s using the Schilder technique.

Bloat: Ooh, he’s using a Hedstrom file.

Gurgle: That’s not a Hedstrom file.

Bloat: It has a teardrop cross section; clearly it’s a Hedstrom.

Gurgle: No, no, K-FLEX. Bloat: Hedstrom!

Gurgle: K-flex!

I have learned that the mouth is a country, with distinct topographies of intense fascination to perfectionistic-tending -year-old dental students.

Above all, I have learned that the mouth is an ecosystem where the condition of every part impacts the condition of every other. What happens in the maxilla does not stay in the maxilla; it reverberates in the mandibular.

Neglect of an anterior cuspid will be paid in a bill sent to the posterior molar.

This I did not know when I naïvely arrived to plug a gap in my smile and was apprised that my decade of neglect of an out-ofsight extraction had over time set in motion a wholesale migration and extrusion of upper left bicuspids and put extra stress on the centrals. Drifting teeth are always at risk of moving cusps into a damaging lateral excursive pathway. Braces will be needed: age .

Email: aseupeterson@wng.org

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Sometimes, of course, a sinus problem plus excessive swallowing may result in abnormal outward lateral pressure from the tongue to the teeth, creating temporary orthodontic pressure and movement outward. This shift may place the lingual cusp in harm’s way, endangering tooth-to-tooth forces. At this point I would not be surprised if unusually strong bilateral opposing vector forces are what caused the ligaments connecting my teeth to the bone to be stretched and chronically inflamed. I hate it when that happens.

You see why this reminds me of the Bible. Paul writes of “varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. … To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues” ( Corinthians :-).

This is the revealed church ecosystem—but it only works well if we each find out (by trying, usually) which of these gifts each of us has been given, and use that one. Otherwise, a situation similar to Sprained Tooth Syndrome will occur. STS may have started as trauma from a popcorn seed, but because it went uncaught in the early stages, periodontal ligament damage and swelling ensued: The tooth then supra-erupted into an undesirable position that then prolonged the inflammation.

Likewise, Mrs. Jones had an evident tendency to flirtation in the fellowship room after the worship service. Mrs. McGillicutty noticed it, but rather than using her gift of “distinguishing between spirits” and taking her sister aside, she chose to keep to herself. In addition, because Mrs. Roberts keeps her counseling “gift of wisdom” under a bushel basket, Mrs. McGillicutty was not aware of any church members to whom she could direct Mrs. Jones for counseling. The whole dysfunction came to light only when a startling announcement was made from the pulpit that Mrs. Jones and Mr. Smith would be leaving the church for undisclosed reasons.

The Bible says to “earnestly desire the higher gifts” ( Corinthians :). Let the child of God do so. It isn’t even so much for yourself as for the lateral incisor sitting across the nave from you. A

DECEMBER 14, 2013 • WORLD



11/21/13 10:43 PM

Marvin Olasky

Venturing boldly

WORLD is doing so in several ways, and we’re asking you to do so, too

>>



WORLD • DECEMBER 14, 2013

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Third, at a time when other news organizations are reserving for themselves every dollar they raise, we’re continuing to honor biblical concern for the poor through our Hope Award for Effective Compassion, which distributes , each year to local ministries that offer challenging, personal, and spiritual help to those in need. Last month we announced the  national winner, selected by your votes: Administer Justice, which gives the poor legal help and biblical counsel. (Bold step: It’s time to start sending your nominations for  to jmcgraw@wng.org. Please give the name and location of the ministry, and explain briefly how it applies biblical truth to practical problems.)

Fourth, although over the years we’ve emphasized communicating through the pages of WORLD, we also want to reach people through whatever media will expose them to God’s truth. We’re investing in WORLD Radio, now with half-hour daily shows and two-hour weekly shows available online and on numerous stations. We run the Amy Writing Awards for Bible-based articles published in secular newspapers, and we also help WJI students strongly committed to Christ to get paid internships at secular newspapers and websites. (Bold step: Go to wng.org/ amyawards and submit an article—deadline is Jan. .)

Fifth, at a time when time-consuming and popularity-risking investigative reporting is rare, WORLD brings you both tidings of comfort and joy and also some bad news that helps us to pray more boldly. In this issue we have an inspiring Daniel of the Year cover story but also a “problems of Christian leadership” story on a church that may have spent some money unwisely—and we’re working on similar stories for our last issue of the year two weeks from now.

Can I drop my fundraising diffidence, channel my internal Joel, and boldly ask you to put a tax-deductible check into the envelope in this issue, or visit wng.org/ worldmovers to give quickly and securely online? Yes I can! WORLD is being five-ways bold: Will you be our partners in boldness? A

KRIEG BARRIE

D WORLD , This year I had the opportunity to meet some of you at events in  states. You’ve impressed me as intelligent and thoughtful folks concerned about the future of our families, churches, and communities. You’re careful with your dollars, and I’m glad you’re willing to invest some as members of and donors to the WORLD News Group.

Last month you read my mentor Joel Belz’s take on why we deserve a spot on your end-of-the-year giving list. I’ve learned from Joel the need to lose some of my awkwardness in requesting donations. He wrote that he is “bold to ask you to write out a check to WORLD for , , , or even ,” and is “boldly looking for  of you who will commit to give , not just this year, but each year for a three-year stretch.”

OK, boldness. Here are five ways we at WORLD are being bold, and then asking you to be bold as well.

First, at a time when other news organizations are firing reporters, we’re hiring: two new full-time writers and lots of part-timers. Some news organizations talk about the potential of “citizen journalists,” but we’re making it real by spending a week each year training  WORLD readers to become WORLD writers.

Many of them are now writing for our website. We’re starting to take applications for our fourth annual mid-career training course, which we’ll hold next fall, God willing. (Bold step: To start the process, please send a resume and writing samples to June McGraw, jmcgraw@wng.org.)

Second, at a time when the typical news organization is spending less than  percent of its budget on the training of young people, we’re investing many more of our dollars and hours in doing just that. We start with God’s World News for kids and teens, of course, but in late May we focus on an intensive two-week World Journalism Institute (WJI) course for current college students and recent graduates. In our paid internship program, several interns each year live with Susan and me during the summer, all the while working hard at improving their writing. (Bold step: If you or someone you know is interested, visit worldji.com and apply.)

Email: molasky@wng.org

11/25/13 4:55 PM

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11/21/13 3:27 PM

Health care for people of Biblical faith

If you are a committed Christian, you can live consistently with your beliefs by sharing medical needs directly with fellow believers through Samaritan Ministries’ non-insurance approach. You do not have to violate your faith by purchasing health insurance that pays for abortions, abortifacient drugs, and other unbiblical practices. Health care sharing satisfies the individual mandate in the recent Federal health care law (United States Code 26, Section 5000A, (d), (2), (B)).

Every month the more than 27,000* households of Samaritan Ministries share over $7 million* in medical needs directly—one household to another. They also pray for one another and send notes of encouragement. The monthly share for a family membership of any size has never exceeded $370*.

For more information call us toll-free at 1-888-268-4377, or visit us online at: www.samaritanministries.org.

Follow us on Twitter (@samaritanmin) and Facebook (SamaritanMinistries). * As of November 2013

Biblical faith applied to health care www.samaritanministries.org

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