1. Activism, justice, and shalom
In last week’s Repaso I included the first part of an interview between Jamie Smith (@james_ka_smith) and Tyler Wigg-Stevenson (@tylerws). Here’s a taste of part two (and tasty it is):

The question for me is: will our passion [for justice] extend to hating injustice even when the people against whom injustice is being perpetuated might actually hate us? Who might be thoroughly unsympathetic characters and yet, nevertheless, be victims of injustice? That’s why I think the next step for the justice movement, as it were, is growing into a commitment to peace, which I think is much harder because it involves places where people are committing violence.

2. Fear is the opposite of generosity
Aaron Ausland (@aaronausland), a long-time international development guy, reflects on Doomsday Preppers in light of his life experiences, and concludes:

The post-apocalyptic ethic that assumes a need for women and children to gun down the unprepared is sort of at work already. And this reminds me that the opposite of generosity is not greed; greed is a proximate cause underneath which lies fear. Fear is the opposite of generosity.

3. Kuyper is my homeboy
Byron Borger (@byronborger) of Hearts & Minds reminds us how great the late Abraham Kuyper is, and recommends four new books by or about him.

4. Micro and macro development
Pranab Bardhan, an economics professor at UC Berkeley, reviews four relatively recent books that are shaping how we think about – and do – economic development. They roughly fall into two camps:

In the past decade, development economics has grown to extraordinary prominence, not just in academia but also in the public arena. This new development economics has moved in two strikingly different directions. The first focuses on micro-level policy interventions… The second trend focuses on macro institutions: the structures of democracy, autocracy, centralized and diffused power, and legal protections of property and contracts that organize politics and markets.

5. Neighborhood Film Company
I’m working on a story for This Is Our City these days on the folks behind Neighborhood Film Company. They’re up to some really cool stuff.

[Photo: Franco Pagetti via poormojo.org]

In his wonderful book Generous Justice, Tim Keller makes the case that for those who have truly experienced the unmerited grace of God, their lives will naturally be marked by a passion for pursuing justice. But the Christian life is “a long obedience in the same direction,” as Eugene Peterson famously put it (borrowing from Nietzsche), and doing justice as a way of life doesn’t just happen automatically. So what are the spiritual practices that will shape us and sustain us?

Mae Elise Cannon, whose work with World Vision focuses on advocacy and outreach in the Middle East, offers some answers in her new book, Just Spirituality: How Faith Practices Fuel Social Action (IVP). Those answers come in the way of mini-biographies of Christians from around the world who have worked for justice and social change over the long haul – fueled by spiritual disciplines.

Some of those profiled in the book will be more recognizable to readers than others – and that’s important in and of itself. Those who get famous for doing justice and loving mercy – people like Desmond Tutu and Mother Teresa – are the rare exception; most heroes of the faith end up cultivating the good, the true, and the beautiful in relative obscurity. If we take this “long obedience in the same direction” seriously, it is fairly likely we can expect to find ourselves in the company of the obscure as well.

Nonetheless, in each chapter Cannon links a more-or-less well known Christian with respective “inner” and “outer” spiritual practices:

• Mother Teresa: From Silence to Service

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer: From Prayer to Discipleship

• Watchman Nee: From Study to Evangelism

• Martin Luther King, Jr.: From Community to Proclamation

• Fairuz: From Worship to Freedom

• Desmond Tutu: From Sabbath to Reconciliation

• Oscar Romero: From Submission to Martyrdom

One can’t help but be encouraged by the stories of this “great cloud of witnesses” – including the less well known saints whose stories appear amidst the big names in each of the chapters. Their lives are indeed instructive for us.

Just Spirituality’s greatest contribution is the way it reminds us that rightly ordered societies are so closely linked to rightly ordered lives.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest thoughts.

[Photo: "Candles in Coptic church" by Héctor de Pereda via Flickr]

1. Buying social justice
Rachel Pieh Jones (@RachelPiehJones) lives in Djibouti, and the activism of some fellow Americans scares her:

If my generation cares so deeply about global issues of justice and poverty that they are willing to change eating, clothing, and living habits, where are they? A significant challenge for nonprofits and ministries remains recruiting people who will commit to serve long-term outside the United States. I know there are a plethora of good reasons that concerned American Christians can’t just uproot and leave the States, from family to health to finances. I know I simplify. But I have a theory about what is partly contributing to the dearth of young Americans willing to spend their lives on behalf of others. They think they are already are.

2. Christians and immigration
World recently published essays by two evangelicals with different views on the immigration debate. Unfortunately, it’s not really a conversation as the title suggests, but it sure is better than nothing. Here’s an excerpt from Danny Carroll, a Guatemalan-American professor who teaches at Denver Seminary, and whose views on this issue I mostly share:

One of the reasons Christians disagree about the Bible and immigration is that we speak from diverse perspectives that define in different ways how the Bible can be used for societal issues. Our starting points differ, as do our arguments. We should not be surprised, then, that we differ on things like immigration. We talk past each other without realizing we are speaking different “theological languages” from various church traditions. Our disagreements, though, do not disqualify Christian input into the national discussion, but we need to be wiser about how we speak out and be more aware of our theological and church backgrounds that may lead us in contrary directions.

3. DFW on empathy
During a 2005 commencement address, the late David Foster Wallace said this, among other things:

Most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible.

4. On saving the world
Jamie Smith (@james_ka_smith) interviews Tyler Wigg-Stevenson (@tylerws) about responsible activism and social change, drawing on Tyler’s recent book The World Is Not Ours To Save (which I loved). Here’s an excerpt on the relationship between activism and discipleship:

I think discipleship is the comprehensive posture of living a life that seeks to follow Jesus. Of seeking the discipline of the confession that Christ is Lord, of the living person of Christ. It seeks that discipline over every aspect of our lives. Activism, on the other hand, is a posture toward social realities that presupposes that coordinated activity can make a difference in the social realities that we live in. One’s discipleship might very well lead one into acts of activism or to a career as an activist or to times spent in activism, but discipleship can never be evacuated into activism. Activism is never a substitute for discipleship. It’s at best a subset of the sort of activities that one might do as a disciple of Christ.

5. Modern Motorcycle Diaries
Alex Chacón (@ExpeditionSouth), of El Paso, Texas, recently spent 500 days riding his motorcycle from Alaska all the way down to Argentina. You can read an interview with him here; better yet, watch this video.

[Photo: msu.edu]

Following the historic ruling in the genocide trial of Guatemala’s former dictator Rios Montt on Friday, it’s been fascinating to watch the varied reactions on social media, especially from Christians with very different interpretations of the character of the man now sentenced to 80 years in prison. They also differ widely in their understandings of who bears responsibility for the events of the war, and how Guatemala could best heal from the (relatively undisputed) wounds of the past.

I respect those with differing viewpoints on this issue, and I affirm the overwhelming complexity of the matter. Everyone interprets these events through the lenses of their experiences, values, and allegiances, and I’m no different. But amidst the tweets ranging from jubilation to disbelief, I was reminded of a story I’d read several years ago that offers us a different vantage point. It’s not a comprehensive account of the war’s atrocities, to be sure, but rather a glimpse of a moment in time – an eerie one at that – which sheds light on Rios Montt’s faith and the extent to which it impacted his political leadership.

It comes from Ruth Padilla DeBorst (the daughter of René Padilla) who gives leadership to the Latin American Theological Fraternity (FTL) in addition to her more recent work with World Vision. This story first appeared in an interview with Andy Crouch in Christianity Today in 2007 as part of its Christian Vision Project:

My husband was part of a group from Calvin College that personally interviewed many of these political leaders. They sat with Ríos Montt, who had been president of Guatemala in the early 1980s, in his office in 1987. He welcomed them effusively and gave an impassioned speech about brotherhood in Christ and about how blessed he was in receiving these guests from North America. He knelt in front of them and led them in prayer for his nation, with great passion. And then they started interviewing him.

They asked about the condition of the people in his country and how he viewed the statistics on malnutrition and poverty. They asked, “How do you see your government bringing light to these situations?” When they began pressing these questions, he worked himself into an absolute fury and threw them out of his office. They were afraid for their lives. They had to get out of Guatemala in a hurry.

He had the jargon. He was the founder of a church. Only God knows what was in his heart. But there did not seem to be any connection between his faith and his political leadership. Some of this is simply symptomatic of a young church—Christians who have had very little exposure to public policy and administration of public affairs.

That’s why the core of our proposal in the FTL is that Christian mission is, or must be, “integral mission.” God is Lord over every last corner of the world. And that has to do with interpersonal relations and with our relationships with him, but it also has implications for the way society is organized—who gets favored and how.

You can read the rest of the interview here.

[Photo: Jorge Dan Lopez/Reuters via guardian.co.uk]

God’s great love and purposes for us are worked out in the messes in our kitchens and backyards, in storms and sins, blue skies, daily work, working with us as we are and not as we should be, and where we are… and not where we would like to be.”

– Eugene Peterson, in the foreword to Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith (Brazos)