This is Africa!

I love Africa. I was born in Africa. I grew up in Africa. Most days the sights and sounds and emotions of my childhood are as vivid as last night’s storm. I can’t describe what it’s like to experience those unique sights, sounds, smells, and tastes. Africa is not the célèbre cause of the month for me, or a photo opportunity. The first 20 years of my life were spent in Africa. The people are full of joy, welcoming, and hospitable. In South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and the Sudan - I have always been accepted warmly. I’ve marveled at the Cape of Good Hope, climbed Table Mountain, smelled the pines of Tstsikamma, heard the roar of Victoria Falls, and stood at the convergence of the Luangwa Valley, as the mighty Zambezi rolls towards Cabora Bassa. The vibrancy and pain of Africa is imbued on my consciousness.

Some experiences and sights and sounds and emotions cannot be translated. I vividly recall my thoughts and feelings just a few months ago while sitting on the edge of the mountain overlooking lower Boma in the South Sudan. Watching the sun slowly setting to the west, thousands of feet below me, the Gia villages were lighting their evening fires. To the north relief vehicles looked like ants scurrying back and forth. Far off in the distance thunderclouds were emptying torrents of rain – as if nature itself was trying to cleanse the land of its bloodshed and sorrow. The rhythmic drumbeats of the Jonglei village gave an eerie but calm impression. In the afternoons you can still hear the occasional volley of gunfire, as if the SPLA need to remind everyone that they control the mountain. These sights and sounds peel back emotions that aren’t felt often. How can such a beautiful place be so full of sorrow? The human suffering makes it hard to breathe – as if there is a weight on one’s chest.

The reason for the overwhelming sadness is that most of Africa is a continent without much hope. According to the Hoover Institution, two-thirds of African countries have either stagnated or shrunk economically since independence in the 1960s. Most African nations today are poorer than they were in 1980 - by wide margins. It’s hard for well-intentioned people to acknowledge that poverty is not a cause, but a result of Africa's problems. According to the Netherlands-based Genocide Watch, since 1960, around the time of independence, about 9 million black Africans had been slaughtered through genocide and mass murder. The Congo leads the way with 2,095,000, closely followed by the Sudan with 2 million, Nigeria and Mozambique with a million each, Ethiopia: 855,000, Rwanda: 823,000, Uganda: 555,000 and hundreds of thousands more in other countries.

The economic observations are just as daunting. According to the World Bank it takes mere days to incorporate a company in Canada. In Mozambique, it takes 153 days. And Mozambique's company law has been unchanged since 1888. In the midst of the unending demands that the west do more, would it be unreasonable to suggest that, after 123 years, the government of Mozambique might also be obligated to do something about its regulations?

Meanwhile, next door in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe's government is being given hundreds of thousands of tons of emergency supplies from the UN's World Food Programme. At the U.N. the head of the WFP emphasized that the famine was all due to drought and Aids, and nothing to do with Mugabe's stewardship of the economy. Ironically, it was during the G8 summit, devoted to Africa, that Zimbabwe's government ordered those commercial farmers whose land had not yet been confiscated to cease all operations.

What African countries need most, the West cannot give. What Africans need is personal liberty. That means a political system where there are guarantees of private property rights and the rule of law. If you were living in some impoverished African village, would you want any “wealth” if there were the constant likelihood that the government, or some irate chief, or some marauding tribe will come through to destroy everything?

The Index of Economic Freedom, published by the Wall Street Journal, lists Botswana, South Africa and Namibia as “mostly free.” World Bank GDP rankings put Botswana 89th ($2,980), South Africa 94th ($2,600) and Namibia 111th ($1,700). Is there any mystery why they're well ahead of their northern neighbors, such as Mozambique 195th ($210), Liberia 201st ($150) or Ethiopia 206th ($100)?

The lack of liberty means something else: A nation loses its best and brightest people first. According to the last census, there were 881,300 African-born U.S. residents, of whom I am one. Want to end poverty in Africa? The first step must be removing those petty dictators who rule throughout that continent. Dictatorial mini-giants such as Robert Mugabe. Yes there's hunger and poverty in Zimbabwe; but the blame is to be placed squarely on Mugabe, not on a lack of help from the west. The G8 summit?  Don't look for any discussion on getting rid of Africa's dictators and warlords. It will be about wealth redistribution, and government-to-government aid with many strings attached.

But state-to-state aid ignores the value and potential of the human person. When we put the person at the center of our economic thinking, we transform the way we look at wealth and poverty. Instead of asking what causes poverty, we ask what causes wealth? What conditions are prime for human flourishing from which prosperity can grow? In echoing what the PovertyCure Network has outlined, it is time to move:

• From aid to enterprise.
• From poverty alleviation to wealth creation.
• From paternalism to partnerships.
• From handouts to investments.
• From seeing the poor as consumers or burdens to seeing them as creators.
• From viewing people and economies as experiments to pursuing solidarity with the poor.
• From viewing the poor as recipients of charity to acknowledging them as agents of change with dignity, capacity, and creativity.
• From encouraging dependency to integrating the poor into networks of productivity and exchange.
• From subsidies and protectionism to open trade and competition.
• From seeing the global economy as a fixed pie to understanding that human enterprise can grow economies.

But most importantly, it is time to view all people as free beings created in God’s Image. When you let someone’s humanity connect with your own soul, everything changes! Here’s an excerpt from my journal on a trip to Zambia:

“Today we drove to the Chadiza district on what may or may not have been a road to do two medical clinics - one in Chadiza, and one in a village called Kabvuwa, right on the Mozambique border. James and I rode with Wellington, but we still managed to get lost getting there, so we showed up fairly late in the afternoon. Being lost on the Mozambique border is not good! You cannot imagine a poorer or more remote place on earth. The villagers had been waiting for hours, but when they saw our van kicking up dust on the road, they got up, and welcomed us with joyful singing. And then we got to work. We gave out pills, cleaned sores and burns, and we pulled lots of teeth. As the sun started to set we worked frantically to help as many people as possible – even pulling teeth in the dark with only one small flashlight. I was helping Laurie with wound care. A young girl, maybe 9 or 10 years old, wearing a bright blue shirt came to us with a severe infection in her eyes. We cleaned out her eyes with water and cotton swabs. The girl was clearly in severe pain. But when I looked her in the face, and we made eye contact she flashed me a beaming smile like I had never seen before. It was a look of relief and gratitude and true happiness. In the poorest, most remote spot I have ever been to a little girl showed me true happiness. The emotion of the moment flooded over me, and I couldn't hold back the tears. I had to sneak around the corner and sit in the van for a few minutes so the rest of the team wouldn't see me not smiling. They don’t know that the constant smile is a mask I wear for their benefit. I'll never know that little girl's name, I’ll never see her again, but she’s why I keep coming back to Africa.”

Instead of the familiar refrain, “This is Africa,” let’s pray, “God bless Africa!”

Return to the Southern Sudan

Christian Relief Partners has been involved in the Southern Sudan for a couple of years now. Last month a historic referendum was held in which the south voted to secede from the north and establish independence. This comes after a bloody twenty-five year civil war that decimated the country. Now this brand new country needs to put aside inner strife and inter-tribal conflicts and stand together.

In African countries that have experienced genocide, civil war, and tribal violence, the role of community in fueling hatred and inciting violence is impossible to ignore. Greed has prompted many African leaders to use communities as pawns - using their poverty and hopelessness to stir up dissention and hatred, and creating an environment of fear and hostility. Even as these conflicts are managed and new leaders come into power, the resentments and tribal hatred continue to fester, so that some of these communities are always on the brink of violence. It is becoming more apparent that those taking over leadership in post-conflict areas, and trying to rebuild their communities must play a significant role in tearing down these barriers of hate by promoting peace, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Leaders with the desire to create lasting change in Africa are increasingly collaborating with Christian organizations to seek training that can help them as they steer communities towards a more peaceful future.

The power of true biblical forgiveness is a model that has already resulted in transforming communities all over the continent. Obviously, many communities are still shackled with generations of hatred and resentment. Remarkably, the fledgling government of the world’s newest country is now seeking help to train government officials, civil leaders, police officers, and lawyers in peacebuilding, conflict resolution, trauma healing, and servant leadership.

In my capacity as Christian Relief Partners’ Liaison for African Projects, I will be departing for the Southern Sudan on March 8th along with some of the board of SEA Partners. It is a chilling kind of excitement to be hands on involved in the establishment of the world’s newest country! My itinerary will be as follows:

March 10-14: Meet with ministers and teachers in Boma, Southern Sudan.

                        Distribute food aid from the U.N. World Food Programme

March 14-16: Meet with government, civil, and religious leaders in the capital of Juba.

                        Meet with representatives of Joint Aid Management (JAM) in Yei.

March 16-18: Meet with leaders in the village of Biong to discuss the establishment of a  

                        new Christian school.

March 19: Return to Nairobi, Kenya.

After this trip I will develop a curriculum based on conversations with government and church leaders that will result in the training of teams traveling to the Sudan, as well as ministers in the Southern Sudan. This project will be titled, “A Model for the Training of Ministers as Agents of Reconciliation and Communal Peacebuilding through Biblical Forgiveness in the Southern Sudan.”

As you can imagine, such a trip costs a great deal due to the logistics of getting in and out of the Southern Sudan. If you have supported this work in the past, or if this is something you are interested in supporting, please contact me at: charles@partnersonline.org. Every bit helps, and your kindness would be greatly appreciated.

Peace and Blessings

Charles

A Brief Note on Men, Women, and Relationships

Recently, I have given a great deal of thought to the universal problem that men and women fall in love, but do not truly understand each other. Perhaps this is brought on by my annual “Love Actually” Christmasthon, or by the fact that deep down I’m a lovesick fool, or just plain pathetic, or overly analytical, or perhaps it is because my own history of tried and failed relationships reads like Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade. What I’m trying to say is that I’m not the expert, just someone who has tried and failed, and thought a lot about those failures.

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, purportedly said that after all his years of research, he still did not know what women want! Perhaps that is a question best left for women to answer. What I can do is say precisely what men want and need, and it is something that only the woman they love can fully provide. And it’s not what everyone thinks it is!

There are many misperceptions regarding male needs. For example, here is an old joke that illustrates a stereotypical misperception regarding male sexuality:

A heading reads: How To Impress a Woman

Beneath that heading: “Compliment her, respect her, honor her, cuddle her, kiss her, caress her, love her, comfort her, protect her, hold her, wine and dine her, buy things for her, listen to her, care for her, stand by her, support her, go to the ends of the Earth for her.”

That long list is followed by: How To Impress a Man

And beneath that: “Show up naked. Bring food.”

As with most stereotypes there is some truth to this, but it is not fair or accurate to men. So what do men most want? Answer: To be admired by the woman he loves. Men need admiration. A man needs to be admired by his wife (for the sake of clarity, let’s keep the discussion within the context of marriage). More precisely, a man needs to feel that his wife admires him, looks up to him, and trusts him. A man needs the rush of knowing that if his wife believes in him he can conquer the world. One proof is that the most devastating thing a woman can do to her man is to hold him in contempt. That is so devastating to a marriage that, over time, it is often more toxic than infidelity.

Contempt is the same as public humiliation. It is so despicable a behavior that it is hard to describe effectively. We’ve all seen it at the mall: the brow-beat husband and father scurrying two steps behind the wife, drooping shoulders, carrying the diaper bag or purse or whatever – only rushing to fetch the minivan! Or the wife who only has criticism for her husband at their friend’s dinner parties, or the woman at church who says, “I have three children. Two I gave birth to, and one I married.”

Of course, this means that in order to gain a woman's love, a man must be admirable. Boys know this instinctively. Young men often reveal how much harder they work at something when they know girls are watching them. If a woman “falls in love” with a man she does not admire, that love will not last. Conversely, a woman can always fall in love with a man she has come to admire first.

To be admirable, then, a man needs to exhibit three qualities:

Strength

Integrity

Ambition

Like the legs of a tripod, all three are needed. A man who has strength, but no integrity (honesty) is simply macho; a man of integrity, but no strength or ambition is weak; a man with ambition, but no integrity is a crook.

To be admirable, a man must exhibit strength in the world and at home as a husband and father. That means making tough decisions, leading with certitude, sometimes saying “no,” and always doing so with the utmost kindness.

Likewise, integrity has to be a borne from the kind of honesty that imbues character. It comes from seeing the folly in something you’ve done, and wishing you could change it, but you can’t – you have to press forward with courage and resolve, and the conviction that you will never lie again. Then you will gain character, because, in the words of Danny Devito in The Big Kahuna, “honesty will reach out from inside and tattoo itself across your face.”

Ambition must not be confused with material success. Having ambition does not mean that a man is wealthy, but that he is a goal oriented hard worker who wants to improve himself. Plenty of men who earn relatively little are still admired by their wives because they have a work ethic that is not lazy, and looks to the future.

So as it turns out, everybody wins. Women get what they want, men get what they want, children get what they need – good homes and role models, and society gets what it desperately needs – men of strength, integrity, and ambition!

In Defense of the "Commercialization of Christmas."

Every year, as predictable as the arrival of winter, comes criticism about the commercialization of Christmas. We are told that Christ has been taken out of Christmas because we spend too much money on Christmas gifts and because stores have rendered Christmas little more than a great time to sell merchandise.

If there is a better example of people complaining about something that is overwhelmingly good, I would like to know what it is. One time each year, a majority of people feel obligated to buy gifts for their friends and relatives. It is a time when we go to stores, not for ourselves, but with the needs and wants of others in mind.

Here is a good rule governing criticizing: Before you criticize something, imagine its alternative. Imagine that when Christmas came around stores put up no decorations and no one bought gifts. Would we be a better society? Of course not! Spending money on gifts for others is one of the nicest traditions in society and ought to be cultivated, not discouraged. People who don't buy Christmas gifts aren't noble, they are cheap.

Another objection is that some people spend out of obligation, not out of love. Again, think of the alternative. If we were to encourage only altruistic acts that come from love, few people would get married or have children, and almost no gifts would ever be exchanged. It is none of my business to judge why other people give Christmas gifts. It is only for me to appreciate the fact that they do. Christmas is greatly honored by gift giving. When you buy Christmas gifts, you bring joy to the recipients, you feel good about giving, you spend time thinking about what other people like, you keep many businesses alive, and most of all, you honor God by reciprocating, in the lives of others, His gift to us – Jesus, the Christ.

The Greatest Sin

"You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.” (Exodus 20:7)

As I have reflected on the 9/11 attacks this ninth anniversary, as well as the controversy surrounding the “Ground Zero mosque” and the “burn a Koran day,” my belief that there is one sin that is worse than all other sins has been reinforced. That sin is committing evil in the name of God – evil defined as purposefully harming another human being.

The Commandment in Exodus 20:7, translated as, "Do not take/misuse the name of the Lord your God in vain," is imprecisely translated. The Hebrew verb literally reads, "Do not carry the name of the Lord your God in vain." And, the commandment continues, "for God will not hold guiltless whoever carries His name in vain.” It is the one sin that does not have the offer of forgiveness!

When a secular person commits evil they do not bring God into disrepute. When a person commits evil in God's name, however, they destroy the greatest hope for goodness to prevail on earth - widespread belief in a God who demands ethical goodness.

There is nothing as evil as religious evil. The Nazis were cruel, and so were the Communists, but they only sullied their own names, not the name of God. For example, the immense amount of evil being caused by those Muslims who slaughter innocents in the name of God is hurting God's reputation.

One can only pray that Muslim institutions will realize the damage done to the name of Allah and to Islam by those Muslims who preach or practice evil in the name of Allah and Islam - and the even greater damage done by the rest of the Islamic world's failure to protest against this evil by publicly announcing that evil preached or committed in the name of Allah and Islam is sin and its practitioners will go to hell, not to Paradise to be serviced by multiple virgins! For if there is a hell, those who murder and torture the innocent while praising God are surely the first to go there.

I remember when Islamists kidnapped a young lady who was a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor. Before taking her picture, these men covered her head and her hands so that no female skin would be exposed. In their perverse thinking, God is more concerned with men being titillated by female skin than He is with kidnapping (not to mention beheadings and bombings).

This is why religious fundamentalism is twisted. The legalism that fundamentalism produces furthers the greatest sin – carrying the name of God in vain because it causes people to act unkind and even commit evil in the name of God.

Dennis Prager tells about a young man who attended a Jewish institute he once directed. When this young man first arrived at the institute, he was a kind and nonjudgmental person - and completely secular. After his month-long immersion in the Torah, he became a fully practicing Orthodox Jew.

A year later the young man was actually less kind and was aggressively judgmental of his fellow Jews, including those who had brought him to Judaism in the first place. In one year he had become, in his own eyes, holier than the teachers who brought him to religion in the first place. The religion's emphasis on legal observance enabled him to count the number of laws his fellow Jews did not observe and judge them accordingly. Over the course of my own ministry I have seen a number of new converts behave in this way.

Within Christianity, faith in Christ can lead one to live a life of extraordinary loving-kindness and self-sacrifice, but it can also, and has, led Christians to place so much emphasis on proper faith as to neglect equal emphasis on proper behavior.

When you evaluate your own beliefs and practices, ask yourself, “Has this belief or doctrine made me a better person?” or, “Has this belief or doctrine made me less kind, less compassionate, less rational, and more judgmental?” If your answer is the latter, it’s time to re-evaluate that belief. If not, you may be “carrying” God’s name in vain.

“He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

What is Salvation?

What does it mean to be saved? What does the word “salvation” mean? Over the course of my ministry I did some informal polling on this question, asking Christians what they think salvation means. And invariably the answer is, “Salvation is going to heaven when you die.” When we ask, “Is this person saved?” what we’re asking is, “Have they done what is necessary in order to go to heaven when they die?” We tend to talk about salvation as a future expectation for individual people. We talk about salvation as a means of escaping this world and going to a better world.

The hope of going to heaven when I die brings me great comfort, but that is not the meaning of the concept of salvation in any of the gospels. It is simply not defined that way.

Stories of salvation in the gospels are about restoration. Jesus heals, and forgives, and restores. In every story the person touched by Jesus is restored to God, their family, and their community. Salvation is God giving back to us life and peace and community and trust.

The word we translate as “salvation” in the New Testament has a depth of meaning: life, deliverance, preservation, restoration, wholeness, soundness, health, and peace. And what are we saved from? Sin, death, guilt, sickness, loneliness, ignorance, fear, hell, despair, alienation, and meaninglessness.

So let’s take this word “salvation” out for a test drive through Luke’s Gospel.

In Luke 7:11-15 we read the story of Jesus raising a young man from the dead. If you had been a journalist on the scene, your headline would probably have read, “Jesus raises a young man from the dead.” But I want you to notice that Luke phrases this in such a way that the point of the story is Jesus giving back to a hopeless woman her status in the community. If you were a woman whose husband and only son died, leaving you all alone, you were in big trouble - you had no status, no voice, no income - and in this story Jesus saw her, had compassion on her, and the miracle here is the return of the son to the mother so that she can be restored to her community, and we’ll read that story a hundred times, and miss the point.

Also in chapter 7 of Luke’s gospel (vss 36-50) Jesus is anointed by a “sinful” woman at the home of Simon, a Pharisee. This woman understood God’s love and Simon never got it, and what’s interesting is the last thing Jesus said to her: “You faith has saved you; go in peace.”

In the Hebrew community and language the word “peace” is “shalom” - one of the most important words and concepts in the Bible. “Shalom” is wholeness, completeness, fullness. To live in shalom (peace) is to live in harmony with God and with humanity and with nature.

So when Jesus tells this sinful woman to, “Go in peace,” he’s not just saying, “Have a nice day.” He’s saying something profound. He’s talking to her in a such a way that she knows, and Simon knows, and everyone at the table knows, and everyone eavesdropping outside knows that she has been embraced by God, and because God has embraced her, her community, who knows her reputation, must also embrace her and forgive her and love her. Jesus restored her to her community. That is the meaning of salvation in this story.

In the following chapter (8:40-48) we read a similar story. Here again we come across a woman who is an outcast. Because of her uncleanness she has no community, no position, no standing, no voice - and Jesus heals her, he saves her, and he calls her “daughter” – and once again, this very public affirmation has the result of restoring her to her community.

All of these stories are, in one way or another, salvation stories.

My favorite salvation story in Luke’s Gospel takes place in chapter 19:vss 1-10. In short, as Jesus entered Jericho, Zacchaeus, who was a tax collector, and thus an outcast from his community, grabs Jesus’ attention. Jesus addresses him: “I must stay at your house today.”

Salvation came into that house literally and figuratively, and when Jesus said, in the presence of everybody, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham,” he is saying, “This man (Zacchaeus) is not an outsider. He is once again part of this community, he can be trusted, he can be loved, he can be forgiven and accepted again.”

Salvation cannot just be about a future expectation, it also has to be about present reality. If we let the future expectation of salvation dominate how we think and talk about salvation we are not being true to the way salvation is described in scripture, we’re not being true to the way Jesus spoke about salvation, and we will never function effectively as his body on earth. Salvation must be experienced here and now.

The church needs to ask some very difficult salvific questions. If we do not place ourselves in the loving and forgiving and salvation affirming shoes of Jesus, Christians can easily roll off phrases like, “I forgive you,” along with, “But sin has consequences” in the same confusing sentence with no apparent sense of irony or awareness of their mischaracterizing the gospel.

What does salvation look like for a divorced mother?

What does salvation look like for the family who’s been knocked out of their home by a hurricane?

What does salvation look like for the mother of 3 kids in Africa who has AIDS?

What does salvation look like to people in the Sudan who have nothing but contaminated water to drink?

What does salvation look like to people in Dallas who have no air conditioner in the summer?

What does salvation look like to people in our community with no food?

What does salvation look like to people addicted to drugs?

What does salvation look like for a church leader who has sinned?

What if salvation walked into their house?

What if Jesus walked into their community?

What if we’re supposed to be Jesus?

Salvation, for those people, had better not be a “see ya in heaven someday” pat on the back!

Salvation is a new house.

Salvation is food.

Salvation is medicine.

Salvation is clean water.

Salvation is restored trust

Salvation is peace.

What is salvation for you?

"I Have Sworn Upon the Altar of God, Eternal Hostility Toward Every Form of Tyranny Over the Mind of Man."

The origin of this quote is a letter written by Vice President Jefferson to his old friend, Dr. Benjamin Rush. Specifically, Jefferson fiercely opposed Christian clergy who sought to have an established state church. Instead, he championed the idea of church/state separation. For this, the clergy hated him, and waged a despicable campaign of slander and lies against him. Here is the quote in it's original context:

I promised you a letter on Christianity, which I have not forgotten. On the contrary, it is because I have reflected on it, that I find much more time necessary for it than I can at present dispose of. 


I have a view of the subject which ought to displease neither the rational Christian nor Deists, and would reconcile many to a character they have too hastily rejected. I do not know that it would reconcile the genus irritabile vatum who are all in arms against me. Their hostility is on too interesting ground to be softened. 


The delusion into which the plot shewed it possible to push the people; the successful experiment made under the prevalence of that delusion on the clause of the constitution, which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity thro' the U. S.; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians and Congregationalists. 


The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, and they believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility toward every form of tyranny over the mind of man. 


But this is all they have to fear from me, and this is the cause of their printing lying pamphlets against me, forging conversations for me with Mazzei, Bishop Madison, and company, which are absolute falsehoods without a circumstance of truth to rest on; falsehoods, too, of which I acquit Mazzei & Bishop Madison, for they are men of truth.