Me I Love Sarah Elderkin Regardless (MILOSARE :-)

Beginning my pilgrimage into journalism in the 1980s and 1990s, I found few better inspirations than I did in Hillary Ng’weno’s crowd at the Weekly Review.

My dad would religiously buy me the Daily Nation, the East African Standard, the Weekly Review and the Step magazine to complement our evennings together beside his transistor radio, after which we would then talk over what had been reported.

That was a few years before I discovered that an international media order (beyond the BBC and DW radio) existed 🙂

Back to the Weekly Review…I have been excited to re-read Sarah Elderkin again after quite some time.

She’s the kind of probing journalist you want to have telling your story 🙂

This is yours…

I don’t know you, but am convicted in my heart to pass this on to you anyway…

You are going through some tough moments.

Your “why” questions are reminiscent of my struggle with unanswered prayer, expectations that have not been met, could have beens (including people and opportunities) that are not.

Some of my questions in the past have generally included:

a). Why is waiting so much part of being a Christian?

b). Why can’t God just give us what we need now?

c). We certainly need justice for the oppressed, equality and equity in the world for the poor, elimination of terror, etc, don’t we? Why do such disturbing situations linger before our eyes for ever so long?

d). It is about 2,000 years since the resurrection, why should we still be waiting for the Kingdom of God? How come we are still preaching the Gospel of Christ?

II Cor. 4:1-11 has often been helpful.

Vs. 7 says: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”

So I can look at those scars of the past and present them as badges of honor which declare that any victory is from God.

Not that it is easy.

It is humbling; you admit that you are not the best in everything.

Yet it is liberating.

You marvel at God’s grace in continuing to use such imperfection in the way He does.

Life goes on and may you find Him true today and in the days ahead.

Remember too Timothy Radcliff’s words: “God is not a god. He is not a powerful celestial superman. The coming of the Lord is not like the chattering of cavalry coming to our rescue, but that God comes from within, inside our deepest interior.”

This is where we least expect him to come from and therefore calls for patience and waiting for He not only endures with us but will also show up when we need Him most.

Now, God also gives His best in life to those who leave the choice to Him.

May He hide you under His wings and carry you through every corner of this life.

Your vindication

Via the International Bible Society

¹⁷ no weapon forged against you will prevail,
and you will refute every tongue that accuses you.
This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD,
and this is their vindication from me,”
declares the LORD.

Isaiah 53 • View this Chapter • Isaiah 55

Bible Study Resource:
• About the book of Isaiah from the NIV Study Bible, Book Introductions

New International Version
International Bible Society
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984

The Sovereignity of the Lord in Creation and History

Via the International Bible Society

Psalms 33

¹ Sing joyfully to the LORD, you righteous;
it is fitting for the upright to praise him.

² Praise the LORD with the harp;
make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre.

³ Sing to him a new song;
play skillfully, and shout for joy.

⁴ For the word of the LORD is right and true;
he is faithful in all he does.

⁵ The LORD loves righteousness and justice;
the earth is full of his unfailing love.

⁶ By the word of the LORD were the heavens made,
their starry host by the breath of his mouth.

⁷ He gathers the waters of the sea into jars ^[a] ;
he puts the deep into storehouses.

⁸ Let all the earth fear the LORD;
let all the people of the world revere him.

⁹ For he spoke, and it came to be;
he commanded, and it stood firm.

¹⁰ The LORD foils the plans of the nations;
he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.

¹¹ But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever,
the purposes of his heart through all generations.

¹² Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD,
the people he chose for his inheritance.

¹³ From heaven the LORD looks down
and sees all mankind;

¹⁴ from his dwelling place he watches
all who live on earth-

¹⁵ he who forms the hearts of all,
who considers everything they do.

¹⁶ No king is saved by the size of his army;
no warrior escapes by his great strength.

¹⁷ A horse is a vain hope for deliverance;
despite all its great strength it cannot save.

¹⁸ But the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him,
on those whose hope is in his unfailing love,

¹⁹ to deliver them from death
and keep them alive in famine.

²⁰ We wait in hope for the LORD;
he is our help and our shield.

²¹ In him our hearts rejoice,
for we trust in his holy name.

²² May your unfailing love rest upon us, O LORD,
even as we put our hope in you.

Footnotes:

1. Psalm 33:7 Or sea as into a heap

Psalms 32 • Viewing Chapter 33 • Psalms 34

Bible Study Resource:
• About the book of Psalms from the NIV Study Bible, Book Introductions

New International Version
International Bible Society
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984

Another’s life…and death…

Upon a life I didn’t live, upon a death I didn’t die; upon another’s life, another’s death, I stake my whole eternity. – Amy Carmichael.

Empty legacy

Via Breakpoint

MTV turned 25 this month—but with uncharacteristic modesty, the cable channel isn’t doing much celebrating. It’s been left mostly to the news media to honor MTV’s many accomplishments.

“Without MTV,” the Associated Press points out, “you might not have reality television. Commercials wouldn’t have vertigo-inducing quick cuts. Musicians wouldn’t need to look like models to survive. Kelly Osbourne [of the reality show The Osbournes] wouldn’t have gotten near a recording studio. And only seamstresses would know about wardrobe malfunctions.”

If that were my legacy, I’m not sure I’d want to call attention to it either. But that’s not really the reason MTV is playing down its anniversary. As the Associated Press says, “When your average viewer is 20 years old . . . perhaps it’s wise not to mention you’re 25. MTV wants to be the perpetual adolescent.” The Washington Post puts it more succinctly: “At MTV, it is always about the now.”

Perpetual adolescence and living only for the moment are just a couple of the twisted values that MTV has foisted upon us over the past twenty-five years. There’s also exhibitionism, voyeurism, promiscuity, greed, and a host of other vices. Through its style as well as its content, MTV has done all it can to promote the cheap, the vulgar, and the flashy over the good, the true, and the beautiful.

I’m not saying that MTV has added anything to the culture that wasn’t already present. All these elements have always been part of sinful human nature. Where MTV distinguished itself was in glorifying these things—moreover, glorifying them for a young audience.

We certainly can’t place all the blame for our coarsened and desensitized culture on MTV. But it deserves a significant share of the blame for a culture in which our children—at younger and younger ages—are surrounded on all sides by twisted views of sexuality. And I do mean “surrounded on all sides.” Even kids who aren’t MTV viewers come up against its culture-shaping influences from their peers, from advertisers, even from their teachers, or from its host of affiliated networks ranging from Nickelodeon to LOGO, the new Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered channel. MTV has forced parents to work harder than ever to protect and shape their kids’ minds, while giving them less of a chance of doing so successfully.

Only in a culture shaped by MTV’s kind of values, for example, could Madonna’s latest stage act—hanging on a mirrored cross while singing—draw little more than yawns and “Oh, there she goes again.” Madonna and her onstage antics are a perfect expression of the channel and the culture that helped create her. Or take that infamous Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” at the Super Bowl. As the AP implied, what shocked an audience full of adults was old hat to many of their kids, who had seen far worse in MTV’s videos and reality shows.

It’s not many people who can look back and say that they changed a culture. That can be pretty awe-inspiring. But when you change it in the way that MTV did, you don’t celebrate: You hang your head in shame.

For Further Reading and Information

Today’s BreakPoint offer: Rewired: A teen worldview curriculum from the Wilberforce Forum and Teenmania. Tell your youth pastor about it!

“MTV Won’t Say How Old It Is (But It’s 25),” CNN, 1 August 2006.

Hank Stuever, “25 Years Down the Tube,” Washington Post, 1 August 2006, C01.

Ben Mathis-Lilley, et al., “I Want My A.D.D.,” New York, 7 August 2006. (Warning: profanity.)

Rod Dreher, “MTV at 25,” Beliefnet, 3 August 2006.

BreakPoint Commentary No. 040810, “Beyond the Music (Video): MTV’s Cultural Impact.”

BreakPoint Commentary No. 020423, “Reality Bites More Than a Bat Head: MTV’s ‘The Osbournes’.”

BreakPoint Commentary No. 030916, “My Own Private Neverland: A Culture of Lost Boys.”

BreakPoint Commentary No. 010315, “Mooks and Midriffs: Bypassing Parental Authority.”

BreakPoint Commentary No. 050429, “‘Different Together’: The LOGO Channel.”

When…

…man works, man works but when man prays, God works. – Patrick Johnstone.

Electoral reform no politician is talking about…

Yet it was the pet subject of some last year.  Perhaps it is convenient that it shouldn’t rank so high on their priority lists at this moment in time; for they know what it would mean to their respective game-plans ahead of 2007.

Analysis: How to fight reactionaries

*The writer’s grace and style, if nothing else, captivated me ever so much here…

Via Cienfuegos

Recently, after giving a reading at the Oakland public library, I was approached by a black woman from the audience. She asked whether my wife was black. “I’ll tell you if you tell me why you think it matters,” I said. She paused for a moment.

“Well, you talked a lot of sense, and it seems like however much sense brothers talk they always end up with white women.”

“She’s black,” I said.

The woman smiled and sighed.”If she were white, would you now think less of anything you heard me say?” I asked.

She paused again. “I think I would,” she said.

“That’s a shame,” I told her.

“I know,” she said.

Every identity has its fundamentalists – the gatekeepers of what is and isn’t permissible for those who share that identity. Since we all have access to multiple identities – race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, class – these fundamentalists usually have their work cut out trying to keep everybody in line. As the guardians of authenticity, their job is to deny complexity and impose uniformity.

One thing all these fundamentalisms have in common is that they are, ultimately, reactionary. They exploit identity not as a starting point to connect with the rest of humanity but an end point, from which the rest of humanity is excluded. Devoted to eternal and exclusive truths, they brook no dissent and tolerate no debate. What matters most to fundamentalists is not what you do but who you are. Regardless of how many good deeds you perform, a Christian fundamentalist will only recognise you as a fellow human being up to a certain point unless you too are a Christian fundamentalist – beyond that you are just one more sinner.

For fundamentalists insist that we privilege just one identity above all others all the time. Since this is not how most of us live our lives, we tend to ignore them. The price for breaching their codes, they warn us, is banishment; the prize for conforming to them is belonging. But since, under normal circumstances, they are not a part of a community to which most of us would want to belong and they have no power to deliver on their threats, they have nothing we want or fear.

So, for the most part, they stalk the borders of our communities – the pamphleteers and proselytisers, who harangue and harass. But at moments when an identity feels itself besieged, they will move to centre stage. Fear will polarise people and send them scuttling into crudely constructed camps. When faced with a threat, either real or imagined, the fundamentalists who sounded simplistic will be praised for their clarity; views that were once dispelled as narrow-minded will be embraced as principled. The marginal gradually becomes the mainstream.

Identities do not exist in a vacuum but are rooted in material conditions that confer power and privilege in relation to one another. They are not static and fixed but dynamic and fluid, constantly shifting according to time and place.

Irritating as it was, the question from the woman in Oakland did not stem from bigotry. Segregation means mixed-race relationships in the US are rare, and exceptionally high rates of murder, HIV/Aids and imprisonment among African-American men make viable and available black mates relatively scarce. According to the census, there are 30% more black women than men in Baltimore, Chicago and Cleveland. In New York the figure is 36%. The way in which racism in the US affects straight black women’s lives makes many of them sensitive to the racial choices black men make when looking for a mate.

Nationalist fundamentalism in the US took grip immediately after the terrorist attacks on September 11 and has been thriving ever since. Americans felt attacked as Americans and responded as such with flags aplenty.

Such developments are not inevitable – despite being imprisoned by a racist state Nelson Mandela still managed to lead the creation of a non-racial democracy – but they are understandable. Everybody must take responsibility for how much prominence they wish to give any particular identity at any particular time. But they do not choose how much prominence others wish to assign to it.

In this respect, Islam is no different from any other identity. Although the extent of the rise in Islamic fundamentalism in Britain has been exaggerated, it certainly exists. A Pew Research Centre poll in June revealed that 15% of British Muslims believe that “violence against civilian targets can be justified often or sometimes” – that was marginally higher than the figure in Pakistan. The same poll showed that 81% of British Muslims said they thought of themselves as Muslims first and citizens of their native country second – a higher figure than in Egypt and Jordan.

There is no point in being in denial about the obvious reasons for this. Muslims will be more likely to organise around and identify with their religious identity, both at home and abroad, so long as they feel attacked as a result of their religious identity. There is no sensible conversation you can have about Islamic identity that does not address what is happening to Muslims locally and globally.

For the past five years they have been fed on a nightly diet of bombings and occupation in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon; imprisonment and torture in Guantánamo Bay, Belmarsh, Basra and Abu Ghraib; and tales of alleged wanton murder and rape in Hamdania, Haditha, Balad and Mahmudiya.

This excuses nothing but explains a lot. The war on terror did not create Islamic fundamentalism but it has exacerbated it. The British government should not change its foreign policy because it makes Muslims angry. (It should change it because it is immoral, ineffective and makes virtually the entire world angry.) But nor should it treat this anger as though it were the unpredictable response of fanatics who don’t watch the news and operate in isolation to world events.

At present the UK government’s only response to these trends is greater surveillance of Muslim communities and holding bantustan-style meetings with “community leaders” whose credibility decreases every time they show up at Downing Street. The government’s strategy at the moment is to first pathologise and then patronise them.

This will not work. Not for reasons of cultural sensitivity particular to Muslims but political common sense applicable to anyone. Those who refuse to address the issue of poor housing, job prospects and public services in white working-class areas will never address the rise in the racial fundamentalism that has found voice in the British National party. To acknowledge this is not to pander to racism but to display an understanding of its root causes.

Fundamentalists thrive only at times of crisis. At certain moments for certain identities they offer not just the easy way out but what can seem like the only way out. To be serious about combating them, one must first be serious about tackling the crisis that gives them leverage. Only when you offer an alternative and more attractive route out of that crisis can you isolate the leaders and win over the followers. To do so is not indulgent but intelligent.

My cousin Obama

Yes, he’s my cousin too, but do I say?  No, I just menson…