Recently I had an opportunity to present a version of a talk called, “The Matrix and the World,” in which I sought to unpack 1 John 2:15-16 and make sense of John’s imperative not to love the world.  In particular I zeroed in on the third of John’s descriptives about the world, “…the boasting of what he has and does.”

A number of clips from the Matrix were used to illustrate that people can exist in one 'reality' and yet there is an alternative reality in which we should really live. For Christians, that alternative reality is the Kingdom of God. We are not to love the world so that we can be fully subjects of God’s Kingdom.

The group I was with got into the nitty gritty practicals of “boasting” as it relates to being stewards of God’s money and the signals we emit and receive from others around us. When it comes to clothes, cars, and many other material objects in our society, those purchases with God’s money are often about status signals. The question on the table was, What does purchasing status signals (to wear, to drive, to inhabit) have to do with the Kingdom of God?

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Human trafficking compels a response.

If the knowledge that human beings are being bought and sold in some of the neediest parts of the world doesn’t move you from spectator to responder, what if you knew that almost 18,000 people are trafficked into the United States every year?

It’s true, we are complicit. It is happening in our back yard. In addition to the fact that trafficking victims are locked away in our country, our wealth and freedom fuels the demand in other parts of the world. Many sex tourists are our countrymen.

The US government and many non-government organizations (NGO) are responding in a variety of ways—the government has committed financial resources and through the State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Office, the government is working to place this issue on the agenda of governments across the world. Domestic and international NGO’s are responding to prevent trafficking, rescue victims, prosecute perpetrators and restore victims to health, but there are gaps that demand our individual response.

You can respond in at least one of three different ways: Learn, Leverage, Look.Read more

This is the fourth  post in Heidi Metcalf's 5 part series about Human Trafficking.

1. Sex and Labor  Sells  2. Would You Sell Your Daughter? 3. Where is God Amidst Human Trafficking?
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Suffering and evil. Why does God allow them? Let me be very clear on an answer to that question… I don’t really know.

But let’s talk about what I do know. 

I do know that questions of suffering and evil are not new and are a challenge to faith. "The fact of suffering undoubtedly constitutes the single greatest challenge to the Christian faith, and has been in every generation," writes theologian John Stott in The Cross of Christ. "Its distribution and degree appear to be entirely random and therefore unfair."

I also know that Jesus identified with suffering. He suffered every indignity and pain imaginable.

Finally, when it comes to suffering, God is not remote. “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” Ps 34:18 Through the example of Jesus, God compels us to move toward suffering.

My objective is not to address fully the problem of evil. This objective I leave to the many theologians who are more articulate and learned on this topic than I am.

The question that emerged for me in the face of evil was more of an observation of the destructive nature of God’s goodness. From this observation, I arrived upon hope.Read more

This is the third post in Heidi Metcalf's 5 part series about Human Trafficking.

1. Sex and Labor  Sells
2. Would You Sell Your Daughter?

I heard once that there were schools that would take field trips to the morgue. The thought was that children would see the consequences of violence, drugs and risky behavior and that they would be "scared straight".  It turned out, however, that after the initial shock of seeing a dead body for the first time had passed, the impact of the visual failed to change behavior. In some cases, children became inured to it.

The danger in writing about such hard things like the evil in sex trafficking or child labor is that it becomes like a trip to the morgue for the reader. At first you are shocked, and then the stories become familiar. Distant, but familiar, and you have to be shocked a bit more to be moved to action.Read more

Ok, so maybe not your daughter, but what about a niece or a neighbor?

You are a woman, and your parents were desperately poor—unable to provide for you and your five siblings on pennies a day in your remote village. They need you to contribute to family income so at 13 years old, you followed a neighbor’s promise for work in the big city. You cannot read nor can you write and when you arrive in the city, a woman meets you and takes you to your accommodation. She locks you in a room, and you are sold to the highest bidder. You spend the next ten years servicing an average of 20 men a night. You lost your freedom, your childhood, and your future… Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

The valley must look a lot like the red light district in Mumbai. Hot, dirty, dark, disease-infested. Animal feces mixed with mud, sinister looking pimps—men and women—lurk in the shade of the tattered awnings of shops and brothels.  All eyes on me; too observed to really be able to observe. The buildings are 2-3 stories tall. Shutters open from the second floor of the brothels and silently announce the contents of the cages therein—minor girls trapped inside; the most valuable possession of the brothel keepers.

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Kiribaba is a nine year old boy with sad eyes and an ill-fitting t-shirt who lives in a tent in Sri Lanka with his extended family across the street from the Indian Ocean. At night the synthetic tents are too hot, so he sleeps on the cement foundation where their house used to stand. Five years before the tsunami claimed their home, Kiribaba’s mother migrated to the Middle East to work as a domestic laborer. She's not been heard from again.

Her story, and her son's, is common.

The World Bank reports that migrant labor accounts for about 7% of Sri Lankan GDP--unofficial remittances from migrant laborers could double that number. Many Sri Lankans leave their country in search of work because there is none to be found at home.

In Sri Lanka, remittances primarily from housemaids working in the Middle-East are the second leading net foreign-exchange earner after garments and are an important balancing element in the current account, usually offsetting around 60 per cent of the trade deficit." (here)

While there is little to no research that connects human trafficking with migrant women who serve as domestic laborers, I heard anecdotal evidence to the contrary. In addition to their earnings, returning women bring stories of abuse, rape, exploitation, and the suicides of their countrywomen who could not take anymore. Some women, like Kiribaba’s mom, may never return. Read more

As far as I understand it, God intended us to work and intends our work to be good, bringing beauty and order from chaos. In the Genesis creation narrative, God Himself is portrayed as a worker, speaking the world into existence and getting his hands dirty forming humanity out of dirt. God gave Adam and Eve work to do – to care for the garden – before the fall. Work is not a result of the fall.

But, if I’m honest, it does not always feel this way. Work, and our view of work, is affected by the fall. Work is sometimes stimulating and fun, but it can also be isolating, overwhelming, tedious, purposeless, and dehumanizing. Sometimes I work as an expression of my creative gifting and sometimes I work just to survive. Sometimes I love my job and sometimes I resent it.

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I’ve been thinking about the Lord’s Supper lately, and (bear with me…) about sex as well.

Before I get flagged by every internet filter known to cyberspace, let me explain. This last semester, my campus fellowship did a series through Dating, Marriage and Sexuality. We all learned a lot as worked through what God intends for us in our dating and relating.

So when the topic of sexuality emerged toward the end of the semester, I was amazed at the increase in our attendance. Sex, I tried to explain, is a transcendent experience. What is going on between a man and a woman on the marriage bed extends far beyond the physical experience and into the spiritual realm. When I sleep with my wife, there is far more going on than mere mechanics.Read more

Something remarkable is happening in our world and in the church, and various leading voices are already naming it.   

Consider just some of the (mostly unprecedented) events in the last month or so…

* The leaders of the world’s leading industrial countries comprising the G8 have agreed to forgive $40B in foreign debt for 18 of the world’s poorest countries, and have agreed to double financial aid to Africa to $50B over the next few years.
* President Bush unveiled a plan for the US to increase financial aid by almost $2B for various relief and intervention efforts in Africa, on top of significant resources directed specifically at the Sudan.
* A remarkably diverse gathering of over 1,000 well-known, high-level religious leaders and anti-hunger advocates met in early June at the National Cathedral in Washington to discuss new ways of cooperation and shared efforts to end hunger around the world, and unveiled a new umbrella organization called the Alliance to End Hunger.Read more

FIX ME

An opinion of Coldplay's latest "X&Y" album
by rachel s. yoo

“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.” - - Victor Hugo

Coldplay’s new album X&Y was somewhat of a disappointment to me. I had been a dedicated fan for several years, even to the point of shamelessly responding to online classified postings to see them live at The Fillmore (don’t worry, without any luck). Because Parachutes and Rush of Blood to the Head were so beautifully crafted, my expectations were high. When I first pressed play, none of the songs really made an impression, and most of the melodies blended together. But I wanted to like it so I listened to the album over and over and over again.

And then I fell in love.  Well, not with the whole album, but with Track 04 called “Fix You”. The progression of the song is what first caught my ear. It introduces itself with a shy, timid character – no percussion and just a few blending chords. The song gains strength when the clear and piercing piano notes sing their melody. In the middle of the song, the lead guitar and drums interject to claim victory and take the rest of the song home.

But a song with a catchy tune or moving melodies is empty without meaningful words.   Read more