Tag Archives: non-violence

Mar 30 2013

this went thru my mind (on violence)

 

V-for-violenceBackground checks, gun control, & legislation: President Obama: We Have Not Forgotten What Happened in Newtown

“Right now, 90 percent of Americans — 90 percent — support background checks that will keep criminals and people who have been found to be a danger to themselves or others from buying a gun. More than 80 percent of Republicans agree. More than 80 percent of gun owners agree.”

Churches of Christ, military service, pacifism, Restoration Movement & war: Alexander Campbell, Tolbert Fanning, David Lipscomb: A Nineteenth-Century Anti-War Triumvirate [required reading]

“Alexander Campbell, Tolbert Fanning, and David Lipscomb had three things in common. They all lived during the nineteenth century. They were all ministers in the Church of Christ … And they were all vehemently anti-war. … All wrote well before the horrors of World War I, with Campbell and Fanning writing their anti-war works even before the carnage of the so-called Civil War. … I shall present Campbell’s anti-war views from his famous ‘Address on War’ that was originally delivered in May, 1848, in Wheeling, Virginia, published in the Millennial Harbinger in July the same year … I shall present Fanning’s anti-war views from his March 1847 article in the Christian Review titled simply ‘War.’ … I shall present Lipscomb’s anti-war views from his 1889 book, Civil Government: Its Origin, Mission, and Destiny, and the Christian’s Relation to It, which was originally published as a series of articles in the Gospel Advocate from 1866 to 1867.”

Fear & war: Threats of Annihilation Normal for South Koreans

“Nowhere is there the slightest inkling that anyone in this second largest metropolitan area in the world — is fearful or even anxious about the stream of threats emanating from North Korea.”

Guns & statistics: Children’s Defense Fund: Protect Children, Not Guns The Truth About Guns [essential reading]

“A gun in the home makes the likelihood of homicide three times higher, suicide three to five times higher, and accidental death four times higher. For every time a gun in the home injures or kills in self-defense, there are 11 completed and attempted gun suicides, seven criminal assaults and homicides with a gun, and four unintentional shooting deaths or injuries.”

Holocaust: Explaining the Holocaust to Our Nine Year-Old Daughter

“This is part of the beauty and the tension we experience as an interfaith family. We have two beautiful traditions, with rich spiritual practices, that do much good in the world. At the same time, we share a tragic history, in which the Lutheran theology to which I’ve dedicated my life in ministry was twisted in order to justify killing my wife’s ancestors. I am constantly aware of it, especially when I preach and teach, and at times find it difficult to reconcile.”

Shootings: One Nation Under The Gun: Thousands Of Gun Deaths Since Newtown

“The Huffington Post has tracked gun-related deaths in the United States since Newtown. Click here for an interactive map of those who have died.”

Mar 23 2013

this went thru my mind (on violence)

 

V-for-violenceAbuse: No More Silence: An Interview with Boz Tchividjian of G.R.A.C.E.

“Q. What are some of the most common mistakes churches and Christian organizations make when it comes to preventing child abuse? A. Silence is one of the most common failures of the Christian community in preventing child abuse.”

Arms suppliers: China Edges Out U.K. As World’s Fifth-Largest Arms Supplier

“Made-in-China weapons have moved into the No. 5 slot, displacing U.K.-manufactured arms, but the Asian giant still trails far behind the U.S. and Russia, whose weapons account for 30 percent and 26 percent of the market, respectively, according to a new report released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute … China’s biggest customer? Pakistan. It made up 55 percent of Beijing’s arms exports between 2008 and 2012, the Institute says.”

Capital punishment, death penalty & justice: The Death Penalty Has a Face: A DA’s Personal Story [required reading]

“…  my father was … a Church of Christ preacher  so I sat through a lot of funerals as I grew up. … It may seem strange to say but I never really thought much about my feelings regarding the death penalty before I became district attorney. I was raised in a Southern conservative place with small town values by parents who believed in and practiced their Christian faith in every way. I guess support for the death penalty was simply a given.

“During my years as DA I have prosecuted more than thirty murder cases. In seventeen of those cases I was faced with the decision—seek death or offer life. Three times I chose death. It was always difficult, but as I got older and more experienced, I felt the weight of the decision grow. I held the life of another human being in my hands. Of course a twelve-person jury plays a large part in giving the death penalty, but I could stop it. All I had to do was say life, and the prisoner lived. …

“I have heard all the arguments in favor of the death penalty. In fact, I’ve made them all—it saves lives of future potential victims; it gives the loved ones of the victim closure; it’s society’s ultimate response to the most heinous of criminal acts. But, in the end, it simply remains that the state has responded to the taking of a life by taking another. …

“Over the years I have come to believe that the time for the death penalty has passed.”

Iraq War: * Was the Iraq War Worth It? A Christian Reflection for the Tenth Anniversary of the Invasion; * What America Learned in Iraq

* “… the war has devastated the church in that country. While there had been considerable religious freedom under Saddam Hussein, after the invasion suspicion and hostility toward Christians dramatically increased.”

* “The costs of the second Iraq war, which began 10 years ago this week, are staggering: nearly 4,500 Americans killed and more than 30,000 wounded, many grievously; tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis wounded or killed; more than $2 trillion in direct government expenditures; and the significant weakening of the major regional counterweight to Iran and consequent strengthening of that country’s position and ambitions. Great powers rarely make national decisions that explode so quickly and completely in their face. It may seem folly to seek a silver lining among these thunderclouds. But there are three flickers of light that offer some hope that the enormous price was not paid entirely in vain. These coins offer a meager return on our enormous investment, but not collecting them would be an insult to the memory of all that we have lost.”

Non-violence, outreach & preaching: Is Preaching Nonviolence Bad for Evangelism? by Kurt Willems

“Jesus and the Apostles did little in their preaching to soften the cost of discipleship. The price only goes on sale when we promote our own agendas rather than the priorities of the reign of God.”

Mar 16 2013

this went thru my mind (on violence)

 

V-for-violenceCapital punishment: * Arizona Woman’s Murder Conviction, Death Sentence Overturned; * Once On Death Row, He Now Fights To Defeat The Death Penalty

* “There was no evidence tying her to the crime …”

* “Maryland is about to become the 18th state to abolish the death penalty. … The strongest advocate to end the death penalty in Maryland is Kirk Bloodsworth, who was convicted of murder in that state in 1985 and was the first person in the U.S. to be sentenced to death row then exonerated by DNA evidence.”

Concealed carry, church, faith & guns: Guns in Church

“Do I want our members slaughtered in their seats? Of course not. … What I am suggesting, though, is that our churches have become so accommodated to culture that we are no longer relevant. We are no longer any different from the world. We have lost our saltiness, and might as well be thrown out onto the ground to be trampled. Apparently, we have lost our faith. We no longer trust that God will keep us safe, or, that if he doesn’t, that he won’t use us even in the midst of tragedy to do good. If that is the case, and I think it is, then what is the point?”

Genocide: The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking

“The numbers are so much higher than what we originally thought …”

God, Scripture, and violence: * The Phinehas vs. Jesus Conundrum; * Getting Honest about the Dark Side of the Bible; * A Coming Storm; * A Cruciform Magic Eye [required reading]

* “As followers of Jesus, we must honesty face the challenge that the ugly, violent aspects of our Bible and our history pose for us. As followers of Jesus, we are called to not only refrain from violence, but to be peacemakers (Mt 5:9) and ‘ministers of reconciliation’ and ‘ambassadors’ of the kingdom (2 Cor. 5:19). Yet our Bible, which we confess to be ‘God-breathed’ (2 Tim.3:16), contains material that is violence-making rather than peace-making. … In light of all this, we must ask ourselves: What does it mean to be makers of peace and bringers of reconciliation when the Bible we confess to be ‘God-breathed’ has material that continues to inspire violent attitudes, if not outright violence? … The question I therefore leave you with is this: Is there a way to affirm that all Scripture, including its violent stories, violent prayers, and violent depictions of God, are ‘God-breathed,’ while at the same time renouncing its violence? For in confessing Christ as Lord, it seems we are bound to do both. It may seem like an impossible conundrum, but I have found that impossible conundrums are sometimes an opportunity for the most profound insights. Think about it.”

* “I only began to discern a way to understand how horrific depictions of God in Scripture bear witness to the crucified Christ when I finally stopped trying to deny these depictions were horrific. So long as we try to tidy up, sanitize, minimize and piously gloss over material that we honestly know in our hearts is macabre and revolting, the best case scenario is that we will succeed at finding a slightly less revolting deity in these portraits than we initially found. This is what standard evangelical apologetic approaches accomplish, on a good day. It is in essence the approach I adopted five years ago when I began this present project. But I came to see that even the very best of these approaches are of no value when it comes to disclosing how this material bears witness to the self-sacrificial, enemy-loving, non-violent love of God on Calvary. And to make matters worse, all the while we are tidying up our macabre depictions of God, we are bearing some responsibility for the way this material continues to serve as a precedent for people to appeal to in order to justify their hatred and violence, as it has served throughout history.”

* “I am … proposing what I call ‘The Cruciform Thesis.’ It consists of four principles that I derive from the revelation of God on the cross, for I argue that the cross is the quintessential revelation of God and the thematic center of everything Jesus was about.”

* “The God who bore our sin and God-forsaken judgment had always been bearing the sin and God-forsaken place of his people. The God who reflected the grotesqueness of our sin back toward us by taking on the guilty, God-forsaken semblance in the process of revealing himself, had always been reflecting the grotesqueness of his people’s sin by taking on a guilty, God-forsaken semblance in the process of revealing himself. … God only became a human and suffered to atone for the sin of the world once, in the crucifixion of Christ. But the fact that this single event reveals what God is truly like means it reflects what God has always been like. And when we fully embrace this and refuse to let it be compromised by granting authority to the horrifically violent warrior images, we are in a position to discern the crucified God in the portraits of the warrior God, and see in the crucified God the crucifixion of the warrior God.”

Preventive measures to violence: Focusing on Violence Before It Happens

“‘When we looked at kids who had committed attacks, the vast majority had come to the attention of an adult for a behavior that was concerning but would not necessarily cause someone to conclude they were planning an attack,’ said Bryan M. Vossekuil, former executive director of the National Threat Assessment Center, part of the Secret Service, and a co-author of a 2002 guide to threat assessment in schools published by the service and the federal Education Department.”

War: What the Iraq War Did to and for the Middle East

“Ten years later, it’s clear that the Iraq war cast ‘a very large shadow’ indeed, but it was a much darker shadow than the fantasists who ran American foreign policy back then foresaw. Bush believed that freedom was humanity’s natural state: Blow away the manhole-cover that a tyrant pressed down on his people, and freedom would gush forth like a geyser. Yet when Saddam Hussein was toppled, the main thing liberated was the blood hatred that decades of dictatorship had suppressed beneath the surface.”

Feb 28 2013

this went thru my mind

 

Compassion, illness, prayer & service: Jesus My Patient [required reading]

“A prayer from Mother Teresa and used by her Sisters of Charity in their care for the sick, poor, and dying …”

Creation & faith: Seeing God in the Stars

“Dr. Jennifer Wiseman is an astronomer, author, and speaker. … As senior project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, she studies star-forming regions of our galaxy using radio, optical, and infrared telescopes. As director of the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, she helps improve communication between scientists and faith communities.”

Immigration & the poor: Do Illegal Immigrants Actually Hurt the U.S. Economy?

“Illegal immigration does have some undeniably negative economic effects. … Labor economists have concluded that undocumented workers have lowered the wages of U.S. adults without a high-school diploma — 25 million of them — by anywhere between 0.4 to 7.4 percent. The impact on everyone else, though, is surprisingly positive.”

National debt: Our Debt, Ourselves

“I want to present a calmer view, by emphasizing six facts about the debt that many Americans may not be aware of.”

Shane Claiborne: Ask Shane Claiborne … (Response) [essential reading]

“… non-violence doesn’t mean getting stepped-on. The call to non-violence is to disarm violence. A part of the way we do that is suffering with those who suffer.”