The Secret

29 09 2010

Maybe it was a simple curiosity which led me to watch a movie entitled The Secret, a few days ago. The arresting trailer had promised to unveil the secret that would change my life: it started with a rich series of portraits of historical figures (Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, Hugo, Beethoven, Lincoln, Emerson, Edison and Einstein) who apparently knew the secret promoted in the movie, citing some of their most famous lines. The first quote was from a contemporary philosopher, Bob Proctor, and affirmed, “Whoever knows the secret can obtain whatever he wants: happiness, health, wealth.” A recent New York Times review has called this rhetorical ploy an “example of a related logical fallacy called the argument from authority,” but, still, I could not help but be intrigued.

The movie’s message of positive thinking then advocates that, according to the Law of Attraction, wishing for something can attract events and even make them happen. Interestingly, The Secret does not mention the fact of death nor what awaits us after life, but focuses only in the here and now: “think positively, rise up in the morning, look yourself in the mirror and say to yourself, today is a special day. Believe it to the end, and, eventually, your finances, relationships and your life will be special, and free from problems, anxiety and preoccupation.”

The movie was so persuasive that I even thought of giving it a shot. Maybe I could photograph a Ferrari, look at the picture every day as if were already mine, and sooner or later it would be in the garage. Or I could wish to become the boss at the office, so I told my wife about my resolution to arrive at work with a bossy demeanour, and after a moment of hesitation, she looked me in the eye and said, “Honey, are you feeling well?”

One could of course criticize a number of elements in The Secret’s grandiose self-help message. But what struck me was a missing portrait in this hall of success and fame. What about Jesus? I asked myself: how come the most influential person of all history is not part of its list? Maybe for the way he has lived his life? Has he lived it without anxiety or preoccupation? In health and wealth? Only with positive thoughts and nothing else?

The truth is that Jesus was born and raised in a modest, if not poor, family, worked like everyone else, and when he had to pay taxes (which are not at all small here in Italy, nor were they when the Romans pretended to conquer and profit from everyone else!), he had probably the same preoccupations we have when the revenue form arrives home. And when he died, he had been just betrayed by a friend, negated by another, and saw a crowd request that he should be crucified. It does not sound like a story of success, for sure, but between him and The Secret, I would rather choose the apparently less successful option. Jesus did not live with a secret in his life but he may well be, at least in my case, a hidden pearl more promising than The Secret’s assurance of health and wealth.

Enzo Bifano lives in Rome, Italy, and works as an analytical programmer at a large communications company.


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Categories : On Anything and Everything

Ten Thousand Virtual Coffees Served

23 09 2010

Wondering Fair celebrates today 10,000 visits! Although no match for McDonald’s or Starbucks’ number of coffees served, we are thrilled to have started our own virtual cafeteria and for the community gathering around it. Thanks to everyone involved, be it through writing, commenting, offering suggestions and helping us spread the word around. Our community is expanding bit by bit, and now includes visits from 80 countries. Cheers to folks down in Libya and the Netherlands Antilles!

News from the WF team of contributors: after renovating her basement during the summer, Jessica is considering construction work if things don’t go as planned, while Hélder is offering consultancy on IKEA furniture assembly. Matt Gray’s baby daughter, the cute gal to the right, has just started giggling, and selected 11:30 pm as her hour of giggle party. Matt writes: “It’s hard to quietly rock to sleep a kid who’s woken up in fits of laughter – you find yourself fluctuating from exhausted annoyance to wanting to join in on the joke.” Madi continues on as a non-stipendiary domestic goddess and waits her second baby, also congrats! Her big challenge now: ”trying to stop myself eating more than two bags of salt and vinegar crisps in a row.”

Although not pregnant, Dave also reports snack cutbacks: “I’m discovering first-hand how one’s metabolism slows after 33! … Crispy-Creme Donuts are no longer my friend–doh!”  Also not pregnant, but now experienced in labor-level pain, René is cutting back on goodies too, after a luxurious 3-day reading break in hospital, thanks to a kidney crisis and Rome’s calcium-packed tap water. Mineral water everyone! Jeremy, on the other hand, has had a less acute but more spectacular pain: his chair collapsed right when he was leading a committee meeting at work, to a chorus of gasps. He emerged to to wave a white flag and carry on, but maybe offering Dave’s left-over Crispy-Creme Donuts to everyone could also have worked.

One special thanks goes to Matt Stauffer, who blogs here, and who has been helping us tweak the look and design of Wondering Fair. Articles are more visually readable now, and more lookin’-good improvements are on the way.

As a gift to everyone, besides our regular articles by contributors and guests, John Stackhouse has just posted a new answer to a reader question, at Ask John, and Dave Benson and a team of fellow Aussies have produced a new mp3 resource, One Path, Many Doors, available at the Media page. Enjoy!


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Categories : Housekeeping

The Purpose of Fear?

22 09 2010

Fear can be scarier when it is shared. I can remember several moments in the past few years where I’ve felt a palpable shared sense of fear, first in the build-up to the Iraq war, then more recently with the “financial crisis.” In each case, I can remember feeling that moral dilemmas, which would ordinarily involve some fairly straight-forward thinking, have become muddled and unclear.

So I became unsure, for instance, over whether a pre-emptive military policy in Iraq really had some merit. I had been opposed to this idea for years, but such conviction was harder to maintain after the evening news was saturated for weeks with stories about the possibility of long range nuclear missiles and chemical weapons in the hands of Saddam Hussein. Similarly, I remember that same sense of uncertainty – what might be called a cloud of fear – following me around when the financial crisis supposedly threatened the stability of our social institutions, including the viability of entire governments. Again, social fear was palpable as we assessed the limited options for economic recovery being proposed, which have now resulted in many countries propping up the very institutions and their leadership which bear responsibility for the economic crisis. Strange decisions result from strange times.

I’ve just spent the past weekend at an academic conference discussing another, perhaps even stronger, fear cloud – the threat of climate change. Speakers helpfully pointed out that climate change is but one of several issues which are accelerated by our consumptive lifestyles and disdain for the limits that God seems to have placed in the creation, as we face water shortages, peak oil, soil destruction, pollution, dead zones in the ocean, and the list could go on. I imagine we all have a personal, concrete experience with the some troubling ecological issue, whether that be a recent water shortage, the ugly smell of a nearby landfill, or extreme weather patterns.

One of the most useful interactions I had at this conference was a theological discussion on a proper Christian response to fear. What resources and guidance does our faith provide in seeking to respond to ecological or financial crisis? A frequent exhortation that appears in the Bible is to “fear the Lord.” Indeed Psalm 111:10 suggests that “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.” The hebrew word used in the Psalm for fear, yārēʾ, actually encompasses a wider range of meaning, including fear, reverence, to honor, worship, or be afraid of. There is some wisdom embedded in the language itself here, I think; it suggests that what we fear, we may also grant overriding control over our moral lives. Thus, if I fear the financial crisis, i.e. my own financial ruin, at the root of this fear is my own love of money and the economy which secures my wealth. Similarly, fears of environmental destruction may reflect an underlying worship of the patterns I am familiar with, such as a ready supply of tropical fruits or an abundance of consumer products without any indication of their source or true cost. In short, my fear may reflect an underlying reluctance to see change, whatever the source.

A Christian response to such fear, I think, is the act of repentance. In this, we identify the underlying idolatries (or distorted loves) that generate our fears and express regret for the destructiveness these misguided attachments have caused. Next, we detach our loyalties from them, and place our trust instead in the only thing which can correspond to our highest aspirations: the personal God who created us. This redirection offers an entirely new orientation by which we can respond to bad news and conceive of our life within changed circumstances. This orientation holds, even if the pennies are few and the winter comes too early.

Jeremy Kidwell


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Categories : On Anything and Everything

Life Surprises

20 09 2010

There is a Woody Allen movie, Small Time Crooks, which tells the story of an amateur band of bank robbers. Allen’s character, nicknamed Brain, conceives a highly original plan to rent a store close to a bank, dig a tunnel under the ground, and emerge right in front of the bank’s vault. He gathers some fellow unskilled criminals, and they start digging the tunnel, while Allen’s wife runs a storefront cookie shop. The tunnel digging is a disaster – they run into a pipe and flood the basement with water; they read the map upside down and end up in a fitness store – but the cookie business does quite well, actually. People line up in this little shop for the best cookies in town, and as word spreads, multitudes come, there is media coverage, and soon a cookie empire is built. The band of criminals gets rich, unexpectedly rich – but from an honest cookie business.

Life throws some interesting surprises at us. Every now and then a door of opportunity flings wide open right when we were so busy working at something else. We were so engaged in a long dreamt project that we almost miss these little surprises that walk by. The most renowned violins in the world – the type of violin that Sherlock Holmes used to play in his books – were the product of a frustrated violin player, for instance. Antonio Stradivari worked hard to become a master violinist, but as he grew disappointed at his own limited talent, he discovered that he was quite good at making violins. Thus his seventeenth-century handmade pieces were unequalled for a long time even by industrially designed violins. A mediocre violin player became a master violin maker.

Or take the example of Augustine, the fourth-century professor of rhetoric. After a successful career that took him from his humble North African village to teaching posts in Carthage and Rome, Augustine came to Milan to hear an especially gifted speaker. As he sought to learn the art of communicating well, he was actually amazed by the content he heard there. “And I studiously listened to him–though not with the right motive–as he preached to the people. I was trying to discover whether his eloquence came up to his reputation, and whether it flowed fuller or thinner than others said it did… And, while I opened my heart to acknowledge how skillfully he spoke, there also came an awareness of how truly he spoke,” disclosed Augustine.[1] The worldview articulated by bishop Ambrose’s lips took Augustine by surprise. He was startled to find answers to his spiritual longings in a place he went only to learn more about speaking. Shifting his attention to the meaning of the words he heard, Augustine moved on to become one of the greatest theologians of all time.

These little life surprises, arriving suddenly, stealthily, unexpectedly, teach us to pay attention even to the most common of situations. A love which is not shared by the person we desire may be painful, yet produce a priceless insight into ourselves. A failure may yield valuable lessons for future projects. A conversation with a stranger may open our eyes to a whole new talent we were not aware we had. Talking with someone much older or much younger or much poorer than us might stretch our minds in a way books and university degrees can’t. We might just learn that we live in a universe more gracious and more benevolent than we thought, a place of discipline and hard work but also of little surprises and opportunities just around the corner, a reality being redeemed by providence, generosity, and grace. Even for bank robbing small time crooks.

René Breuel

[1] Augustine, The Confessions of St. Augustine, ed. and trans. Albert Cook Outler (Mineola, New York:Dover, 2002), V.XIII-XIV.


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Categories : Bar Conversations and Cheap Advice

The Right to Despair

17 09 2010

Elie Wiesel, writing from inside the barbed fences of German concentration camps in his autobiographical Night, recalls a piece of advice offered by a fellow prisoner: “We have no right to despair!”[1]

I love his resilience. But is it genuine? It’s hard to believe his statement isn’t just a half-hearted plea for optimism. If anyone has the “right” to despair, it should certainly include the Jews of the Holocaust. They were surrounded by death, even breathing in the smoke of their burning friends and family. What hope can survive in a place like that?  In my mind, circumstances so laden with death and horror gladly serve up the right to despair. Despair lets sufferers off the hook of hope.

If, however, the prisoner’s statement is honest, it creates quite a quandary. How can anyone declare hope when there’s no visible reason to hope? The possibility of hope in such a dark place grates against logic. I want to understand that a circumstance is either hopeful or hopeless, black or white. But here, the two collide. Living in circumstances that are, by any account, utterly hopeless, his hope somehow remains. How is this possible?

Logically speaking, it’s not possible. We cannot be with and without hope simultaneously. So if this man really can maintain hope in the most hopeless of situations, we have to conclude instead that his hope never depended upon his circumstances. His hope must lie elsewhere, impervious to the changes he experiences. He can invoke that they have “no right to despair” because his hope, even here, is not thwarted by their surroundings.

But what about you and me? While we’re far from concentration camps, we are nonetheless threatened by despair through our own circumstances. Is there hope for us? We face enough grief or troubled relationships or paralyzing insecurities that despair is often an easy alternative. In fact, despair is always readily available. It’s hope that’s so hard to find.

But the Jews found it. Their hope was absolutely unshakable. But how? How did they—and how can we—maintain a hope that cannot be eclipsed by despair?  

Our first task is to know where we’re placing our hope. These beliefs can then direct our actions. Like the Jews, unshakable hope requires belief in an external and transcendent Force, outside the realm of corruptability and circumstance. Even more importantly, unshakable hope requires that this Force is already involved in redeeming the world.  In the throes of despair, we do not have the energy to convince this Force of the need for goodness. If we cannot join in a preexisting mission, our hope is lost. 

What this suggests is that this Force cannot be an unnamed phenomenon or a jelly donut. Our hope must be fixed upon an actual Person who is capable of and in the process of improving the world. I, for one, know of no other Person like this than the God of the Bible. 

Having lined out our beliefs, what remains is to allow this hope-giving God to affect our circumstances. If the beliefs above draw the general shape of God, our daily task is to fill in the details. We walk with God, search for God, cry out to God, and revel with God. As we grow to know God intimately, our hope is strengthened because we realize just how faithful, how good, how powerful God is. We grow to trust in God.

Eventually, the potency of God grows more convincing than the potency of our visible circumstances. From the perspective of this unshakable hope, we learn to recognize the fleetingness of everything else, like watching busy traffic from a peaceful perch. Nothing can uproot us, because we are rooted in the Unchangeable. We unknowingly shed our ”right” to despair because we no longer have a need for it.

“If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom 8:31) 

Brandon Gaide currently resides with his wife in Sacramento, CA, working as a recruiter.  He recently finished his MA in Theology, and seeks opportunities to teach what he loves: the hope of the Gospel.

[1]    Elie Wiesel, Night (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), 42


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Categories : Making a Difference

The Crystalline Mountain

15 09 2010

I grew up in the land of the shadows,
Where nobody ever saw light
In the fields or the glades or the meadows,
Nor on the highest height
But there was a story we told
Of a glassy and crystalline mountain,
Where courageous pilgrims of old
Saw the sun sparkle down like a fountain
And atop that mysterious hill
Lived the glorious Infinite One
Whose ultimate, glorious will
Was for all to encounter the sun.

A wonderful wives’ tale indeed
But could it be possibly true?
Such questions did nothing but feed
My need for a hint or a clue.

And so I decided one morn
That since I was so fully torn
I’d welcome man’s praise or man’s scorn
By seeking the truth, come what may.

Two factions in my land there were
Who felt so completely cock-sure
That they could correctly infer
The truth of this legend of Day.

The Jeevers were believers who claimed to believe
That belief in the Mount was the way to achieve
The meaning of life and a life full of meaning,
Existence devoid of this darkness deceiving
And filled with the splendor of light.
But though they claimed to put trust
In the road as an absolute must,
They never were moving, they always were staying,
Fearful of doing, fearful of straying,
Filled with no faith and much fright.

The Jinkers were thinkers – bright, intellectual.
They sat and they thought – being quite ineffectual.
Their only activity would pass for passivity –
They’d sit and they’d ponder how a Jeever could squander
His life on the road without end.
I went first to the Jeevers, the house of belief,
Hoping believers could offer relief
And I asked…

“What do you know of this Infinite One?
How do you know he exists?
What do you know of this dazzling sun?
Can you tell me of what it consists?
And what do you know of this mountain of glass
That no one has seen with their eyes?
Can one really ascend, can one truly pass
From this darkness and into the skies?”

And they answered…

“Well, um, gee, gosh, mister, gee, I don’t know,
No one has asked how we know what we know.
But we know it, we know it, we know it, we do –
We always have known that our story is true.
The best way to believe is to murder your doubt,
Do this first and then you will soon figure out
That the Infinite One surely reigns in his glory –
Just doubt all your doubt and believe in our story.”

Their answer didn’t satisfy,
In fact it sounded like a lie!
How could I in vain deny
The power of my doubt?

So there I stood my mind confused,
And as I stood, my mind, it mused,
Maybe the Jinkers so enthused
About doubt could help me out.

So I went to the Jinkers, the house of doubt,
Where thoughtful old thinkers were milling about
And I asked…

“Why don’t you believe in the Infinite One?
Is it true that he doesn’t exist?
If it’s dumb to believe in a dazzling sun,
Then why do such thoughts still persist?
All skills and all notions are at your command,
You claim that by knowledge you’re powered,
Yet you always dismiss what you can’t understand –
Doesn’t that make one a coward?”

And they answered…
“Well, um, gee, gosh, mister, gee, I don’t know,
No one has asked how we know what we know.
But we know it, we know it, we know it, we do –
We always have known that our story is true.
Believe in your doubt and doubt your belief,
I’m sure you will find it a welcome relief
To know that your life is a meaningless hole –
You no longer need to pretend there’s a soul.”

I stumbled away in grave melancholy,
Refusing to say that my life was mere folly.
I was tired and weary of looking for truth,
Existence was dreary, all notions lacked proof.
In light of this doleful and dismal analysis
Both mind and heart were trapped in paralysis –
Neither a Jinker, nor a true Jeever!
Neither a thinker, nor a believer!
So by the end of this spiritual squall
I sadly believed in nothing at all!

But just as I made this dreadful decision,
My focus beheld a magnificent vision –
A man who was dressed in traveling gear
Saw my distress and kindly drew near.
His eyes wisely twinkled like flames in the night,
His face, nicely wrinkled, was beaming with light.
His eyes pierced right through me, I felt understood,
He knew me as only a traveler could.

“Where are you going?” the climber inquired.
“Oh, I’m not going,” said I.
“Well, everyone goes, it’s the way that we’re wired,
You choose but the path you will try.”

“I’m glad that you’ve found the great mountain,” said I,
But that path will not do for me, sir,
For I’ve seen way too much to ever deny,
But too little to ever be sure.
Don’t bother to preach about faith and belief,
Why don’t you just move along,
For I’ve found a nice way to conquer this grief –
By not choosing, I cannot go wrong.”

“A choice not to choose is a choice in itself,
Just look at the Jinkers and Jeevers!
Their lives are deprived of a traveling health,
They’re nothing but vain self-deceivers!”

“I will not commit, I simply refuse!
I will not submit to a choice I could choose,
For a choice is a risk, a decision for strife,
To journey this mountain would cost me my life!”

A fire in my head, a war in my brain,
I couldn’t discern what was sane or insane.
Then the man spoke with a storm in his eyes –
His words held the hope of the infinite rise.

“So you’d forfeit your life to stay where you are,
Where the land is dismal and dreary,
And yet won’t consider the mountain afar
As more than an unfounded theory?
Faith is required at either extreme,
It’s a risk either way, my dear friend.
As badly repulsive as that thought may seem,
It’s still what is true in the end.
So why not bear this load with me
And see what it’s all about?
Why not take this road with me,
Where faith isn’t threatened by doubt,
And belief is more than pompous opinion
Fostered by ignorant fears,
And doubt has a voice, but never dominion
Over volitional spheres?”

That was the day my decision was made,
Reluctant, recalcitrant mule.
That was the way, though distraught and dismayed,
I became a spectacular fool.

At times I see this mountain,
And sometimes I cannot.
And sometimes this crystalline mountain
Moves from its mystical spot.
But always it supports me,
This glass beneath my feet,
Whether or not I’m allowed to see
A visible mountainous street.
And so I keep on plodding
One step at a time,
And still my feet keep trodding
On this treacherous, tremulous climb,
Until my eyes behold him
On the day my race is done,
Bathed in the sunlight golden
Of the glorious Infinite One.

Matt Mattoon


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Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us

Burn a Koran Day

13 09 2010

The biggest headline dominating the news around the world this past week has been about Rev. Terry Jones, pastor of a church in Florida, United States, and his plans to hold an international day to burn copies of the Qur’an. The repercussions around this act have grown progressively and exponentially, as protesters in Pakistan, Afghanistan and across the Middle East expressed their fury, president Obama urged the reverend to reconsider and cancel the event, and at least 11 countries condemned the event. Today, a mob has attacked a school in India, apparently as a form of retaliation.

This seems like a ripe moment for us to confess the stupid things Christians do. The actions of the reverend are, by any standard, profoundly against the Master he set out to confess, who urged people to love friends, neighbors, and enemies, who died on behalf of those who persecuted him, and who asked God on the cross to forgive those who were crucifying him. Rev. Jones seems more motivated by political ideology than by a clear grasp of the gospel of Jesus, and I, for one, would not mind if he were quietly abducted by a SWAT team and left blindfolded in downtown Kabul, even for a day…

We cannot  judge any group, or religion, by the lonely weirdos in it, of course, but we still have to own and confess sins made in the name of Christ. Christians have done wrong, stupid, and shameful things. The list is not small, and it must surely grieve God to the core and makes he want to vomit: defense of slavery, wrong wars, oppression of women and ethnic minorities, colonialism, religious intolerance, elitism, clericalism, forced conversions, anti-Semitism, obstruction of scientific progress, prejudice of gays, massacres of native peoples, complacency before violence done by governments such as during the Holocaust or the Apartheid.

Surely, so many of the wrong actions Christians have done in the past were performed with other motivations dressed with religious language. The medieval crusades motivated soldiers with Christian rhetoric and downplayed the geographical expansiveness behind the efforts, for instance, as happened with the discovery of the Americas and the division of Africa among European powers. The Holy Inquisition was arguably more about the Church’s power and control than about a loving intent of caring for people. And, if I may add, the actions of Rev. Jones, and George W. Bush’s war against Iraq (sorry if this offends any American nationalist friend…), if done with any pretense to Christian justification, did so by confusing democracy with the gospel, freedom with salvation, America with God’s people. The worst of Christian acts were always committed at moments when the teachings of Jesus were confused with, or substituted by, some current ideology. 

So may this moment lead us to true, wholehearted, contrite, genuine, purifying repentance. May we acknowledge our mistakes, ask God for redemption and ask one another for forgiveness, and beg God for the grace to become better people and to do differently in the future. And may we seek to understand the message of Christ better and distill it from alien ideologies, and to get to know the man who, if he appeared in downtown Kabul, or Karachi, or Baghdad, or London, who not be a promoter of conflict, but would win people’s hearts immediately.

René Breuel


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Categories : On Anything and Everything

On Children’s Songs and Politics

10 09 2010

As a father, I listen to lots of music that, to put it nicely, is not my personal preference. Children’s music can be wonderful and full of joy, but after a few hours on repeat even Raffi can make you want to scream and jump out of the window. However, when you listen and sing along to something non-stop, things tend to stick in your head. I was struck a while ago by the chorus of a Raffi song called “The Sharing Song” (from Singable Songs for the Very Young):

It’s mine but you can have some;
with you I’d like to share it.
‘Cause if I share it with you,
you’ll have some too.

It struck me as odd that we devote so much effort to imbed the value of sharing with others in our children when as an adult it holds a vague sentimental meaning at best. The first verse of “The Sharing Song” goes:

Well if I have a cake to eat
If I have a tasty treat
If you come to me and ask
I’ll give some to you.

Sure, a friend who is willing to share his beer is a good buddy, but, isn’t this to miss the point? I mean, on a macro-level, the western world definitely has “cake to eat” (in a non-Marie Antoinette sort of way). As a US citizen I’ve often wondered what would happen if the values we try to instill in our children helped dictate tax law, foreign policy or immigration. At this suggestion some react with fear (they’d overrun us), anger (why are you trying to take what is rightfully mine) or derision (you’re just being naïve). I understand that this is a sensitive issue and that mandated sharing is not really the same thing as voluntary sharing. But still, aren’t you at least curious?

In his brilliant essay, The Gift, Lewis Hyde discusses gifts and gift communities drawing on biblical passages, Hindu scriptures, traditional folk tales, sociological investigations, and poets. He notes that the gift moves “from plenty to emptiness. It seeks the barren, the arid, the stuck and the poor” (24). The community he envisages is one where the strong and well positioned in society demonstrate their strength and position precisely by giving it away to those with less. The poor person’s “neediness is felt throughout the group, and its wealth flows toward the need and fills it without reflection or debate, just as water flows immediately to fill the lowest place” (114).

This is a beautiful image, if somewhat utopian on a world-scale. As a Christian I simultaneously affirm Hyde’s vision wholeheartedly and deny it’s possibility. The Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, proclaims a community of love and generosity (though, obviously, positioned within history and with different assumptions than many of us have today). However, it also reveals the selfishness of humanity and the fear in which we all live. Instead of Raffi’s “if I share it with you, you’ll have some too” we tend to sing “I’ve got to get mine, so screw you.” But God, in Christ, gave himself for us that we might also give ourselves for others, one aspect of what Paul called “filling up what is lacking in Christ’s sufferings” (Col 1:24).

So come on and sing with me: “ It’s mine but you can have some; with you I’d like to share it…”

Ben Edsall


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Categories : Making a Difference

Crossroads

3 09 2010

Travelling through Gambia in 2001, I came to a crossroads:  four lanes converging, traffic lights at the intersection, cars and commotion. It happened to be one of the country’s latest civil engineering accomplishments and the traffic lights here were in fact the first and only of their kind in the country. However, the lights were not the only noteworthy characteristic at this crossroads. No more than twenty yards beyond the intersection, the tarmac for each of the adjoining roads simply ended, merging with featureless dirt as far as the eye could see. Only one road to the crossroads was paved and that was the road I had arrived on. Suddenly I felt lost. On arrival at this junction, anyone’s hopes for a smooth journey beyond it were severely curtailed. Either one hit the rough, Thelma and Louise style, or turned around and simply went back.

Notwithstanding this conspicuous lack of navigable road, numerous drivers approached the crossroads from various other routes, bouncing along the potholed earth to arrive at, and continue through, the only traffic lights in the nation.

Perhaps, like me, you sometimes see that the road ahead is not going to be as smooth as the road behind.  At least for us who set to follow Jesus, rarely is the ‘straight and narrow’ of the Christian life easygoing. (“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me….”, Luke 9:23).  An encounter with Jesus and what follows can even be rougher for the one previously travelling safely than for the one previously living dangerously. Think of the different people who encounter Jesus in the Bible: sinners are redeemed, religious elites condemned; the humble and poor are exalted, the rich turned away empty-handed; prostitutes approach in turmoil and leave in peace, priests approach in confidence and leave perplexed. Whether they chose to follow Jesus or not, people often left on a different and unexpected road to the one that took them to him.

So what of my Gambian crossroads?  When I set out for them, I didn’t expect to have to turn around there.  But like the prodigal son whose crossroads moment in the pig sty causes him to come to his senses and head home (Luke 15), sometimes the only way forward is back.  Thelma and Louise kept going, purposefully driving off the edge of a ravine to their deaths. In doing so they turned their backs on the justice and mercy held out to them.

Some of us need to travel back. Or forward, or maybe need a sharp turn of direction. Maybe in the end it’s not about which direction we go in, rough or smooth, east or west, but about travelling with the one who can truly provide guidance, justice, mercy, peace and home.

Madi Simpson


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Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us

A Label I’m Learning to Embrace

1 09 2010

No one likes being called names: Ignoramus, Incompetent Boob, Fundamentalist, Fatso. Often the abuse has a scintilla of substance, albeit couched in an ad hominem that distracts from one’s own shortcomings. But the latest label thrown my way really hurt: Luddite. That’s right, someone called me a ‘Luddite’.

How would you feel? I was shocked. Partly because of the scathing tone: “Llluddite!” But mostly because I had no idea what it meant.  My self-image as a walking lexicon was shaken.

So I did some research. First, context. The detractor applied the label when he discovered I have no mobile phone. (Or cell phone for my North American counterparts!) “Who in this day and age doesn’t have a mobile? … You Llluddite!” Ouch. So I’m guessing this was a not-so-subtle technological swipe.

Second, history. Resisting the urge to google this insult, I reached for a copy of Technopoly sitting on my shelf.  Social critic Neil Postman might shed some light. (Pause for page flicking.) Ah, the Luddite Movement began with the actions of a youth named Ludlum.  (An unfortunate start to be sure.) His father asked him to fix a malfunctioning weaving machine, but instead Ludlum destroyed the devilish device. Devilish, because between 1811 and 1816, this contraption had replaced skilled fabric workers, resulting in wage cuts, child labour, unemployment, and widespread discontent. In Postman’s words, “since then the term ‘Luddite’ has come to mean an almost childish and certainly naïve opposition to technology.”[1]

“Could this be me?” I wonder. Am I a Luddite simply because I neither possess nor know how to use a mobile phone?  Granted, I have broken electronic equipment over the years; recently I ran my friend’s iPod through a washing cycle before hanging it out to dry, still secure in his jeans pocket. But I’ve never intentionally destroyed any device.  Maybe not owning a phone was such a countercultural stance that I should be considered a naïve opponent of technology?

Postman continued: “But the historical Luddites were neither childish nor naïve. They were people trying desperately to preserve whatever rights, privileges, laws, and customs had given them justice in the older world-view.”

Perhaps there was some substance to this stinging attack.  Now, I’m not judging others for having a mobile. If I worked as a courier, a cell phone would be indispensable. And I don’t believe I’m a hypocrite to borrow a friend’s phone and tell my wife I’ll be late home. But I do resent how we unthinkingly adopt the latest and greatest without ever asking how it affects all our lives.

In many ways, I liked life better BME (before mobiles existed). BME my yes was a yes and my no was a no.  I was organized enough to turn up when I should; I wouldn’t hold off to see if a better social offer came my way, forcing last minute changes of plan. BME I could hold a sustained conversation without interruption, eye-contact and all, without my best friend glancing under the table to text his girlfriend. And BME you could still track me down in the case of an emergency. I was accessible, but not so convenient that you would divulge trivial details better kept to yourself, or treat me like a tool to accomplish tasks truly your own.

In this age when I’m already a digital fish swimming in radio waves, occasionally I need some shelter. I wonder if there is such a thing as “too contactable”—leave a message for me at the Coffee Club if you must, but don’t make out like the world fell apart because I wasn’t a text away.

Thus endeth my rant. Though I do think there is something more significant at stake than destruction of a weaving machine or avoidance of a mobile. Identity is the issue. In subtle ways, we all begin to reflect the technology we use. To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Or, as Postman extends the truism, “To a man with a camera, everything looks like an image. To a man with a computer, everything looks like data.”[2] And to a person with a mobile, everything looks like a text message. I’m not made in the image of a phone.  But I do believe I’m made in the image of a loving God, who respects people as people, and objects as objects. And never shall the twain meet.

Maybe one day I’ll purchase a mobile, and then “Luddite” will give way to “Sell Out.” But until that day, I’m learning to embrace this label. My only wish is that the way I use technology will magnify rather than mutilate God’s image in me.

David Benson

[1] Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 43.

[2] Postman, Technopoly, 14.


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Categories : Bar Conversations and Cheap Advice


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