Fast from Violence this Lent

Image By LINUZ90

I deeply love this initiative being started by my friend, Rev. Gregory Livingston.

In response to the growing violence in Chicagoland (and in the world for that matter), Pastor Greg is calling especially upon followers of Christ to give up violence for Lent.  There are seven steps to this:


7 Point Anti-Violence Plan - LENT 2013 (February 13 - March 30)

1. Avoid: Alcohol, Cigarettes & Bad Food Choices.
2. Negative Media
3. Develop your Inner-Self through Prayer, Meditation & Centering
4. Replace Acts of Violence with Acts of Charity
5. Read Positive, Proactive & Redemptive Literature
6. Volunteer at your Local School, After School Program and/or Community Center
7. Have your Place of Worship sponsor a Youth Group/Activity

So, grab the flyer here for your church and get started today.

What is the "theology of a gangsta"?

On the road today and had a great conversation with a friend about the concept of "Gangsta Theology". It was intriguing to hear what he had to say about how theistic gang-culture is. Welli encouraged him to write something about it and I hope the results will make it to this blog eventually. For now, I'm curious whether any of you have insights on this. I've tried to boil this down into some specific questions, but I can't quite formulate them. Perhaps you can?

If this topic interests you, let me encourage you to check out what my friend, Pastor Gregory Seal Livingston, is doing to engage violence with the hope of Christ this Lent. Read more here:

"Fasting From Violence" -- Lent 2013 http://huff.to/11SbUi0

Okay, talk to me about violence and Jesus. What does it mean to bring good news in an increasingly violent world?

Violence between Bhutanese-Nepalis & African-Americans in Columbus, Ohio

This kind of story is one of the untold (or at least lesser-told) parts of the refugee resettlement story. Refugees don't immediately lay hold of "the American dream" but are rather initially settled in poverty. Very often, they are resettled into some of the most impoverished and crime-ridden parts of the country. Unfortunately, violence, robberies, and even murders are the result. Refugees are often easy targets for such things.

I can testify to the fact that there is a growing sense of fear particularly among the Bhutanese refugees of their African-American neighbors. Every story such as the one below is taken as evidence that every black person is to be feared as a threat. The countless counter-examples that can be provided usually prove unable to outweigh even one story of "black-on-Bhutanese" violence. So, while the story below tries hard to claim that race and ethnicity played no role in the situation, such an assertion is impossible to believe.

City wants residents at apartment complex to meet on conflicts | The Columbus Dispatch: "By the time police arrived after an onlooker called 911, the melee had grown. One woman who saw the fight said that as many as 20 Bhutanese Nepali refugees were beating four black men."

Pray for Uganda: Violent Riots in the Streets

I just heard about this from a friend online and then contacted my sister who is living in Kampala.  She's okay but said that they haven't been able to leave their house today.  I hope you will pray for the nation of Uganda and ask God to continue to advance his Kingdom there.

Noah in Cross-Cultural Context (Pt.1): Communicating Corruption

I recently completed a 2-part message (or series) on the story of Noah and the Flood from Genesis 6-10 at TriEak Parmeshwar Mandali (TPM), the Nepali-speaking church that I pastor in the Chicago area.  Over the next couple days or so, let me post here some of the thoughts I’ve had on the text and some reflections on my process of teaching this story in a cross-cultural context to Hindu-background Bhutanese and Nepalis with little to no prior experience with the Bible.

Noah’s story comes towards the end of an extended series of messages that I’ve been preaching at TPM that have taken us through the first 11 chapters of the Genesis.  Nearly all of my hearers have had no prior exposure to the content of Genesis, so we’ve been charting new territory.  I’m not going to take the time here to go back through the previous stories that we’ve encountered (for tips on Chronological Bible Storying click here).  I’ll just mention that I have been careful to explain how this particular story relates to the broader Biblical context and story of redemption.  We’ve made use of the “bible-storying cloth” as a helpful visual aid for this.

Communicating the Concept of Corruption Cross-Culturally

After setting up the context, I described the world of Noah as that of increasing population and increasing wickedness (दुष्टता).  The Biblical text (Gen. 6:11) describes a world of corruption, filled with violence (पृथ्वी भष्ट बएको र उपद्रवले भरिएको थियो). I felt that it was important to give special emphasis to a “world filled with violence” to my Bhutanese-Nepali refugee audience that didn’t need to be convinced of the evil of violence.  Prior to preaching, I was concerned that some might be troubled with the way God judged the earth in the days of Noah.  However, once they took time to consider a “world filled with violence”, they needed little convincing that God should indeed judge such a world.  This was great because it isn’t uncommon to encounter resistance when speaking to people from Hindu backgrounds about sin and God’s desire to punish it.  For my Bhutanese-Nepali audience however, their intimate experience with the evil of violence actually provided them with a unique handle on the Noah story and what it says about the nature of God.

In stressing this, I was able to basically introduce this as a story of God’s judgment against sin in the midst of which was a beautiful act of salvation.  My point today being that a typical stumbling block to the Noah story was avoided by honing in on a particular form of evil that both appeared in the Biblical text and resonated with my audience.  For me, this proved another encouraging affirmation that the better I understand my audience, the more effectively I’ll be able to communicate to them the Word of God.