An Educational Version of IJM

Over the holidays, Andy Crouch of Christianity Today posted an op-ed honoring the International Justice Mission (IJM) for its faithful and amazingly successful work in combating various kinds of slavery around the world. He progressed to suggesting the need for a Christian organization to form around reforming the American education system, which he cited as being broken as much, if not more than those of other nations. I waited several weeks to discuss it here so that school would be back in session and perhaps more folks would be able to join in the conversation.

I have a mixed reaction to him comparing our educational system, even obliquely, to the social justice systems of nations that allow for sex slavery and other abominations to occur under their noses.

Does our education system contain injustices? Yes. We also need to address them. I am confident that Andy (whom I’ve met and like personally) was trying to highlight the dynamic creativity, multilateral expertise and profound effectiveness of IJM, and wanting to build that kind of a team to address domestic education. In that, I heartily agree. As an educator, and a Christian one at that, it did rankle a bit to have my profession/industry even incidentally be compared to Third World pimps. I know that wasn’t what he was trying to say, so I’ll move on to what he was trying to address.

Media Franca

The term “lingua franca” effectively means the tongue of trade. In Jesus’ day, it was a form of Greek. Today it is English—the official language for international communications. It is reasonable then to consider the ‘media franca’ the mode for communicating in an era.

For much of human history, the media franca was oral tradition. With the evolution of the printing press, it became books, though the oral tradition continued strongly through theatre. In the 20^th century, it became a four-horse race between books, radio, film and TV. Now it is all of the above through the true media franca of the Internet.

Intellectual Crisis

Only someone returning from a Vanwinklian nap would not be aware of the incredible and brittle factiousness permeating our culture. Nearly everyone you talk to will shake their head with sorrow at the cracks throughout Western society, and then just as quick point to this or that group as the ones primarily responsible. In a NYTimes review of a new book, The Anointed, the divisive debates roiling in Christendom are brought to fore from the apparent perspective of someone from a more secular worldview to an audience largely outside of the Christian worldview.

The review describes much of the intellectual conflict in evangelicalism, particularly in the States. Old earth versus theistic evolution, whether the Founders were Christian or Deist (or pre-Darwinian humanists, as some now affirm, with credible arguments), the relative value of academic credentials versus a strictly common-sense/sola scriptura based faith are some of the issues, even asking the fundamental and completely academic question of whether or not the Enlightenment was a good thing.

Manliness

What characteristics, positive and negative, come to mind when you think of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’? How does the culture view/define them? How have those changed over time? What is a Biblical description of those terms, and how do they compare to your pictures and those of the culture?

While it seems to me that both masculinity and femininity have been radically redefined in the last 50 years, I’m tempted strongly to evaluate the changes to the concept of manhood as the most negative and damaging. It is as if equality for women was improved at least partly at the expense of men. Rather than lifting both up, women were lifted up and men brought lower.

To put it bluntly, women have become, not just better women, but more masculine, and men have been made more feminine and less masculine, to their detriment.

Carrying Culture Too Far

Today I met a lovely postdoc who is an international Fulbright scholar at a major university. She is working with a professor who happens to originally hail from her native country. There is a surprising bit of friction because the professor apparently perceives her as competition rather than a colleague. While this occurs sometimes in the US, it is fairly rare, but in this woman’s country it is fairly common. So there is no shortage in irony in this situation.

One of the things I love about universities is how cosmopolitan they truly are:  folks from the globe over coming together in scholarly pursuits, sharing and studying a world of knowledge and culture, ideally in harmony. All cultures have their weak spots as they are composed of fallen human beings, but it is still a shame when those weaknesses survive the transfer to a new environment, even though it should be expected.

When these rough spots arise, ideally the egalitarian environment of the university helps resolve them. This should be the hallmark of the Church, yet universities are more known for ‘inclusiveness’ and Christians known for ‘divisiveness.’ Both are stereotypes in every sense of the word. As Christian faculty, we have the opportunity to be peacemakers in both cultures, and from there affect many more.

“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” Proverbs 27:17

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” Matthew 5:9

SDG

Cultural Stupor

We’ve been hearing about these mass deaths of birds and fish recently, and there have been no end to both speculative and inane causes proposed. Conspiracy theorists have been having a heyday with it. Yet, game shows, sports and reality TV dominate our attention as a nation.

Our infatuation with mindless entertainment is distressing, though I sometimes get caught up in it myself. Tonight, I went to a friend’s house for dinner and game night, and while we waited variously for others to arrive or the young children to be put to bed, we watched “Wheel of Fortune” and “Minute to Win It,” even paying attention to the latter over dinner. They’re game shows for Pete’s sake, and “Minute” is a series of mostly silly party games, yet we got into it as these Coyote Ugly-style barmaids tried to win money for one’s parents’ struggling salon and to bring the other’s mother to live nearby from across the country. Then we went on to play our own (board) game.

Diversion is fine, yet I find myself curiously agreeing with Neil Postman that we are likely “Amusing Ourselves to Death.” As we fill our minds with vapid entertainment, does it dull our awareness of the world around us and our ability to analyze what we do perceive?

Why are these birds and fish suddenly dying en masse? In this ordered world of cause and effect that God created, something is causing it, and if the reports are as truly widespread geographically and the numbers of dead animals as high as reports say, then there is something big going on. Of course, unfortunately, the first question we have to deal with is, “are the reports even accurate?” Then we can start chasing after causes.

For better or worse, most people (myself included, somewhat), listen to the story with half an ear, tsk, and move on to the next thing, thinking it’s ‘not my problem,’ letting the authorities and experts figure it out. That’s what they’re paid for, after all.

The question in my mind is, are we frogs in a slowly heating pot, or blissfully ignorant in true safety and comfort? How do we tell the difference? Maybe, we should wake up regardless, and live the lives God has given us and let Heaven be the time for comfort and bliss. Given that He has prepared good works ahead of time for us and warns us of the days being evil, I’d rather live than exist.

The final question is, “How?”

SDG

Universalism?

Yesterday, I suggested that God gives some information to some folks and not the complete story, then gives other, but equally incomplete information to others, with the idea that we pool our knowledge to find more complete understanding and thus bring glory to God. It is an understandable step, then, from that to ‘all roads to God are one,’ so that the exclusivity of the Gospel is weakened.

I do not take that step.

Rather, I see the revelation of God (the Scriptures) to the people of Israel as the linchpin or key to the general revelations that the rest of the world’s cultures have been given. Without something to use as an anchor or framework to hold human knowledge and understanding together, we face the certainty of getting things put together incorrectly, and increasing conflict when the pieces don’t fit together.

I do not believe it is an accident that God placed Israel in the Middle East, near the cradle of civilization, at the crossroads of three continents, so that every culture, whether through trade or war, had to go through that area to reach elsewhere. Israel is at the heart of information exchange for the vast majority of human history, leaving the opportunity for the Jews to witness to the special revelation of God, and in turn apply it to the wisdom and understanding of the nations, and re-disseminate it back to them.

Did they take advantage of the opportunity? Not so well, but not so incompletely either, as their influence has been so much larger than one postage stamp sized country has ever had a right to.

Not only are they placed strategically, but God chose that place for His incarnation, and at a time when the dominance of the Romans lead to an overall peace like the world had never seen, the Pax Romana, with good roads to facilitate a quick spread of the message. There was relative peace, which left people with the luxury of time to consider higher things than mere survival, and the freedom to travel relatively unobstructedly throughout the known world to share it.

Finally, God in the Scriptures repeatedly declares His intent to redeem nations, tribes and tongues; in short, cultures, wisdom, knowledge and understanding. Perhaps, then, we as Christians need to do more listening to others, and filter what we hear through the Scriptures and the indwelt Spirit. Perhaps God is less concerned with conversion and more with redemption. Perhaps if we trusted God’s leading more, and feared going astray less, the power of the Gospel would be more evident, and we would see what real transformation looks like.

Perhaps.

SDG