Christianity/Politics/Religion/Violence

Charles Stanley and his "Messengers"

Posted on by stephen t berg / 15 Comments

I have no doubt that Dr. Charles Stanley is sincere in his desire to encourage the U.S. troops fighting in Iraq. But his “Messenger” struck me as, well, a garish idea. 

It’s not so much the smack of self-promotion in the guise of “filling a great need” by providing the army with “spiritual nourishment.” It’s the aura of pronouncement, of the square-toed Sunday school teacher who tells you what it’s like, what you need, when you know he has never been where you’ve been.That is, it’s “In Touch’s” envelope of safe and willing ignorance of what really goes on and what happens to the psyche of soldiers in war, specifically this sad and detestable war. (Here I would implore Charles Stanley’s “In Touch” readers to go out and pick up Chris Hedges’, “War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.”)

Now, I’ve disagreed sharply with Stanley on a couple of previous posts–over his Biblical justifications for war, which in effect is a Christian sacralizing of war–so maybe I’m over-reacting, or maybe I’m reacting to him, personally. I’ll let you decide. If you’ve a moment (to squander) here’s what’s on his site:

Thousands of U.S. troops are now stationed around the world. Far from their families, friends, and churches, they have a tremendous need for encouragement and truth from the Scriptures. But their missions often carry them far from a chapel and chaplain.

Understanding the need for spiritual instruction that men and women in combat areas have, Dr. Charles Stanley said, “In Touch wants to help military chaplains share the love of Jesus with U.S. soldiers. Today’s technology is providing amazing ways to share the gospel with people around the world.”

messenger-whitebgThe In Touch Ministries Messenger is a nearly indestructible solar-powered audio device designed specifically for the American soldier. It holds more than 70 hours of messages from the ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley, including these powerful series:

-Facing Life’s Obstacles
-Living the Extraordinary Life
-The Ways of God
-How to Release Your Burdens
-Living in the Power of the Holy Spirit

    The need is great, and the Messenger will be a vital tool to provide spiritual nourishment to members of the U.S. military. Its lightweight construction, earphone jack, and solar panels for recharging make it the ideal audio player for troops in the field.

In Touch Ministries is committed to delivering 20,000 Messengers to U.S. troops in August 2007. This initiative is powered by Dr. Stanley’s desire to share the Word of God with military men and women everywhere. But its level of success will be a direct result of the support we receive from In Touch partners.

The good news here is that this is something you can feel good about not supporting.

Just one more thing Dr. Stanley. While your helping the strafed and hunkered troops to “Face Life’s Obstacles,” and “Live the Extraordinary Life,” perhaps you take a couple minutes of those seventy hours to explain how their President, with supporters such as yourself, concluded that their lives were necessarily expendable for the illusion of containment of a terrorist element that will only grow as a result of the war and ongoing occupation, and how, again, the war has nothing to do with the control of a diminishing natural resource. And again, how the gospel endorses all this. Or is everything explained in your new book , Landmine’s in the Path of the Believer? (Yes that’s the title.)

Freedom/Spirituality

Divine Wing-shadow

Posted on by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

Walking in the predawn this morning, the signs of fall of hidden from view, you could have thought you were entering early summer. The slow warm breeze anticipated a clear, sun-soaked day. The air was temperate, beach-buoyant, welcoming. Even the pavement seemed content, distant from any contracting, crack-inducing cold.

sunsetstraight This kind of warm-dark covers you like a blanket. It keeps out the ice chips and bayonet wind; it keeps out the tempests and mortal fears.

If I had a baptized or even anointed imagination I’d say it was like walking in Divine wing-shadow. Where, on reflection, we all should walk, at least once a day. Because in this foreshadowing of eternity we are free of the constricting day ahead, and free from any controlling past.

Fisheagel Those who imagine themselves here, who “image” themselves here, are doing dress rehearsals for eternity–maybe more. Maybe they are actually  stitching a piece of eternity into the temporal rising and setting of our day. And in this space we are free and safe.

A safe place is soul refuge. And “safe” is one of the three things we humans need. Safety, belonging and a measure of respect, will see us through, see us grow into brothers and sisters, see us see in the other the best kind of sibling.

God bless free and safe people, who in their presence, make others free and safe.

Beauty/Spirituality

In this park

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I see in this park, a subspecies of reality, forms of life, death, and beauty.

I see beautiful people. Faces, bodies, all symmetry. I see friends, walking together, couples playing with children, two people playing bocce-ball, a family chatting and walking and planning.

I see the ungainly. I see people we call handicapped. The ones that remind us by their exteriors that our interiors are rarely symmetrical. It was M. Muggeridge who called them heavenly messengers.

wedding I see a wedding group posing for pictures on concrete stairs bordered by petunias in front of something called a centennial flame.

I see an old man, wearing a once fashionable straw hat leaning into evergreen shrubs taking note of his own anomie. It may be that his entrance into the cold desolation of solitude is a life-line. It may be his precondition to hope.

I see the work of a gardener challenged. I see decrease, no longer imperceptible change, change wholesale–in the leaves of the Elm.

I see us all, knowingly or not, facing immense uncertainty, all standing on the threshold of emptiness, hoping only to propel some part of a well lived moment into the future.

I see beauty in a landing magpie.

I see every rainbow colour in the flared tail feathers and pinions of a landing magpie.

Spirituality

Giving Fear the Pass

Posted on by stephen t berg / 1 Comment

Last night below my window I heard: “Stop! Police!” I heard feet racing on the grit littered back-alley asphalt. And then I heard the dogs barking at someone cornered half a block away. I heard some yelling and then it was over. Only the police car lights raining reflections high on the bedroom wall remained. And the bumpy rhythm of downtown traffic at midnight returned.

I still shrink from sirens, from noises at night. I shrink from “Stop Police!” I’ve never been able to embrace my fears–like it says someplace in a personal development text. I never really knew what embracing would look like, or, I suppose, what it meant.

Fearface I understand too well the evolutionary, instinctual, self-preservationist, value of fear. But after that, after the automatic reflex, I’m not sure value and fear should be in the same sentence.

While a night-siren immediately calls up all kinds of fears–where are the kids? will a knock come? will I receive “the call?” is there a break-in, a knife, a gun around the corner? and on and on, it’s what lingers, the fear hang-over, the fears we’ve not quite trained to stay out of range, that can dictate to us our days.  

So while I will never embrace my fears, I try not to resist them either. Instead I let them move over me and watch them as they pass, even focus on each fear as it passes. For I have learned that not doing so gives them power. Ignorance of fear only works if it is truly ignorance and not a kind of ignoring.

It seems that identifying fear, giving it a name, is already a response to fear. And perhaps, mysteriously, a benign contemplation of fear leads us toward an opening of love, the final arbiter of fear. Perhaps this was in the mind of the ancient Hebrew poet who wrote “I sought the LORD, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.”