I remember seeing this on the original air date of February 20, 2007; but had forgotten about it until a conversation yesterday about Craig Ferguson prompted me to look it up on YouTube. I am still astounded at what is a very impressive monologue–he says a lot of counter-intuitive stuff there, not the least about how “not right” it is that we find so much enjoyment in ridiculing the weak, broken, and vulnerable. While I presume Ferguson is not a Christian believer (though he is certainly aware of something beyond himself–if only that great ultimate reality called ‘friends’ or ‘community’), I found myself renewedly aware of the deep, self-saturated sinfulness of my own sense of humor. Embarrassing.

To one Iowan who favors Arizona Governor Bill Richardson, it looks like Barack Obama or John Edwards may be the lesser of three evils (Hillary Clinton being the third). The excerpt below comes from a piece on NPR this morning, Iowa Caucuses Do or Die for Some Democrats, by David Greene:

As one of the candidates with lower poll numbers, Richardson’s best hope for doing well in the caucuses may be winning over people like Tony Ross. [...] Ross tells Richardson he’s worried about Hillary Clinton getting the nomination because he thinks she may lose to a Republican.

“So my biggest fear going to caucus for Richardson is that I would drain support from someone else,” Ross says.

Richardson has no easy answer. He says that if he gets the nomination, he could beat a Republican.

Afterwards, when asked if he plans to caucus for Richardson, Ross says he is unsure. Richardson is hands down his favorite, he says. Still, Ross does not know if Richardson will have the resources to stay in the race in the long term.

“I’m afraid if I throw my support to him and he does not get enough bounce out of Iowa, it drains support from Edwards and Obama, and Mrs. Clinton comes out as the eventual nominee. That just worries me,” Ross says.

This just kills me. Seriously. You should have seen heard me screaming in the shower. This mindset would be easier to stomach were it not for the fact that I have listened to this same “wasted vote myth” be repeated over and over again this election season. If ever there were a time to cast a vote for the person you really wanted to support, would it not be now when the major parties have yet to select their candidate? Wake up America! Stop listening to the pundits, the pollsters and playing into the self-fulfilling prophecies and simply vote your conscience!

Tonight was to be the last of our men’s groups until after the new year. We did not meet this past Wednesday because of Thanksgiving and in classic Scott fashion I forgot to send out the weekly reminder. The consequence was that it was just Bill and me eating my wife’s delicious chocolate-chip pumpkin-loaf and bantering about John Piper’s tendency to make everything so black and white. Please do not get me wrong–Piper asks relevant and important questions but sometimes comes across as too definitive (though for good reason considering the primary audience). One of the chapters we were supposed to cover in Don’t Waste Your Life was “Chapter 7: Living to Prove He is More Precious Than Life.” By divine providence I later stumbled across an email exchange with my pastor from a couple months ago. It quickly reminded me that we should never treat the Christian life like a checklist, as if we have figured certain things out with enough finality that they never need be revisited. And so the Lord continues to persistently and tenderly press me on the [central, radical and essential] questions of living “faithfully” as a covenant child of the God of grace, justice, mercy, and goodness in the face of (and in the midst of) poverty and brokenness.

In his book The Problem of Wine Skins: Church Structure in a Technological Age (IVP, 1975), Howard Snyder writes:

In the Old Testament, God’s concern with the poor consistently appears within the context of the justice of God and the working of justice among God’s people. Thus, biblically, words such as “the poor,” “the needy,” “the oppressed,” “the sojourner,” typically have moral content, relating to God’s requirements for justice. This is not easily comprehended in today’s world because “the poor” does not have such a moral content for us. It has a purely descriptive sense; one might say that for us it is a purely secular word. But what we must see is that poverty itself is of ethical significance – the poor is a moral category. In God’s world there is no human condition which escapes moral significance; and the poor, and the treatment they receive, are strong indicators of the faithfulness of God’s people.
(quoted by Waldron Scott in Bring Forth Justice [Paternoster, 1980, 1997])

The above is a helpful observation — namely, that “poverty itself is of ethical significance … the poor, and the treatment they receive, are strong indicators of the faithfulness of God’s people.” — especially when you consider some of the observations and comments from a recent Barna survey (okay, so Barna will win no prizes for careful sociological research, but his surveys do provide helpful, if informal, snapshots of the state of the evangelical heart.):

Interestingly, evangelical Christians were only half as likely (11%) as the rest of the adult population to deem poverty to be the nation’s most vexing social challenge. Asian Americans (11%) were similarly less likely to see the issue in this way.

Only HALF AS LIKELY? Admittedly, most evangelicals would deem “salvation” as the nation’s most vexing social challenge, but still: “half as likely”? What about the (coincidental?) correlation between “evangelical Christians” and “Asian Americans”? Of course, there is no necessary (explicit or implicit) link between the two pieces of data, but the juxtaposition in a recent Barna report raises the question: what is it about “evangelical Christianity” that would produce a similar attitude toward poverty as that among “Asian Americans”? Might it be that our informal comparison between “Japanese Buddhism” and “Bible-belt Christianity” is a bit more substantive than we have been willing to allow? Is this attitude toward poverty among Asian Americans related to that body of worldview ideas/values that hinders (through willful blindness, ignorance, and stubbornness; cf Ephesians 4:17ff) Asian Americans from truly hearing the gospel of God in Jesus Christ? And do “evangelical Christians” share the same worldview structures? That is, are “evangelical Christians” similarly hindered from hearing the gospel of God in Jesus Christ?

In this light, the following paragraph from later in the same Barna report is rather interesting:

In like manner, people groups that are more affluent provided the smallest estimates of poverty. On average, people from households earning more than $60,000 as well as those who have a college degree estimated the poverty rate to be 20% – substantially below the typical estimate offered by adults, but still significantly higher than the actual rate published by the Census Bureau.

Statistically, it appears that our material “well-being” [in itself a loaded use of a loaded-term ...] and consequent lifestyle actually blinds us to the needs of those around us: think about it — we travel well-maintained roads from white-collar business districts to well manicured subdivisions: our daily commute, by design, does not take us through the most needy parts of our community; we shop at the cleanest stores in the most pristinely and carefully developed areas, often unaware of the people displaced by the development. On occasion — only about 20% of the time, to use the above statistic — we stumble uncomfortably across the “poverty” [by which WE mean those "less fortunate" {whatever that slippery term means} than us] around us and so are forced to acknowledge that “yes, it’s there” — and someone should do something about it.

The Barna article concludes:

Barna expressed surprise that devout Christians were not more engaged with the issue. “Given the extensive comments in the Bible regarding the importance of taking care of the poor, we expected to see a larger distinction between the responses of Christians and non-Christians. As churches seek social causes through which to engage people and their faith, facilitating hands-on responses to poverty would probably activate a lot of latent faith and resources.”

So I wonder (and view Piper’s chapter in new light): how far have I drifted from the gospel of God in Jesus Christ that I fail to apprehend the essential, organic — and profoundly moral — link between “a life worthy of the calling” and “my obligations to the poor”? How far have I drifted, similarly, that I fail to apprehend the essential, prime place of “suffering” as God’s good and gracious tool by which he “grows me in grace”? What gospel is it that shapes me if not the gospel of God in Jesus Christ? What spirit and mind possess me if not the Spirit and Mind of Christ who willingly laid aside his own wealth and privilege to serve a wretch like me, even paying my full debt?

“Having stuff hanging from your rearview mirror isn’t worth somebody’s life. We can all relate to what it’s like to be in a car and do something stupid, but as a result, people are reluctant to punish [distracted drivers]. They think, ‘If someone’s dead, what good is it going to do?’ It used to be that way with drunk drivers, too. We need to put more responsibility on what it means to drive an automobile. It’s criminal to not be in control of your car, and there should be consequences for it.”
Christine Culver, Executive Director of the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition, as quoted in “Broken” by David Darlington in the January/February 2008 issue of Bicycling magazine

Over the weekend I had a few casual conversations with people about the finish of the Tour de France. “They’re all dopers!”; “Who isn’t doping?”; and “Did you watch the drug tour?” were common catch-phrases. I even got flack from family for tuning in to Versus each evening to watch the race. It is clear that the doping scandals of 2006 and 2007 have turned off many would-be cycling fans. This brings me to the point I was trying to make in this post (albeit with sarcasm), which is that I actually think pro-bicycling is doing what other professional sports should be doing to eliminate the use of performance enhancing drugs: cheaters are being caught and clean riders are continuing to race.

My only criticisms over the way cycling handles doping cases have to do with 1) media leaks which circumvent the due process rights of the riders; and 2) casting the net so wide, or weaving the holes so small, that innocent people get caught up in what can easily become a career ending rush to judgement. Suspend or ban riders when there is clear proof of cheating, but provide the same protections that we afford common criminals. That said, here in America we seem to prefer to bury our heads in the sand (e.g., the PGA has no drug testing program whatsoever), or we just accept that doping is okay so long as the doper plays for our team (as appears to be the case in San Fransicso).