In a BBC article today, Mark Mardell writes:

The voices I hear on the streets [in Europe]…
mourn the fact that there is no leader with a map, a compass and a purpose, who can offer some hope that there is a way out of the swamp…
It chills me a little. ‘No more heroes any more’ I think to myself.
The shadow of the 30s, bullies in big boots with simplistic solutions, hangs heavily over Europe’s economic woes. History surely isn’t about to repeat itself?
Yet in nearly all our countries there is a vacancy for someone who understands people’s pain even if he or she cannot make it go away, and for someone who appears to have a clear plan that has a chance of working.
As far as I am concerned, those in need of equine support or with a love of uniforms need not apply.

Please pray for this continent!

Hope you’ve had a wonderful Christmas-tide and a super start to the new year!
Report on Pre-Christmas: The “Festival of Light” went wonderfully! We had about 50 people in the Garden House (former kindergarten building) as we explained the Jewish festival of Chanukka and its connection to Jesus’ claim to be “the Light of the world”. Some deeply personal conversations with several “not-yet” believers resulted. Please pray that God’s Spirit will use the love and friendship these folk sensed together with the content of the message and questions discussed to move them closer to Jesus!
Three days later, we traveled to the western part of Germany to celebrate Christmas with Daniel’s parents (Erich and Doris) and family and to speak at the home church of his mother in the Westerwald (”Western-forest”).
It was a wonderful time: these are the folk who sent a team of professional tradesmen from the congregation to lay paving stones for the back area patio here in Haus Nazareth. They are warm, transparent people who have a deep desire to do things for God’s Kingdom.
I preached on the three sermons of the Apostle Paul in Acts 13-17… focusing in particular on the reason why Paul gave so much background information to the non-Jewish audiences to whom he spoke.
This is an important topic for people working in a post-Christian environment like Berlin, with only 1.5% church attendance. The simple reason is: the story of Jesus and His life and sacrifice for us is only truly understandable if you have what the film industry calls the “backstory” of the reality of cosmic evil, creation, the fall of the human race into enmity with God and the divine initiative He took to reclaim and redeem His lost creation.

Clark visiting with some of the tradesmen and their wives after the service

More good news: Our boxes from the U.S. arrived today! Since my back is also doing quite a bit better, we were able to get them up the front stairs into the building!

Jesus was an intense realist about the way the world system works. That is comforting in the light of the daily headlines about financial crisis and systemic meltdown in the banking sector. His early followers recalled clearly His encouragement to “seek first the kingdom of God” and the promise that if they did, “all these things [necessary shelter, food, clothing, etc.] will be given to you” (Matthew 6:33)

In interaction with some friends about the current situation, the name of Noriel Roubini has kept coming up and I wanted to pass along a couple of links that may help in clarifying the factual side of what’s happening:

Roubini is an professor of economics at New York University that has been predicting for five years or more exactly the scenario that is now playing out.

The New York Times ran an article on him recently. It makes for bracing reading.

Two articles by Glenn Beck summarize what Roubini is driving at:

This one was written on February 28th of this year.

This piece came out a couple of days ago.

In all of the turmoil, I’m comforted by Jesus’ words: “Peace I leave with you… my peace I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled or afraid!”

Shalom!

I mentioned last time that you might be surprised at which European countries have the healthiest birthrates. Perhaps you thought of some of the “family-friendly” southern European countries like Italy, Greece and Spain. In fact, these nations have some of the lowest fertility rates in the world (about 1.3 children per couple).

However, childlessness is peculiarly high in Germany and Austria, too. Shorto cites a study that found that 27.8 percent of German women born in 1960 were childless. This rate is “far higher than in any other European country. (The rate in France, for example, was 10.7.) When European women age 18 to 34 were asked in another study to state their ideal number of children, 16.6 percent of those in Germany and 12.6 percent in Austria answered ‘none.’ (In Italy, by comparison, this figure was 3.8 percent.) The main reason seems to be a basic change in attitudes on the part of some women as to their ‘natural’ role.”

To modern, post-Christian Europeans, childlessness is emerging as an ideal lifestyle. Why is this?

The thinking of a nation or society can become, in the words of the Apostle Paul (Romans 1), “futile” and people’s hearts “darkened”. Eventually, the “truth of God” is exchanged for a lie, resulting in direct consequences in the relationship between man and woman. I suspect that the Western world in general - and Europe in particular - is farther along this road than any of us would like to imagine.

How does this play out?

Let’s start with the fact that the European countries with the healthiest birthrates are the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands; England and France are also relatively better off. Why would these countries - which would certainly be reckoned as some of the most “post-Christian” - be better off than the ostensibly more “religious” Roman Catholic south? Shorto points to a problem deeply rooted in the relationship between man and woman that is embedded in the “culture” of family life in the southern tier of Mediterranean nations, Germany and Austria. The problem is with the willingness of the fathers to be full partners in the home and in the raising of children.

Fathers in the nations with the healthiest birth rates are significantly more committed to a “partnership” model of marriage. Dutch fathers, for instance, “change more diapers, pick up more kids after soccer practice and clean up the living room more often than Italian fathers; therefore, relative to the population, there are more Dutch babies than Italian babies being born. As Mencarini said, ‘It’s about how much the man participates in child care.’”

Shorto argues that this is also the case in the United States, which enjoys the highest fertility rate of almost any developed country. In addition to the flexibility of U.S. society and the American job market, he points to “the relatively conservative and religiously oriented nature of American society, which both encourage larger families. It’s also true that mores have evolved in the U.S. to the point where not only is it socially acceptable for fathers to be active participants in raising children, but it’s also often socially unacceptable for them to do otherwise.”

Our good friends, Dave and Claudia Arp, who started their work of “Marriage Alive” in Europe, have being teaching a Biblically-based partnership model of marriage for years. It’s interesting that European social scientists are now uncovering empirical data that supports the direction of their teaching. (I’d encourage you to take a look at Dave and Claudia’s website .)

Shorto concludes his NY Times article with a dark glance at the future. He quotes Carl Haub of the Population Reference Bureau: “You can’t keep going with a completely upside-down age distribution, with the pyramid standing on its point. You can’t have a country where everybody lives in a nursing home.”

Please pray for Europe!

Mainline national media, both in Germany and in the U.S., have leaned - for as long as I can remember - toward the negative in reporting about classic Christianity (often under the codewords “evangelical” and “right wing”). A perceptive friend who is a keen analyst of cultural trends warned 15 years ago that two other labels of choice in the attack were going to be “fundamentalist” and “fascist”.

A recent article in Der Spiegel (28. April, 2008), a leading national news magazine, highlights the trend. This follows a particularly malicious media attack on Christival, a rally of young evangelical Christians. The point of the attack was against a seminar being offered for people with homoerotic feelings who wanted to change. The leader of the “Green” party in parliament, himself an active member of the gay movement, led the attack.

The Spiegel article cleverly weaves a report on evangelical outreach in Germany that ties young evangelical groups to conservative political circles in the USA. The young Berlin Projekt church, for instance, is linked to George Bush via the following chain of logic: The “Berlin Projekt” is friends with “Redeemer Presbyterian Church” in New York, which in turn belongs to the “Presbyterian Church in America”; the PCA is the denomination of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; therefore, the “Berlin Projekt” must be associated with George Bush’s political and military program.

If a student in one of my philosophy classes tried to argue a point with that kind of logic, I’d give him an instant “F” (German = “6”) on the spot! But that is, unfortunately, not untypical of the “evidence” that is used in these kind of attacks. (If your German is up to it, you can read the Spiegel article online.)

Is this all part of a conspiracy? It’s hard to tell; often the effect of a network of contacts is even stronger than a centrally planned action. But there is one power that penetrates the deepest secrets and brings light into darkness: prayer.

[This is the fourth and last of Paul Cowan's reflections on the film Amazing Grace. Thanks, Paul, for letting us share in your thinking and reflection!]

Faithfulness, without ‘theories’ and predictions of success, seems the only way forward in society, doesn’t it? Hope is only anchored in the belief that there will be an ultimate end to “this world” - maybe 2 yrs down the road, or 2,000 yrs, or maybe even 200,000 yrs! - and an ultimate, “new earth and new heaven”. Right?

So, I think we work for the cup of cold water for this person and that family; and we just continue until we die. It is enough. If God gives a broader success, PTL. If it doesn’t come, while we continue to work for it, we just continue to work for it. And sometimes martyrdom comes. Which is not sought for (like Islam), but is accepted.

Scripture do seem to indicate a reward comes “later” - The Real reward.

I say all the above, living a contradiction: the single most important theological phrase for what I do, in my vocation, is: “Thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven”.

What expectations does the Bible really hold out for us for successes here on earth?
If conceivably some Wilberforces, and some Clapham Societies, did emerge today, what hopes should there really be? Besides slavery, it was the reform of “manners” (societal values) Wilberforce aimed at. Again, where is Britain on that today? Or for that matter, the USA? Especially in light of the fact that less than 50% of the boys today grow up with a living and intimate experience of a father! Where will we be in 20 years?

While having a chai tea latte (very yuppie! oops… yummie… yummy!) and waiting for the chiropractor to return to his office, I read an article on German humor in today’s Wall Street Journal.
I thought you might be interested:

Germans aren’t necessarily known for their humor. Still, Viacom believes it can build an audience for the German version of Comedy Central by running homegrown programs alongside foreign fare. Its most popular show so far is “Para-Comedy,” produced for Viacom by Dortmund- based Prime Productions. The show follows handicapped people who play practical jokes on unsuspecting passersby, “Candid Camera” style. In one episode, a blind woman asks a couple to give her guide dog directions. They readily oblige. “You have to go straight down that way and on the left you’ll see a large fountain. Take a left and go about 30 meters,” the man tells the Labrador retriever, stroking its head. “Did you get that?”
It might shock the sensibilities of some, but those involved say their motivation is to break down stereotypes of handicapped people through humor. “German humor is very down-to-earth,” adds Catherine Muhlemann, a Swiss executive who heads Viacom in Germany.

Humor can be a key to the heart. (Witness how Jesus used humorous images to drive home a point. He skewered the “super-pious”, for instance, by saying that they carefully insured their water was kosher by filtering out every gnat, while overlooking the fact that they were swallowing a whole camel - a notably unclean animal!).

After living in Germany for almost thirty years, I’d add just a couple of additional observations to the Wall Street Journal comments:
- German humor has a strong affinity to Jewish humor. There is a strong sense of both the joy of life and its shadow side. This probably isn’t unusual, since Jewish and German culture were so intertwined over centuries. (Germany was the place for Jewish life until the horrors of the so-called “Third Reich”).
- German jokes are seldom self-directed. Unlike the Irish or the English, or - to some extent - the Americans, Germans do not usually tell jokes on themselves.

(When we see each other personally, ask me to tell you my all-time favorite Irish joke. It was told to me by my friend, David Wilson, who directed the Irish work of Campus Crusade for many years.)

Have a wonderful weekend. Please keep praying for the German people - and for our friend in Korea, Jin-Ok, and her associates in the mission congress.

Since I’ve been reflecting on the interface between faith and action and how that can play out in social and political life, I’d like to recommend a recent article by Jeffrey Goldberg in The New Yorker about Michael Gerson, senior policy advisor to President Bush and former chief speech writer.

I think it illustrates very well the cross-currents and ambiguities facing someone trying to live out their faith in the real world.

Let me know what you think of the article!

P.S. Some have suggested a little larger and clearer typeface, so I thought we could try this out. Please tell me if it helps!