My friend Cynthia LaGrou contacted me about writing a short piece for a collection on this very topic.  The project is now out and available through Samizdat Creative.  The price is ridiculously cheap for such a great collection of voices.  Some of the authors are my friends and include:

Reimagining a Woman’s Role in the Church by Frank Viola

Coloring Outside the Christian Circle By Becky Garrison

Why We Need Mothers & Fathers & Sisters & Brothers & Daughters & Sons By Kathy Escobar

Leadership Lenses, Jungian Archetypes and Gender By Leonard Hjalmarson

Shoulders to Stand On: The role of men in restoring the woman’s voice By Jeff McQuilkin

My piece is an expanded version of my original post called The Courageous Imagination – A Call to Men

Abstract: Deep within the heart of a man is the desire to fight for something. Yet also embedded within a man is the destructive bent to rule over the woman. History is littered with the undeniable evidence of oppression towards women. What would happen if men took up the courageous call to address one of the deepest needs of the heart by restoring one of our deepest bents, to literally change the course of history and fight for women.

This is a conference I wish I could go to.  Some friends of mine are hosting a conference called A Sustainable Faith, April 23rd-24th in St Petersburg, FL.  Its on “Justice in the real world.”  They’re asking how we can be  sustainably committed to justice over the long haul and not become overwhelmed or disenchanted.  I like it.

The conference main speakers include Shane Claiborne, Danielle Shroyer, and Spencer Burke.  There are also a ton of breakout workshops.  And the cost is a ridiculously low $65 before March 25th.  Get it while its cheap.

Yesterday the Healthcare bill passed 219 – 212.  Obama’s persistence paid off.

My first inclination was that this is a political victory for Obama. In 2 1/2 years Obama will have the trump card that will get him elected for four more years.  He’ll be able to stand in front of the American people with evidence of his tenacity, strategy and persistence. These are hard things to come by in American politics.  He’ll be able to stand in front of the Republican party and say, “I won.” (But I doubt he’d do that.)

But is this really a victory for Obama?

Some pundits on CNN were calling this the most important civil rights bill in the last 40 years.  It can only be compared to the sweeping changes made by Kennedy and Johnson because it directly affects the poor and working class.  For the first time in America’s history, the representatives essentially said that caring for all the people is a mandate.  Healthcare is a basic right of the people.

I feel this tension.  I pay for my own healthcare costs. I have the most basic plan available with a massive $7,500 deductible and I still pay about $8,000 a year for my family.  I don’t even know how some families make it.  It’s a huge cost.  And I haven’t been to the doctor in ten years. I’ve watched my basic plan get stripped down and the cost raised every single quarter for about six years.  Something is deeply broken.

I have a lot of friends who are concerned for the cost of the whole thing.  But I would suggest that the cost of not doing it is higher. When we exclude a category, we’re setting up the possibility of becoming one in that category. If the recession taught us anything it is that there are a lot of people closer to bankruptcy and the edge than we thought.  This bill is essentially saying, “We’re not going to leave you behind.”

(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty.)

My favorite line: “If I help the poor, what’s in it for me.”  Gotta love Colbert’s sense of satire.

What if the evidence suggest women are actually better at leading than men?

Many of you know I’m a huge proponent of women’s leadership.  I’ve led the Call To Men to lead the way in lifting up women.  I’ve called out injustice and oppression. My primary reason for lifting up women is based in the idea that humanity can only see the whole image of God in BOTH the man and the woman.  Adam was originally both expressions.  So in order to see the God image in ourselves (I’m speaking from a man’s perspective) we need women fully integrated into the decision making process, leading the way.

But recently I came across an interesting article that kind of caught my attention in a new way.  What if the historical evidence suggests women are just better leaders than men?  The Pew Forum study on religion revealed a startling piece of evidence.  Women just stay with God better and in more numbers than men.  It’s just a fact.  And as the study suggests, women have been doing this for long periods of time.

I have a Masters in Organization Leadership and I can tell you that the evidence of leadership is based in modeling the defined response, not just talking about it.  The capacity to influence is rooted in integrity to an idea, not just the capacity to speak about it.  This idea was deeply explored in Robert Greenleafs Servant Leadership.  A true leader is the servant of all.  Even Jesus suggested this with his own words.

Mark 9:35 – Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.”

And to press the evidence, women have been doing this even in the face of injustice and oppression towards women.  Women have remained faithful even in spite of the injustice. The article calls out the injustice.

Not a single major faith is led by members of its female flock, and the more deeply adherent a religious group becomes, the less freedom it offers its women, not to mention power. It’s hard not to compare women sticking with faith to wives confined to bad marriages: They’re so committed to the institution that they’ll willingly shrink under mistreatment just to maintain their own status quo.

In other words, history reveals that women just get it better than men. They reveal stronger faith. And if we’re going to be honest about who we’re really going to follow, wouldn’t it then be more honest to admit that women are better leaders?

What better way to explore the Adventurous Life than to begin being honest with ourselves.  The real winner is all of us.  To begin including women into the idea of leadership means we can begin to see the whole image of God in our midst.  We can begin to see the beautiful voice that has been missing in the conversation for so long.

The One Campaign has a new video out.  My favorite line is, “It’s not about charity.  It’s about justice.”  Amen to that.

Recently I asked what it meant to approach conflict with the idea that, “There is no war!“  And without a doubt the dialogs on non-violent resistance always leads to a single exception to the rule of love.  We can’t help but articulate it because as parents we feel the responsibility to protect our children.  Storm articulated this in that post. He asked,

“What if that person is attempting to hurt someone else, say a child? Should we fight to protect the innocent?”

It’s a legitimate question and one I’ve wrestled with.  It seems to be the one exception people throw up to non-violence as a rule.  We like exceptions, don’t we?  They provide us safe comfort to hold love just far enough as to personally comforting but not discomforting.

And I will be honest that I haven’t had a good answer or response to the question.  I’ve asked myself the same thing and come up empty.  But for some reason this time was different. Something snapped inside of me.  An image popped into my head about what I would personally want to do if someone were to attack my children.  And I think it’s the answer to the exception.

I would offer myself in their place.

Think about it. It’s the only way to hold the dignity of everyone involved.  It is the only way to embody Jesus in that moment.  It’s the only means to embody non-violence to the other who is, for some reason, inflicting violence. It would be the only way to convey love both to the oppressor and the oppressed.

If I’m serious about following Jesus and engaging the Way of love, this is the response I would want to teach my kids.  I would want them to see the last thing I do as an act of love and sacrifice.

And let me be clear that this is my hope.  I have never encountered the exception in my life.  I pray that if the moment ever comes, and I do not wish for it to come, that when history called on me to respond, I would choose to love when it mattered most.

[RSS - See Embedded Video] (ht)

I absolutely implore you to watch this right now.  Or get involved. It’s only 2:10.  But it blows doors on any sermon I’ve heard in a long time.  If this were the message being preached, which is a return to the heart of the Kingdom message Jesus preached, it would radically change the landscape of culture.

I love the quote, “To return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of Scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate.”

Doooooooh!

What if the way to end a war begins with saying, “There is no war.”?

A couple of days ago, I was browsing through my Blog Reader and came across this title”

“Winning The Drug War By Ending It”

The title refers to a short post from Andrew Sullivan on the war on drugs, but it got me thinking about what Jesus said.

Luke 6:29 – If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also.

What if Jesus is giving us the more radical and wholistic means to end conflict. What if the best way to end conflict is to simply hold onto the idea that, “There is no war.”  When we strike back, aren’t we validating the notion that there is a war?

What if the most courageous person in a fight is the one who is willing to see the true identity and dignity of the other person, and by holding back the punch, we are reminding the other person of who they really are?  A child of the living God, called very good.  And when we hold onto to that standard of justice, we are validating it in our own life.  We are in essence saying, “This is true.”  And not because it is true cosmically, even though it is, but because we need we need it to be true in our lives.

So when we say, “there is no war” were not ignoring the obvious in justice.  We’re calling out the reality that non-violent resistance is actually first about holding on to what is true in our lives?

I’m a white Anglo male in case you didn’t know. ;-P And recently I was reminded that I am at the top of the oppressive food chain.  Not a good place to be sometimes.

Recently Professor Soong-Chan Rah wrote an open letter to Mike Foster, Jud Wilhite and Zondervan stating publicly his offense at the book, “Deadly Viper Character Assassins.” Professor Rah’s primary concern was what he called “orientalism”.

My contention is not about the content of the book itself (i.e. – the material that discusses integrity and character).  It is with the way in which you choose to co-opt Asian culture in inappropriate ways.  Let me cite Edward Said in Orientalism where he states: “Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient – dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style of dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.”

You can read the rest of the letter here, but it pretty much comes down to the this:

“You are taking a caricature of Asian culture (the martial arts warrior, the ninja, etc.) and furthering the caricature rather than engaging Asian culture in a way that honors it.”

Mike and Jud used an expression of Oriental culture in a way that was offense to those in the Oriental culture.  And to be fair, many in the comment section to Rah’s post recognized that there is likely no malice in the intent.  Mike and Jud probably just saw it as “cool”.  But cool isn’t always cool, is it?

Sadly, Mike, Jud and Zondervan have largely ignored the event up to this point, which seems rather strange (or ironic) given the content of the book.  Mike Foster actually deleted a message from Jeff Straka on his Facebook page, which requested an apology.  Not the smartest way to sell a book about radical integrity.

But this post is actually not about the letter, Orientalism, or Mike, Jud and Zondervan’s response.  It’s about something deeper than that.

You see, when I read the letter, it didn’t immediately connect.  I didn’t get what Professor Rah was talking about.  I’ve read Deadly Viper and actually wrote a book review about it when it came out.  I praised it for its call to confront the enemy within in a compassionate way.

And then suddenly I realized that I am a white, Anglo Saxon male from the United States.  This position in life, which I did not choose, affords me a way of seeing the world from extreme privilege.  The door of opportunity opens for me simply because I have these attributes in a way that would never open for a African American or Asian woman from another country.  And suddenly I realized that it has also blinded me to the concerns of the other, in this case Professor Rah. The enemy within naturally saw the position of Mike and Jud because they are like me.  It closed me eyes to seeing how the other felt.

You see it’s just easier to ignore that enemy within, calling the other out and saying you’re being too sensitive.  It’s just easier to sit from privilege and ignore the offense.  And sadly this is not only what Mike and Jud are doing, which invalidates the content of the what they are saying in the book, but it also invalidates me. When I ignore the offense of those who are different from me, I invalidate myself.  When I stop listening to the cry of my brother, I am not only harming the other, I am harming myself.

And I also don’t want to make the same mistake of the original offense.  I don’t want to take sides.  I stand with Professor Rah in the defense of his dignity.  But I also stand with Mike and Jud reminding them that with privilege comes responsibility.  We are all on the same side, the human side created in the image of God.  To confront the enemy within we must embrace the truth with a radical sense of integrity, even when we are the one’s who have committed the offense.  And we must also embrace a radical sense of grace that restores everyone involved.  The problem isn’t people.  The problem is the lie that we hold onto that perpetuates invalidation and ignorance of the other.

Sadly, calling out Professor Rah’s letter and confronting it head on would actually validate the content of the book, which was never the concern in the first place.  It would actually strip away the fluff, which is what the Asian design component really is. It would show that Mike and Jud were serious about is message, even at the cost of image.

So I ask you Mike and Jud, for the sake of your fellow human beings created in the image of God, to address this issue.

Much love

Update: When I wrote this post I had not seen this video (which you have to be on Facebook to see). All I can say is, “Wow!”  Come on guys.  And sadly, I checked Mike’s Facebook page for any word on the letter, a response, or comments, and…nothing.  But I did see this quote.  Mike said, “dont be afraid to courageously admit your failures. take those skeletons in the closet out for a dance. #potsc”  Ironic.

Update 2: You can also read Mike’s original response to Professor Rah’s letter here.

Update 3: Apparently Mike is working to speak directly with those in the Asian culture to find ways to address the issue.

Update 4: Mike and Jud posted this on the Deadly Viper site.

Update 5: A meeting happened.

Other Responses:

Dan Iwao – My thoughts on the controversy

Todd Thomas – The Deadly Viper Controversy

Marian Wang – Stop Pimping My Culture

Edward Gilbreath – Deadly Assumptions

Dave Ingland – Don’t Disprespect Me Because I’m Asian

ABC Pastor – Seeking God In Deadly Vipers