natalie's narrative

If these people decide the election next year...

…I’m moving to Guanajuato! Seriously, I think the gentleman who said the quote below from December 17th’s New Yorker is the type of person that the Republican presidential candidates are trying to appeal to at the moment. Let’s hope a less nativist stance wins the day. (And to me, nativist is just a nicer word for racist.)

From “Return of the Nativist,” Dean Allen—who is helping Buddy Witherspoon, a Republican National Committeeman, run against South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham—shares his opinion on immigrants:

“Some of these people may be coming in here to get jobs washing dishes, but some of them are coming in here to hijack airplanes,” he explained. “If you’re down there trying to look at the people coming across the border, maybe a lot of them are just motivated by economics, and they want a job washing dishes or cutting grass. But I can’t tell Jose Cuervo from the Al Qaeda operatives by looking at them, because they cut their beard off. It’s like trying to get fly manure out of pepper without your glasses on, you know? I mean, not a racist thing, but they’re all brown with black hair and they don’t speak English and I don’t speak Arabic or Spanish, so if they don’t belong here and they don’t come here legally, I want to know who’s here.” He echoed McCain’s observation that the anti-immigrant feeling is strongest in states with new Hispanic populations. “The illegal Hispanic population, it’s definitely growing,” he said. “I can tell you just from how many you see when you walk in Wal-Mart, and you drive down the street and you see buildings now with writing in Spanish that says ‘tienda,’ which is Mexican for ‘store.’ You didn’t see that even a year or two ago.”

Now where can I learn more about this Mexican language he speaks of??

From the future...

Via ImmigrationProf Blog, a "news article" from the future shows us the hypocrisy and ridiculousness of presidential candidate Ron Paul's position on immigration: President Ron Paul Deported Under Ron Paul's No Amnesty Law. Although the article is of course a joke, Paul has really advocated that we should do away with birthright citizenship, where citizenship is granted to any child born in the US--regardless of the parents' citizenship status. My favorite tidbit:

"[...]that was the only way to ensure that all American citizens are pure Americans, deserving of all the inalienable rights American citizenship has to offer, such as welfare-to-work programs, parochial educational vouchers, color-coded terror charts, and so on. We found that once you go back a generation or two, the numbers are simply staggering."

The ImmigrationProf Blog also points out that Tom Tancredo's grandparents were immigrants--the same guy whose last name is now an "ism" representing the anti-immigrant sentiment.

Crazy-making

A couple of weeks ago I intentionally skipped a small group that I normally attend, since I knew the discussion question was to be this: “Imagine that a friend of yours just lost their 2-year-old daughter in a car wreck. At the funeral, he or she is in tears and asks you, ‘Why did this have to happen?’ How would you respond? Why?”

Maybe I should have been there, just to give my perspective on loss and to connect with others who have also grieved the loss of a relative or friend. I just didn’t have the energy, though, to counter some of the responses that would have been offered. Granted, before I lost my dad, I too would have tried to answer that question and would have likely ended up with an insensitive answer, so it’s unfair to blame people who have simply not had certain life experiences. 

Either way, I’ve been pretty taken aback by some of the things well-meaning Christians have said to me and other grieving people. It seems to reflect a deficiency in our theology. We immediately want to gloss over the bad and jump directly to making it right. Maybe our circumstances of being in the comfortable USA, where we rarely experience suffering, have made us this way. Such an approach, however, can be damaging to the recovery process, since it can ignore legitimate feelings that may need to be addressed or hashed out with trusted friends.

I shouldn’t be afraid to share that I don’t believe in God at the moment, or that I’m really angry at Her, or that worship songs in church can either disgust me or make me cry. It should be okay to completely disagree with you that God took away a loved one in order to teach us something. 

I’ve linked to Jenell Paris’ blog before, and recently she shared her thoughts on those who want to consider infertility a blessing. She has grieved a loss in the past, and makes a great point: 

“It's crazy-making to tell people that what they experience as bad is actually good.”

Class

I had wondered about class before: "Why we can't talk about class," and in today's Chicago Tribune I found a good observation about how we perceive class: "Class definitions will always be a moving target for journalists." Something I'll try to notice in the presidential campaign frenzy:

There is a reason that politicians of both parties and commentators, such as Lou Dobbs, send out angry broadsides about the "war on the middle class." Listeners -- no matter how much or how little they make -- can choose to believe these commentators are talking about them.

God and empire

I just started reading Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire, and wanted to share one of the many things that have jumped out at me. The authors, Brian J. Walsh and Sylvia C. Keesmaat, give a summary of the book:

The epistle to the Colossians, we are arguing, was an explosive and subversive tract in the context of the Roman empire, and it can be and ought to function in an analogous way in the imperial realities of our time. This letter proclaimed an alternative reality, animating a way of life that was subversive to the ethos of the Roman empire. (8)

Walsh and Keesmaat dialogue with a postmodern young person named William, who was raised in a Christian home but later left the faith. Having dabbled in international finance, William is now jaded and looking for something more, something beyond our consumerist McWorld, beyond our current-day empire of militarism and global capitalism.

William may want God, but the question is, which god does he want? And on whose terms will he accept this god? You see, the danger of wanting a god, without being willing to allow this god to speak in a voice that is radically other to our own voice, is that the god we end up with is like any other consumer product we take off the shelf. We would never be accountable before such a god, precisely because we never allow this god a voice that would actually call us to account. This consumer-friendly god, this god of postmodern construction, this generic off-the-shelf god would be no God at all. Rather, it would be an idol. And before idols like this the empire has nothing to fear, because ultimately such idols—such gods—are in the service of the empire. (34).

I’m excited to see the direction that Walsh and Keesmaat take with this, since I struggle with what it means to live Christianly in the confines of this American/global empire. I wonder how to truly listen to the voice that isn’t my construction or a result of my consumer choices. I wonder how to discern how much we know of God is a convenient creation that justifies our existence as citizens of an empire. How much have we rendered powerless the Gospel since it would force us to make difficult choices in our context of a powerful military and accumulation of wealth?

Why do good things happen to me? *updated*

That's the question that my dad countered with in church the night he passed away, when someone wondered why bad things happen to good people. And that's exactly what I thought when I learned that I GOT ACCEPTED INTO LAW SCHOOL! I will start the part-time program in the fall at Depaul in Chicago--and I'm alternating between panic and excitement, that's for sure! I wish I could have seen the look on my dad's face or could have heard his voice, but I do know he would be super proud. Hopefully I can continue to make him proud and survive the next four years to eventually become an immigration attorney!

More from The Culturally Savvy Christian

Last Sunday, I had the opportunity to go to Sunday School at Snowhill since I was back in OK for Thanksgiving, and we discussed evangelicals'€™ incomplete view of salvation. Many times, Christians focus on "fire insurance" and praying the sinner'€™s prayer, at the expense of transformation into disciples of Christ.

I recently read a similar critique in The Culturally Savvy Christian. Author Dick Staub criticizes what he calls "Christianity-Lite,"€ and its notion of salvation. Forgiveness, joining God's fellowship, and the promise of heaven are important, but they are not the whole story. Our idea of what it means to "become a Christian" is incomplete. Hans Rookmaaker claimed that Jesus didn'€™t aim to make us Christians; Jesus came to make us fully human. We, according to Staub, "neglect the holistic, restorative transformation"€ that is salvation: 

In this reductionist scenario, the prospective follower of Jesus "€œaccepts Jesus,"€ receives forgiveness for sin, makes a commitment to live a morally upright life, and then is charged with the task of helping other people become Christians. (94)

Such a truncated version of the Gospel leaves out God'€™s purpose for us. He wants us to reflect his image, developing our intellectual, creative, relational, and moral capacities as human beings. We forget about the creation story, and the fact that God wants to restore his image fully in us--€”starting now. The result: "a Christianity that is generally disinterested in art and the mind and that emphasizes morality and evangelism"€ (95).

The story of the prodigal son didn't end with his reunion with his father; instead, there was a lavish banquet afterward. Our salvation story should be the same way. Staub remarks, "€œAny Christianity that knows God as savior but not as creator will produce Christians who are less than fully human, as will any Christianity that knows God as creator but not as savior" (95).