Don't forget

While Americans celebrate Independence Day with flags and fireworks, cookouts and complaints about the price of gas, we should take a moment to remember how many people in the world still remain without religious freedom.

In several former republics of the Soviet Union, for example, persecution of the church is a daily affair. Baptist pastor Hamid Shabanov, for example, was recently arrested in Azerbaijan by police who claimed they found a gun in his home. Supporters insist the gun was planted.

In Kazakhstan, authorities are closing down churches and other places of worship, often on the basis of specious reasoning or trumped-up charges. You can learn more about religious persecution in these and other former Soviet bloc states at the watchdog site Forum 18.

In countries where Muslim law is incorporated into the national government, conversion from Islam to Christianity is against the law and can carry stiff penalties, as illustrated by a recent case in Iran. A religious freedom organization called Compass Direct offers updates of religious persecution across the globe -- more than enough stories to prompt prayers for the oppressed and thanks for the religious freedom Americans have.

One of the things we can pray for is that the Baptist World Alliance will find an effective spokesperson to lead an open staff position to promote religious freedom and human rights worldwide. BWA has good connections in the United Nations and is the most widely respected voice for Baptists in global political circles.

Another thing we can do is to offer thanks for the freedom we have. While some Baptists have joined other conservative Christians in pushing for a more cushy relationship between religion and government, our founding fathers knew of the dangers, and guarded against them. To learn more about the role Baptists played in guaranteeing religious liberty for Americans, you can reprise this old editorial, or take a look at this excellent post by David Stratton.

On this holiday, fireworks can be fun, but center stage belongs to freedom.

Strange behavior

Our puppy, a trial to my soul about which I've previously written, is rapidly turning into a genuine dog. He gains about a pound every week, though I won't be keeping up with his weight now that he's finished his last round of puppy shots and gotten his rabies vaccine.

And, typical doggy behaviors are beginning to emerge -- like hiking a leg while he does his business and tracking every interesting scent he can find. Some of the more disgusting canine characteristics are showing up, too: while turning up his fuzzy nose at the dry dog food we offer, he eats the nastiest things he can scratch up, including fecal findings from his canine colleagues.

Yesterday, while out for a short walk, he went into a neighbor's yard, sniffed, and dove headfirst into the grass, trying his best to press himself into the ground at a particular point, rolling back and forth with a clear intent to grind something into his fur.

I took a close look, and discovered the carcass of a tiny vole, one of those mouse-like critters who dig little tunnels in the yard. I don't know what killed it, but Banjo was determined to get its dead-critter scent deeply ingrained into his coat.

Why do dogs like to roll in carrion, or even other dogs' poop? Conventional wisdom is that its a hereditary behavior left over from their heritage as wolves, who also typically roll in the carcasses of dead animals long past their expiration date. Some think there's a predatory purpose to disguise its scent and make it easier to sneak up on an unsuspecting victim. A rabbit, for example, might be less likely to run if the breeze brings it the scent of putrid possum rather than fresh wolf.

Others think the behavior is more of a communal thing, a way for a canine to return to the pack saying "Look what I found!" Pack-mates could judge from the smell, perhaps, whether the carcass was worth scavenging.

Why do dogs roll in carrion and eat disgusting things?

Why do humans often choose behaviors that stink up their lives to no good end? We should be guided by reason and values higher than the base instincts that inform our pets, yet many people choose to roll around in some of the worst options life has to offer.

The human inclination to make bad choices is nothing new, of course. Ancient wisdom in the Book of Proverbs observes: "Like a dog that returns to its vomit is a fool who reverts to his folly" (26:11).

Fortunately, we don't have to live like dogs. If our lives are going to smell to high heaven, let it be the scent that Paul talked about in 2 Corinthians 2:15: "For we are a sweet aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing" (NET).

That's better.

Ministry as "meaningful work"

The online Chronicle of Higher Education reports that a growing number of students are responding to a perceived call to ministry, reversing a two-decade trend. The shift seems to reflect changing cultural values as well as the fruit of a major financial investment by the Lilly Endowment.

The trends certainly needed reversing, if churches are to have qualified leadership. In the years after World War II, about the same number of college students went into ministry as into medicine, according to the Center for the Study of Theological Education at Auburn Theological Seminary, in New York. By the mid 1980s, however, while 15 percent of college graduates went into medicine, just one percent entered a seminary or divinity school.

Concerned with that bleak picture, the Lilly Endowment put up some major money in grants for colleges "to help students explore the relationship between faith and work, to encourage talented students to consider entering Christian ministry, and to prepare the faculty and staff members to help students think about work in new ways," according to the Chronicle.

Between 2000 and 2007, Lilly shelled out $176.2 million to 88 church-related colleges.

One of the main challenges has been to get ministry on the radar screen of prospective students when other professions are so much more lucrative, mainline churches are less influential, and fewer pastors are seen as important leaders or intellectual heavyweights.

A major part of the effort has been to help students recognize that ministry is meaningful work. Grant participants have taken various paths toward that end, and appear to be having some success. Anecdotal evidence presented in the article suggests that more recent college graduates are choosing to pursue theological education, which could bring down the average age at many seminaries, where less than one in three students are in their twenties.

Lilly's effort is boosted by a contemporary trend in which younger adults seem more likely to be involved in volunteer work and more attracted to service-oriented professions whose rewards are more than financial.

As a former pastor (26 years), it's sad to think that so much effort is required to convince potential pastors that ministry is "meaningful work." The happy thing is that the program appears to be getting traction.

Now, perhaps, the Lilly Endowment can help seminaries and divinity schools keep pace by developing programs for students who want to do meaningful and ministry-related work, but not in traditional church settings.

Otherwise, many of those fresh-faces may not stick around.

Unexpected inspiration

I was driving home from a day in the office, enjoying some quiet time and listening to public radio. For more than a year, National Public Radio has been broadcasting an occasional series of first-person pieces called "This I Believe," and I always find it fascinating to hear where other people find their grounding in life.

The program has featured people who are well known and people who are unknown, but they always have something interesting to say. On June 30 the speaker was a real surprise -- it was Kim Phuc, who was nine years old in 1972 when U.S. bombers laid napalm over her village of Trang Bang, in South Vietnam. Fire swept over the child, incinerated her clothes, and left her with very serious burns.

As Kim Phuc ran screaming from the village, photographer Nick Ut snapped a photograph that became an iconic image of that unfortunate war and that helped him win a Pulitzer Prize. We didn't know Kim Phuc's name at the time, or know what happened to her, but she became widely known as "the girl in the picture." Another thing we didn't know is that, after taking the photo, Ut scooped the girl into his arms and personally carried her to a hospital, beginning a lifelong friendship.

Kim Phuc spent 14 months in a hospital, underwent 17 operations, and suffered extraordinary, ongoing pain. After being released from the hospital, she wanted to study medicine, but the Vietnamese government would not allow it, using her for propaganda instead.

Eventually, however, Kim Phuc made her way to Canada, where she is married and the mother of two. As I listened to her describing her story, she spoke of going to the library and reading many books in search of guidance, including "the Holy Bible." And then she said: "In Christmas 1982, I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior. It was an amazing turning point in my life. God helped me to learn to forgive — the most difficult of all lessons. It didn't happen in a day and it wasn't easy. But I finally got it."

Christian testimonies are not daily fare on public radio, making her message even more powerful. It was a long time coming, Kim Phuc said, but she learned the power of forgiveness. She concluded this way:

Forgiveness made me free from hatred. I still have many scars on my body and severe pain most days but my heart is cleansed.

Napalm is very powerful but faith, forgiveness and love are much more powerful. We would not have war at all if everyone could learn how to live with true love, hope and forgiveness.

If that little girl in the picture can do it, ask yourself: Can you?

Indeed, can you?

[To see old and new photographs of Kim, and to read or listen to her "This I Believe" entry, click here. Or, to read about a foundation Kim started to help other victims of war, click here.]

Being mad makes me mad

I hate being mad, so it's a good thing that I don't have a short fuse and don't get my feelings hurt easily. In general, I'm more laid-back than high-strung, so while I'm in touch with angry feelings when they arise, I don't dwell on them -- usually.

Yesterday, however, two things really got into my craw.

The first was a credit card bill. We've been doing lots of home maintenance lately, and the cost added up to several thousand dollars. I could have taken money from savings to pay for it, but when a "0% interest" offer arrived from an Amazon.com credit card I never use, I decided to take advantage of it for six months of no interest payments.

I'm usually pretty savvy about such things and rarely get burned, though I know the credit card companies use such teaser rates because they know most people won't pay the balance before the typically exorbitant interest rate kicks in. I make notes and generally avoid that.

When my first bill arrived, however, I discovered that Chase Bank, which operates under the guise of Amazon.com and many other branded credit cards, had added a full $285 in "transaction fees" to my balance -- effectively charging a high rate of interest in advance and making the "0%" claim an absolute sham, nothing more than a big honking lie in bold print.

After scouring the original offer, I eventually found information about the transaction fee. As you might guess, it was printed in such a tiny font that it was barely readable.

That made me mad. I called, complained, and asked for the deceptive fees to be removed, but got no satisfaction, other than that letting the company know they would get no more business from me -- and knowing I could warn any readers to beware deceptive claims.

While I can afford to pay the ridiculous fee and clear the account before the six months is up, I know that is precisely how credit card companies entice many other people into taking out loans they cannot afford to pay, contributing to mountains of debt that can become overwhelming. That makes me mad.

The second thing that got my goat was not a financial issue, but a theological-social-cultural one: I learned that a professor from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, while preaching in a Texas church, said wife-abuse sometimes results from a woman's unwillingness to submit to her husband's "God-given authority" over her. You can read about it here in Bob Allen's report at EthicsDaily.com ... I won't go into the stomach-turning details.

The professor's pompous position is really nothing new, as it builds on the SBC's "Baptist Faith and Message" statement that was amended in 1998 to assert that wives should be submissive to their husbands, claiming divine sanction for such a practice.

Fundamentalists moan that Christians have fallen prey to cultural shifts that have promoted women's rights and allowed women to think they might be qualified to stand on an equal footing in their marriages, their workplace, or even the pulpit.

They do so, however, on the basis of biblical texts that are clearly products of their own culture. The same biblical texts that talk about submissive women also speak often of human slavery but offer no words of condemnation. For modern interpreters to claim that slavery was a cultural anomaly but male domination is an eternal principle is nothing more than bad hermeneutics fueled by men who like being in charge and fear losing their power.

The professor did not put all the blame on non-submissive women for abuse they might receive -- he admitted that men are sinners, too -- but promoting a theology that tells men they should expect their wives to be submissive is just priming the pump for domestic violence.

And that makes me mad.

I suspect I'm not the only one.