In my last blog, I noted the Australian who found large dead zones in the huge Pacific ocean that was very alarming to him a veteran sailor. We are all aware of the rapid melting of glaciers all over the world and the melting of Artic ice. Maybe even more alarming is the melting of the Artic tundra which is releasing methane gas which is about 20 times as bad a greenhouse gas as is carbon. This combination is extremely bad news about climate change.
But now some good news from Memphis reported in the August 2013 Sojourners magazine; see "The Power of Partnership," by Bob Smietana.
The Congregational Health Network began with a simple request from the largest hospital network in Memphis to a group of local pastors: Help us take better care of your people. Ten years ago, officials at Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare were worried that chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, and obesity were threatening the well-being of local residents and sending health-care costs through the roof.. . . . Hospital officials knew something had to change. They wanted to focus on preventive health care---getting people in to see their doctor long before they were in crisis. So in Memphis, a city where faith remains a powerful force and more than 60 percent of the population has ties to a religious group, they turned to churches for help. . . .
It begins with preventive measures, such as healthy eating, and goes all the way through to aftercare. Church members who leave the hospital are tied into a support network when they get back home. . . .
He believes hospital officials now have a better understanding of how other factors, such as crime, unemployment and lack of access to good food, also affect a community's well-being [shalom]. . . .
Mortality in the network went down by half, . . . .Network members also averaged about $8,700 less in hospital costs. . . .
When they sign the covenant to join the network, pastors promise to model good health to their parishioners.
How about church suppers also modeling good nutrition---not high fat, high sugar---in their meals together.
Much of America is exceptionally stupid when it comes to understanding our social problems, and even more stupid when it comes to solutions. Case in point: America's drug problem. The following is a summary from The Week (Oct. 18) of an article
"Why we've lost the drug war," by Stephen Marche.
"The war on drugs is over. Drugs won," said Stephen Marche. That's the inescapable conclusion of the largest study of the drug trade ever conducted, just published in a medical journal. Canadian researchers found that despite $1 trillion in spending to stop drug trafficking and sales, drugs are just as available as ever [Prohibition failed again], and far purer and cheaper. In fact, marijuana's purity has increased 161 percent since 1990, and it's 86 percent cheaper. Cocaine is 80 percent cheaper than in 1990. In other words, "now is the greatest time in history to get high." Clearly, attacking the drug supply doesn't work; the problem is that Americans' demand for drugs appears to be nearly "limitless" especially if you consider that 48 percent of the population also uses legal prescription drugs of some kind, including antidepressants. The fundamental problem is that our bodies and minds were not made for a "hypermodern reality" where food is overabundant, social connections are weak, and people are switched on 24/7. In a culture riddled with stress and despair, people self-medicate. As long as our culture's mantra is "just take something," drug suppliers will be there to meet the demand.
I have retired in small town/rural Iowa. Recently a deputy from the Mitchell Co. sheriff department said abuse of prescription drugs is worse than abuse of illegal drugs.
Pursuing the American Dream while following the American Trinity has its consequences.
Are we Americans exceptionally stupid, even arrogantly exceptionally stupid? Are we immoral idiots? Are we blending the American Dream with the American trinity of hyperindividualism, hypermaterialism and hyperethnocentrism? Or is it with the OT Israeli Trinity of idolatry, injustice and immorality?
Israel wouldn't repent, even after God sent prophet after prophet to warn them of impending judgment. Their social evil seemed irreversible and led to their exile to Babylon. Is American on a similar irreversible decline?
Has the false belief in American exceptionalism led us to an arrogant stupidity? If so, what is the evidence?
1. Our exceptionally, excessive military spending; we spend nearly as much as all the rest of the world combined; we have military bases all over the world.
2. Our exceptionally, excessive system of unjust mass incarceration of young Black and Latino males; worse by far than any other democracy.
3. Our incredibly inefficient health care system which costs twice as much per capita as any other democracy.
4. Our extraordinarily unequal economic system which has created an enormous wealth gap, especially unjust racial wealth gap.
5. Our exceptionally, excessive use of both legal and illegal drugs; more on this stupidity in my Friday blog.
6. Apart from a few prophetic voices such as John Perkins, Jim Wallace and Randy Woodley, the American church is in bed with the American trinity.
Does an exceptionally flawed Americanized Christianity open the door for the exceptionally evil American trinity to run rampant? Compared to Europe, America is highly Christian; does this indicate that American Christianity is part of the problem?
Again, I would highly recommend reading Randy Woodley's recent book Shalom and the Community of Creation; Woodley is a Cherokee Indian theologian.
P.S. Readers may wish to add to the list of exceptionally stupid things America does such as pollution, climate change, high rates of gun ownership, high rates of abortion, etc.
On some issues, there is too much bipartisan agreement in Washington, but you wouldn't know it from the media headlines. There is tragic bipartisan agreement on:
1. Excessive military spending: the facts: In 2011, the United States spent $739 billion on its military, China, $89 billion, Britain, $62 billion, and Russia, $52 billion. The U.S. world share of military spending was 45%; China, 5%; in other words, the U.S. spends almost as much as ALL the rest of the world combined. Surely we could cut our military budget in half; we would still be the world's most powerful nation by far.
2. Excessive counterterrorism: the facts (from Dirty Wars by Jeremy Scahill): "By mid-2010, the Obama administration had increased the presence of Special Operations Forces from sixty countries to seventy-five countries. . . . Obama and his team created a system "where people are being killed, you don't know what the evidence is, and you have no way to redress the situation," former CIA case officer Phil Giraldi told me. "It's not that there aren't terrorists out there, and every once in a while one of them is going to have to be killed for one good reason or another, but I want to see the good reason. I don't want to see someone in the White House telling me, "You'll have to trust me." We've had too much of that." . . . . "While the Obama administration ratcheted up its drone strikes and targeted killing campaign, al Qaeda affiliates were growing stronger, embolded in part by the US escalation. Although the Obama administration boasted that it had al Qaeda on the ropes, its global assassination program was becoming a recruitment device for the very forces the United States claimed to be destroying.". . . . Colonel Patrick Lang, who spent his entire career in covert operations leading sensitive missions, told me that the threat posed by AQAP had been "greatly exaggerated as a threat to the United States. . . . Yeah. They could bring down an airliner, kill a couple hundred people. But are they an existential threat to the United States? Of course not. Of course not.. . . . We've gone crazy over this. We have this kind of hysterical reaction to danger." Bush and now Obama are now engaged in "perpetual war" against terrorists; terrorists against terrorists??
3 Comprehensive immigration reform: though the Obama administration wants reform, it is not front and center in its public political agenda; immigration reform has been pushed to the back burner. For Republicans, reform is not even on the stove
American missionaries, I highly recommend that on your next furlough, you spend 6 months or a year at George Fox Seminary studying under Randy Woodley, a Cherokee Indian scholar/practitioner. There are areas of your theology and practice that are mostly likely fatally flawed and sinfully syncretistic. Especially in the area of a biblical NT theology of society---the kingdom of God as Jubilee Justice for the oppressed poor.
By the way, I would recommend the same for most American pastors. And for any white evangelical Christians who have blended their faith with Tea Party ideology which favors the rich and dishonors the poor. Check out the Paul Ryan budget and see what is and isn't in his budget.
Now two excerpts from Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision (2012).
The American Dream is actually a false premise based on the success of relatively few people, held up as a carrot for the masses. In truth, an American Dream based on the misery of others caters to a selfish,consumer-driven mentality that values wealth and personal gain over justice and peace. . . . In truth, America is a far cry from being a "Christian nation" or even a nation built upon Christian principles. . . . The American Dream was built on a mentality of theft, imperialism, and supposed superiority. . . . in order to maintain our "Dream" we have incorporated an ethic of war.
What is the solution to the American Dream?
Jubilee was good news for the poor. . . . . God's will and cosmic design is that no one suffer unjustly, but because human beings create unjust systems, shalom-type social parameters must serve as a social safety net to offset human disobedience. In order to create a shalom system of social harmony, no person could be oppressed too long without hope of ease and eventual release; no family could remain in poverty for generations; no land could be worked until it was depleted and useless; no animals could go hungry for too long. Any of these violations of shalom that were left unmitigated for too long would upset the natural order of reciprocity fixed in all creation. . . . Jesus was the fulfillment of the Jubilee, the Sabbath system, and ultimately shalom.
The Tea Party tail of 30-40 persons is wagging the larger Republican dog in the House. The Tea Party, a determined, aggressive, passionate and uncompromising wing of the Republican Party, is winning the political battles in Washington. They are controlling the political agenda; they are setting the terms of the political debate. Not on the political agenda are three hugely important social problems: comprehensive immigration reform, the unjust mass incarceration of young black and Latino males, and the immoral income/wealth gap, especially the racial wealth gap of 20-1.
The Tea Party won the sequester battle; the Tea Party has succeeded in bringing about a partial shutdown of the government; and the Tea Party would see a federal government default as a good thing. Anything to shrink the size of the government; anything to make President Obama look bad. The president is on the defensive.
Unless the Republican leadership has the political courage to marginalize the Tea Party minority, the year ahead looks bad. The poor will suffer; the rich will prosper.
I would fully support two anti-government policies: cut the military budget in half and eliminate massive corporate tax breaks (subsidies, welfare) and pro-Wall Street policies.
