ShahshankedRedemption

The Appearance Of Evil?

2012-02-03T09:57:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, when I worked for a Christian missions organization, I got into trouble for carpooling. Well, not so much for carpooling, but carpooling with a female. This is what happened.

Three of us who worked together and lived in the same area decided to start to carpool—two male and one female. It was good for the environment and even better for our pocketbooks. All went well till the day my other male carpool buddy had to run an errand after work and needed to drive his own car. We never thought anything of it; as usual, I picked up my female co-worker and drove to the office.

As we entered the parking lot, another co-worker was just entering the building and saw us pull into my parking spot. Within a few minutes, I was reported to the boss for carpooling with a female, and was called into his office.

I was basically told that carpooling with a female had the appearance of evil, and I shouldn’t do it. Although I should have been flattered that my boss thought so highly of my multitasking abilities—being able to maneuver L.A. freeways while driving and, at the same time, performing whatever else it was that they thought I was doing—I was deeply offended and felt dishonored. In any case, I refused to obey, and continued to carpool with and without the third party.

What infuriated me even more was what took place a couple of weeks later when I approached my boss on the same subject.

“Don’t worry about it. We just found out that our president has been carpooling with his secretary for the last 20 years. So, you can now continue to carpool with a female in your car,” he said so nonchalantly.

Talk about being frustrated and angry! When I did it, it had the appearance of evil; but when the president did it, not only it was righteous, but also it became a moral and spiritual precedent for the rest of us peons. And all this time I’d thought Jesus was my moral guide. It wasn’t long after that the president, my moral compass, had to resign because of some financial irregularities.

What is this “appearance of evil” that we should avoid? Who decides that?

✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠

I’m flying back to Burbank from Springfield, Ore., and have a two-hour layover in San Francisco. It’s Monday night, and a Monday Night Football game is on. My favorite team is playing against the Steelers—any team that plays against the Steelers is my favorite team. I decide to sit at a bar, order a hamburger and, while eating my dinner, I watch the game.

I notice my phone is dying, so I ask the bartender if I could plug in my charger anywhere. He places a power strip on the bar in front me and tells me to help myself. That’s when a very pretty young lady who was sitting behind me moves over and sits right next to me.

“My computer is dying. Do you mind if I share the power strip with you?” she asks.

I’m very used to this. Almost always female strangers start conversing with me without any hesitations. This has nothing to do with my charming personality, but a gift the Lord has given me. People, especially women, find me trustworthy, a man with no agenda, who cares.

We spend the next half an hour talking. She tells me she’s waiting for her friend to join her, so they can go paint the town together. As I’m talking to this young, beautiful lady, I’m so grateful that I no longer work for that missions organization, which would have frowned upon seeing one of their top men talking to a strange young woman in a bar. OMG, talk about the appearance of evil.

As I get up to leave, I’m impressed to do something.

“Do you like to read?” I ask her.

She says, “I love to read.”

“I’d like to give you a gift. It’s my new book.”

“I love it. Thank you!”

I autograph my book, hand it to her, and say goodbye.

On occasions, I’ve given my book to strangers, but have never heard from any of them until the above young lady. For almost a month I’ve been thinking and praying for June (not her real name) when I get a long email from her. This is how she starts it:

“It was a real pleasure meeting you that day, and after reading
(devouring?) your book I only wish I had spoken with you more! Your
book really resonated with me. It was written in such a way that I
felt a close connection with you; the way you wrote about your
experiences was like a friend sitting next to me telling these
stories. It gives me hope in my struggles as a young woman.”

Even if I were still working for my old employer, I’d have still risked being accused of “giving the appearance of evil” to experience the above interaction. But, thank God, I don’t. I wonder what Jesus would have done?

Honestly, I'm Only An Evangelist And Not An Apocalyptic Expert!

2012-01-10T19:10:00.000-08:00

The year was 1979. The Islamic revolution in Iran was in full swing, the American embassy in Tehran was occupied and the American Christian End Times enthusiasts were printing out books like there was literally no tomorrow. One author, referring to an incident in Abraham’s life, called all Iranians “kidnappers” from day one. Another gleefully printed the above photo putting words in Yasser Arafat’s mouth saying, " And then the Lord will put a hook in your mouth and we'll all head for Israel—Ezk. 38" According to these authors, Iran was hell bound. But was she really?

In the last two months, thanks to my publicist, I’ve had over a dozen radio interviews concerning my new book, Shame On You—rising from the ashes of shame to face guilt. The book is about my Muslim upbringing in Iran and it also contrasts my shame-based Iranian culture with the guilt-based culture of the West. The book has nothing to do with the End Times or what the Islamic Republic of Iran is going to do with her WMD once she develops it. However, that has not stopped some of the interviewers from asking my opinion about the future of Iran.

Questions go like this:

“So, do you think Iran has the bomb yet?”

“What do you think Iran is going to do with it?”

“Should Israel attack Iran?”

“What do you think our government should do?”

“Do you believe Mehdi is the antichrist? ”

I’m one interview away from responding with the following:

“Just because I was born in Iran doesn’t make me and expert on the Iranian government any more than you being born in America makes you an expert on what the US government should do with the military drone that is now in Iranian hands. I’m here to talk about Muslim evangelism.”

What’s more interesting is that almost none of these people have ever paid any attention to what the Lord is doing in Iran. They’re completely ignorant of the rate by which Iranians have been turning to Christ since 1979 when they were all supposed to be hell-bound. The rate is so high that it has created a great concern for the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Why such a fascination with death and destruction instead of love and salvation? Why do we hardly hear the good things that the Lord is doing In the Middle East? As we start 2012, let us be thankful for the God-given freedom so many of us take for granted in this country, rejoice with those Muslims who are entering the Kingdom and pray for the ones who are being persecuted simply because they’ve called upon the name of Jesus for their salvation.

What Are All These Foreigners Doing In My Country?

2011-10-11T19:16:00.000-07:00

Years ago I was invited to teach a workshop at a large denominational convention. I was given an hour to teach on Islam and Muslim evangelism. However, at the last minute I was told I would be sharing my teaching time with a Native American brother who was going to teach on reaching his nation.

In less than 30 minutes, we were each expected to give solutions to some of the most complex challenges facing the American church. To add insult to injury, directly across from our classroom was going to be a very well known mega church pastor teaching a workshop on “church growth”.

Having faced situations like this over and over again for many years, I decided to even out the odds and placed a sign on the other workshop’s door telling the attendees that the room was switched to ours.

Within a few minutes before our class was to start, pastors began to pour in trying to grab any seat they could find. Eventually, the class was filled to its capacity with standing room only. That’s when I calmly got up to introduce myself.

“Hi, my name is Shahrokh Afshar. My friends call me Shah, but you can call me Shahrokh. Next to me is Pastor ‘Pretty on the Top’ and we are going to be your teachers for the next 60 minutes.”

That’s when one of the pastors in the back shouted, “Where’s Pastor Jack?”

“Jack who?” I replied

Needless to say, within a few seconds my class emptied— as if the rapture had taken place and only seven of us were left behind. It was obvious that to most of those pastors, church growth took precedence over evangelism, including Muslim and Native American evangelism, which are two of the least evangelized people groups in the entire world.

Four of the five pastors in the room had intended to be there all along, but after realizing the prank I’d pulled, the fifth guy stayed because he told himself, “Anyone who can pull something like this on Pastor Jack is worth listening to.” Ted and I have been great friends ever since.

It frustrates me to no end to see that even after 9/11 how much most pastors in America still operate with the above mindset—looking for the magic formula that can turn their small fellowship into a mega church overnight instead of doing the work of an evangelist, especially among these two grossly under-reached groups.

Every once in a while, I challenge believers to do the following the next time they are at church:
Before the service starts, request that your pastor ask the church members this question: ‘How many of you were saved at this church and how many of you transferred here from another church?’ If the pastor is willing to ask such a question, you’ll be shocked by the result. You’ll find out that a good 80-90% of your church members have transferred from other churches for whatever reason and are what I call “Recycled Christians”.

By the way, I’ve been to churches where 100% of the members were Recycled Christians.

“Look around you,” I often direct American pastors. “You and your church members can all be missionaries to any people group you desire without having to ever leave your home. God has brought people of every nation and language to your doorsteps for a reason. You don’t need to spend a penny traveling to their foreign lands because they have already spent their own money to be here. You don’t need to learn their languages or cultures (although it’s very help if you do so) because they’re trying hard to learn English and the American way of life. You don’t need to learn how to eat their foods because they’re desperately trying to keep their Big Macs down. All the Lord is asking you is to, in Christ’s name, take a glass of cool water across the street to the guy that may wear a turban and speak with an accent.”

According to some of the studies I’ve seen, the church attendance in America is dropping every Sunday. No doubt there are many reasons for this phenomenon, but as far as I’m concerned there are two extremely prominent causes for this occurrence.

First, a majority of Americans who are born in this country have lost interest in church attendance and don’t consider Christianity relevant.

Second, we’ve finally run out of Christians to recycle. Is it possible that after decades of recycling old disciples rather than baptizing new ones, we’re finally running out of recyclable Christians? Could the answer to the next great revival in America lie not in building another mega church building filled with English speaking believers who have transferred from smaller churches, but in Christian leaders who are willing to build their churches one person at a time by reaching out to those who’ve never heard the Good News and are more open—the internationals God has brought to our doorsteps?

Let's NOT Do Lunch

2011-09-12T16:35:00.000-07:00

So, the other day I ran into an old friend I’d not seen for a long time. As he was rushing to a meeting, he said, “Let’s do lunch!”

Having heard that phrase many times before, I wasn’t about to just let it go without a response. I called his bluff.

“Absolutely!” I replied. “When?”

He was caught quite off guard. He didn’t expect me to call him on his offer.

“Well, I’ve got to get back to you on it.”

I wanted to scream, “Hey, I didn’t ask to have lunch with you. You're the one who suggested it while knowing it was an empty gesture.”

Do you know what happens when we give our word to do something and then renege?

1. We destroy the very foundation of all true relationships—trust. Without trust, there’s no true relationship. However, trust will be established when we stay true to our promises.

2. We give the impression that the person on the receiving end of our empty promise is neither important nor needed. Unfortunately, most of us tend to treat a person we esteem important or needed more differently than an average Joe Christian.

I was raised in a culture where to blindly trust people was your demise. In that society, we were expected not to trust, so everyone went around with his guard up 24/7. Shouldn’t we Christians be a bit different than those from my old culture? Shouldn’t all our leadership – our pastors – be people of their words?

A majority of young people I come across today are longing for a community, a place where the people are trustworthy and transparent. A place were the people’s “yes” is “yes” and “no” is “no”.

Creating such an environment starts with us as individuals. The next time you promise to do something for someone, regardless of how unimportant the person might be to you, for Christ’s sake, DO IT. This way, you create a highly sought-after commodity within God’s community—trustworthiness. Let the person know he’s important not because he’s got something that you need, but because he’s made in God’s image.

Please Don’t Go To A Bible College!

2011-08-18T14:55:00.000-07:00

The other day I got a message on Facebook from an old Bible College student of mine, Jeremy.

“Hey ProfeShah (that’s what my students used to call me), do you remember the advice you gave me 5 years ago? It was one of the best words of advice I’ve ever received in my life,” he said.

Shoot, if you know me, you know I don’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning, let alone a piece of advice I gave someone over five years ago. So, being a good shame-based culture person that I am, I faked it and said, “Yes, of course!”

In my Middle Eastern culture, by admitting to not knowing something, you’ve committed two sins: not knowing something and admitting to not knowing something.

I responded, “I told you to get the heck out of the Bible College and get yourself a degree that you can make a living with”.

To my amazement, he wrote back saying, “Yes, and thank you. I’m an engineer today making a living and taking care of my family.”

I know some of my evangelical friends get upset when they hear me taking such a stance, but I had my reasons, of which the most important was the welfare of my students. It was within the second year of teaching at that college when I noticed a good number of my students were graduating college with $20-30K debt and ending up working behind a counter, asking customers, “Would you like a tall, grande or venti?”

“If that’s going to be the case, you don’t need a four-year college degree to pump syrup in a coffee cup or work as a bank teller,” I used to tell them.

Most of these kids were being trained to be one thing and one thing only: pastors. The problem was that the denomination the college belonged to couldn’t provide enough churches for these graduates to pastor. On the other hand, the available churches were usually 20-30 member churches not able to support the new pastor fulltime, which again, put my students behind the same coffee or bank teller-counter.

Knowing how difficult it is to pastor in general, I knew we (the college) were setting many of my students up for failure. If you haven’t thought about it already, someone has and is ready to write me about it: “Aren’t you taking these kids away from their godly calling to be pastors?” To believe that is to believe the only way to serve God is to stand behind a pulpit, which in and of itself is a false assumption that has been shoved down our throats for many years. I don’t need a pulpit to serve Christ.

Read: I Love My Church, Starbucks

For the first 10 years after starting the first Iranian Christian organization in the United States, I was a civil engineer during the day and a house-church planter at night, driving all over LA County preaching the Gospel to a newly-arrived group of Iranian immigrants. Even if I had wanted them to, these Iranians would have never been able to support my family and me for what I was doing.

For 10 years, it was my engineering degree that put a roof over my family’s head, food on our table and gas in my ‘69 VW Bug. Maybe even more important, I own my home today – not because of the 30 years I pastored, but because of the 10 years I engineered. My salary as an Iranian pastor would have never been able to purchase my family a house.

It took me 10 years to build a solid enough base of supporters before I was able to leave my engineering job. By then, I was also convinced that was something I was called to do.

Maybe 40-50 years ago, a church of 40 members was able to support her pastor fulltime, but those days are over. Today, to be fully supported, the same pastor needs a church that is four to five times larger than that. That was a reality that most of my students faced. Since, right off the bat, pastoring a large church was out of the question, they needed to have a job that would put a roof over their heads and food on their tables while trying to pastor a small church.

That is why I encouraged many of my students to get out of the Bible College and first get a degree that would give them a solid base of financial support. Meanwhile, they could do what I did for ten years: serve God where they were. If they never get into a “fulltime ministry,” they haven't wasted four years of college and thousands of dollars getting an education they never needed. But, if they do, and feel they need more Biblical education, they can always go back to Bible College and get their Biblical degrees with the money they saved from their well-paying jobs.

That’s what I did.

Teacher, Teacher, Teacher 2—Muslim And Theology!

2011-08-04T08:41:00.000-07:00

How much theology should a Muslim have before he/she can...
http://www.youtube.com/user/ShahzamFactor?feature=mhsn#p/a/u/0/VMLgRAOuyaE

Teacher, Teacher, Teacher...I Have A Question!

2011-07-20T20:57:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends:

For a while I've been wanting to make a series of 1-2 minute video questions dealing with some of the issues facing the church. This is the first one. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

http://youtu.be/kmduHpc_PYw

Shah

PS. if you find these videos interesting and my questions challenging, then maybe you'd like to have me as a speaker at your churches, schools or gatherings.

Shame On You: Rising From The Ashes Of Shame To Face Guilt

2011-06-19T09:31:00.000-07:00

The Bible Didn’t Save Me

2011-05-27T13:29:00.001-07:00

October 25,2011 will mark my 40^th anniversary of being a Jesus person. The day I began my journey with Christ, I was riding my motorbike 70-80 miles an hour while on my way home from Thanksgiving dinner at my friend, Ellen’s house. I’d heard her father pray a blessing over the meal and it had greatly moved me.

I didn’t know anything about the Bible and I had never opened one. After all, as far as I was concerned, it was a corrupt book so why bother? I didn’t know anything about John 3:16. I hadn’t heard about the Roman Road or been given a tract on the Four Spiritual Laws and there was no one around to have me repeat the Sinner’s Prayer. On top of all that I didn’t believe I was a sinner. Even worse, I didn’t accept the very foundation of the Christian faith: Christ’s death on the cross, his divinity, or his position as the Son of God. But, I was one desperate and hopeless Muslim man who was willing to try anything. So, without knowing it, I did what Apostle Paul had said almost 2,000 years earlier, “Everyone who calls, ‘Help, God!’ gets help.” (Rom. 3:13, the Message)

I called and He helped.

On that day, my journey with Christ started apart from the Bible. The foundation of my faith began to form on the basis of an experience —an experience stemming from me calling on Jesus for help. Eventually, I came to understand Christ to be my Lord and savior by reading the Bible, but without my initial experience, I would have never read it. So, today, even if one proves to me that every word in the Bible is a lie, my faith in Christ will not be shaken because it is not based on the word of God, but on the Word of God (Christ) himself.

When I pastored the Iranian church, a majority of my Muslim background believer members had started their journey with Jesus through tangible experiences with him (dreams, visions, healings and so on) and apart from the Bible, very much in the same way that many early Gentile Christians had. I often wonder how the early Church did their daily “devotions” since the Bible had not be canonized yet and even after it was, not everyone could afford to have one under his arm, which brings me to my purpose for writing this blog.

In 2001 I started teaching at a Bible college. After a year into teaching American students who were almost all born and raised in Christian families, I began to notice a correlation between Muslim and postmodern evangelism, and how they both long for an experience with God. The Muslim longs for it because He’s been taught that God is not approachable and my postmodern students had only known God theologically apart from an experience (this applies to postmodern non-Christians too, but at the present my focus is on postmodern Christians).

For years, our evangelical mentors taught us not to rely on any experience, but to rely on the word of God. “After all, your experiences are not reliable,” they told us. I wonder if after getting knocked off his ass on the way to Damascus and going blind, Paul was told the same thing by the Pharisees of his time. I also wonder if we would’ve had 2/3 of the New Testament if Paul had not had his Damascus experience. After all, isn’t most of the Bible a collection of man’s experience with God?

No doubt some of my readers will disagree with me because they might assume that I’m putting more weight on an experience than the word of God. I am not. What I’m saying is what we used to say during the “Jesus People” time: “God has no grandchildren.” For our children to stand by their parents’ faith in Christ, they themselves need to have an experience to support their theology.

Being In The Middle Is Not Easy

2011-04-15T09:16:00.001-07:00

As a Muslim background believer, I have certain beliefs that put me at odds with some Christians. For example, I have no firm Eschatological stance on the part that Israel plays in the Second Coming. Some evangelicals automatically assume that I hate the Jews because of my Muslim background, or even worse, they might question my salvation as if it is based on a firm support of Israel rather than my faith in Christ.

The other day I was listening to Dr. Doda (not his real name), a mega-church pastor, being interviewed on a radio talk show. Our doctor is known for his partnership with the nation of Israel and has written books on the subject. During the course of the interview, he made the comment that the future of America rests upon her supporting Israel. When the interviewer asked why, he quoted what the Lord said to Abraham (Gen. 12:13), an interpretation that, for many years, has been argued for and against. I leave that argument to smarter people and theologians of which I’m neither. The conversation hit home with me when the subject of Iran came up.

Very confidently, Dr. Doda said something like, “As Ezekiel tells us, Iran and Russia will join forces to attack Israel and that’s when God will destroy them both.” I was rather shocked at the glib and nonchalant way this man of God was referring to the destruction of millions of people. “If what you’re saying is true, Dr. Doda, shouldn’t you be doing all you can to introduce these masses of humanity to Christ?” I asked myself. Not once during the interview was it brought up that in the midst of all this confusion and political unrest, our Lord has made Iran the fastest Muslim country coming to Christ. I guess that couldn’t be as important as what one should or should not believe when it comes to supporting Israel.

On the other hand, there are those Christians who question my sincerity in Christ and love for Muslims because of my stance against Islam as a religion. According to them, somehow being a Christian should prevent me from criticizing the religion of my fathers. And since apparently I support Israel by cautioning the Church about the advancement of Islam in the West, I’m somehow encouraging people to hate Muslims. I guess this group of Christians assumes because I left Islam I automatically hate Muslims.

For almost 30 years I pastored the most unique church on the face of the earth. It consisted of 50% Muslim background Iranian believers and 50% Messianic Jewish Iranians. I find it rather amusing that a majority of those Christians who are so diligent in supporting Israel as the nation and people of God have never raised a finger to win one Jew to Christ. And, on the other hand, many of those Christians who are so concerned about me offending Islam have never had the privilege of sharing the Gospel with one Muslim. I have done both. I don’t hate Israel or Muslims and my record speaks for itself.

This Is What I Mean By "Social Justice"

2010-10-31T13:54:00.000-07:00

I was meeting with New York Times bestselling author. This was our second meeting. I’d read her book a while back, liked what she had to say, and when I found out that another friend knew her, I asked to be introduced to her. Our first meeting had gone well.

It was a few weeks before the last presidential election. As we sat at a table at Starbucks, she started to tell me about the conversation she’d recently had with a friend who disliked Sarah Palin.

“I’m voting for McCain.” I told her.

“What?! You’re a Republican?”

“Yes, I am.”

I could tell she was surprised. People who don’t know me have a hard time pigeon-holing me. Some Evangelicals feel that I’m too liberal to be a Christian, and non-Christians are shocked to find out that I, a brown-skin Iranian, am a conservative Christian. She wasn’t any different. Her book, which I recommend very highly, is not something that every evangelical would have on their bookshelf. So, she had assumed I was a liberal.

Her curiosity got the best of her, so she asked, “Why do you like McCain?”

“He is for securing our borders,” I replied.

“I want our borders left open.”

Now it was my turn to ask questions: “Why do you want our borders left unsecured?”

“I want people to come here so they can be helped.”

“If you want to help them, why don’t you go over there?” I asked her.

That’s when everything hit the fan.

In the middle of Starbucks, she began pounding the table with a raised voice saying, “How dare you?! How dare you?!”

Those who know me know that I never shy away from a good confrontation, but I almost never go out of my way to deliberately provoke anyone to anger or hurt their feelings. My new-found friend’s reaction was a total surprise to me.

I had no idea why she was so angry with me. I was almost in tears and shaking. My brain began to search for the cause of her anger like my Mac doing a search on the hard drive for a lost document. If she had listened hard enough, she could have heard the clicking in my head. Then, Eureka! I figured it out.

She was angry because a naturalized American, me, had just told her, an American, to leave her country. But that wasn’t what I meant. It took me a while to explain to her what my point was, and eventually she apologized to me. I think I might have been as upset if I was in her place not knowing what the other person meant with those words.

I was simply referring to what I’ve practiced in my own life. For example, when I visited Tajikistan in 1998 (a war-torn ex-Soviet satellite, which is among the poorest nations in the world), I was so moved by the lack of healthcare in the country that the following year I went back with a medical team hoping to alleviate some of the pain I’d witnessed. I didn’t go around demanding that the government should bring all sick Tajiks here so Americans can take care of them. That was my personal issue. I was obeying Christ’s mandate.

In asking my question, I was telling my friend, “If you really care about helping people of other countries, YOU go over there and help them. Don’t turn something personal into a public problem demanding that others take care of it for you.”And to me, this is "Social Justice".

After my explanation and her apology, we went back to being friends. We have met once or twice since in the same Starbucks.

----------------------------------------------

It’s the last day of a grueling seven days of providing care to over 600 sick people by an American medical team in Ghorghan Tepeh, Tajikistan—a Muslim nation. Except for me, everyone in the team has suffered from some kind of dysentery. Being born and raised in Iran has its benefits. For over a week we’ve had no water or electricity. It’s in the middle of summer and it’s quite hot. Although the team is under my care, I mostly act as a translator and at times help with crowd control.

We’re all tired, smelly and desperately in need of a shower. I am also quite frustrated. There is so little the team’s doctors can do with the limited resources they have available. They have no X-ray or CAT scan machines, and can’t run blood tests. So sometimes the best we can do is pray over the patient.

As Marvin (a team member who’s directed many medical teams before with his doctor wife) and I are guiding patients to where they’re supposed to go, a Tajik lady walks up to us. She’s crying. Our doctors can’t do anything for her.

“My in-laws want my husband to divorce me,” she tells me in Tajik.

“Why?” I ask.

“Because I’m barren and my in-laws demand grandchildren of us. But I love my husband.”

Now, I’m in tears. I know the pain of being barren. My wife experienced that for the first eight years of our marriage, but there’s nothing we can do. I explain to Marvin what the issue is, and then ask her if she would let us pray for her.

I want her to know to whom I’m praying, so I pray in Tajik. My heart is heavy as we send her away. She is crying and I’m wondering how God’s going to answer this prayer. Even if there was a medical solution, these people are so poor and can’t afford even the most basic surgical procedure.

As the end of the day draws near, I’m even more frustrated. There are more patients to see and we’ve ran out of most of our medicine. I’m grateful that our doctors have so sacrificially put aside their own interests and seen patient after patient for hours on end. But, I also wish they could do more. Frankly, I’m beginning to wonder if this has been a successful trip when our infertile lady shows up again.

This time she is full of joy. Her tears have turned into laughter. “What in heaven’s name could have changed her so quickly?” I wonder.

This is what she tells us: “By the time I got home there was a letter from the government telling us we’ve been approved to adopt the twins we’ve been asking for. We’ll start the procedures tomorrow.”

She then makes another announcement, “The twins will be called, Shahrokh and Marvin.” Dear God, I feel sorry for those kids. Shahrokh is a Persian name and can be handled with much less difficulty in that culture, but Marvin?

And finally she presents Marvin and me with a naan — a flat, round bread popular in that part of the world. “I want you and Marvin to each take a bite on different parts of the bread,” she tells us. We comply.

She takes the bread back and says, “We will nail the bread to a wall in our house and keep it there for as long as it lasts. This is our tradition; something we practice in memory and respect of people who have touched our lives.”

By the time we leave for the States, we have seen over 600 patients. We’re all filled with a sense of gratitude and fulfillment for being able to touch so many lives in such a short time. Yes, there are many more people to be helped, but none of us come away thinking that somehow every American is obligated to share our burden and bring the needy Tajiks to the US so they can be helped.

I Love My Church, Starbucks II!

2010-09-10T20:34:00.000-07:00

I’ve just dropped my car off to be serviced, and have a couple of hours of waiting, so I go to the Starbucks across the street. This is my second time at this place.

As I sip on my coffee, I notice a couple walk in together. The man walks up to the counter and after ordering his drink, he turns around and asks the lady behind her what she’d like to have. He pays for his purchase and goes to the end of the counter where he’s to pick up his order. Anyone watching the couple would have no problem assuming the two are together, but this is not the case.

When it’s the lady’s turn to order her drink, the barista tells her, “Your drink was already ordered and paid for.”

“By whom?” asks the lady with a vey confused look on her face.

“By that guy,” the barista points to the man who’d walked in before her.

The woman walks up to the guy and thanks him insisting to pay the stranger back when the man says, “Lady, I’m grateful to be alive. Riding my bike here, I almost got killed by a driver who didn’t see me. So, please accept my gift to you.” He then walks out.

“Did you see what just happened?” I ask the gentleman sitting across from me.

“No!”

I go on to explain what just transpired and finish by saying, “May God help us all to see life the way this man just experienced it.”

“Amen!” responded the gentleman.

His quick response causes me to ask, “Where do you go to church?”

It turns out that Mike is a worship leader of a very large church in the neighborhood. We hit it off very pleasantly. We spend the next two hours talking about our faith, worship and the church.

As we’re talking I notice a young lady standing in line can’t take her eyes off me. Eventually she walks up to me and says, “Do you remember me?”

I really don’t, but I fake it. “Of course, I remember you! But can’t remember your name.”

With tears in her eyes she says, “Mehri! I’ve been thinking about you so much lately.”

As soon as I hear her name, I remember her totally. Over ten years ago, she used to be one of my church members. She goes to this Starbucks often, and as fate has it today, she’s come in later than usual. If it were any other day, she would not have run into me. I introduce her to Mike and after exchanging contact info, we promise each other to meet soon.

Eventually Mike has to leave which gives me a chance to fire up my Mac and update my status on Facebook when another young man sits next to me.

“Are you on Facebook?” he asks with his thick African accent.

“Yes, I am.”

“My name is Zach! Can I be your friend on Facebook?”

“Why do you want to be my friend? You don’t even know me.”

“I’ve never met many of my friends on Facebook. At least I’ve seen you in person.”

I find it fascinating what his generation considers friendship.

“My name is Shah. You’re from Africa, correct?” I say, as I shake his hand.

“Yes, but you’ll never guess where.

“Cote d’lvoire”

“No! Benin. I told you, you’ll never guess.”

I’m not going to argue with him about the fact that I was only a country or so off the mark.

“I have over 350 friends on Facebook, but except for a handful, I’ve never asked anyone to be my friend. They all requested to be my friends,” I continue.

“Why’s that?”

“This way, I’m assured that these people wanted to be my friends because they know who I am and what I believe, so my comments and thoughts will not offend them.”

“So, what is it that you believe?”

I know that question was going to come up, and am ready for it.

“Being from Benin, I assume you’re a Muslim,” I tell him.

“Yes, I am.”

I begin to share my testimony with him from a shame-based perspective, a culture he was raised in. He finds my life-story to be interesting and identifies with much of what he hears. He goes on to tell me about some of his Christian friends who’ve been sharing the same kind of life-stories with him.

As Zach and I are talking, I notice another old friend standing in line. I haven’t seen him for over 8-9 years. It’s good to renew our friendship.

Eventually. I get a call from my mechanic. The car’s ready, and I have to leave. As I walk across the street, I realize, “I had church at the Starbucks this morning.” I had fellowship and renewed friendships, exchanged ideas on church and worship, met some new people, and shared my faith with a Muslim man.

When was the last time you did all this at your Sunday service?

————————————————————————

Since our first meeting, I’ve met with Mike again, and have had the honor of being given the three CDs he’s produced. He’s one talented man of God. I also had a chance to meet with Mehri, my old church member. She’s been through a lot these last 10 years including a divorce, unsuccessful attempt to move back to Iran, the loss of all personal possession, a new, but painful start in America, and battling leukemia.

In our last meeting, after sharing all she’s been through, trying very hard to hold back tears, she said, “Pastor Shahrokh, do you remember the first day I came to your church? I’ve never been the same since. Thank you for introducing me to the Lord. Throughout these past 10 years, He’s been my only true friend. I would have never made it without him in my life.”

I Love MY Church, Starbucks I

2010-09-09T16:49:00.000-07:00

The Bible college where I teach is an hour away from my house. To avoid the morning rush hour, I leave home early, which gets me to the college an hour before my class starts. I spend the hour in the neighborhood Starbucks where I get my tall “Awake” with a maple scone, and get a chance to review my teaching notes for the day.

On this particular day, as I sit down, I notice the young lady sitting across from me is reading her Bible. I automatically assume she’s one of my Bible college students, and ask her, “Whose class are you studying for?”

“It’s a Lit. class,” she tells me.

I’m confused. I know there are no literature classes at the college I teach.

“Do you go to LIFE?”

“What’s LIFE?”

“The Bible college a mile south of here.”

“No, I go to CSULA working on my master’s degree.”

“And, you use the Bible in your class?”

“Yes, one of the assignments is studying the Old Testament as a literary document.”

I’m so intrigue by the conversation, I decide to forgo reading my notes, and spend the next hour getting to know this young lady. From then on, till the end of the semester, I keep meeting with Lisa once a week at Starbucks to talk about life and The Old Testament.

————————————————————————————

Lisa is not a believer, but her knowledge of the Old Testament would put many of my students to shame. After getting to know her well enough, I asked if she’d be willing to be interviewed by the students in my “Evangelism and Discipleship” class, which she agreed.

On the day of the interview, Lisa sat on a stool in front of the class and let the students ask her questions about her beliefs. Although she was a bit nervous at first, it all went fairly well.

After the class, a student walked up to me and said, “ProfeShah (that’s what they called me) you amaze me. You not only can walk into a Starbucks, and start a conversation with a total stranger, but you can also convince her to come before a class full of Christians and be questioned about her beliefs.”

“As I’ve been trying to teach you, evangelism is all about a relationship built on trust. Lisa knows I’ll be her friend for life whether she ever decides to follow Christ or not,” I told him.

During the same semester, along with a group of students, Karen and I had Lisa over for a BBQ where she taught the students how to swing dance.

Throughout the years since our first meeting, I’ve continued to stay in touch with Lisa. She’s always been open to hear about my faith and how I became a follower of Christ. At the same time, she’s always made it clear that she prefers to stay a secular person, enjoying her own moral values. So, what took place next was quite a surprise to me.

Last week Lisa called me. She is getting married and she wants me to do the wedding. Apparently, her Catholic fiancé wants to have a church wedding, but doesn’t want it done through the Catholic Church, so, she immediately thought about me.

I met with the couple yesterday. I feel quite honored to officiate the marriage of a young lady I met at my church, Starbucks. I'm looking forward to the privilege of sharing a Christian perspective on marriage with a group of people whom, otherwise, might have not heard it.

To Charge Or Not To Charge

2010-08-08T19:10:00.000-07:00

I’m invited to speak at a church about two hours north of where we live. The pastor is an old friend and many of his church members know me personally. I look forward to being at the church.

Before getting on the road I put $60 worth of gas in the car; she runs on premium. After driving for about 100 miles, I’m finally there. My 45-minute teaching goes well, and afterward I spend another hour or so fellowshipping with church members. Before I leave, the pastor graciously gives me an envelope with my honorarium in it. As it is my practice, I don’t look at it till I get home. Six hours later, when I get home, I open the envelope. The check is for $120. Deducting my gas expense, per hour, I’m paid a little over the minimum wage. I’m hurt and feel dishonored. I believe I should have been respected more, but I have no one to blame but myself.

——————————————————

In almost 40 years of being in the ministry, I never asked for any specific honorarium when invited to speak anywhere. In some cases, I even gave the honorarium back. Looking back, that was done out of a combination of pride, fear of being accused of putting a price on the Gospel or not trusting God and even more important, having a fulltime job which supported us sufficiently so I didn’t have to rely on honorariums as a means of support. However, not having a fulltime job since 2006, things are now different.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that I needed to establish a value system for giving out that which springs from my background, education, knowledge and experience. Coming to this point has probably been one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever made.

I have known many pastors and Christian leaders who, not only have a set honorarium, they also must be flown first-class when invited to speak somewhere. “But those are well known successful pastors and leaders with much more knowledge and experience than me,” I’d say. But, in reality, the majority of those pastors don’t have a fraction of the knowledge, experience, background or even accomplishments in my field. When I’m invited to speak somewhere, it’s because the audience wants to hear what I have to offer—an Iranian Muslim-background Believer, with a B.S. in Civil Engineering and a M.A. in Cross-cultural ministries; who planted the first Iranian Christian organization in the United States; taught at a Bible college for 5 years; and as a Middle East regional coordinator, planted churches all over the Muslim world for 6 years. However, in my case, that was easier said than done. I had to struggle with many issues.

Am I putting a price on the word of God? Am I not trusting God to support me? How can I swallow my pride and ask for a certain amount without offending anyone? These were the questions that kept haunting me, until something interesting took place that put my soul at ease.

————————————————————

It’s a few days after speaking at the above church. My phone rings. It’s an old friend who’s recently become the pastor of a church.

“I’ve been teaching on the Beatitudes and this coming Sunday I’m teaching on persecution. However, not ever being persecuted myself, I thought it would be great if someone like you who knows a bit more about the subject could come and speak about it,” he tells me.

I’m delighted at his request. Frankly, it’s been a while since I’ve gotten any speaking invitations. However, I have a dilemma I must deal with.

“George, I’m going to ask you a question that I’ve never in my life asked anyone. I hope you don’t get offended,” I say quite uncomfortably.

“Of course not! Go ahead and ask it.”

“How much is your church prepared to pay me?”

“Our honorarium is $150.”

Then comes an even harder statement to make, but I’ve done my research and know my request isn’t unreasonable.

“Well, that’d be fine. You’re my friend and I’ll be honored to speak at your church for any amount, but I’d like to know that my honorarium is....”

After getting all the info, we say our goodbyes and I hang up.

The next day George calls to tell me that after talking to his board, the church is prepared to pay me what I’ve asked for.

That Sunday after I’m done speaking, George hands me my honorarium, but at the same time he says, “Please don’t leave yet. We’re writing you a second check—another gift from some of the members.”

———————————————————

I still struggle with the idea of having to negotiate a price for my expertise, but I also realize if I don’t honor myself enough to set the price, albeit with pure intentions, neither will the majority of those who invite me to speak at their gatherings.

You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. (James 4:2)

They Don’t Care How Much We Know Till They Know How Much We Care

2010-06-02T13:43:00.000-07:00

Recently, our good friend, Bill, told us about a conversation he’d had with a server at a restaurant with whom he’d developed a friendship. Upon discovering that Bill was a Christian, the server told him, “All of us waiters draw straws on Fridays to see which one of us ends up working on Sundays when, after church, many Christians come here to eat. We hate waiting on them. They have the worst attitudes and are lousy tippers.”

Both my children worked as servers in various restaurants while going to college. In fact, my daughter still works two days a week at a high-end Japanese restaurant while going to graduate school. So, when I relayed the above story to her, she laughed and told me the following story which had happened to one of her friends at the restaurant:

After waiting on a grouchy and complaining church-going couple on a Sunday, instead of a tip, my daughter’s friend was left a Christian tract entitled, “Why the love of money is evil”. I guess this enlightened couple had no idea that anyone loving money wouldn’t necessarily become a waiter since servers usually work for minimum wage and the tips they receive are their main source of income.

—————————————————————————————

It’s Mother day 2010. After speaking at the Philadelphia Church in Seattle, some of the church leaders take me to a picturesque water front restaurant. Our server is a young beautiful Asian lady. She reminds me of Megan, my daughter.

As soon as she leaves to get our drink orders, I ask the table, “OK, what do think her nationality is?”

That’s one of my hobbies. I take pride in the fact that I can often tell what foreign language people are speaking or what their nationality is.

But, not today.

We go around the table and each makes a guess, so by the time our server comes back, we’re ready for her. I’m quite wrong. It’s Grethe who’s gotten it right. The lady’s Filipino. We all laugh and have a lot of fun with it.

A while later, on her third trip to our table, Allan, one of the guys in our group, asks her the following, strange question, “Do you have a recurring dream?”

“Yes, I did when I was a little girl,” says the server.

“What was it?”

“I used to dream I’m in this dry and lonely place where everything around me is brown and dying. I’d be walking by myself when all of the sadden a Transformer appeared in front of me. I would get so scared that I would wake myself up.”

And then she leaves to attend to other patrons.

“Why did you ask the question,” looking at Allen, I ask. Of course, I have a feeling why he did it, but I have to be sure.

“I don’t know! Every time she walked up I was impressed to ask her the question. Now, let’s interpret her dream. Any ideas anyone?”

Everyone has something to contribute.

Allen suggests what colors mean in dreams. Ed talks about her lonely feelings, and Grethe and Christa remind us of her fear. This isn’t my first time facing such an unusual encounter, but I’m still quite intrigued.

I don’t have a gift of dream interpretation, but after years of practicing Lectio Devina or “Meditative Prayer”, I’ve learned that if I bring my thoughts into submission to God and focus on him, I’m often directed as how to pray. My focus is on the Transformer.

“A Transformer is a shape-shifter. It can reveal itself as one thing, when, in fact, it is something else. To me it symbolizes a lack of or a broken trust,” I commented.

We can’t wait for her to come back. By this point we’ve treated her with so much respect and light-hearted conversation that she’s willing to hear what we have to offer. No sooner she gets back to us, she asks, “So, did you figure out my dream?”

Allen looks at me and says, “Go ahead, you tell her.”

I tell her our conclusion: “There’s a deep lack of trust in your life due to something that happened to you when you were little. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was your parents’ divorce. Since then, you’ve been having a hard time taking things at face-value, fearing, no matter what it is, it might shift its shape.”

By now our lovely server is in tears.

“Yes, my parents are divorced,” she says while sniffling and wiping tears off her face.

“Now, for the good news,” I continue.

“Today, God brought us here to let you know that even though people, even your parents, can and will fail you, He never will. He wants you to trust Him.”

While crying harder, she manages to say, “My mother’s at church right now. She’s been asking me to go with her. I think I’m going to start doing that.”

We make sure to leave her a great tip.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A majority of people we interact with in our daily lives don’t care for our Message because they don’t know if we care for them. It’s a foolish and dilapidated thought process that assumes that somehow giving a tract to someone as a means of witnessing exonerates all your other actions. After all, let’s not forget:

You are a letter from Christ...written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the Living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts..." II Corinthians 3:3

A Pacifist, At Whose Cost?

2010-04-27T21:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, my son, Todd, an officer in the United States Air Force posted the following on his Facebook wall: “Todd Afshar only regrets that he has but one life to lose for his country,” which was promptly commented on by a friend saying, “Cats have more lives to give. Learn jazz.”

Todd’s comment and the letter he had sent to his American grandparents (Todd’s grandfather served in the armed forces during WWII) reminded me of a conversation I once had with a Christian pacifist.

The pacifist’s brother had posted an anti-war article on his blog. His post was filled with a bunch of bumper sticker slogans such as, “War is not the answer!” “War, what is it good for?” mixed with Christ’s admonition of, “turning the other cheek ” and “loving your enemies.” I had no problem with much of what the man had to say, but what really got me was the title of the blog: “Which War Has Ever Helped Anyone?”

I respect pacifists, but I have a great problem with naïve Christians who get their biblical macros and micros mixed up.

In response to the brother’s question, I left a comment on his blog saying, “I don’t know! Maybe you should ask your question to the Jews who were freed from Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau and other Nazi concentration camps at the hands of those valiant American soldiers who shed their blood willingly to free the world from the tyranny of an evil man named Hitler.”

The writer quickly replied to me by quoting Christ’s admonition and that somehow we could have reconciled with Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese Empire if the US had not overreacted toward those animals.

This is what I replied:

So, according to your understanding of what Jesus said, after bombing Pearl Harbor and killing several thousand American soldiers, we should have told the Japanese, ‘In response to Christ’s mandate, we are not only going to ignore what you have done, but we also offer you San Francisco to bomb.’

I think, just like so many other Christians, the above writer couldn’t separate Christ’s micro principles from his macro principles. To make my point even more clear to the author, I went on to challenge him with the following question:

Suppose a man breaks into your house and rapes your wife. In keeping with Christ’s mandate and wanting to turn the other cheek, would you offer the rapist your daughter also?

Unfortunately, our friend was quite upset at my question and assumed that I was calling him an unfit father, which, by no means was my intention. I was only trying to show the brother how faulty his reasoning was. If you can’t apply Christ’s mandates to an everyday personal situation (a micro principle) — which, I believe, was Christ’s true intention in the previously mentioned mandates — how naïve are you to think it could be applied to all international dealings of various nations particularly in defending the innocent against blood-sucking parasites who are a billion times worse than the imaginary rapist?

As I said, I have no problem with pacifists, but please remember that your act of pacifism comes with a price — the blood of our military men and women. The same price people like my son are willing to pay at any moment they are called upon so you can continue to exercise the luxury of being a pacifist in the comfort and security of your country.

One final warning to my pacifist friends: If and when the Muslims take over a Western nation, among the first people they’ll execute will be the pacifists. If you weren’t willing to fight for your own faith and country, you will certainly not fight for theirs. So, really, you’re nothing by a liability to them.

IT’S ALL ABOUT HONOR!

2010-03-12T09:44:00.000-08:00

I’ve inherited my dad’s looks and many of his characteristics. Just like him, I’m very easygoing until I’m cornered or dishonored.

The year was 1963. I was still living in Abadan, Iran, when a new family moved into a house across the street from us. All the neighborhood kids knew the man of the house was nothing but trouble because he was just plain mean.

For example, while playing soccer, if our ball accidentally went over the fence, and landed in his yard, he didn’t give it back to us. He’d cuss us out —something completely unheard of in our community—for having a good time, and laughing out loud, but we couldn’t do anything about it. Within that society, kids didn’t question an elder. This went on until the man had to face my easygoing dad.

Mr. Golcheen, our new neighbor, had a dog that was just as mean as her master. One day the dog got out of the gated front yard and bit one of my brothers. After he came home crying, my mom approached Mr. Golcheen and very politely said, “Sir, you shouldn’t let your dog get out of your front yard.” To which, he very sarcastically replied, “Madam, you shouldn’t let your boy get out of your front yard.”

The poor soul wasn’t aware that my dad, who’d just gotten home from work, was standing across the street listening to the whole conversation. Having his wife insulted, and demanding his honor restored, my dad charged the man. That was the only time I remember my dad that angry. Fortunately for the man, other neighbors stopped my dad and allowed Mr. Golcheen to cowardly duck into his house. A few weeks later he moved out of the neighborhood.
_________________________________
The year’s 2002. This is my daughter’s senior year at Birmingham High, and her best friend has talked her into working with her at this dive of a pizzeria in a shady part of the city we live in. I’m not very happy with my daughter working in such a place, but Megan’s excitement overrides her dad’s disagreement. After all, like my dad, I’m also an easygoing father, whom, as much as possible, never says, “No.”

After working there for a few months, one night Megan comes home crying. The owner of the place, who has a very foul mouth, had cussed her out in front of customers, and she doesn’t want to work there any more. Many Americans may be quite delighted to hear their daughter isn’t going to be working for a place they disapproved to begin with, but not with me. I was raised in a shame-based culture and taught to defend my family’s honor, which is very important to me.

I call my good friend, Dennis. He’s of Swedish decent, and is built like an eighteen-wheeler, burly and strong. I tell him what I’m about to do and ask him to go with me. He readily accepts my request. No sooner than I call, and tell him my game plan, he’s at my front door. We get in his truck, and head for the pizzeria.

I’ve met the restaurant owner before. He’s a scrawny-looking guy who was born in Lebanon but raised in America. As soon as I enter the place, he recognizes me and has a feeling of why I’m here. I ask him to meet us outside. We go out and I sit at a table with my back against the wall across from him. Dennis stands right behind him, just as we’ve planned.

“Are you going to beat me up?” he asks nervously, hoping I get his joke.

“Of course not!” I reply. I’ve no intention of beating anyone up. I just want to teach this spoiled brat a lesson and restore my daughter’s honor.

“You know what “Aaibe” is, correct?” I use the word for shame in Arabic.

“Yes!”

“You know how important our honor is in that part of the world. You’ve brought ‘Aaibe’ on my family by dishonoring my daughter, and that needs to be rectified.”

“You’re correct, sir. I’m sorry for using bad language around your daughter.”

“You should never use bad language around my daughter period, but even more important, you will never direct it at her.”

“I’m very sorry. Please tell her if she comes back, I’ll never do it again.”

“That’s never going to happen. She’s not coming back to this place, EVER,” I smirk.

My family honor is restored, and I’m satisfied. But, even more important, Megan knows that her dad stood up for her, and that she can always depend on me to be her covering and protection.

As we’re walking away, I thank Dennis for going with me and he says,
“Thank you for bringing me along. I learned how my daughter should be treated.”

A few weeks later, I hear that our Lebanese friend is fined heavily for allowing an underage employee to sell liquor to an undercover police officer.
_____________________________
Recently, after posting my last 3-4 blogs, I got two interesting, yet opposite comments.

An anonymous follower gave me a great compliment, albeit, a left-handed one, saying:

“so ive read all of your blogs, never commented, a lot of the times because i felt you were just whiny. i really like the quality of your last 3 or 4 posts, and just thought i should give you a little bit of encouragement. keep going sir.”

The second comment from a friend said, “What happened? You’ve lost your fire.”

My friends were both right and wrong. I haven’t lost my fire, and, no, I wasn’t whiny. Originally, I started blogging after being unjustly fired from my job, which deeply dishonored me. I was cornered and shamed. My blogs were my way of trying to restore my honor. However, once the new leadership in charge of the old missions organization took me to lunch to apologize in person for what the old regime had done to me, I felt no reason to continue writing about the same issues. My honor was restored, and just like my dad, once again, I’m easygoing.

The above stick drawing and the note is from Megan. She sent it to me just the other day after I got her car fixed. By the way, she’s 24.

Robin Hood Was A Thief

2010-02-15T11:03:00.000-08:00

I used to steal.

Years ago, when I worked for a clothing store, one of my coworkers convinced me that stealing from the company was my right. Here’s how he justified the act:

“You see, Shah. What we do is not stealing because, first, this company marks up the resale values of all the clothing by 100% and makes a lot of money. So, stealing a few items here and there will not hurt them at all. Second, these people expect us to steal because they only pay us minimum wage. “

Does the above logic justify stealing?

It sure satisfied me. I became an expert in ripping off the store. I went to work wearing my old clothes, chose whatever I wanted off the rack, and in opportune time walked into the dressing room, and changed to my new outfit. At the end of my shift, I walked out of the store wearing brand new shirts, pants and coats without having to spend a penny.

I was convinced I was entitled to the merchandise. It was my right to have the new clothing, however, at the same time, I had no obligation to the company that had employed me.

I felt like Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to give to the poor – ME.

In those days, the majority of my coworkers did not share my entitlement attitude. But, these days things are quite different.

Today, the Josephson Institute of Ethics released the findings of the first-ever large-scale study of the relationship between high school attitudes and behavior, and later adult conduct.

“The report showed that during 2008, 64% cheated on an exam, 42% lied to save money, and 30% stole something from a store. This new study reveals a close connection between youthful attitudes and behavior and continuing patterns of dishonesty as young people enter the adult world. The survey found that current age and attitudes about the need to cheat and actual high school cheating are significant predictors of lying and cheating across a wide range of adult situations.”

Why the change?

First, let me tell you what changed me and then offer you my opinion for the above question.
As soon as I became a follower of Christ, an inner-voice convicted me of my flawed logic. Nobody lectured me on it. I didn’t hear a “fire and brimstone” message on what happens to thieves. I simply knew I was guilty of stealing. So, I quit. I stopped cheating, lying and stealing to bring honor to my Lord.

What does my conversion have to do with 30% of high school students stealing from stores? If you look at the Ten Commandments, much of it has to do with the wellbeing of the community. I believe the farther our nation gets from God, the more entitlement-minded we become. The more one feels he deserves to have something he hasn’t earned, the more cheating, lying and stealing will take place – acts that eventually will pull communities apart from one another.

The Answer Lies Somewhere Between Pat and Bono

2010-01-21T09:18:00.000-08:00

By now we’ve all heard Pat Robertson’s explanation of the tragedy in Haiti. According to him, the earthquake was the result of a pact that Haitians had made with the Devil 200 years ago. As soon as I heard what he said, I posted the following on my Facebook:

“If Pat is correct, and Satan is the ruler of this world, shouldn’t Haiti be the most prosperous nation on the face of the earth?”

Why do some Christians see the need to defend God with bad theology? Why do we feel that we have to have an answer for everything under the sun? If you and I had an answer for everything that took place in this universe we wouldn’t need faith.

On the other hand, there are those like Bono, the lead singer of the band U2, who believe these tragedies are a direct result of poverty. His solution? Foreign aid and lots of it. After all, Western countries don’t have as many disasters because they are rich. But, is that really the answer? According to Rabbi Daniel Lapin, “The problem is not poverty, it is priority.”

Take, for example, the continent of Africa. Since 1970, rich countries have given a staggering $2.74 trillion in aid to African nations, but to no avail. Most African governments are corrupt to the core. The leaders of these nations embezzle most of the foreign aid and the help never gets to where it’s supposed to go.

On December 26th, 2003, over 30,000 victims perished in a massive earthquake that struck the city of Bam in Iran. Being a victim-mentality government, Iranian authorities explained away the death toll inflicted by the quake as a direct result of poverty.

For many, it is very easy to blame poverty for such devastation, however the same people fail to realize that just a few days after the Bam earthquake, the United States had one of the same magnitude, which struck the California town of Paso Robles with almost no casualties. Why? Because it is more important for the corrupt Iranian government to spend billions of dollars on a large-scale nuclear weapons program than it is to retrofit buildings in an earthquake-prone region. People, in their minds, are dispensable.

Right after the quake in Bam, I sent several thousand dollars to one of our pastors in Iran, directing him to use it to help the people in the destroyed city. After a few weeks he sent me several newspaper clippings that showed the wide-spread corruption that was taking place in the midst of all that misery. For example, the German’s rescue dogs were stolen at the airport. Supplies sent by the US were sold on the black market. Iranians were stealing valuables off dead bodies, and to expedite the process, the thieves were cutting off bodies’ arms, fingers and ears with the valuables still on them.

So, if it isn’t the Devil or poverty causing this, then what is?

According to Rabbi Lapin, it is the lack of Biblical worldviews. Whether Americans like it or not, in the United States, the standard bearer of Western civilization, “We have two cultural imperatives embedded deeply within our national DNA. Both flow from the Bible with which our founders were intimately familiar and by means of which they sculpted their worldviews.”

The first cultural imperative is to leave ourselves less vulnerable to nature. Americans believed it was God’s will to developed medicine and medical technology to defeat disease. They found insecticides to protect the food supply and built dams to control rivers. They took God’s commandment to Adam and Eve (“Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.”) seriously. Americans knew they were pleasing God by making the nation safer and more secure for themselves and their neighbors, which then seemed to be blessed.

The second distinctive cultural imperative is the importance of preserving human life, which is driven from America’s Biblical roots and distinguishes her from the peculiar fatalism toward death found in so many other cultures.

As Lapin said, “Together, these two values enshrined in the West in general and in America in particular, are chiefly responsible for the vastly diminished impact that natural disasters inflict upon our society.”

Let me finish this post with Rabbi Lapin’s exact words:

God runs this world with as little supernatural interference as possible. Earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, and yes, tsunamis happen. It is called nature, which is not benign. Fortunately God also gave us intelligence and commanded us to make ourselves less vulnerable to nature. He also implanted in us a culture in which each and every life is really important. That is why Deuteronomy chapter thirty states, “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your seed may live.”

God may have allowed the earthquake to happen, just as he has allowed germs to exist and just as he has allowed cold weather each winter. However under the influence of Biblical culture, people have defended themselves against germs and they have learned how to produce energy to defeat winter’s frigid conditions. A long time ago, in His book, God provided the incentive and encouragement to survive nature. He isn’t to blame for the deaths in the Asian disaster. Many of the deaths are attributable to slowness in adopting the western values that promote technical and economic development along with profound respect for each human life.

You Are How You Act, Not Just How You Believe

2010-01-15T14:34:00.000-08:00

“Hey, why the long face?” asked my pastor.

That Sunday morning, I was feeling so bad about something that had happened the day before that my pastor could see it on my face.

“Well, I’m kinda embarrassed to tell you,” I replied.

“Come on, Shah. You know me better than that. Tell me what’s bugging you.”

Like a kid caught after breaking his next-door neighbor’s window with a slingshot, I spilled the beans, “In three years of marriage this has never happened to us. For the first time one of our checks bounced.”

With a surprised look on his face, he began to laugh, and said, “ Let me tell you a secret. For the first time in my marriage, I wrote a check that didn’t bounce.”

Of course, he was exaggerating, but like a neon sign on top of a cheap motel, a light went on in my head, “So, you don’t have to live within your means, and it’s OK to write bad checks? Wow…There really are people who live this way?”

I was raised in a culture where we had to purchase everything in cash. No credit cards. No loans from the bank. There were no entitlement delusions. You were only entitled to that which you could afford in hard currency. No cash, no carry! That was the end of that tune. My parents spent years saving their money so they could carpet a room, or buy a secondhand car – not because they were poor, but because they were wise and practical with their finances. That is why, that Sunday, I was rather ashamed of what had transpired the day before, and did not expect my pastor’s response.

Sure, my pastor was joking, but I’m amazed at how, today, the same entitlement mentality prevails even among Christians.

While at a wedding, in a circle of Christian friends, I over heard one man, without batting an eye, boast, “My house is going into foreclosure. I haven’t paid my mortgage for the last six months, and now I’m looking for a smaller house.”

My first reaction was to slap the brother and scream at him, “Where is the honor in your action, you who boast of your Christian faith? Who told you, somehow, you are entitled to buy a house you couldn’t afford? And now, instead of settling your debt, you’re looking for another house!”

36 years ago when Karen and I got married, I inherited her 1969 VW Bug that her parents had given her as a high school graduation present. I still have the car and drive it on occasion. At one time, some of my church members told me how embarrassed they were to see their pastor drive such a beat-up car, but that didn’t matter to me. I wanted to be an example to my church and was hoping for the members to learn the importance of living within their means even in a land that is built on spending and credit. Besides all that, I truly loved driving my VW. In fact, in 2000 I had it completely refurbished – a job that was done by a friend whom I paid gradually as the work progressed.

In 2005, after paying off our mortgage and existing car loans, I looked through our finances to see if I could afford to purchase a new car (because, any more, I could not hack the summer heat in a car with no A/C). As it turned out, we could afford it, so for the second time in my life—The first time was over 37 years ago--I went out and purchased a new car for myself.

Let me sum up what I’m trying to convey to you in this New Year: You are how you act and not just what you believe. Telling people what you believe isn’t going to cut it if you don’t live accordingly. Jesus told us to let our light shine so those around us would see it and glorify the Father. In these economically tough days when many are desperately looking for solutions that can offer them comfort, we can be that light by putting aside our childish entitlement attitude, and as an example, live wisely within the means God has granted us.

How Church Stole The Christmas From Me!

2009-12-22T12:41:00.000-08:00

Having grown up in an international city, (Abadan, in Iran) my family attended Christmas celebrations and parties thrown in honor of the Westerners working there. However, like other Muslim families, we never celebrated Christmas at home. We didn’t put up a tree, go caroling or exchange gifts. That all changed once I came to the US.

I spent my first Christmas with the family that eventually became my in-laws. Not having anywhere to go as foreign students, Kathy, my wife's, Karen, sister, who worked at the language school we attended, took a few of us to her house for Christmas. In the last forty years, except for one, I have spent every Christmas with my in-laws.

Christmas was huge with my in-laws. The McCarts and their extended family sure knew how to celebrate the day. Christmas was a month-long event filled with evenings at home watching Christmas programs on TV, wrapping gifts, having friends over for dinner, making elegant decorations, putting up the tree, shopping, and above all, loading up the living room with so many gifts that you almost couldn’t fit any people. I have never seen so many gifts being exchanged. In those early years of being in the States, I really looked forward to the Christmas season. That was, until, I became a pastor.

As long as our Iranian church was small, we were not obligated to do anything for Christmas. But, as the church grew and we became more and more Americanized, our church culture changed. Now we were obligated to celebrate Christmas the way all other American churches celebrated the season: WE HAD TO HAVE CHRISTMAS PROGRAMS.

All the churches we knew had choirs for Christmas, so we had to have one. Even a heathen American can, at least, sing a few bars of Silent Night, but not so with us Iranian Muslim-Background Believers. For example, Iranian songs are mostly in minor keys. We are simply not accustomed to singing Western songs. So, except for a few Iranian-Jewish believers who had come out of Iran as Christians, hitting the right notes in a popular Christmas song was not what the rest of the church was capable of doing. Unfortunately, almost all Christian songs we had available to us were translations of the Western songs. What I experienced in selecting singers for our world-renowned choir is something that could rob anyone of the joy of this season.

Karen has always marveled at how bold Iranians are. For starters, we have no fear of the microphone. We all believe we have something to contribute, and you'd better listen to us while we contribute it. So, the whole church wanted to be in the choir and I had to oblige, lest I hurt someone's feelings. How do you tell someone that not only can they not sing, but that his voice is downright offensive — or as we say in Farsi, "It can actually scratch the listener’s soul"? After holding out as long as I could, I finally had to be honest with a few of these individuals and ended up losing them as church members.

I will not bother you with the logistics of the choir practice — getting people to show up for rehearsals, arguing over something being "too American" or hearing people murmur, “That’s not the way Americans do it” — I don’t even want to go near the issue of trying to teach them how to sway back and forth in unison to some songs. There is no swaying with Iranians. Any hint of dancing automatically turns into full-blown belly dancing with hip gyration and breast shaking.

Alas, what’s a Christmas program without the Nativity play using those innocent and pure children? Every parent wanted their child to be Mary, Joseph, the Magi or the Angel. I lost members because their kids ended up playing the livestock or the shepherds.

But wait...There's more.

Then came the official church Christmas meal. After all, what’s a Christmas party without a delicious Persian meal? You would think assigning certain meals to certain individuals would have been the end of the issue. But, NO! “How come I have been assigned to cook this when my specialty is that?” were among many complaints. Worst were the ladies who insisted in knowing whose meal the pastor thought was better. I had WWIII on my hands if I didn’t feel that Mrs. A’s rice was not as good as Mrs. B’s rice. I lost many Mrs. from the congregation over this because they felt people didn't appreciate the way they made their rice!

I wish the way we were robbed of Christmas was only limited to my Iranian congregation. Well, it wasn’t. We were also heavily involved with an American mega-church where Karen was employed.

Weeks before Christmas, almost every evening, every staff member would work way into the night, working at different events, setting up hundreds of Poinsettia plants in the sanctuaries, decorating Christmas trees and lampposts on the street in front of the church and its parking lots, and selling tickets for the shows, which no matter what, had to be bigger and better than any other church. The Christmas programs went on for a whole week and all the staff was obligated to attend and work at least one of those boring events. For most, if not all, of the employees of that church, Christmas was nothing but stress, stress and more stress.

After years of doing Christmas like that, (where instead of following the McCart tradition of fully enjoying the season, my wife and I spent all our time away from home, trying to find time to put up our own tree, forgetting Christmas lights on the house, losing time to bake, and dragging the kids to church or just leaving them at home alone because they were too burned out) I began to resent the whole season. There was no joy in celebrating our Lord’s birthday since we piled it up with so much baggage.

May I offer you a suggestion? Don’t make the mistake I made. Don’t confuse Christmas with another church program. I am not banning Christmas celebrations from church. I’m all for celebrating. Party till the cows come home. The question you should ask yourself is, “At what price?” No church activity is worth robbing anyone of his God given contentment.

Isn’t it interesting that some of us evangelicals, accuse the world of commercializing Christmas, yet we’re not willing to recognize what we have done to suck the life out of a season that is synonymous with JOY? I don’t know about you, but any more, I’d rather have a commercialized Christmas than a joyless one.

Grateful To Be An American

2009-11-26T20:22:00.000-08:00

The year was 2006. I had just been detained by Egyptian authorities at the Cairo airport. After several hours of interrogation, I was stuck in what is equivalent to an immigration holding-tank with the rest of the people who were not allowed to enter the country. I would later learn that some of my Christian activities the previous year had landed my name on Egypt’s secret police blacklist.

As I was sitting in the detainment area, waiting to be processed, the officer-in-charge walked up to me and asked, “Where are you from?”

“I am an American,” I replied.

The man’s face quickly contorted, as if someone had just pushed his face into fresh horse manure. He then snatched my passport out of my hand and mumbled what sounded like, “You are NOT an American!” as he walked away.

What angered him was the fact that an Iranian-born man was referring to himself as an American. I knew that. In fact, he might have treated me a bit differently if I had told him that I was an Iranian, but I refused to do so. Iran is where, of no choice of my own, I was born. However, by choice, I am now a naturalized American citizen, and I was not about to allow an Egyptian officer take that privilege away from me.

America is my country and I am grateful to be an American. Here’s why:

I am grateful to be an American because this is the nation where, exactly 40 years ago, I was welcomed with open arms and taught that all men are created equal in God’s eyes. It was in this country that I learned the meaning of freedom. It was in America that I received my higher education that provided a decent living for my family and me. But even more important, it was here where I met my soul mate and greatest love of my life, Karen, whom I’ve been with for 36 years. Furthermore, it was in the United States of America where our two children (a son who is proudly serving in the Air Force and a daughter who is working on her doctorate) were born. But above all else, it was this great land that introduced me to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and freed me from the bondage of Islam.

So, to my dear friends, who, just like me, migrated to this great nation, let me say: Be grateful for living here. Otherwise, may I suggest to you what I suggested to my Iranian church members the Sunday after 9/11:

Did anyone put a gun to your head and force you to come to the United States? Those Americans who were born here have no choice. This is their country and they have to put up with things they don’t like about their nation. However, for those of us who willingly migrated here, we have our country of origin. If you can’t be grateful for what this nation has to offer, or you don’t like this country for your personal reasons, then I will be glad to buy you a one-way ticket and personally put you on the first plane back to Iran. Why? Because ungrateful people will never be happy, no matter where they live.

Conversion And Cultural Understanding

2009-10-10T14:52:00.000-07:00

Imagine for a moment an Iranian Muslim student in the 1970s who, after having been in the United States for just a few months, heard the Gospel for the first time.

Unlike my American friends, I was raised in a shame-based society rather than a guilt-based one. I knew the greatest sin I could commit was anything that might bring shame to my family; I sought instead to bring them honor.

I was introduced to Christianity for the first time at a Bible study with a few other foreign students. As a hungry and penniless student, I appreciated the offer of an American friend to come and enjoy free food at this meeting. As we ate, a gentleman opened a book and began to talk to the group; I didn’t understand a thing the man said. It wasn’t until the other Muslim students and I left the house that I realized I wasn’t the only one confused. Language was not the only problem, however. Everything the man talked about posed a problem for what I was raised to believe.

The stranger talked about God. The only gods I knew were Khoda, the dualistic god of the Zoroastrians, and Allah, a Semitic god to the
Arabs. But the God referred to that night appeared as a man, Jesus, to the Jews 2,000 years ago and called himself the Son of God. To me, that was blasphemy. In fact, as a Muslim, the greatest sin I could commit was the sin of shirk—making an equal with God.

As a little boy, I was told that according to the Quran, the Muslim holy book, God was neither begotten nor begets. I was brought up to respect Jesus as one of the many prophets God sent to warn mankind. While he performed some miracles and raised the dead, Jesus was simply a man whom the Jews appeared to have crucified. Like many Shia Muslims, I believed that in the last minute before Jesus was arrested, God changed the appearance of Judas to make him look like Jesus, and that it was actually Judas who was nailed to the cross.

I was always taught that in the last day, everyone will be judged according to his or her own actions on earth; no one could take your place for punishment. For the strange man in the living room to assert that I was a sinner and that Jesus died to forgive my sins was, frankly, offensive. I could not believe this man, who knew nothing about me, would dishonor me in this way.

Two years later, I faced expulsion from school due to bad grades. I couldn’t face being such a failure to my family who made many sacrifices to send their oldest son and brother to the United States to become an engineer. This extreme shame led me to contemplate suicide.

But things got even worse. The house I was living in burned down and I lost all my belongings. Shortly thereafter, as I was sitting on a street curb on campus thinking about my future, a young lady walked up to me and asked how I was doing. She was apparently concerned about the way I looked. I was surprised to see someone actually care about my wellbeing, especially someone I did not know. I have never forgotten that simple act of kindness, which included her giving me a sweater, and have made a point of practicing it every chance I get.

The young lady, Ellen, belonged to a group of former Hippies who had become followers of Christ, or as they were called, “Jesus Freaks.” Through her I got to know the whole group, where in the midst of them, I felt the sense of peace that I had been longing for. At one point I asked what gave them such peace, to which they simply replied, “Jesus.” Once again, I was offended. I didn’t understand how a second-class prophet could provide such peace when Islam, the revelation to end all revelations, was not able to offer me the same.

That Thanksgiving, Ellen invited me to her house for dinner. As we sat around the dining table, her father said a blessing over the food. I had never heard anyone pray over a meal. As Muslims, if we ever said a prayer, it was after we had finished the meal and were full. For whatever reason, that prayer was what brought me to the following.
That evening, as I rode my motorcycle to school, I began to have a conversation with the only god I was familiar with, Khoda. I said, “I’m a Muslim. I believe in Mohammad, Ali and the other 11 Imams, but I want to kill myself.” Then I added, “Jesus, if you really are who these people tell me you are, I’ll accept you if you give me good grades at school.”

At the time, I did not believe Jesus was the Son of God, that he was divine, or that he had died on the cross. I was concerned not about my sins, but my honor. I wanted someone to restore my honor by changing my grades. Interestingly enough, as little as I knew about this man named Jesus, I did believe that he cared about restoring my honor just as much as my Christian friends believed in his power to forgive their sins. That is why I prayed the way I did, and though I prayed to Khoda, it was Jesus who came to my rescue.

On that day, I took my first step toward the cross. Islam was my religion, identity, tradition, and attached to my family’s honor; renouncing it was one of the hardest things I have ever had to face.
It has taken me many years to understand who Jesus is. In fact, I learn more about him every day, but I never forget the reality that Jesus accepted me as I was and did not wait until my theology was perfected.

Over 30 years later, I do not believe I switched gods to follow Jesus any more than the apostle Paul did on his way to Damascus, but rather I came to a more complete revelation of the Creator through my Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ—the one who saved me from my sins, fears and shame—the son of God and God himself.

I know now that according to Jesus, the second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. That act of love can start with a simple smile followed by the heartfelt question, “How are you?”

From Mohammad to Jesus

2009-09-10T11:04:00.000-07:00

I am putting together my itinerary for 2010. I would like you to watch this clip and share it with your pastor or group leader asking them to consider me as a guest speaker. The flier bellow gives more information as to how they can contact me.

Open publication - Free publishing - More speaking

PLEASE DON’T PIGEONHOLE ME

2009-07-30T12:55:00.000-07:00

Did you see the confrontation between California Senator Barbara Boxer and Harry Alford, CEO, of the Black Chamber of Commerce? If not, watch the following video.

It doesn’t matter in which camp you reside, but apparently, according to Mr. Alford, Mrs. Boxer assumed that all blacks in America should do or think the same. In other words, she pigeonholed the gentleman, which offended him greatly. As a naturalized American citizen, I have experienced this type of misconception from both Christians and non-Christians.

Recently, an old student of mine who had read my blog wrote me saying, “Don’t tell me you believe in Rob Bell’s crap.” She was referring to the Author of “Velvet Elvis” who is an emergent church pastor. Although I own the book and had read parts of it, I had forgotten whom Rob Bell was. Later, when I remembered who he was, I realized why my student had made the comment. She was assuming that because some of my ideas were like those of Rob’s, I must be an emergent teacher forgetting that, because of my background, I have had those thoughts long before Rob wrote his book.

Right after 9/11, I began traveling all around the country and abroad with my American flag bandanna. At that time, for security reasons, the airlines started the policy of randomly checking three passengers’ carry-ons. The computer provided the names of the passengers. On one of my flights, proudly brandishing my bandanna, I sat next to a young white lady from San Diego.

As we began to talk, she said, “In the past week I have been to 5 different cities and in every city, when boarding the plane, my name has come up for inspection. I am so happy they are doing it that way.”
“Why?” I asked
“Well, for your sake!”
“What do you mean?”
“This way you and people from your background don’t feel like they are being singled out.”

Again, just because of the way I look, she assumed I might somehow be offended or annoyed if the airlines had decided to only go through the luggage of those who resembled the Arab terrorists. I think my reply shocked the heck out of her.

I said, “With all due respect madam, this is one of the most illogical statements I’ve ever heard. Why should the authorities go through your stuff, a white blond woman, while I, a Middle Easterner, can freely waltz onto the plane? For what? So my feelings might not get hurt? I wonder if you ask the men and women who lost their loved ones in that cowardly attack what they would have rather seen: 12 Arabs having their feelings hurt or their loved ones being slaughtered? After all, the men who slammed the planes into the Twin Towers were not a bunch of white men from Sweden.”

In my last blog I talked about Postmodernity, which, automatically, made one of my readers assume that I must believe in Process Theology. I wasn’t aware that there was such a connection between the two, but, apparently, the reader had a need to pigeonhole me. By the way, no, I don’t believe in Process Theology.

I’ll never forget the first time I met with a New York Times best-selling author of a book that is brilliant and yet not very complimentary toward evangelicals. This was our first meeting and she knew nothing about me. In the course of our conversation, I don’t know what I said, when, with a surprised look on her face, she exclaimed, “So, you’re a Republican?” She had assumed because I’m a minority who liked her book, I must be a liberal Democrat.

Please don’t assume since I’m a naturalized American citizen from Iran that I automatically desire all illegal aliens in the US to be given amnesty. I believe the same rule of law that applied to me must be applied to all. On the other hand, just because I have a great passion for Christian gay men and women who struggle with their sexual identities and their place in the Body of Christ, one should not pigeonhole me as gay man (my wife will convince you otherwise) or some misguided liberal Christian. Would you label Jesus a whore and a criminal because He had compassion for and spent time with all those hookers and thieves? I doubt it.

Modernity, Postmodernity, Metanarrative and the Prayer of Jay-booz

2009-06-21T19:12:00.000-07:00

Recently, I started corresponding with a young man who has been reading my blogs. From reading his email, it is clear that he is bright, quite articulate and painfully honest. When I first asked Tom (not his real name) to tell me about himself, this is what he wrote:

I'm a 28-year old white man. My parents are pastors in a suburb of Seattle. They founded the church they currently pastor when I was two weeks old.

I attended a private Christian elementary and junior high (but a public high school), then marched straight to a Bible college, my dad's alma mater - it seemed like the logical "next step". I never seriously considered any other colleges.

It's an old, familiar story: fell in love, tried to have the perfect Christian wife and marriage...and was divorced 5 years later. I think that the breakdown of my marriage was just one, however significant, step down the road I've been on for years: if my faith, obedience, dedication and spirituality were not enough to keep my marriage together, what else could all the "Christian experts" have been withholding from me?

It was Tom’s last question that gripped my heart the most. A question that I never asked till I was well in my late 40’s, over 30 years after becoming a follower of Christ. A question that today Christians younger than my own children are asking me over and over again. How did we, evangelical Christians, come to the conclusion that our faith, obedience and spirituality should guarantee us of a life void of pain and failure? Of course, the preacher from the pulpit and the televangelist on TV are quick to point to the Bible. But I believe the answer lies in understanding the word metanarrative. However, to understand the phrase, one needs to understand two other phrases: modernity and postmodernity. I hope I don’t bore you to death!

Modernity
First introduced in 1627, this term describes the knowledge, power, and social practices which emerged in Europe around that time. Modernity was not associated solely with ‘newness’, but also with beliefs in rationality and ‘progress’, and came to be seen as a central attribute of Europe, which the rest of the world were expected (or compelled) to adopt. (Answer.com)
Postmodernity
Said to exist after modernity. Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the late 20th century, replaced by post-modernity, while others would extend modernity to cover the developments denoted by Postmodernity and into the present. (Answer.com)
Metanarrative
A metanarrative can include any grand, all-encompassing story, classic text, or archetypal (original pattern or model) account of the historical record. They can also provide a framework upon which an individual's own experiences and thoughts may be ordered. These grand, all-encompassing stories are typically characterized by some form of 'transcendent and universal truth' in addition to an evolutionary tale of human existence (a story with a beginning, middle and an end).
According to Jean-François Lyotard, a defining condition of postmodernity is a widespread skepticism or "incredulity" toward metanarratives. (Wikipedia)
Examples of metanarratives
1. The Enlightenment theorists believed that rational thought, allied to scientific reasoning, would lead inevitably toward moral, social and ethical progress.
2. Marxists believe that human existence is alienated from its species being, although capable of realizing its full potential through collective, democratic organization.
3. Freudian theory holds that human history is a narrative of the repression of libidinal desires.
4. An uncritical belief in the free market is a belief that through humanity's acquisition of wealth all who work hard and are afforded the right opportunities will succeed materially.
5. Categorical and definitive periodizations of history, such as the Fall of the Roman Empire, are rejected by postmodernism. Other periodization schemes include the Dark Ages and Renaissance.

Do we, Christians, have our own metanarratives, or as I like to put it, “one size fits all stories”? Do we insist that all the stories in the Bible are universal and if something was promised or worked for Abraham, Jabez or David should work for all Christians? Let me give you a couple of examples.

A year ago, two weeks after I had had my second operation in less than three months, a dear pastor friend of mine asked if I would fill in for a speaker who could not fulfill her commitments at his church. I readily accepted his offer for two reasons: friendship and needing to make some money. My friend’s church was about two hours west of where I live and because I was in too much pain, I asked another dear friend to drive us to the church.

The meeting went well and many people stayed afterwards to talk to me. As I was saying goodbye to my friend and his wife, because of the pain, I was leaning against the wall and kind of hunched over. It was then that he asked, “Why did you have a second operation after your cancer operation?”

“My cancer operation unmasked a hernia which needed to be taken care of.” “A hernia is nothing like cancer,” he replied.
“True, but the operation hurts more,” I answered.
And, that’s when he said something that completely threw me for a loop: “Joseph had many trials, but he never complained.”

According to my friend, since Joseph suffered much in his life and yet, never complained, I should have also acted accordingly and not reveled that I was in pain. If the Bible gives us that story, it is because God wants us all to behave as such—a biblical metanarrative. Actually, I wouldn’t have minded keeping my mouth shut and had never said anything about my pain, if my friend could have guaranteed the second part of that formula: Enduring the pain would eventually have made me the ruler of Egypt.

Do you remember Bruce Wilkinson, the author of the best selling book, The Prayer of Jabez, a 93-page, $10 tract published in 2000? The book, which sold over 22 million copies, is based on a passage in the book of Chronicles, in which a man named Jabez prays, “Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, and that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain.” And the Lord granted his wish. According to Mr. Wilkinson, the lesson is that God wants believers to ask for blessings. Those who ask—by reciting Jabez’s 33-word prayer—unleash miracles. Those who don’t ask don’t receive. Squabbling couples should ask for happy marriages, he writes. Business executives should ask for more customers—another biblical “one size fits all”.

Having heard the voice of God, in 2002, Wilkinson, whose self-help prayer book had made him a rich man, moved to Africa and announced his intention to save one million children left orphaned by the AIDS epidemic.

However, in October 2005, Mr. Wilkinson resigned from the African charity he founded. He abandoned his plan to house 10,000 children in a facility that was to be an orphanage, bed-and-breakfast, game reserve, bible college, industrial park and Disney-esque tourist destination in the tiny kingdom of Swaziland, came back to the US and went into an early retirement.

According to everything I have read, Bruce’s failure was mostly due to his lack of intercultural understanding and refusal to listen to the advise of the western aid-workers who had lived in Swaziland for many years. But, to me, his greatest mistake was to fall victim to his own myth. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Mr. Wilkinson says that he blames neither God nor man. He says he weeps when he thinks of his disappointed acolytes, and is trying to come to grips with a miracle that didn’t materialize despite his unceasing recitation of the Jabez prayer…”

To say that because God granted Jabez’s wish, He desires the same for everyone who prays the prayer, is as diluted and misguided as saying, “…rational thought, allied to scientific reasoning, would lead inevitably toward moral, social and ethical progress.” To believe that is simplistic, naïve and denies the complexity and mysteriousness of the God we serve. But even more heart-wrenching is not realizing how much damage Christian metanarratives have done to the faith of Christians like my young friend, Tom, a man who was taught that his faith, obedience, dedication and spirituality should be enough to keep his marriage together. And, of course, the reason his marriage failed was because he wasn’t faithful, obedient or spiritual enough.

I Need A Friend

2009-04-09T19:18:00.000-07:00

The year was 1971, which was probably the worst year of my life. I was in my second year of college and due to terrible grades, I was facing expulsion. My most soothing thought at the time was suicide. I couldn’t face being such a failure to my family who had made many sacrifices to send their oldest son and brother to the United States to become an engineer.

I lived on campus at the time. One day walking to the bookstore, deep in thoughts with my head down, I passed a student who was just coming out of the bookstore, whom I didn’t notice at first.

“How are you?” he asked
Not expecting any reaction, I said, “Not well!”

To my utter astonishment, he did something that I will never forget for the rest of my life.

He stopped dead in his track, turned around, caught up with me and looking straight into my eyes, he asked, “Is there anything I can do?”

I was surprised to see someone actually caring about how I was doing, especially someone I only knew by face (I wish I knew his name so I could look him up and thank him). Later, when I became a follower of Christ, I found out that he was also a believer and a part of an acting group called “His Players”.

I have never forgotten that simple act of kindness and have made a point of practicing that every chance I get.

Let’s fast forward to 1999 during my last year at Fuller Seminary. Once a year, the school had a “Muslim day of prayer” when students from what was then called, “School of World Mission” would gather together to pray for the Muslim world. I was asked to say a few words to encourage the students prior to Brother Andrew, who was the main speaker that day.

I started my talk by first thanking the students who had invited me and made a few comments about the great work that Bother Andrew’s ministry, The Open Door, was doing and then made the following statements:

I have been attending Fuller for the past 10 years —Yes, I am so smart that I managed to cram 2 years of graduate school into 10 years. The sidewalks on our campus are no more than 5 feet wide. I know! I’ve measured them! When you pass someone, your shoulders almost touch each other. However, there has hardly ever been a day when anyone of you passing me has squarely looked me in the eyes and greeted me. How can you care and pray for my Muslim mother whom you have never seen when you don’t even bother to greet her son whom you can see?

Needless to say, I was never invited back.

I wish I could say that young students at Fuller were the only group of Christians who acted this way. Years ago, attending a Christian convention in Atlanta, I walked up to a group of men on the street and said:

“Gentlemen, you must all be pastors.”

“How did you know?” one of them asked.

“Because I noticed you all kept to yourselves and never acknowledged a passerby with a simple greeting or a smile.”

Yes, I know I am harsh, but I believe, sometimes, that’s what it takes to wake the Christians up to the reality that, according to Jesus, the second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself and that that act of love can start with a simple smile followed by the heartfelt question, “How are you?”

I offer this to all passersby every morning as I sit at the base of the foothills across the street from our house while playing with Cocoa, my dog, knowing that my sincere smile and question can change the life of someone who might be thinking of killing themselves that day.

I Went to a Hybrid Open-Source Conference!

2009-03-12T11:56:00.000-07:00

I love jazz. No, not because it doesn’t resolve (Blue Like Jazz fans know what I’m talking about) but because, to me, it’s the quintessential iconic example of how the church is supposed to function.

The next time you go to a Jazz concert, pay close attention to the way the musicians interact with each other. It is usually clear who the leader is, but he/she doesn’t hog the show. A tune is played and repeated over and over, so that each musician has a chance to present his or her interpretation of melody. The result is many different angles on the same basic idea, because that basic idea means very different things to each musician. The end result is a combination of the experience and personalities of each artist, and the communication between them. For me, this is what Paul’s talking about when he says:

"He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe. It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up." Ephesians 4:10-12

To be a follower of Christ is like being in a jazz band. We all have a part—an instrument, if you will—to play and we should all be allowed to participate by playing our solo parts. It should not be only by “the few, the proud: the pastors” who play every instrument from the pulpit on Sundays.

But what does jazz have to do with a hybrid open-source conference? Well, let me start from the beginning. A dear friend, Charles Lee, was the brain behind this combination of a conference/unconference gathering called the Idea Camp, which from the start had taken a different approach to doing a conference. Charles used every paperless means of communication from word of mouth and conventional landlines to cell phones, email, texting, blogging, Facebook and Twitter (I’m sure I’m missing a few more means) to promote the conference, and boy, was he successful. If I remember correctly, about 500 people attended this two-day conference and over 1200 watched it on their computers via live streaming and it was all for free.

The goal of each workshop in this gathering was to allow for more conversation rather than another classroom approach to a conference. All the speakers like myself acted as facilitators and not talking-heads. We all had 10 minutes to talk about who we were, introduce the class to some challenges facing the church today, and then let the class respond to those challenges for about 45 minutes. If you’ve ever heard me teach, you know this is my style and my cup of tea when it comes to challenging a room full of young and old believers—asking questions and letting everyone play his/her instrument.

With this being my first time involved in such a gathering, I came away with mixed feelings. As I said, I loved the way every modern means of communication was used to promote the conference. It was truly a “green” conference. Even the conference schedule was emailed to everyone’s cell phones and laptops so it didn’t have to be printed on paper, of course, except for the very few that were posted on bulletin boards. But after experiencing this magnificent way of communication, I came away wondering if, with all our latest tools in communication, we’re developing better relationships?

I noticed throughout the various “question and answer” sessions that many people were busy reading and answering email off their laptops, web-surfing, text messaging or twittering—something that I had to learn before attending the conference. I even saw one guy watching the event that was taking place right in front of him on his laptop. Even worse, there were people who would do that as they were trying to have a face-to-face conversation with one another. By the way, no one did that to me—I guess they knew better— but I heard several of my friends complain about it.

I find this type of behavior to be quite dishonoring and self-absorbed. If it is more important to answer an email that can wait till you are out of the conference or retweet a #tweet to another friend who is sitting only a chair away from you because it’s so cool that it can’t wait till the meeting is over, then maybe you should step outside to do your emailing, surfing and retweeting instead of so blatantly ignoring and disrespecting those around you who are trying to tackle the challenges facing them. And please know that I’m not questioning anyone’s ability to multitask.

Today, many of you have several hundred friends on your Facebook and just as many followers on Twitter. I wonder how many of these friends will show up to help you when your car breaks down on the 405 freeway in the middle of rush-hour traffic. Just like our theology, have our relationships become millions of miles wide and a tenth of an inch deep? You know…Shallow? You tell me.

We Are All A Bunch Of Retards*

2009-02-20T17:00:00.000-08:00

* Please do not be offended by me using the word retard. I only use it to make my point.

Last Sunday my daughter, Megan, and I went snowboarding. After the third run, I started to tell her about a funeral I had attended a couple of weeks earlier.

About two months ago I was speaking at church when I ran into an old friend I had not seen for many years. Fred and I go way back. Before departing, we promised each other we would get together soon.

Early in January I received a call from the pastor at whose church I had met Fred.

“Shahrokh jan, do you remember the man who had come to see you when you spoke at our church?”

“You mean Fred? Of course! Why?”

“Well, on New Year’s Eve day his wife took him to the emergency room because he had been having a headache and as they were sitting in the waiting room he passed out and the doctors were not able to revive him. He died of a brain aneurysm.”

Soon after, I received a call from a staff pastor of one of the largest megachurches in Southern California where Fred had been attending for the last eight years. The family had asked if I would share a few things about him at his memorial, which was held at his church.

The memorial was just wonderful. Fred had made a lasting impression on all the several hundred people who were present that day. After the pastor spoke for a few minutes he invited his wife and children to say a few words about their father and husband. One of his daughters said:

“I was on my way to San Francisco when I heard my dad had passed away, so I hauled ass to get here.”

There were one or two chuckles, but, for the most part, not knowing how to react, everyone kept very quite. I leaned over and told the stranger sitting next to me:

“I bet this is the first time the word ass has been mentioned from the pulpit of this church.” He didn’t even crack a smile.

After the family was done sharing, it was my turn. In the few minutes I spoke, I simply shared the following true story with the people:

As I stood in the checkout line at Sam's Club, I noticed the lady in front of me who was paying for her groceries. Her husband was patiently waiting with their cart full of items. In between them was whom I assumed to be their son. The boy had Down Syndrome. I couldn't tell how old he was. You know, it is not easy to guess the age of a person with Down Syndrome. They all look much younger than their age. Anyway, from his facial hair I assumed he was in his 20's.

The boy was about 5 feet tall. It was obvious that he was wearing a diaper, which meant he could not control his bowels. He was quite bowlegged and could only take short steps when walking. He was not able to raise his arms any higher than his shoulders and on top of all that he could not talk. He had a small device placed in his throat. The little gismo enable him to make "ooh, ooh" sounds when he needed to get his dad's attention. I spent a few minutes watching the interaction between the father and the son when it suddenly hit me like a runaway bullet train in Tokyo.

The crowd around him fascinated the boy. Drooling non-stop, every once in a while he would turn around, look at his father and say, "Ooh". The father patiently would take out his handkerchief, wipe the boy’s face, pat him on the shoulder and invite him to look at more people. The process was repeated several times. Although, for all practical purposes, the young man had nothing of any significance to offer his dad (that his dad was in need of) each time he turned to his father, yet the father patiently attended to his son’s "oohing" call for help.

As I watched them, I realized that the most talented, the most educated, the most athletic, the most accomplished, the most successful, the best looking, and even the most spiritual of us are nothing but a bunch of retards in God's eyes. And even though, for all practical purposes, we have nothing that He is in need of, every time we turn to him and say, "Ooh," He is there to receive us with open arms, wipe our drooling faces, pat us on the shoulder, and give us hope to go on with life.

And then I ended by saying,

“Fred was one of those retards, but having become one with Christ, today he is no longer drooling since his face was once and for eternity wiped with the blood of the lamb.”

Before I could finish my last sentence, I received a standing ovation, which thoroughly surprised me. But I still had one more thing to say.

“Ladies and gentlemen, wanting to be politically correct, I really struggled whether I should use the word “retard” or not, but if she—pointing to Fred’s daughter—can ‘haul ass,’ I can say retard,” which got me another ovation.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

As I was sharing the story with Megan, she said,

“Dad, I had never heard you tell the story of the Down Syndrome boy till a few months ago when I came to listen to you at Charles’ church. That story changed my life.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Last week as I was driving home, the image of that story flashed in my mind—and it hit me. Everything has set me up for success. I have two of the most amazing parents; I have had the best upbringing; I have been given the best opportunities in life; and I still have managed to screw it up. I have never had a doubt that God loves me, and I have been taught since childhood that, “There is nothing I could do to make God love me less.” While I believed that, I also believed that there were things that I could do to make God love me more. I had an epiphany in the car that night. Even if that boy had his life “more together” and had learned to wipe the drool off his own face, and that was one less burden that he placed on his father, his father would not love him any more. Even if I spent the entirety of my energy perfecting a flawed area of my life, and I could package my life up in a prettier fashion, God could not love me any more.

That boy had NOTHING to offer his father. He was a burden on his father; he was nothing for his father to take pride in; he was never going to be able to take care of his father; he was never going to be able to carry on their legacy; his father would most likely have to out live his son. And this is how it is with me. God is not better off having me on His team. I have nothing to offer God that He does not already have. I constantly walk in the wrong direction, and stumble back to God for Him to wipe the drool off my face and point me yet again in the right direction. But He is crazy in love with me. And there is nothing that I could do to change that.”

I am so glad the area was too noisy and my Ninja mask had my whole face covered so no one could see or hear me cry out loud on top of the mountain.

The Issues of Matthew 18 and the Corporate Church

2009-01-15T13:06:00.000-08:00

Immediately after parting ways with a Christian organization I had been with for many years, I sent out an email informing everyone on my mailing lists of my departure. Knowing how the organization would have dealt with it — never saying anything about it publicly in hopes that eventually all their constituents would forget about me ever working for them — I wanted my friends to hear it directly from me, without the spin. Within a few hours, I received a reply from an angry pastor wanting to know why I had informed him of my departure and if prior to my leaving I had followed the Matthew 18:15-17 process where Jesus said:

If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

Ever since receiving that email, I have wanted to write on this subject, but kept postponing it until recently when a dear pastor friend asked me the following question in an email:

Before I read your blog, I was assuming that you did go through this process (Matt.18) before you left. God put it on my heart to not assume, but to ask you, my brother in Jesus, a few questions: how did the process go? If you did go through this process, where did this process break down? Was the offence(s) expressed clearly? When it was not received one on one, did you bring two or three witnesses? If you DID bring two or three witnesses, you did right, brother. And if they ignored the two or three witnesses, then they will be accountable to God for refusing what Jesus said is the way to deal with offences.
What you see in the above paragraph is the heart of a man whom, like most followers of Christ, desires to do what He is expecting of us. However, in doing so, we tend to become as harmless as doves, but not as wise as serpents like Jesus wants us to become. Let me tell you what I am talking about.
A few years ago, I remember coming back from lunch with the then vice president of my old denomination. While driving back to the office, he said something that made a lot of sense to me. As we pulled into the parking lot of our headquarters, he pointed to the building and said, “Many people confuse this building with a church and expect us to behave as such. This is not a church, but a corporation.”
In the above passage, Jesus is talking to a community and not a corporation. The process involves me and my brother and not me and my corporate boss. “Isn’t your Christian boss your brother in Christ?” one might ask. In theory, yes! In reality, heck no! He is your boss first and then your brother in Christ. This is how the corporate chain of command works. He is the head-honcho and you are the peon.
For the most part, within today’s corporate church, Matthew 18 only works when it is directed from the people in charge toward those under them. It hardly ever works the other way around without any repercussion since, in confronting the peon, the boss is never in danger of losing his job, but God knows the peon is if the reverse were to happen. The first time I made the mistake of asking my boss a question regarding a decision he had made, I had his office door slammed in my face so hard that eventually a carpenter was called to dislodge the door so he could get out of his office. Oh, he also threatened to fire me.
Do you realize how difficult it is to find two or three witnesses to confront your corporate boss when your potential witnesses know they are very well in danger of losing their jobs, or at least losing favor with the boss? Of course, in a corporate setting, you are supposed to take your grievances to HR. But again, at least where I worked, for the same reasons, the HR people were just as powerless as my witnesses.
What was even more frustrating was when I took my issues to my boss’s peers who were quite aware of the situation and would even agree with me, but would not do anything to rectify it lest they lose favor with their boss. In fact, one of them simply told me, “If I were you, I would go find me another job.”
So, my dear brothers and sisters, let’s get real: Unless you are willing to lose your job, be careful in following the above mandate when it comes to confronting your corporate Christian boss. I had the guts to do it and ended up without a job. Hopefully you’ll fair better if ever in the same situation.

Don’t Call Me Unforgiving Because I Seek Justice!

2008-11-15T16:35:00.000-08:00

Years ago, I had an encounter with a Holocaust survivor that I will never forget. His name was Howard and the two of us worked together in the Men’s Department at what was then called The May Company, located on Wilshire and Fairfax in Los Angeles. Howard was a delightful Jewish man in his 60’s. He spoke with a thick German accent and was as funny as one could be. Having not spent any time to get to know him, I knew nothing about Howard’s background, but I so wanted to witness to him.

The year was 1972. I had just become a follower of Christ and I knew very little about Christianity and Christ himself, for that matter. In fact, at the time, I didn’t even believe in Christ’s divinity—Yes, you can be a Christian without believing in the Trinity, but that’s a different story for another time. In the 70’s, Christians were big on “End-Times” issues. Christ’s second-coming was right around the corner, yet we were taught things were going to get a lot worse before his return. All one had to do was look at the signs of the time and get ready for the end of the world.

Now, back to Howard.

Howard had just rung a transaction when I “dropped the hammer.”

“Howard, you need Christ in your life because He is coming back soon and things are going to get very bad,” I told him very assuredly.

Slowly, Howard closed the cash register while rolling up his left shirtsleeve. He turned around, looked me straight in the eyes, and with anger in his voice, he pointed to a number tattooed on his wrist and said, “You mean it’s going to get worse than this?” He then walked away in silence to assist a customer.

Today I am glad he walked away from me when he did since I was about to talk to him about forgiveness. Here I was, a foolish young Christian man who knew nothing about who Howard was and what horror and injustice this gentle old man had experienced, yet was ready to “teach” a Holocaust survivor a thing or two about forgiveness.

Why is it that so many of us Christians are quick to demand forgiveness from others? For example, right after the Columbine High School shootings, many Christians were literally demanding forgiveness for the animals who brought so much pain and agony upon all those families. The majority of these Christians weren’t remotely involved with the tragedy or even lived in Colorado. Shouldn’t we, at least, give these survivors a bit of time for grieving and venting in anger– a process so necessary for emotional healing–before demanding forgiveness of them?

In the late 90s, I personally had a very hard time with the concept of those Western Christians who walked the path of the Medieval Crusades, asking forgiveness of all the Arab nations on behalf of what was done to them in the name of Christianity. Being a Muslim background believer, I constantly had to ask forgiveness of myself, but, unfortunately, my Muslim side, being honor bound, kept refusing to accept my Christian side’s apology. Yes, I’m being sarcastic.

After I was fired from my Middle East mission coordinator position, I was deeply hurt and angry and needed to vent. Those who are close to me know that it’s through venting and discussing my frustration that I get the poison of bitterness out of my system. However, there were those who were uneasy about the way I was dealing with my pain.

“Brother, you should forgive because the Bible says so!” they would tell me.

And my response to them was always the following:

“Please don’t pull scriptures on me. I know what the Bible says about forgiveness. As a pastor, I taught from those very verses for 25 years. I know I should forgive, but first you must give me time to heal. I can’t fake it. While dying inside, I can’t say the right Christian clichés to keep you happy. I need to vent, and if what I say doesn’t jive with your Christian standards, then stay away from me until I can live up to those standards.”

Today, after two years of being away from that oppressive system I worked under for six years, I’m not as angry. I believe the healing process is taking place and God is working in my life, which brings me to another misconception some Christians have:

“We still feel an edge and anger in your writings. Forgiveness means you forget and let go,” some might say to me. To which I say, “Bull-dung!”

Please consider my favorite Prophet of the Old Testament, Jeremiah, talking to his beloved people, the Jews of Israel:

How can you say, 'I am not defiled; I have not run after the Baals'? See how you behaved in the valley; consider what you have done. You are a swift she-camel running here and there, a wild donkey accustomed to the desert, sniffing the wind in her craving—in her heat who can restrain her? Any males that pursue her need not tire themselves; at mating time they will find her. Jeremiah 2:23-24

Here, Jeremiah calls his own people, the very chosen of God, the men and women he would give his life for, a bunch of horny, whorish defiled camels and jackasses because they are following a broken system that is opposed to God’s way. Is there anger, bitterness and resentment in Jeremiah’s voice? Of course there is. I wonder how many of my Christian friends would have accused the YHVH’s prophet of lacking forgiveness. Instead, they are quick to point out that the Jews deserved it.

How about Jesus himself?

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. Matthew 23:27-28

Can you sense the anger Jesus is showing toward the Pharisees? I am sure Jesus was not patting these guys on their backs while insulting them. In my Iranian culture, to say, “woe”— vaay in Farsi — to someone is pretty much the equivalent of saying, “You deserve to go to hell”. And that’s exactly what Jesus is saying to those whom, for generations through their teachings and instructions, had kept the Jewish heritage and laws intact.

For all the years I have been a follower of Christ, I have never heard any Christian accusing Jesus of harboring resentment or having an unforgiving attitude toward the Pharisees. In fact, my experience has been totally the opposite. If I had a dollar for every time I heard a pastor preach with glee and an admiration for the way Jesus confronted the religious people of his day, I’d be the one bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac instead of the government. Yet, when I or other believers dare to question some of the Christian leaders of our time, we are accused of not showing Christ-like forgiveness.

Do you ever stop to think that by doing so, we, like Jesus, are seeking justice and truth and our attitudes toward these men have nothing to do with a lack of forgiveness on our side? Is it possible that after 25 years of being a pastor and six years of working within a Christian corporation, I have seen way too much crap to keep my mouth shut? It amazes me how these same Christians demand accountability from any government official — especially if that individual is not a Republican — yet when it comes to keeping their own Christian leaders to the same standards, they refuse to do so less they be accused of lacking forgiveness.

I feel regret for all the years I saw injustice and hypocrisy within the Church and didn’t say anything. I didn’t do it because I was afraid or was trying to whitewash the actions of certain individuals. I simply believed that it was I who was wrong. After all, I am but a converted Iranian pastor from a Muslim background. “Who am I to question the sincerity of my American mentors?” were my thoughts for years.

But today I realize how wrong I was. There is a time and place when we have to demand accountability at the cost of being accused of harboring resentment or unforgiveness in our hearts.

Thank God I Am NOT A White American Male...

2008-11-02T09:40:00.000-08:00

The other day I was talking to a friend who is a white American male—Bear with me. I know mentioning someone’s race is not very PC these days, but there is a point to this race calling. He was basically telling me that the people who don’t vote for Obama are racist and if he loses it is because he is black.

“And if he wins, are you willing to admit it is because he IS black? I didn’t vote for either Kerry or Gore, does that make me a racist too?” I asked

“Of course not, you are different,” was the response.

“How am I different?” I asked.

“Well, you are Persian,” was the answer.

“So, you think because I am not white, I can’t be racist?” I asked with a funny look on my face.

“No, that’s not what I meant. It’s this country that is so racist,” answered my friend looking rather serious.

“What do mean, ‘It’s this country that is so racist?” Now, it was me who was serious.

This was not the first time I had had a conversation like this with Americans who honestly believe that we live in the most racist nation in the world and somehow only white people are perpetrating this act of racism. What I find interesting is, here I am, a naturalized American citizen from the Middle East, having to defend America against American-born Christians and non-Christians alike.

Have you noticed how the Chinese, the Koreans, the Persians, the Arabs, the Blacks and the Hispanics can all have their own churches which are called the Korean, the Persian or the Black church of such and such without anyone ever walking out of those churches saying, “My goodness, that church is all Hispanic or all Arab!” or, accusing those churches of being ethnocentric? Yet, I can’t tell you how often I have heard Christians tell me, “Last Sunday I went to an ALL white church!” as if they were referring to a KKK gathering.

I have lived in the United States for almost 40 years. I went through the Iranian hostage taking in the late 70s and the two Gulf Wars when, if the above people were correct, I should have faced some kind of discrimination and yet I can’t prove that at any time in these last 40 years I have experienced any such thing. Even when the pastor of a mega church referred to me as “our token Iranian pastor” in front 900 people, did I take it to be a racist act? No. Stupid and ill advised? Definitely! But, not racist.

This is not to say that there are no racist Americans. There are many of them. But, they come in every shape and color – not just white. But that does not make the whole nation racist.

A few months back, Karen and I went to Montgomery, Alabama for the commissioning of our son, Todd, into the United States Air Force as a Second Lieutenant. While there, we visited Rosa Parks’ Museum. I can’t tell you the emotion I experienced and how I wished I had lived here at the time so I could participate in the Civil Rights marches and have the honor of walking side by side with Dr. King.

As I watched the reenactment of that memorable evening when Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, with tears in my eyes, I marveled at a nation where, in the span of only 50 years or so, things have gone from considering the black man so unequal that he was forced to sit in the back of the bus so the white man could sit in the front of the bus to today when a black man – I am aware that Obama is only half black, but he considers himself to be a black man – has the possibility of becoming the president of the same nation, and under my breath I whispered, “God bless America.”

Please compare what America has accomplished in her short history with some parts of Africa or the Middle East where people have been killing each other for hundreds of years because people of tribe A consider people from tribe B to be inferior and therefore worthy of being wiped off the face of the earth. Racism is a disease that plagues every race, color and nation and white people do not have a corner on it.

A few years ago a black pastor asked me the following question:

“Shah, I have tried very hard to befriend the Muslim foreigners who attend the mosque next to my church, but these people won’t even come near me. Why do you think is that?”

“Well, there could be couple of reasons. First, they might be racists and dislike black people. After all, some Muslim countries still use black people as slaves. However, there is a second reason. They are afraid of you,” I responded.

“Why so?”

“Rosa, how many blacks do you know that have been mugged by Iranians?” I asked.

“None!”

“I have two Iranian friends who were mugged by black guys and my third friend’s father was shot to death by a black man. Do you blame these friends of mine for being afraid of blacks in general? Is it possible that your Muslim neighbors might also have friends and relatives who have experienced the same things?” To her credit, my dear friend, agreed with me.

The other night, as I was channel surfing, I came across Chappelle’s Show. Dave Chappelle is a black comedian who, like most ethnic comedians today, gets a lot of laughs by making fun of white people. I guess it is considered comedy when other races make fun of white people. However, when it is done the other way around, it is called racism. To his credit, on some occasions, Chappelle also pokes fun at his own people. On this particular episode, using all black comedians, he did a skit called something like, “If people don’t like you, it could be that you are a jerk and has nothing to do with your race.” Is it possible that some people don’t like me and won’t hang out with me because I am a jerk and my race has nothing to do with it? Abso-freaking-lutely! And this brings me to why I wrote this article.

I am tired of all the America-bashing I hear constantly. Yes, she has done many wrong things in her past—which nation hasn’t?—but she has been quick to fix it. NO, she is not perfect, but, as one who was raised under a totalitarian system, I believe America is still the best nation on the face of the earth. Let’s stop looking at what she should have done right and start being grateful for how far this young country has come to correct her past.

I am willing to bet my last dollar that some of you would never dare to even think about what I have said on this posting lest you be called a racist. But don’t forget, I am not white and therefore, couldn’t possibly be racist and that is why I say, “Thank God I am not a white American Male.”

MAYBE A CAMEL OR MAYBE A BIRD, BUT NOT A CAMEL-BIRD, PLEASE!

2008-10-11T08:55:00.000-07:00

There is a Persian parable about the ostrich, which is called the camel-bird in Farsi. The parable goes something like this:

One day the camel-bird was asked to carry a load and he said, “Why should I? I am a bird”. They said, in that case, “fly” to which he responded, “I can’t. I am a camel”. The same parable applies to many of the Christian organizations today, which can’t decide whether they are a spiritual entity or a secular corporation. If they are expected to act like a corporation, they are quick to tell you, “We are a church.” However, when asked why they are not more Christ-like in some areas of their operation, they are quick to point out, “We are a corporation.” Let me give you a couple of examples.

I heard, recently, a rather large Christian organization announced to her staff members that they weren’t going to get any raises for the next couple of years. Apparently, due to the lack of income, the denomination has been running a deficit for the last few years. As it often happens, after the above announcement, one after another, the leadership of the organization admonished all staff members to be good Christians and work sacrificially by taking on more responsibilities due to the future downsizing. So, in reality, each staff member was asked to work harder for less money, something that I whole-heartedly agree with. As followers of Christ, we ought to be exemplary imitators of our Lord. If we believe in what our Christian employer stands for, then we are bound to give it all we have got to accomplish her mission in this world. My wife, Karen, and I tried very hard to live up to that conviction.

I left a good paying engineering job to become a pastor of a 50-member immigrant church because I believed that was what God wanted me to do. There were days when Karen had to look behind the cushions of the living room couch in the hope of finding some coins to buy milk for our kids. To support our family, Karen, who is probably one of the best executive assistants I know, had to eventually go to work at a mega-church. She worked there for twelve years.

In all the years my wife faithfully worked there, she was only given a one-time raise of $100. As badly as we, at times, struggled with our finances, she never considered looking for a better paying job somewhere else. After all, we felt it was more important to serve God than to seek a better paying job somewhere else. We were taught that if God wanted you to work at that church, you should be willing to receive whatever they offered you. Karen would have probably still been working there if she were not forced to leave. After she accepted a position in a secular company, the pastor of the church personally apologized to me and said, “If I knew Karen was leaving, I would have done all I could to stop her. Letting her go was the biggest mistake our church made this year.”

Having worked for couple of different churches for many years, Karen had never had the luxury of demanding a certain salary. She always took whatever the church offered her. After all, over and over again, we were taught working for God meant money should not be an issue. So, when her new company asked her what kind of salary she expected, She didn’t know how to respond. Needless to say, she took the job and has never and will never look back. “But, what do these two examples have to do with our camel-bird?” you might ask.

In the first case, it is interesting that the same leadership which is encouraging their staff members to make sacrifices—to be camels and carry the load—never demanded the same from themselves because that is not expected of the executives of a cooperation—they act like birds. In the midst of their financial shortfalls, these leaders have continued to remodel their offices, fly first class and give themselves over 100K per year salaries.

In Karen’s case, in 2005, two years after working for the secular company, several people from the above mega-church and the Christian organization I used to work for approached her in the hope to get her to work for them. There was no way Karen was going to leave a job where she had been rewarded so well for her skills. But out of curiosity, she wanted to know what kind of salary these Christian leaders were going to offer her.

In every case the response was, “What? Money is an issue?” In one case I was told, “I don’t know what the salary is. It is somewhere between X and Y amount. Why don’t YOU go to the HR and find out what her salary might be?” Please consider the arrogance that hides her ugly head under the pretence of being spiritual. The man wanted my wife to leave her well-paying job where she was appreciated and compensated accordingly and become his assistant without us having to even dare to ask what her salary might be. For to do so, is considered unspiritual. As a couple of Christ’s camels, we were supposed to feel ashamed and guilty for turning down the opportunity to serve God’s Kingdom because we desired to be adequately compensated for the gifting that God has given Karen. Yet, to every one of these leaders—the birds—the expected Christ-like sacrifice is only for the camels and not the birds. Otherwise, they would willingly give up a few of their luxuries such as remodeling their offices and flying first class to ease some of the financial burdens of their organizations.

Any organization would like the most talented and capable people working for them. Christian organizations are not and should not be any different. However, not wanting to forsake their spiritual obligations as Christian entities, the employees of these organizations are expected not to consider their salaries an issue and instead work for God—basically, get paid next to nothing. On the other hand, when it comes to the executives of these organizations, money IS an issue. While they constantly announce to their constituencies that Christ’s task (preaching the Gospel around the world) cannot be accomplished due to lack of fund, they are all handsomely paid and get to spend God’s money without any accountability because, they say, “This is how a corporation should treat her executive members.”

Having said all the above, please note that there are many churches and Christian organizations who do good by their employees and at the same time are great stewards of what God has given them. By no means am I bringing an indictment against everyone, God forbid. However, to those who are caught in this camel-bird game I say, at the time when more and more Christians are losing their trust in the Church and leaving her, try to win their trust back by, once and for all, making it clear if you are a church or a corporation, a camel or a bird and then act accordingly.

EXCUSE ME WHILE I WHIP SOME CHRISTIANESE OUT OF MY BACK POCKET!

2008-08-04T17:00:00.000-07:00

It was the first day of an annual conference of a Christian denomination. The hotel where the conference was taking place was buzzing with people. The lobby was filled with attendees who were checking into their rooms. A group of people who had just checked in was standing in front of the elevators waiting for the next one to take them to their rooms. From looking at their badges, any outsider could tell they all belonged to the same First Church of the Greatness.

When the elevator finally got down to the lobby, with much patience and courtesy, they all let the bellboy carrying several bags get in first. Trying to return the kindness, the young man standing next to the elevator panel, asked each person which floor they were going to and then he would press the appropriate button.

“47,” shouted a lady standing in the back.

“So you are going all way to the top?” asked the young man.

“Yes, I AM going all the way to the top, but ARE YOU?”

Suddenly a hush came over the full elevator. It was one of those moments when pulling a George Carlin’s suggestion on what to do in a full elevator would have been much welcomed. George used to say every time we got into a full elevator, we should make higher and higher dramatic notes as the elevator went higher and higher. Alas, no one had the presence of mind to do something like that. So, understating the lady’s Christianes language, everyone else held his or her breath, waiting for the bellboy’s response.

For a split second a confused look came upon the young man’s face as if he was saying to himself, “What kind of a @#$!% stupid question is that? Isn’t it obvious that, along with everyone else, I am going to the top, too.” But then, Eureka! You could see the light bulb began to flash on the top of his head like a neon sign on the top of a cheap motel in Vegas.

“Yes, Ma’am, I’M going to the top, too,” He responded politely.

But the lady just couldn’t let it go. By witnessing to this heathen, this was her chance to make a point with the people present and show them how to add another notch to their spiritual gun.

“I am not talking just the top, but all the way to THE TOP,” she continued.

By now the man had caught on with the game she was playing. He was doing his best to play as dumb as he could just to get the woman off his back without giving into what she expected him to say.

“Yes, Lady, I am going all the way to the TOP where the pool, the bar and the gym are.”

Recently a friend gave me a book by Anne Lamotte entitled, “Traveling Mercies” In the book Anne talks about how she got “all the way to the TOP”. The contrast between her language and our elevator lady, who represents so many evangelicals, is so striking that while reading the book I cried, screamed and laughed for joy.

Anne did not grow up in a Christian family. Just like me, she grew up during the Hippie era of free love, drugs and booze. By the time she is writing the segment of the book talking about her so called, “conversion” she is a pill-popping alcoholic who had just aborted her unwanted child by a married man.

Every weekend, when she was hungover, she went to a flea market where she could buy the most wonderful ethnic food. Between eleven and one on Sundays, she could hear gospel music coming from a run down church right across the street where she often stopped by to listen. Once a month she went to the church, however, she always stood at the door and never went inside. No one tried to con her into sitting down or staying. She says, “To me, Jesus made about as much sense as Scientology or dowsing.” It wasn’t till a few months later when she finally allowed herself to take a seat on a folding chair at the entrance.

Seven days after her abortion, as she is bleeding heavily, lying down on bed in the dark, she became aware of someone with her, hunkered down in the corner of her room and she knew it was Jesus. The thought of becoming a Christian appalled her. “I turned to the wall and said out loud, “I would rather die.”

From that day on, everywhere she went she felt a little cat was following her, wanting her to pick it up, open the door and let it in. A week later, when she went to church, she was so hungover that she couldn’t even stand up for the songs. But this is what happened afterwards.

…I began to cry and left before the benediction, and I raced home and felt the little cat running along at my heels… I opened the door to my houseboat, and stood there a minute, and then hung my head and said, “Fuck it: I quit.” I took a long deep breath and said out loud, “All right. You can come in now.”

Oh my God! Isn’t that the most creative “sinner’s prayer” you have ever heard? Can you imagine walking a sinner through a prayer like that?

“OK, are you ready to accept Christ into your heart now? Then, close your eyes and repeat after me: Fuck it I quit. You can come in now!”

Being so offended by the word “FUCK”, I know many evangelicals would completely miss Anne’s conversion moment. After all, how could a holy God accept such a filthy prayer? Forgetting that, as Søren Kierkegaard calls him, the “Wholly Other” that I know cares more about the woman’s soul than her using a four-letter word while talking to him.

In responding to her own question, “why everyone is not joining the evangelicals”, in her book, “The Fall of the Evangelical Nation”, Christine Wicker says:

Partly that’s because evangelicals use spiritual language that’s no longer heard in common parlance and because like every strong group, they learn to communicate in a sort of verbal shorthand that has depths of meaning to it but sounds like jargon and nonsense to others.

The self-righteous and “out of touch with reality” attitude of so many of us evangelicals that insist on saying, “We have it all figured out. We got the formula! There is only one way to communicate with God and that is, of course, our American Christianese” reminds me of a message Dr. Tony Campolla once gave to a large group of young evangelicals.

He was talking about world hunger, urging the young Christians to get involved with preventing it, when he said something like the following--I am quoting from memory:

Within the next a few minutes, as I am talking to you, X number of children around the world will die of hunger, but the majority of you will not give a shit about it. And you know what angers me even more? That you are more concerned about me using the word “shit” than you are about the thousands of children dying of hunger.”

As I am writing this blog, there are millions of people around the world who, like Anne, acknowledging a vacuum in their lives, are starved to know something that would fill that vacuum, but majority of us, evangelicals, do not know how to communicate with them. Just like the old Romans, we have decided that anyone who doesn’t speak our tongue must be a Barbarian. We are so used to our Christianese language that no longer are we aware that the rest of the world needs to hire interpreters to even understand us.

Recycle or Produce?

2008-07-23T17:15:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, at the evening session of a Christian conference I was attending, the host introduced the guest-speaker, a megachurch pastor, as the greatest thing since Al Gore invented the Internet. In fact, after that introduction, many were left feeling like a bunch of apostates for not sharing the same sentiment towards our guest-speaker.

After that superb introduction, the pastor pulled a PDA out of his coat pocket and began to rattle off some statistics on the growth of megachurches in America. According to his statistics, megachurches were the way of the future; growing twice as fast as anyone ever thought they would. Majority of the conference attendees, mostly pastors of 50-60 member churches, reacted to every piece of his statistics with shouts of praise and “hallelujahs” and who could blame them?

Having been conditioned to believe that pastoring a large church would bring them legitimacy and recognition, which to them, were equivalent to having God’s favor and power, a majority, if not all, of the pastors sitting there dreamed of having a megachurch. So, swelling with pride, they relished hearing how quickly these churches were popping up all over the land, which left them with a glimmer of hope that whispered in their ears, “YOUR church could be next...”

I couldn’t stomach more than a few minutes of the man’s talk and left the auditorium. As I was getting out of the door, a friend who was among the audience text me the following: “Isaiah! Peace, peace, where there is no peace.” referring to the prophet Isaiah rebuking the false prophets of his time for prophesying of a coming peace that would never come. We both felt that the speaker’s message of megachurches being the way of the future for all and any pastor had several faulty premises. Not once did the speaker refer to evangelism as a way to build megachurches.

In her New York Times bestseller, “The Fall of the Evangelical Nation”, Christine Wicker says:

…As for those splendid megachurches, the pride of the evangelical world, they’re dinosaurs and don’t yet know it…Megachurches soon will be like Old West ghost towns, one former megachurch leader said. People will be taking tours of them as examples of a bygone era.

I taught a class on evangelism and discipleship at a Bible college for five years. Many of my students hoped to become pastors of large churches. These students’ philosophy of pastoring mostly focused on what I call, “Christian recycling”—finding the quickest way of drawing Christians from other churches to theirs. The sad and most frustrating part of dealing with this megachurch fascination was that very few of the mentioned students had hardly ever considered evangelism as a means to grow a church. But then again, why should they have? These young men and women were fed a cooked up data that lolled them into believing that someone else must be doing the evangelism since the number of the evangelicals in the US is growing by leaps and bounds.

According to Christine Wicker, if evangelicals really had the numbers they say they have and were growing the way they tell us they are, they would be unstoppable. Christine believes there are three sets of figures when it comes to the number of evangelicals in America:

1. The numbers that are provided by the evangelical organizations such as the Southern Baptists and National Associations of
Evangelicals (NAE) brings the total to 54 million, 25 percent of the adult population.
2. The numbers according to the membership figures from churches belonging to NAE total to 23.6 million.
3. When we look at the numbers church planners really count on, Sunday school or small-group attendance, the total drops
down to only 8 million, a far cry from 54 million that my students were fed to believe.

I know some people might be offended by me using phrases such as “cooked up”, “fed to” and so on. However, I speak from experience.

“How many are you running now?” as if I was a cattle rancher, was a common question I was asked when I pastored. The larger the number the more respect you had so keeping count of attendance is very important for any church, especially, a megachurch. At any megachurch there are ushers who are in charge of, literally, counting heads whenever people meet at the church. I can’t tell you how often I heard these ushers tell me something like:

Last Sunday the pastor told me to change the head-count to a much higher number because from the pulpit he could see there were more people in attendance. But, I know there weren’t that many people at church that Sunday.

I have seen churches double and triple count their attendance to reach a much higher specific number—usually, around the magic number of 10,000 if it’s a megachurch.

A few years ago at an annual convention of a large evangelical denomination, I heard the report of the denomination having planted something like 235 churches that year. HOWEVER, very conveniently, they neglected to say that, in the same year, they had closed down over 200 churches, which left the denomination with a net increase of only handful of churches.

Because of the megachurch phenomenon of our days, the evangelical leaders make it sound as if we are racking up victories the Church never dreamed of, yet, on any Sunday, at majority of American churches, mega or small, over 90% of the attendees are transferred Christians—those who left one church to attend another. I have spoken at churches where 100% of the members were originally from other churches.

My church was different. We worked among Iranian Muslims and Jews. Unlike
Christian background Americans, hoping to find a church they could call home, these Jews and Muslims did not get up on Sunday mornings, going through the Yellow Pages asking each other, “Where would you like to go to church today?” Through years of friendship and trust building, 90% of our members were introduced to Christ by the believers at the Iranian church. My church did not have the opportunity of growing through transferred Christians. Our only means of growth was evangelism and that’s why the church grew ever so slowly. If I remember correctly, in the Great Commission, Jesus did not say, “Go into the whole world and recycle Christians by convincing my followers to leave their churches and attend yours because you offer a better youth or singles’ ministry.” But He commanded us to make NEW disciples.

Being so over taken by a capitalistic attitude of “bigger is better”, the church has lost her bearing and true mission—going into the whole world and making disciples for the Master. In any industry, if you are not producing, you will go out of business and the church is not any exception. It is time for the church in America to get out of recycling business, which might be good for the ecology, but sucks for the Kingdom and start producing.

Slutbucks!

2008-06-02T14:29:00.000-07:00

I was using the treadmill at our local gym listening to my iPod and occasionally glancing at several TV monitors in front me when my eyes caught the tickertape running at the bottom of one of the monitors. It said something like, “Offended by the naked mermaid, Christians are boycotting Starbucks.” I later found out that the whole fuss was about Starbucks changing its logo from the mermaid with a bikini-top to a bare-breasted one. OH MY GOD…

Let’s be honest! How many of you have ever looked at the logo on a Starbucks’ cup? I thought we went to Starbucks for its overpriced cup of coffee, which has to be ordered in Italian—it took me a long time learning how to say “tall” instead of “small”, “latte” instead of “with some freaking cream” and recently, watching my favorite game show, the Cash Cab, I found out that "Venti" in Italian means twenty. For all the years of drinking Starbucks, I had never noticed that the logo on the cup in my hand was of a mermaid with a bikini-top, but thanks to boycotters, now we all will. This brings me to the following question: why in God’s name, are so many Christians so preoccupied with sex???

An overweight friend of mine who worked for a Christian organization went on a diet and lost a lot of weight. Like so many overweight people, she had given up trying to look feminine, so for years she had worn over-sized blouses, skirts, pants and muumuus to hide her weight. After losing all that weight, she bought herself a whole new wardrobe, which fit her slim body. Her husband wanted her to look her best.

Seeing her for the first time after she had lost the weight, I was amazed at how gorgeous she looked. At first, I did not even recognize her. No, she did not look sexy or immodest, just feminine. I never asked her this, but I know she felt great about herself. I am willing to bet that because of the way she felt about herself, her productivity at work or in life in general must have improved. The feeling did not last very long. Within couple of weeks, she was pulled into the HR office and was given a thrashing about her clothes and how a Christian woman should not be a stumbling block to her male co-workers. Apparently some of the men had reported her to the HR. Combined with the death of her mother, the rebuke pushed her over the edge and she gained all the weight back. However, the HR never bothered to pull her into the office and give her a talking on how being overweight is not good for HER health. I guess being a stumbling block to MALE co-workers is much greater offense than dropping dead of a heart attack due to one’s weight.

Have you read the book, "Persepolis"? It is written by the Iranian writer and artist, Marjane Sartrapi who writes about her life in today’s Iran. They also made a movie out of the two book series. It is in French with English subtitles and has won several awards. In a part of the book she talks about the day she misses her bus by just a few seconds. Hoping to catch it she begins to chase after it when she hears, “Hey—blue coat! Stop running!” She stops to turn around and face two bearded revolutionary guards armed with their machine guns. This is how their conversation goes:

“Madam, why were you running?”

“I’m very late! I was running to catch my bus.”

“Yes… But… when you run, your behind makes movements that are… How do you say…Obscene!”

Here is a woman who is covered from head to toe. All any man can barely see is her face and still she is told that when she runs her behind moves in an obscene way. I love her response to those morality policemen, “WELL THEN DON’T LOOK AT MY ASS!”

“Yes!” you might say, “But the Bible talks about women being modest.” I agree. Women should dress modestly. However, my problem is defining the term, “modest”. In Iran, for a woman, modesty means to be wrapped in a black shroud from head to toe, and still she can be accused of being immodest by some men.

No, the problem is more with the men who are so preoccupied with sex, i.e. a male-driven Christian organization that changes the acronym, RAC to ARC because according to its new leaders, the RAC could be understood as RAC, which refers to women’s breasts, although the acronym had been used in prior years without any complaints. Another example is a Christian leader who demands a couple of abstract painting, which had been hanging on the office walls for months, be removed because if one were to stare at them long enough one could see women’s breasts.

If I am not mistaken, our Lord’s mandate on not looking at women with impure eyes was given to MEN. Do you know why? Because He knew that we men are visual, that we get excited just by putting the quarter in the vending machine’s slot. It doesn’t matter how many layers of clothing a woman puts on, her behind can still move in what we men might consider obscene. If this is the case, don’t blame the woman. Do what Jesus commanded you, “Quit looking at her ass.”

Is Obama An Apostate?

2008-04-02T10:38:00.000-07:00

Who would have thought that just a few short years after the 9/11 tragedy we would have a man who was born a Muslim and with the middle name Hussein running for the most powerful office in the United States.

One of the hallmarks of Senator Obama’s potential presidency is his promise that as soon as he is elected, he will unconditionally sit across from President Ahmadinejad of Iran and Assad of Syria to discuss peace in the Middle East. In his utmost naiveté, he assumes that these Muslim leaders will be drawn to his gesture for peace, but what he does not understand is that his success will not so much depend on whether he is willing to accept the two Muslim leaders, but whether they will accept him as a legitimate leader worthy of respect. “Why not” one might ask. Well, I am so glad you asked.

The simple truth is that Obama would have three strikes against him before he ever sat down to meet with these Muslim leaders.

The Iranian parliament recently passed a new law that would impose a death penalty on citizens who are regarded as “apostate” from Islam. In the past, the death penalty for apostasy was one of many possible punishments including imprisonment and hard labor. But the new law proposes to make death the sentence for all apostates, according to the Institute on Religion and Public Policy (IRPP).

Article 225:6-7 of section five of this new Iranian government’s Apostasy, Heresy, and Witchcraft law says:

“If someone has at least one Muslim parent at the time of conception but after the age of maturity, without pretending to be a Muslim, chooses blasphemy is considered a Parental Apostate. Punishment for a Parental Apostate is death, but after the final sentencing for three days he/she would be guided to the right path and encouraged to recant his/her belief and if he/she refused, the death penalty would be carried out.” (See full text bellow)

The first thing Senator Obama and his advisors need to understand is that when it comes to the Middle East they are dealing with a shame-based culture. In that culture, unlike most western cultures, the focus of one’s action is not on right versus wrong, but honor versus shame. What matters is whether an action brings one honor or shame. For example, a person from such a culture would be justified to lie, cheat, steal or kill in order to keep his honor.

According to the New Iranian apostasy law, which with some variation is held by the majority of Muslim scholars, Senator Barack Obama, being born to a Muslim father and later becoming a Christian, is considered to be a “Parental” apostate, an offence punishable by death if he lived in Iran. He would be viewed as having disgraced Islam and therefore not worthy of honor. While most Muslims consider Christians to be infidels, they would consider the Senator, an apostate who became a Christian and much less worthy of respect! Should Obama ever sit across from Muslim leaders, from the very start he will be approached as a man without honor. So for him and his supporters to think that Obama’s charm and persona would constitute an asset in discussions with Muslim leaders, is probably well intended but only shows they know absolutely nothing about shame-based societies.

My purpose for writing this article is not to suggest to anyone not to vote for Obama, but to inform my readers of the complexity of the Islamic mindset.

Shah

Section Five: Apostasy, Heresy, and Witchcraft

Article 225-1: Any Muslim who clearly announces that he/she has left Islam and declares blasphemy is an Apostate.

Article 225-2: Serious and earnest intention is the condition for certainty in apostasy. Therefore, if the accused claims that his/her statement had been made with reluctance or ignorance, or in error, or while drunk, or through a slip of the tongue or without understanding the meaning of the words, or repeating words of others; or his/her real intentions had been something else, he/she is not considered an apostate and his/her claim could be heard and justified.

Article 225-3: There are two kinds of apostates: innate (Fetri) and parental (Melli).

Article 225-4: Innate Apostate is someone whose parent (at least one) was a Muslim at the time of conception, and who declares him/herself a Muslim after the age of maturity, and leaves Islam afterwards.

Article 225-5: Parental Apostate is one whose parents (both) had been non-Muslims at the time of conception, and who has become a Muslim after the age of maturity, and later leaves Islam and returns to blasphemy.

Article 225-6: If someone has at least one Muslim parent at the time of conception but after the age of maturity, without pretending to be a Muslim, chooses blasphemy is considered a Parental Apostate.

Article 225-7: Punishment for an Innate Apostate is death.

Article 225-8: Punishment for a Parental Apostate is death, but after the final sentencing for three days he/she would be guided to the right path and encouraged to recant his/her belief and if he/she refused, the death penalty would be carried out.

Article 225-9: In the case of a Parental Apostate, whenever there appears to be a possibility of recanting, sufficient time would be provided.

Article 225-10: Punishment for women, whether Innate or Parental, is life imprisonment and during the sentence, under the guidance of the court, hardship will be exercised on her, and she will be guided to the right path and encouraged to recant, and if she recants she will be freed immediately.

Note: The condition of hardship will be determined according to the religious laws

Whatever Happened to Honor? Part II

2008-01-16T09:42:00.000-08:00

As I was discussing the first part to this article with my community, the discussion took a new turn. That so many Christian leaders often dishonor their subordinates by disrespecting them in various ways was unquestionable. We had all either seen it inflicted upon co-workers or had experienced it personally. What was puzzling to us was why a large number of workers at Christian organizations allow the leaders or pastors to mistreat or dishonor them with regularity?

Why is it that so many capable, well-qualified, rational, and intelligent people working for churches or Christian organizations continue to work under abusive bosses while barely making a living wage? Most of these people will have very little problem getting better paying jobs somewhere else under a more favorable condition, but to them, leaving their current jobs is utterly unfathomable.

Or, even worse, after years tolerating ridicule, marginalization, humiliation while making next to nothing, when the organization finally terminates them because their usefulness has run its course, if given the opportunity, they will not hesitate to rush back to work under the same abusive conditions.

When questioned, a large number of these Christians not only do not acknowledge any abuse they might be experiencing, but they will readily tell you that God wants them to work where they are. To a point, I believe the last statement. I put up with six years of abuse at a place where the management’s motto was, "The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves." because I felt God wanted me to be an anchor of stability for my coworkers. However, I constantly challenged the leadership and demanded that people under them be treated with dignity and honor.

One of the biggest forms of abuse is using God as an excuse to manipulate people into getting them to do your bidding or as I call it, “pulling the God-card.” This way there is no room for discussion. If you say, “God told me to do this or that”, who am I to question God? I also know how often the above phrase is used as an excuse not to face reality. I believe a large segment of the above Christians suffer from what psychologist, Martin Seligman, called “Learned Helplessness”.

Several decades back, psychologist Martin Seligman developed his theory of “learned helplessness”. Subjected to repeated punishment, animals and humans come to believe they have no control over what happens to them, whether they actually do or not. In Seligman’s original experiment, dogs given repeated electrical shocks would prostrate themselves and whine, even when escaping the abuse lay within their power.

Please click on the following links for more details on the above experiment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness
http://www.noogenesis.com/malama/discouragement/helplessness.html

You might protest, “Shah, you are talking about dogs and electric shocks! Where in heaven’s name do you see that being done to people in any Christian organization?” We don’t use electric shocks, but we have our own ways of beating people into “Learned Helplessness” that border on cultic practices.

According to psychologists the following are some of the characteristics of a cult group, which produce “Learned Helplessness”:

1. The group’s leader is reputed to have the potential of bringing a resolution to the problems of humanity.

To put it in our terms, church members often expect their leaders to bring solutions to the world’s and personal problems through their callings as apostles, prophets, evangelists… (Eph 4) or their gifts of the Spirit, words of wisdom, knowledge, prophesy… (I Cor. 12).

2. The leader is also drawn into believing the grandiose role accorded to him and justifies his actions by referring to the transcendent mission suggested by the group’s philosophy.

I don’t know why so many of us have the tendency to put our leaders on pedestals, treating them as super humans not realizing that by doing so we create the potential for a man to believe in “the grandiose role accorded to him”. This is not to say that the leaders just fall into this trap. Having been made in God’s image, we all have a god-complex and want to rule as such. Very few of us can resist constant praise and accolades aimed at our gifting or style of leadership and not fall prey to thinking that we, somehow, are better than others and called to rule over them.

If a pastor is constantly told how great a teacher, healer, prophet or leader he is, he eventually will come to believe that he is impressive and magnificent. And soon after, if he is ever questioned about his imposing behavior, he will refer you to all his accomplishments and how God has called him to accomplish the church’s mission statement.

3. To ensure stability as a close-knit social system, the group manipulates the activities and views of its members. All members are required to comply with the group’s norms. If they appear to question the values, they will face estrangement, which results in feeling acutely hopeless, uncomfortable and unhappy. This will also prevent members from leaving the group.

Every church or Christian organization I have ever known had its own set of “biblical” norms. All staff or church members were required to follow those “biblical” standards. Within several of these organizations or churches, you were demanded to obey the norms and be grateful for being a part of the entity. Those who dared to question the norms were marginalized, shunned, and labeled as, “ones who dare to touch God’s anointed”. Naturally, fearing a great feeling of stress and alienation, the majority of members complied with what the leadership deemed to be the norms, especially staff members. To control the people and prevent them from leaving the church, it was not unusual to make them feel that the only entity that would ever give them a place or a job was the one they belonged to at the present. So, by leaving the place, a member, no matter how talented, was always in danger of never being able to find a place or a job somewhere else.

What are the outcomes of such treatments? Creating a generation of helpless Christians who would stay in abusive situations out of fear of alienation, rejection, being deemed unworthy, worthless, or being called a heretic.

We Christians shock our people into helplessness, not by electricity, but with our words and behavior. We may not lock people in cages, but we have our way of keeping them within boundaries which are created by the “dos and don’ts” of the organization. So many of our leaders strip people under them of every ounce of dignity, talents and gifting by showing love and attention only when it meets their needs to control the people. By doing so, many Christian organizations have created a whole generation of helpless Christians who have come to believe they cannot effectively function anywhere else except within the particular organization. They have become like the dog, which, after being given numerous electric shocks, feel that being mistreated is his lot in life and there is nothing he can do about it. This psychological treatment is so effective that even after leaving an organization, many Christians, given the opportunity, in a heartbeat, go back to the same abusive place.

There is a happy ending to the above experiment. It was noted that the only way to get the helpless dog out of its cage was to send in another dog that had never been shocked. With the gate left open, upon receiving the first jolt of electricity, the new dog would bolt out of the cage and by doing so, it would teach the helpless dog to get out as well.

May I challenge and encourage all of you to be the restorers of honors lost. Be like the last dog, when it comes to confronting the abuse that is taking place in our Christian communities, go in, speak up and help a friend or two restore their honor by showing them the way out.

"I looked at all the caged animals in the shelter. The cast-offs of human society, I saw in their eyes love & hope, fear & dread, sadness & betrayal. And I was angry. "God," I said, "this is terrible! Why don't you do something?" God was silent for a moment & then He spoke softly, "I have done something," He replied. "I created you.” Author- Jim Willis

Whatever Happened To Honor? Part I

2007-11-17T19:45:00.000-08:00

Why is it that after almost 40 years of being a follower of Christ, I still feel out of step with most of American Christianity and feel as if there is something wrong with me? Why is it that as much as I tried, I could never sacrifice relationship over the American Church’s corporate mentality?

These questions were always running in the back of my head like one of those looped videotapes you see in stores that keep showing the same thing over and over again. Often my response was, “You are too sensitive. Don’t be so petty. Get over it. You can’t expect everyone to be wrong so it must be you?” And so on.

Let me give you couple of examples of what I am talking about.

If I was in my office working on my computer and a friend walked in, I would stop everything I was doing to attend to the person who was sitting across my desk. I wanted him/her to know that at that moment they were the center of my attention and nothing else mattered. Yet, if five minutes later I walked into the same person’s office, it would deeply hurt and offend me that my friend would continue banging on the keyboard without once looking up to listen to what I was saying. No, this had nothing to do with one’s ability to multitask or lack of it. To me, this all had to do with giving importance to a friend over an email that could be sent 10 minutes later.

If a friend needs a job, that need becomes my need, especially, when I know some people who might be interested in giving him/her a job. Unlike so many people I know, it is not good enough for ME that I can refer the friend to the right people. I take it upon myself to make sure the people know he/she is my friend and expect them to treat my friend with utmost respect. For, how they treat my friend is a reflection of their treatment of me.

I can imagine what kinds of questions might be going through your minds. What if the email couldn’t wait for 10 minutes? Don’t you think just directing the person to the right people should be good enough? Whose got the time to do follow-ups? Exactly, you are hitting the nail on the head. These were my questions too, yet I hardly ever remember an email that could not wait for 10 minutes and I could always make the time to follow up with my friends’ job hunts.

Does that make me a people pleaser? Am I an insecure person who wants to make sure everyone around him is happy with him? Believe me, I continually scrutinize myself over my actions. Did a desire to give people importance make me an “airhead”, as the president of the Christian organization I worked for once called me? He believed that only an “airhead” would give so much attention to just anyone.

It was only a few years ago, while teaching a seminar on honor and shame, the building block of most Oriental cultures, that I realized how much my culture of origin has to do with who I am today.

The formative years of my life in Iran was shaped under a Shame-Based culture—shame vs. honor. I really don’t want to take the time to talk about that culture. However, it is sufficient to say that within that culture, honor is the greatest attribute one can seek. Giving honor brings a person more honor. I was taught that taking care of my friends or my community was an honorable act.

By the way, the Bible, having been written in a Shame-Based culture is filled with passages dealing with this issue. Consider the following passages.

Leah said, "God has presented me with a precious gift. This time my husband will treat me with honor, because I have borne him six sons." Genesis 30:20

Genesis 45:13 "Tell my father about all the honor accorded me in Egypt and about everything you have seen. And bring my father down here quickly."

Luke 9:26 "If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels."

Revelation 21:27 "Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life."

Unfortunately, honor is an attribute, which, for the most part, has lost its importance within the American church. Most of my experience has taught me that taking the time to honor people of God is not conducive to the American corporate church mentality. Unless, of course, you are a mega-church pastor, an accomplished author, the president of a Christian organization or a televangelist with a funky hairdo, then we better honor God’s anointed or His wrath shall come upon us.

Recently, a friend told me the following story. He had been working for a missions organization for several years giving it all he could. Even though he had a Masters degree, he worked for a minimum wage because, like most of us, he wasn’t in the ministry for the money, but to make a difference for God’s Kingdom. For all the year he was there, along with other co-workers, he never got a raise because, according to the president of the organization, due to financial hardship, they could not afford to give any of the employees any raises. However, later on, my friend found out that through all those lean years, the president of the organization never stopped making his six-figure salary.

But even that was not as dishonoring as what happened to him during the last Christmas he was with that organization. I will let him tell the story.

“I was sitting at my desk when we were all given an unwrapped brown box.”

“What is this?” I asked.

“It’s your Christmas gift.”

“As soon as I opened it, I was about to scream. Inside the box was a gift that, two years earlier, I had designed for the board members. The management had not even bothered to change the two year old calendar that was left in the box.”

Talk about being dishonored. Yet, the management of this Christian organization, which was supposedly spreading the message of Jesus all over the world, had no idea why my friend and other co-workers were not grateful for getting a second-hand Christmas gift. To the management, this act of gift giving should have been received as something magnanimous where, in fact, the employees felt it to be so demeaning.

I literally can recount scores of incidents like this told to me by Christians from all types of denominations and backgrounds, but I finish this blog with one of my own stories.

A few days ago, just a week after my radical prostatectomy operation, I received a call from the producer of a popular Christian radio show in Los Angeles area. He had received an email from a dear friend of mine who had suggested me as a guest on the show. After introducing himself, the gentleman asked if I would be willing to do a radio interview the following day at 5:00 PM. I happily and graciously accepted the offer.

In the past 30 some years of being a believer, because of my unique background, I have been on numerous radio and TV programs. For five years I produced a Persian TV show which was aired among the Iranian community in the Los Angeles area. All that to say: I am not new to radio or TV interviews. I know how quickly a daily TV or radio show can switch directions and bump a guest off the show. So, after I got off the phone, I told my wife about the interview, but I also told her, “I am not holding my breath.”

The next day the same gentleman called to inform me that my interview was pushed back 30 minutes and a few hours later, the interview was postponed to the following Thursday at 5:30 PM.

Thursday came and went and, yes, you guessed it, I never heard from the producer. I waited till mid-day Friday hoping I would at least receive the customary phone call telling me why I was bumped or that they were not interested in interviewing me any longer, but it never happened. So, I called the producer and this is how the conversation went:

“Hi Danny this is Shah.”

“Shah???” It was obvious he couldn’t immediately remember who I was.

“Yes, the guy you were supposed to have an interview with yesterday.”

“Oh, Shah! I never told you we were going to interview you on Thursday. I said if we needed you, we were going to call you.”

“No, you did not. You called me last Monday to tell me I WAS going to be interviewed on Thursday. Do you remember?”

“Well, sorry. I forgot to tell you that we didn’t need you.”

“Couldn’t you at least, out of courtesy, call me and let me know so I could run some of my errands yesterday rather than sitting by my phone waiting for your call?”

“Well, sorry!”

We said our goodbyes and I hung up.

What bothered me the most was his tone of voice. As if he was annoyed that a peon like me would even dare ask why he thought I wasn’t worthy of a lousy phone call. All through our conversation, I wanted to ask producer Danny the following question. Again, to some the question might make me look like a sore loser, but to those who know me well, know that to me it is a matter of HONOR.

“Danny, would you have forgotten to call me if I was Pastor so and so?” I was going to name a popular mega-church pastor. We all know what his answer would have been and that is my point of contention.

Any more, just like the secular world, the corporate church has divided the people into, as an old Christian boss of mine used to say, “major leaguers” and “minor leaguers”. The “major leaguers” are the famous ones, God’s anointed, the mega-church builders. They are the ones who have written all the “how to” Christian books. They are the only ones who have something to offer to the rest of the church. And the rest of us, who don’t have the above qualifications, are the “minor leaguers”. And producer Danny was not any better or worse when it came to assessing people’s value. To him I was a “minor leaguer” who should have been grateful that his radio show even considered interviewing me. However, the story didn’t end there.

Just a few minutes after I finished talking with Danny, the phone rang again. It was him.

“Shah, I need to apologize to you. I dropped the ball. I SHOULD HAVE called to let you know that we were not interested in interviewing you.”

“Danny, this means the world to me. My upbringing demands that we honor each other. You dishonored me by not calling me back originally. And I want you to know that had nothing to do with you deciding not to put me on your show. But now you have restored my honor by apologizing to me,” I told him. He went on to apologize again, but it wasn’t needed.

Today I don’t question the validity of my feelings and actions any more. I have come to realize that my feelings are not only valid, but also they are very much biblical. Those who are made in God’s image are worthy of my time and attention. But, I am also not as bent on expecting that everyone treat me the same way. However, this does not mean that we, as those who are called to be God’s ambassadors in this world, should not learn how to treat people, regardless of their status, with a level of honor due to them.

I have to admit that Danny’s second phone call left me with another nagging question, “Would he have ever admitted to his wrong doing if I had not confronted him and if so, why do so many Christians allow the leadership to dishonor them with regularity and yet not confront them?” which forces me to look at the issue of honor and shame from another point of view.

Stay tuned for my next blog.

What if?

2007-09-30T18:18:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, the president of Iran, whose name is pronounced, Mah-mood Ah-mad-ee-neh-jaad (I got tired of listening to scores of American reporters pronouncing the name ten million different ways) arrogantly, declared that there are no homosexuals in Iran. Well, as one who was born and raised there, one who still has his parents and most of his relatives living there, I, assuredly, declare that he is a liar and there are many homosexuals living in Iran. Of course, this should not come as a surprise to any of you. What is shocking is the way these poor souls are treated. Please click on the following link, but I have to warn you, this is very graphic:
http://www.foxnews.com/photoessay/0,4644,2396,00.html#1_0

By their silence, Christian leaders in the united States are missing a great opportunity to demonstrate the love and compassion of Christ to a persecuted people group. Christians have often complaint that the secular media fails to recognize persecuted Christian minorities globally. On the other hand, the popular Christian phrase , “love the sinner hate the sin”, is seen by the world as being disingenuous. What if the Church of Jesus Christ seizes the day with Ahmadinejad’s hideous statement by supporting that very group of persecuted people? Can you imagine, the bridge, all be it small, that could be built to the homosexual community and broader liberal community if, for example, Dr. James Dobson called the church to pray and speak out against this persecution? No, this would not mean that Dobson is agreeing with homosexual life-style, rather it would clearly show an act of love and concern on the part of the followers of Christ.

I believe God is giving us and will give us opportunities in the future to show his mercy to this fallen world. May we be wise enough to take advantage of these opportunities

I would love to hear your comments.

I CE-LIBRATED LIFE TODAY

2007-08-28T22:52:00.000-07:00

A few years ago I read, Why Jesus Went to Parties? by Max Lucado.

This is how Max starts the article:

Why would Jesus, on his first journey, take his followers to a party?

Didn't they have work to do? Didn't he have principles to teach?
Wasn't his time limited? How could a wedding fit with his purpose on
earth?

Why did Jesus go to the wedding?

The answer? It's found in the second verse of John 2. "Jesus and his
followers were also invited to the wedding."

Why did they invite him?

I suppose they liked him.

He then goes on to say that Jesus went to parties--are you ready for this--to have fun! As Chris Farley used to say on SNL, “whoop dee freaking do!” How low has the state of Christian faith in the western world sunk that one of the most prolific writers of our time has to scripturally prove that it is ok for Christians to have fun because Jesus took time to have fun.

I don’t blame Mr. Lucado. At least he is trying to take Christians out of their organizational attitude and get them to enjoy life and have fun just for the sake of fun and not as an end to another church sponsored program. He, like most western Christians, is a victim of reading the Bible through his own eyes.

Let me clarify a few things as one who is from the part of the world Jesus came from.

Please note that according to the Gospel of John, all the books in the world could not contain what Jesus did while on earth. So, to assume that our four gospels contain all that Jesus did is very naïve. In other worlds, in most probability, this was not the first time that Jesus and his disciples were attending a wedding. The only reason John reports this wedding is because this is where Jesus performed his first miracle.

Second, unlike a majority of western Christian teachers who spend most of their time teaching things about God in a didactic style, Jesus lived God before his students, and what better place than a wedding to show his disciples that the Gospel is all about RELATIONSHIP.

Third, Jesus went to the wedding because He was invited. In the Middle East culture, if you live in a small community, as I did in Iran, when someone in the neighborhood gets married, the whole community is invited. Not to invite your neighbors is a sign of disrespect. Unlike so many Christians leaders I know, Jesus went to the wedding with no agenda but to love and respect his neighbors and not looking to see what was in it for him. He went to the wedding to celebrate the new life a couple in his community was about to start.

And finally, Jesus went to the wedding to have fun. He never separated the Gospel from FUN of celebrating life. You have never experienced a true wedding celebration until you attend a Middle Eastern or an Armenian wedding. Where as in an average American evangelical wedding the main focus is on the religious ceremony, in the eastern culture, it is the celebration afterwards that truly is considered to be the wedding. No, you are not given a piece of cake and a cup of punch and sent home. Maybe, that’s because we don’t separate a wedding into a religious ceremony and a secular celebration. To us, the whole thing is about celebration.

Where did we, Christians, lose it? “How could we,” as one of my old professors at the seminary used to say, “take the most joyous religion in the world (Judaism) and turn it into boring western Christianity?” I know, historically, there are many reasons why we got to where we are today, but that is not the subject of this article.

I am sorry to say that within a few years of leaving Islam to follow Christ, I became one of those Christians who forgot how to celebrate life. I was too busy trying to make a church grow to have fun. I thought to enjoy life while there were so many hurting people around me was not godly. Today I regret spending so many years of my life not having more fun.

All our married life (33 years), my wife, Karen, wanted to learn how to Swing dance. Although I was never against dancing and was probably the only Iranian pastor who always wanted to incorporate dancing as a part of worship, I just could not bring myself to take lessons in Swing. For some reason, I was taught that my enjoyment of life should always involve some kind of religious activity and Swing certainly was not in that category. After all, where is Swing mentioned in the Bible?

My attitude towards life has changed drastically in the last 10 years. Little by little I had to admit to myself that one of the reasons I so often feel out of step with my western leaders is because of my up bringing in Iran. I came to realize how much of the corporate culture of America has crept into the church and has become a part of our Christian life; the culture that demands every action of one’s life to be navigated by its outcome. Everything in life has to be goal oriented. Any more, our best pastors and Christian leaders are not those who necessarily had much passion for people, but organizers with great administrative gifts. Next time you meet a pastor in his office, take a quick look at what he/she keeps in his/her library. Don’t be surprised to see the number of books that are about administration, organizations and goal setting. After all, Capitalism teaches that there should be a return for your investments. You shouldn’t do something just for the sake of doing it. There has to be a positive and tangible return for your efforts, otherwise, as my ex-leader called me, “You are an airhead.”

I can’t tell you the delight and the freedom I experienced when reading Simon Tuglwell’s, the Beatitudes. In dealing with Matt. 5:4, Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth, he makes these life liberating remarks:

…Does it really make sense to say that God ‘has a purpose’ in what He does? God is his own purpose. And in that He is entirely sufficient to himself… God acts without a reason…If we are to be and to act like God, if we are to appreciate the act of God, we must come to appreciate the point of pointlessness, the joy of unnecssariness. We must learn to pay due attentions to the satisfaction there is sometimes in just doing something for its own sake, and not bias our view of life too much in the direction of those things which are always a struggle and which are always justifiable in terms of some solemn intention.

I will never forget the amount of shock and disbelief I experienced several years ago when a dear friend told me she had taken motorcycle lessons at her local CHP office to learn how to ride a motorcycle. “But you don’t even own a bike.” I said and asked; “Why did you do it?” “Just because,” she responded.

What does any of this have to do with me celebrating life today? Well, to get there, I need to set the stage. I got an iPod for my birthday this past June. I had just downloaded Santana’s first album when I went to work on the front yard. As I began to listen to the album, something came upon me.

Was it the Latin beat of the music, the fact that the song took me back to over 30 years ago when my faith was simple and my theology nonexistent, the days when I was naïve enough to trust my leadership as those who were put in their position to serve God’s people and not their own personal ambitions, the days when I trusted my tithe money to go towards spreading the Gospel in the world and not being wasted on remodeling an unneeded church office at the tune of $600,000, the time when I thought the measure of a man was in his Christ likeness and not the size of his church or how many books he has written, or maybe all of the above? Whatever it was, it made me want to dance and I did.

I took the shovel, just like Fred Astaire did with the hat rack in one of his movies, and began to do the Salsa with it. I didn’t care what the neighbors or passersby thought. I wanted to love the moment for no reason. I wanted to dance just because. I didn’t need a mandate or scripture to justify myself in the fact that I finally listened to Karen and four years ago started taking dance lessons.

Drive-by Evangelism

2007-05-19T16:40:00.000-07:00

I live in the San Fernando area of Los Angeles. Some of the most notorious gangs in Los Angeles live just a few miles from our house, so, for us, the news of drive by shootings is something very common. In fact, we have witnessed two rival gang members shooting at each other just a few feet in front us as we were driving home one night. And even though they shot at each other, neither one of them was hit. The way these gangs shoot at each other, very much, describes the way American Christians do evangelism.

As some of you know, I was a professor at a Bible college for five years. One of the classes I taught was Evangelism and Discipleship. When I first started teaching that class, one of the assignments was for the students to witness to three people in the course of the fifteen-week semester and write a one page report on it.

Most of my students would wait until the night before the assignment was due, run to the local Starbucks, buttonhole a poor sucker who was trying to get himself ready for his graveyard shift by drinking a Venti Americana with an extra shot, and ask him, “Sir, do you know Jesus loves you?” or, “Where would you go if you dropped dead tonight?” to which he would usually reply, “No, and I don’t care.” Or “I really don’t give a *&^%”. And then, my students would proudly write their reports on these heroic acts of evangelism.

Within a semester after I started teaching that class, a colleague, who taught the same class, and I changed this assignment to the following requirements:

1. Each student had 15 weeks to make one new—someone they had never met before—pre-Christian friend,
2. Journal everything he/she could about the person and their relationship every time they met, and
3. If the person was to ever become a follower of Christ, what would the student do to disciple his/her newfound friend—an eight week course of action?

Please note that the object was not to, as our professional Christians would say, “close the deal” (have the person repeat THE SINNERS’ PRAYER”), but to just make a friend. After four years of teaching the same class, do you know how many of my several hundred students were able to make one friend in fifteen weeks?

Only a handful.

The majority of my students would rather spend fifteen weeks parsing words in Greek and Hebrew or study Systematic Theology than befriend a pre-Christian because most of them had never been taught the value of having non-Christian friends. After all, a prevalent belief among most Christians today is, “At best, a non-Christian has nothing good to offer Christians and at worse, they can take you away from your faith; so why bother making friends with them.” Therefore, rather than looking at those outside the church as men and women made in God’s image and worthy of their friendship, most my students looked at non-believers as their Drive-by Evangelism projects.

Often, out of shear frustration, I would yell at my students, “What in heaven’s name is your Greek and Hebrew or your Orthodox theology good for if you don’t even know how to share your faith with an unchurched person?”

The Christian motto: “Don’t go there, don‘t see that, don’t touch this and certainly DO NOT associate with those people,” makes us look more like Pharisees than Christ; whom by the way, went there, ate and drank that, touched this and most definitely spent a great deal of time hanging out with people who were considered to be the cesspool of society by the most religious people of his time.

Someone might say, “Well, we need to protect our young ones from the evils of this world. Yes, I agree! But, creating an unrealistic bubble of protection around them, for the most part, will neither protect them from the evils of this world nor will it cause them to be the salt Jesus commanded.

Even worse is the fact that this attitude is not just limited to young Christians, but throughout our Christian society.

I recently read an article by Christianity Today, titled Friends Outside the Faith, http://www.christianitytoday.com/tcw/2007/002/7.36.html, where four Christian women discussed their attitudes towards evangelism.

The article was so shallow and condescending that a friend wrote the following to CT:

"I cannot believe you published the article, “Friends Outside the Faith.” I am absolutely aghast at the perceptions these women have, both of themselves and those who they encounter. Throughout this article the only people these women are truly concerned about are themselves. They have an implicit belief that they are better than non-believers; and they believe all non-believers are searching for truth, i.e. Jesus Christ. Both beliefs are a fallacy.

Let’s look at the first and last examples given in this article. First is Kim; she talks about her realtor who is gay and has invited her to a party. She is only concerned with herself—if she will feel weird, what she will talk about, how it might look bad for her to go. Then there is Eva. Who is she praying for? Herself. She is praying not to mess up something, and then has the realization that God could actually bless someone through her. Me, me, me, me, me.

Lou and Lisa are no better; they believe that they are to be positive influencers of society and to associate with immoral people, just as Jesus did. However, they think that all non-believers are “desperate for something that’s honest, true, and real—and that’s Jesus.” How do they know what non-believers are searching for? When do they ever take the time to listen to what others want? They have their agenda: tell others about God. I don’t see too much listening in that agenda…"

To me, the blame rests on the leadership. I know Christian leaders who shine when given a mike and put in front of a couple of thousands people. They will preach the Gospel like Jesus himself. Yet, you put the same leaders across from one unbeliever and they would look like a deer caught in the headlights, especially if the unbeliever has nothing to help further the leader’s personal cause. Believe me, I have seen it.

The Church in America has to realize that the era of mass-evangelism is over. Today, more than ever before, people are looking for authenticity, transparency and someone they can trust. We must quit looking at those outside the faith as if they have nothing good to offer and, therefore, not worthy of our friendship unless we make them some type of evangelism project. We will become influential when we are willing to be their friends, listen to their stories, and not offer Christian cliché answers to their problems.

CONFESS YOUR SINS TO EACH OTHER THAT YOU MAYBE HEALED OR…HUMILIATED

2007-03-31T16:11:00.000-07:00

All Evangelicals are familiar with the passage in the book of James 5:15 that says: Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.

Do you ever wonder who and how many constitute the "each other" in the above verse? To whom and to how many do I have to confess my sin, so I can be healed? No matter how you feel about the Catholic Church, this is how they interpret the above passage. Once a catholic sees the need for confessing his sin, he goes to the perish priest, makes his confession and, for all practical purpose, that is the end of the issue. Most priests would rather go to jail than reveal what was confessed to them. But, for the most part, the Evangelicals still struggle as how to implement this verse in their everyday life. Let me give you couple of examples.

I met Scott, a well-educated, deep thinking and very attractive man, seven years ago. By that time he had been a follower of Christ for about five years. His greatest desires in these past seven years were to serve God and find a woman who would fall in love and marry him. To stay true to his love for God, he lived a celibate life. Following his pastor’s suggestion he had made a list of what kind of woman he wanted because, after all, if you pray hard enough and live a pure life, God will give you the perfect woman He has chosen for you.

Scott and I spend this past seven years praying, fasting and taking every practical avenue we could to find him a wife. He joined an on-line Christian dating service, went to singles’ meetings and allowed friends to introduce him to different eligible Christian women. Nothing worked! Probably because, we either did not pray hard enough or had sin in our lives (As usual, sarcasm is all mine).

About a year ago, not being able to find a Christian woman, he started dating a musician lady who was not a believer. Before attacking me for allowing it or Scott for going against God’s word and dating a non-believer, let me ask you a question, what is your solution? Do you have a better suggestion for a man in his forties who longs to have the arms of a loving woman around him so he can feel like a man God has called him to be? And please don’t you dare give the cliché that, “God alone should have been enough in Scott’s life.” Even God himself didn’t believe that bullcrap the church has been feeding the Christians for it was He who said, “It is NOT good for man to be alone.” If I remember correctly, at the time when God said that, Adam had God ALL to himself and it was long before he sinned. So, apparently, when it comes to being alone, though God is sufficient, He is not enough.

Scott started to take his girlfriend to church. Finding out that she was a musician, Scott’s pastor hired her to play on the worship team. Everything was going well until Scott gave into temptation. Yes, he slept with his girlfriend once and his life has never been the same because he wanted to be obedient to the Scripture and confess his sin.

My friend happened to be working for a rather large Christian organization. Feeling convicted, he made the great mistake of confessing his sin to his boss. You would think with a little grace that would have been the end of the issue. No, the boss promptly demoted him and demanded that Scott go to his pastor and confess his sin to him also, upon which he was rebuked and striped of all his duties at church. But that was not enough. This horrible sinful act was reported to the president of the organization and eventually the whole executive team had to be informed of it. Knowing the power of gossip, I would not be surprised if within a few weeks the whole building knew what my dear brother had done.

I recently heard of a Bible college student, Mary, who, as they say it at that school, “broke covenant”; she slept with another student. Again, wanting to be faithful to the above verse, she decided to confess her sin to her female RA. The RA promptly demanded that Mary go before her overseers, a couple, and confess her sin to them too. After wanting to know the most intimate details of Mary’s relationship, the overseers made her go before a committee of three confessing her failure. I wish I could tell you that that was the end of the ordeal, but NO. Mary, then, had to go to the president of the college who made her go before the student body at chapel time and announce to the whole school that she had “broken covenant.” Of course, she was not expected to go into all the details (how generous of them!), but I can imagine all the rumors that started because of her confession. One more thing, she also was required to go to her Christian boss and several other people at her job and confess to them also, which cost her the job.

Going back to my friend Scott, out of humiliation and embarrassment, he left his church and quit his job and to be honest, today, he is facing a crisis of faith. As for Mary, whom I have known for a year, she didn’t fair out any better. As I was having lunch with her this past week, my conversation with this young lady who is about the same age as my daughter, 20-21, went something like this:

“You have aged, Mary.”

She smiled and replied, “That’s what my mother said too.”

“What have you learned from this experience?“ I asked

“Not to trust the authority,” she replied.

This is what one of my favorite authors, Brennan Manning, in his book, Ragamuffin Gospel, says regarding the prodigal son,

“for me, the most touching verse in the entire Bible is the father’s response: ‘While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with pity. He ran to the boy, clasped him in his arms and kissed him tenderly’ (Luke 15:20).

I am moved that the father didn't cross-examine the boy, bully him, lecture him on ingratitude, or insist on any high motivation. He was so overjoyed at the sight of his son that he ignored all the canons of prudence and parental discretion and simply welcomed him home. The father took him back just as he was.”

In the same book, concerning the woman caught in adultery in the Gospel of John, Brennan says,

“Jesus didn't ask her if she was sorry. He didn't demand a firm purpose of amendment. He didn't seem too concerned that she might dash back into the arms of her lover. She just stood there and Jesus gave her forgiveness before she asked for it. The nature of God's love for us is outrageous.

Why doesn’t this God of ours display some taste and discretion in dealing with us? Why doesn't He show more restraint? To be blunt about it, couldn't God arrange to have a little more dignity?

Now, if we were in His position, we'd know perfectly well how to behave. The prodigal son would have recited his speech down to the very last word. And when he got finished we would have said, "Well, you go away, prodigal son, and I'll think about this for a couple of weeks. Then you'll be informed by an e-mail whether I've decided to let you back on the farm or not.

I don't think anyone of us would have approved of throwing rocks at the poor woman caught in adultery, but we would have made sure she presented a detailed act of repentance and to be firm in her purpose of amendment. Because if we let her off without saying she was sorry, wouldn't she be back into adultery before sunset?"

Why is it that if I work for a Christian organization, everyone above me is supposed to be my spiritual leaders too? Where does it say that a Christian should spiritually be accountable to his floor manager or even the director of his department who are nothing but a couple of paper-pushers or at best administrators who never try to connect with the their employees on any other level than business? In front of how many people does a Christian have to be humiliated and disgraced before he is presumably handed his forgiveness?

Please, don’t for one minute think that I am suggesting that we are not responsible for our actions or that one should not be accountable for his mistakes. No, we reap what we sow. My issue is with a leadership that has been placed in authority to build up the body of Christ and not their own kingdoms by tearing down people who God has put under them.

May God have mercy on us for taking a passage, which is supposed to bring healing and restoration to the body of Christ to YET AGAIN another tool of destruction, humiliation and above all, control. Maybe that’s why, as Barna says, there are 13 to 15 million unchurched born again Christians in America. Maybe the unchurched are not longer longing for another mega church pastor, but for a leader who will accept and forgive them as and where they are.

Size DOES Matter

2007-02-18T08:49:00.001-08:00

In 1978, I started the first Iranian Christian organization, the Fellowship of Iranian Christians (FIC), in the US. Although, for the first ten years I kept FIC as a loosely-knit group of house churches—yes, I believed in the idea of house churches long before it became popular—eventually, due to our size, we needed to move into a church building.

At the time, that church was considered the flagship of her denomination. Out of the kindness of his heart, the pastor of the church decided to treat me as a part of the staff, even though I was never put on his payroll. And in many ways, our Iranian congregation was treated the same as the English speaking congregation. The Iranian church was never required to pay for any cost we incurred in all the years I pastored there. What a sweet deal, you might say.

For years I felt the same way until the night of the Presidential election in 1998. 1998 was probably the worse and toughest year of ministry for Karen and me. A great split had taken place at our church and Karen and I were desperate for any spiritual support we could receive. At the time Karen worked for the above pastor’s assistant, who we will call Bill.

Bill felt our Iranian congregation could spiritually be benefited if, at a Wednesday night service, we had the English speaking church pray over us. Unfortunately, he picked the night that President Clinton was re-elected for a second term.

I got all the members of my church I could muster up and brought them to the service. The pastor showed up on the platform quite angry because, earlier, a nationally broadcasted TV reporter, Brinkley, had called Clinton, a “Goddamn bore”. So he preached a firey message on respecting those God has put over us, even if they are Democrats, which went on and on and on for way over an hour.

As soon as he finished, the offering was taken and the pastor was about to dismiss the people when Bill leaned over and reminded him the reason why the Iranian church was at the service. I know what was said next in front of my wife, children, the Iranian church members and not to mention 900 English speaking church members might shock some of you, but it did happen.

“Well, I guess we now are going to pray for our TOKEN Iranian pastor,” the pastor announced to the audience. I can’t tell you the amount of shame I experienced at that moment. But after talking to Karen, we decided to drop the issue for two reasons. One, because of his generosity towards our church and second, we considered his statement a harmless AIR-HEADED remark, that any pastor could make in the heat of the moment and he really did not mean anything by it. But as you will see, there was nothing further from the
truth.

Now, let’s fast forward to January 2006. I had requested to meet with the same pastor to discuss some of the problems with a leader I was serving under at our denomination’s headquarters. Unbeknownst to me, our beloved pastor had spent an hour talking to the leader I had a problem with and he had given the pastor some false information about me.

No sooner had I entered the pastor’s house, than he began attacking me for something I had not done. Among other harsh words he used to describe me, he said, “I always knew you were an airhead. That is why you were not able to grow your church any larger.”

According to this great and anointed man of God (I hope you feel the sarcasm), the measure of a pastor is directly related to the size of his membership. It was then when I realized that his remark made nine years earlier was not an air-headed remark, but a calculated and purposefully malicious one.

By the way, it took me almost two hours to show him he had been given some wrong information about me. And when he finally realized he had misjudged me, he began to soften his tone and back peddle. But by then, the damage was done and once again, this TOKEN Iranian pastor was reminded that he was also an AIRHEAD.

Yes, my dear pastors, do not let them fool you. Size does matter. That is, the size of your congregation. You know, in all the years of attending my old denomination’s annual conventions, for once, I would have loved to see, as our main speaker, brother “Doodad” whom his greatest accomplishment in the past three years was to have successfully closed down five churches. I wanted to hear the pain of a man who had done all the right things and yet ended up with all the wrong results. I wanted to hear someone I could identify with. Hey, the Bible says something about the last days and old men dreaming dreams.

2007-02-03T23:20:00.000-08:00

The Appearance of Evil

1 Thessalonians 5:20-22

Don't suppress the Spirit, and don't stifle those who have a word from the Master. On the other hand, don't be gullible. Check out everything, and keep only what's good. Throw out anything tainted with evil. (The Message)

Do not despise prophetic utterances. But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good; abstain from every form of evil. (New American Standard Bible)

Despise not prophesyings. Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. Abstain from all appearance of evil. (King James Version)

Do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil. (New International Version)

A while back, a Muslim leader in Iran demanded that while riding a bus, the women should leave their seats a few stops before their destination so, in case, a man sat where they had been sitting, the warmth of their seats would not arouse him sexually.

Recently, I heard another leader tell his staff members that while having dinner on one of his flights, he was suddenly horrified to realize that he was having dinner with a woman (the passenger next to him) who was not his wife.

Reading the above two incidents, what is the first thought that might come to your mind?

a) What a bunch of psychos
b) Pharisees
c) Give me a freaking break

What makes it even more sad is the fact that the latter incident was conveyed, not by a Muslim cleric, but a Christian leader while pontificating on Abstaining from all appearance of evil. Somehow, to this man, sitting next to a strange woman on a plane, while having dinner, was equivalent to going out on a date with her. As if the poor woman, who had never met this man, deliberately arranged to have her seat next to him so she could have dinner with him because, after all, every woman in the world has the hots for the Evangelical leaders. Talk about arrogance…

Hearing this ridiculous story took me back to seven years ago when I had first started working for a Christian organization. At the time, two of my coworkers and I who lived in the same area decided to carpool.

There were two men and a woman in the carpool. My guy friend made it very clear that if there were a day when I was not going to carpool with the gang, not wanting to be alone with a woman in a car, he would drive alone to work. I, on the other hand, having not directly worked for a Christian organization prior to this job, found carpooling with a woman besides my wife, a non-issue till the first time I did it. What happened next was something that haunted me for the following seven years of working in that place.

Apparently, on the day only two of us carpooled, another coworker saw me pull into the parking structure with a WOMAN who was not my wife next to me. Promptly, he reported me to the boss who immediately called me on the carpet to let me know that what I was doing had all the appearance of evil. I don’t know what they thought I was able to do with a woman while driving seventy miles per our on the freeways of Los Angeles—talk about multi-tasking on the freeway—nevertheless, it was still considered to have all the evil appearances.

Those who know me know that I do not rollover and play dead in the face of injustice and stupidity. Being from the Middle East, more than anything else, the above was an issue related to my honor. Something that most of my, so-called, leaders, did not, could not and, frankly, were incapable of understanding. Needless to say neither me, my wife or our lady friend backed down from carpooling together. I say my wife so my readers would know this was a non-issue for her also. After 32 years of being married, we both have proven our faithfulness to each other and rather spend our energy on things that matters to the Kingdom.

The issue continued till the day someone told the boss that the president of the organization had been carpooling alone with his secretary for almost twenty years. It was then that, suddenly, my carpooling with a woman, who was not my wife, no longer had the appearance of evil. Not because my friend and I had tried to remove all appearance of evil from our lives, but because, now, God’s anointed, the president of the organization had set a precedent for all of us. After all, if the president weren’t perfect, God would not have allowed him to be in that possession. Therefore, he has the power to make, that which looked evil one day, perfectly innocent the next day (sarcasm is all mine).

Unfortunately, even after that, the stigma never left me. As far as my superiors were concerned, at worse, I had an agenda for carpooling with women and going to lunch with them and at best I was continually guilty of giving the appearance, which was evil.

I started this article by giving you four different translation of the same verse. As you might have noticed, only King James Version says anything about the word appearance? I am not sure, but I am willing to bet that 400-500 years ago the word appearance in the English language did not mean what it means today. Maybe, that is why the other more correct translations do not say anything about appearance. But for the sake of the argument, let’s stay with the King James translation. After all, our anointed teachers still insist on using this version.

Suppose I tell you that yesterday, while passing by a bar next to my house, I noticed that a very well known pastor was sitting at the bar with a drink in front of him, deep in a conversation with a gay man. But wait, as the ad on TV says, there is more. While the pastor was sipping on his drink, there was a strange woman applying hair gel to his head and working it into his hair. Now, with all honesty, what do think of this pastor?

As Chandler, the character on the TV show, Friends, would say, “Oh my God”, talk about the appearance of evil. However, before passing judgment, look at the following passages from the Gospel of Luke: 7:36-39

Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner."

Yes, I twisted the story a bit. It wasn’t his head that was being worked on, but his feet. He was not sitting on a stool in a bar, but reclining on a couch in someone’s house. And the woman was not working on his hair with her hands but on his feet with her hair while kissing them (talk about a sensual appearance). However, the outcome is the same.

According to the Pharisees, Jesus should have known better than to hang out with a bunch of drunks and allow a prostitute to touch him, but apparently Jesus didn’t give a crap about how this might have appeared to them. He was more concerned about the people who were made in God’s image than his own reputation. And that is what he demands of ALL of us.

No, I am not advocating foolishness. I am not telling you that no one has the right to set guidelines and boundaries for you and me. What I am having a problem with are those Christian leaders whom, having struggles with a certain issue in their own lives, assume that everyone is suffering from the same weakness.

My beef with the “appearance of evil” is that it takes away from the real point: of abstaining from evil. By focusing on the “appearance” it puts such ridiculous constraints on people, constraints that limit people’s freedom and take away our better judgment or common sense. It is ridiculous for two people not to carpool because of the “appearance of evil or women needing to get up from their seat so that men won’t feel their warmth and be aroused.

Once again, we need to ask ourselves, “How much of the popular teachings being fed to people from the church pulpits in America is aimed to control and not guide the sheep?” Could this be the reason why there is such a great movement of “out of the church Christians” who find the church in her present form not relevant anymore?

Why Can’t I Touch God’s Anointed?

2007-01-25T00:14:00.000-08:00

I used to be on the staff of a Pentecostal mega-church where, at the time, they had a very popular deliverance ministry. One of the greatest components of their ministry was based on Generational Curse. Without getting too far into it, (I am planning to write about it later on) they believed that much of our problems in life were related to some kind of a curse that was brought upon us through a sin committed by someone in our lineage. It didn’t matter if the proverbial sin was committed two days ago by your father or two hundred years ago by your great, great, great cousin who was the stepson of your great, great, great, great aunt.

Since I considered the teaching to be false, I wrote a paper showing its fallacy and presented it to the pastor of the church hoping for a dialog between the leader of the ministry and the pastoral staff.

As is common for the church leaders who are still caught up in Modernity, instead of getting a dialogue, I got a lecture. These leaders do not allow a conversation or an exchange of ideas. As far as they are concerned, it is a privilege for you and me to be on the receiving end of what they dictate to us. And God forbid if you question what they have to offer.

On top of that, one false teaching was defended by another. “Look at how God is blessing this ministry! Don’t you know you are not supposed to touch God’s anointed?” I was told.

The above statement brought up several questions:

1. Who is God’s anointed?
2. Where did this teaching originate?
3. What does touching God’s anointed mean?
4. Why can’t I touch him/her?

In the Bible, the word anointed is usually related to pouring oil on someone or something. The first time the Bible refers to this act is when Jacob pours oil on a heap of rocks.

Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. He called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called Luz. Gen. 28:19-19

This tradition was a sign of consecration and, in the case of Aaron and his sons, a sign of ordination.

After you put these clothes on your brother Aaron and his sons, anoint and ordain them. Consecrate them so they may serve me as priest. Ex. 28:41
The prophets of Israel followed the tradition of pouring oil on men as a sign affirming that God had ordained a particular man to be the king over the people of Israel.

Then Samuel took a flask of oil and poured it on Saul's head and kissed him, saying, "Has not the LORD anointed you leader over his inheritance? 1 Sam 10:1

Hence, the kings of Israel were called God’s anointed. And it was within this context that David called Saul, The Lord’s or God’s anointed.

He came to the sheep pens along the way; a cave was there, and Saul went in to relieve himself. David and his men were far back in the cave. The men said, "This is the day the LORD spoke of when he said to you, 'I will give your enemy into your hands for you to deal with as you wish.' " Then David crept up unnoticed and cut off a corner of Saul's robe. Afterward, David was conscience-stricken for having cut off a corner of his robe. He said to his men, "The LORD forbid that I should do such a thing to my master, the LORD's anointed, or lift my hand against him; for he is the anointed of the LORD." With these words David rebuked his men and did not allow them to attack Saul. And Saul left the cave and went his way. I Sam 24:3-7
This is what is happening. David finally has a chance to KILL Saul who had every intention of killing David. But David refuses to “lift his hand against or touch God’s anointed”. Any honest person should be able to see that the issue here is not criticizing Saul, but doing him in. Touching God’s anointed, as the above pastor tried to convey to me, has nothing to do with telling someone, “sir/madam, I don’t agree with you.” But, it has everything to do with saying, “sir/madam, I am going to KILL you.”
Today, with no kings around and all the Old Testament prophets gone, how can we tell who is God’s anointed is?

Well, according to everything I was ever taught by my Pentecostal mentors, God’s anointed are the Christian leaders with great accomplishments. So, if one is the pastor of a mega-church, a great preacher, a successful televangelist, a popular faith healer (usually with a bad comb-over), or the president of a denomination, you are God’s anointed. So, the anointing is directly related to your status within the church. And because you are God’s anointed no one should criticize anything you do. For to do so is to touch God’s anointed which, after all, even David wouldn’t do.

If the above is true then our Lord, Jesus Christ, was guilty of a grievous sin of criticizing some of the most anointed people of his time, the Jewish teachers and leaders. Yet, you and I both know that this was not so in Christ’s case.

Then, why such a blatantly erroneous teaching, you might ask?

To control the people who dare to ask questions.

If a Christian leader can convince his followers that his accomplishment is related to him being God’s anointed, then by questioning him you have committed the sin of touching God’s anointed. Yet, one of the mandates of Jesus to his followers is to ask questions and to knock on doors for answers. As Rob Bell says in Velvet Elvis, “A Christian does not avoid questions; a Christian embraces them. In fact, to truly pursue the living God, we have to see the need for questions.”

The aforementioned teaching is the brainchild of a group of insecure and control-freak Christian leaders whom, out of the fear of losing control, could not tolerate anyone questioning their motive or behaviors and believe me, after almost 30 years of being in the ministry, I have seen many of these so-called anointed people of God.

For the five years I thought at a Bible College, one thing I demanded of my students was to challenge and question what I was teaching them. I was there to learn from their questions just as much as they were there to learn from me. I would always finish a semester by telling me students, “Be a rebel. Not just to be different, but to make a difference for the Kingdom of God.”

This is me!

2007-01-21T20:42:00.000-08:00

Spiritual Warfare and the Desert Fathers

2007-01-15T12:33:00.001-08:00

As a Pentecostal, I was taught that spiritual warfare was directly related to the binding and loosing of Matthew 16:19 where Jesus said:

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." 
As a Christian, I was told, in Christ’s name we have the power to come against Satan and bind him and all his demons preventing them from operating in some particular circumstances. And by the same token, we had the power to loose the power of the Holy Spirit to operate in the said circumstances. So, you put on the full armor of Ephesians Chapter Six and off you went to bind Satan and his cohorts.

Like many, for years I followed this formula. However after a while I came to the conclusion that, like the many other formulas my mentors had taught me, this one didn’t work either. I was perplexed by the fact that if indeed this verse is referring to binding Satan, then why is it that as much as we have bound him, he is still running around freely and creating so much misery in this world? And if this is not the way to do spiritual warfare, then how does a follower of Christ conduct such warfare?

The answer came to me over ten years ago while sitting in my Early Church History class at Fuller Seminary. Quite in passing, my professor, Mel Robeck, mentioned something about the Desert Fathers, “who went out to do spiritual warfare, but not the way we do it today.” That certainly caught my attention and I began to study the so-called Desert Fathers and Mothers.

Around the end of the third century, when Rome was becoming Christianized and the Church was becoming more and more Hellenized, a group of godly men and women said, “now that the world is no longer persecuting and waging war against us, WE are going out to wage war against the world or the spiritual darkness”. Having believed that Jesus faced Satan in the desert, they also went to the desert to face the enemy, thus the title, Desert Fathers.

If I was to ask a room full of Christians, “how did Jesus over come Satan?” the majority would say, “by the word of God”. Yet, we all know that we can quote the scriptures till the cows come home and still give into whatever temptations we face. Which brings me to the conclusion that the word was only a tool and not the means by which Jesus defeated Satan. Jesus defeated Satan by defeating temptation.

But where do temptations originate? Our thoughts. No man wakes up one morning and says to himself, “today I am going to commit adultery.” No, the act was the end result of something that had started with a simple thought long before the action took place.

So, these men and women of God came to the conclusion that in order to defeat Satan, one has to overcome temptation in himself. And in order to overcome temptation one has to control his thoughts or as Paul says, “bringing them into captivity”. For the Desert Fathers, the spiritual warfare was an ongoing inward discipline and not something that is accomplished by yelling at Satan and attempting to bind him.