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.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
You Are How You Act, Not Just How You Believe
“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.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
How Church Stole The Christmas From Me!
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.
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.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Grateful To Be An American
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.
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.
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