It's Friday ... but Sunday's comin'!

Gotta share this ...

It's nicked from a weekly letter John Fischer sends to his member/partners, of which I am one, and it was nicked from a famous sermon by Tony Campolo, who based (not nicked) it on a sermon by an old black minister at Mount Carmel Baptist Church.

(If you don't read John's daily postings on "The Catch", I really recommend subscribing or at least having a look.

This is John's writing, as he paraphrases and gets to the meat of the message. Read this, and get ready to start jumpin'!

In celebration of our yet to be answered prayers and as we face into Friday … let’s listen to what the real black minister from the Mount Carmel Baptist Church has to say to you and me as we enter into the drama of God’s salvation. 

It is Friday, and you and I are acutely aware of the darkness of the cross and of all human suffering. But the power of God is pulling usthrough suffering into glory. We know in our bones that Friday is not the last word, not the last day.

The old, grey-haired black minister starts out softly and it is a simple sermon—with only one line. For half an hour he preaches that line over and over. For a half of an hour he stands us on our ear with just one line: “It’s Friday, but … Sunday’s comin’!” 

In a whisper he begins, “It’s Friday; it was Friday and my Jesus was dead on the tree. But that was Friday, and Sunday’s comin’!

Picking up the volume just a bit, he says, “It was Friday. The cynics were lookin’ at the world and sayin’, ‘As things have been so they shall be. You can’t change anything in this world; you can’t change anything.’ But those cynics didn’t know it was only Friday….butSunday’s comin’!”

“It was Friday! he begins to bellow. And on Friday those forces that oppress the poor and make the poor to suffer were in control. But that was Friday! … Sunday’s comin’!”

Now the old preacher is shouting, “It was Friday, and on Friday Pilate thought he had washed his hands of a lot of trouble. The Pharisees were struttin’ around, laughin’ and pokin’ each other in the ribs. They thought they were back in charge of things, but they didn’t know it was only Friday! … Sunday’s comin’!”

As he ends his message, he just tips his head back and yells, “IT’S FRIDAY!” 

And all of us within this prayer ministry yell as one, “BUT SUNDAY’S COMIN’!”

TransLink rant-2 -- Public health and the "idea" of TransLink

An excellent article in the Victoria Times-Colonist offers another reason to approve funding for transportation improvements in Metro Vancouver. I'd touched on the topic of public health in my previous post (see previous post), but this report (which doesn't mention TransLink at all) goes into it in great detail.

The award for Dumbest Comment So Far in the non-debate over the TransLink referendum goes to the chap who wrote a comment on Facebook that supporters of the "Yes" side should "prove to me that a No vote means No Transit Improvements". Well, I can't say there will be no transit improvements, but the things Metro Vancouver needs in order to maintain livability require a major cash infusion, otherwise, they would have been done by now and TransLink wouldn't have been in "Service Optimization Mode" for the past 4 years. 

Sadly, it appears that the "No" side is firmly entrenched in its view: that TransLink is evil in and of itself, is poorly managed and wastes money. Well, as I've mentioned before, Dominion Bond Rating Service would not give a AA bond rating, and bond-market managers would not invest over half a billion dollars in a poorly-managed organization. And you can look at BC Ferries and BC Hydro if you want real examples of wasting money. In the meantime, TransLink has been audited over and over, deficiencies identified and dealt with, and the belt has been tightened so much, the organization was suffering constriction of the spine when I left it just over 2 years ago.

Is TransLink evil? Far from it. The "idea" of TransLink is that, in a region as vast and varied as Metro Vancouver -- from the flatland of the Aldergrove to the mountains of the North Shore, with people needing to commute to and from Downtown Vancouver and more and more people staying within their sub-regions -- like the South of Fraser Area -- to live and work, public transportation needs to be integrated and mesh together. Major roads and bridges, pedestrian and cycling amenities, need to be part of that mix, too. The objective? To maintain livability -- so coveted by those who live there -- and to reduce mankind's impact on the environment, not just in the immediate area, but in surrounding regions and ultimately on the earth.

As I point out in my book, A Very Convenient Truth -- or, Jesus Told Us There'd Be Days Like These, so Stop Worrying About the Planet and Get With His Program!*, that is exactly the role God calls humans to perform. We are to be the caretakers, the custodians of His Creation, to "replenish the earth and subdue it" -- i.e. to enjoy what He has given us, but to make sure that our enjoyment does not overpower our ability to replenish.

The "idea" of TransLink is part of that calling. Maybe that's why it's come under such bizarre and often self-serving attack over the years.

*Available as an e-book through Chapters, Barnes & Noble, PaperPlus (in New Zealand), among others.

TRANSLINK – AN UNTOLD STORY

(A slight departure today, from my usual themes in this blog.)

First, full disclosure: I’m no longer employed by TransLink – haven’t been for the past two years, 1 month, 2 days and 23 hours and 51 minutes, as of this writing (not that I’m keeping track). TransLink took care of me when I was let go, but aside from that and the fact they helped feed my children and a whole lot of people on the Downtown East Side during that time*; I still believe in what the organization stands for and I have a lot of friends there, who have been working really hard to maintain the region's transportation system -- and, by extension, its livability. Other than that, I have no skin in this game.

The Sunday before last, I had to take the first ferry to Victoria – leaving Tsawwassen at 7am – so I got up at 4:30, caught the Canada Line SkyTrain at 5:15 and made it to Bridgeport Station in plenty of time to catch the #620 Tsawwassen Ferry bus. Had I missed one train, there would have been another six to 10 minutes later.

Less than 10 years ago, when I had to visit my father in Victoria, I would have had to catch the 98 B-Line from Granville and Broadway in order to connect with the #620 in Richmond. If I missed that one trip of the 98 B-Line, I was hooped: at that time of the morning, the next 98 B-Line bus would be 15 to 20 minutes later, and I would have missed that connection in Richmond. There was another time when I waited in vain for the one bus from downtown that would have connected me with the #620 at Ladner Exchange, because that one trip had been cancelled – probably a mechanical problem; there was no spare bus available and no way of communicating the cancellation to customers.

My point? First, that TransLink service has expanded to the point where we take it for granted that public transit will get us to where we need to go, pretty much any time we need to go there; second, in the couple of years before I left TransLink, some of the services people were taking for granted were already getting clawed back, as the budget tightened: one should think, then, about what the region might look like if the referendum is defeated.

And that's something that's been lost in this debate over the upcoming referendum on transportation improvements for the region. People against the tax increase have been portraying it as a referendum on TransLink itself -- its governance structure, in particular -- as if a "no" vote will mean the organization will get blown to bits.

It won't. A "no" vote will mean needed transportation improvements for the region will not happen. End of discussion. The vaunted livability of our region is at stake, but the "no" side -- with a BIG assist from many commentators, chasing the low-hanging fruit -- has reduced the polemic to the sheep's chant in George Orwell's Animal Farm: "Four legs good! Two legs bad!"

Am I "blaming the media"? Well, you do the math: recently, a Vancouver Sun columnist wrote that “TransLink can’t get the message right” (in the headline) and then cited the fact that the Dominion Bond Rating Service had confirmed TransLink’s “AA” bond rating; the implication was that TransLink didn’t publicize a "good news" story that could have helped its cause.

In fact, the information was sent out from TransLink: in July 2012, I wrote and issued a news release about the DBRS bond rating; the release also noted that TransLink had raised a total of $500 million in long and ultra-long bond issues in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

As far as I remember, and a Google search appears to back that up, there was no pickup by the media, except for the web publication, VancityBuzz.

What’s more, DBRS itself issued a news release last fall, re-confirming that credit rating. Again, a Google search turned up no media pickup, even though newsrooms must get DBRS releases, because if a government – say, the government of British Columbia or the City of Vancouver – gets a downgrade from DBRS, the media are all over it like a fat kid on a Smartie.

But a "good news" story from TransLink, handed on a silver platter appeared to stall at assignment desks around Metro Vancouver.

One of the claims by the "no" side is that TransLink is fiscally irresponsible. I doubt that a bond-rating service would give high grades to a "fiscally irresponsible" agency or that bond-market investors would trust their clients' funds to one, either.

It's worth noting that the DBRS assessment also cited TransLink’s governance structure as one of the reasons for its positive assessment. Evidently, DBRS sees something positive about a billion-plus-dollar organization being run by an apolitical board whose mandate is to act in the best interests of the regional transportation system as a whole. You might want to read the description of what’s required of the directors.

The "no" forces have also been very keen to point out that public money is being used to promote the "yes" side in the referendum. Former Vancouver City Councillor Peter Ladner (my former editor at Monday Magazine, by the way) wrote a very eloquent rebuttal to that, which I'll quote here (with his permission):

"The mayors' council is using public money-- apparently $4 million. My response is if the overwhelming majority of elected officials at the regional and provincial level, all the medical health officers, all the planners and most municipal councils see a yes vote as vital for the region's economy, health, environment, livability and social equity, it's their responsibility to ensure a positive outcome. They didn't ask for a referendum. None of them like spending public money persuading people to pay more tax. But they're being forced to fight it. How could they justify not spending money on it if it's that important? Selling reasoned arguments is far more costly than tossing out juicy, glib, misleading sound bites to an overstretched media.

"As for the Better Transit and Transportation Coalition, we have been spending only what money has been donated by organizations, corporations, individuals, unions, etc. Amounts still TBD as the funding is currently being raised." 

One more thing: this referendum is horribly unnecessary. The people of Metro Vancouver have already spoken and said what they wanted for a regional transportation network and how they were prepared to pay for it. In 2009, TransLink held extensive public consultation sessions, which included a table-top exercise in showing what services were available and what existing and potential funding options could be used. You can read about it on the TransLink website or, if you don't feel like reading the whole report, check out the column Gary Mason wrote in the Globe and Mail when talk of a referendum was bubbling up in 2013. 

Another canard gets shot out of the sky -- the one about TransLink’s “wish list”, it’s actually the people’s wish list, and we need to remember that.

More importantly, we need to think of traffic congestion, crowded buses and trains, at least one bridge that will no longer be safe to use, pollution (much of which gets blown into the Fraser Valley, affecting the health of the people there, not to mention much of our food supply).

Those are the real stakes. You have to wonder why anyone would try to divert people's attention from that.

--

*My earnings helped support the work of Gospel Mission (not Union Gospel), where I was assistant pastor for a while; my flexible work hours allowed me to deal with Mission business as it came up.

Murdered for an "old book"?

Lately, I've heard some interesting statements about the Bible.

One "big-time" pastor, for example, has referred to it as "a bunch of 2,000-year-old letters". Someone else -- a professing Christian -- referred to the Old Testament as "a book of Jewish stories" that was made obsolete when Jesus came.

This morning, I woke up with an image in my head: the grainy screen-grab of yet another video from IS. This one showed about 20 Coptic Christians, kneeling in front of a row of black-clad IS hoodlums, each hoodlum holding his knife at the ready.

Also today, there is a report that over 250 more Christians have been kidnapped by IS in Syria, and other news reports that an American missionary had been kidnapped in Nigeria.

In other words -- keeping this in focus -- thousands of people are dying for the sake of that "old book". But rather than get dragged into an argument with people, we need to remember what we're supposed to do, and that includes waiting for the Holy Spirit to give us the words we need if we have to defend our faith. Satan has been saying "Hath God said ...?" for thousands of years, and we can't allow ourselves the luxury of responding or else we'll be hopelessly side-tracked from the work we're supposed to do as Christians.

What this boils down to, in fact, is variations on the tired old theme the enemy has been using since the Garden, "hath God said ...?" The object is to sow doubt (Matt. 21:21) and make us lose our resolve to follow the Great Commission. If we can turn on one another and fight over what the Bible says or even whether it's the Word of God, so much the better.

After all, the outright promotion of atheism is one thing, but we're seeing cases in which people with lots of followers are being outed as lukewarm Christians, as Jesus chastises in Revelation 3:15-19.

But consider Nehemiah 6:9, with the enemies of the Jews trying to subvert the rebuilding of Jerusalem: "... all were trying to make us afraid, saying, 'Their hands will be weakened in the work, and it will not be done.' Now therefore, O God, strengthen my hands."

That's where we're at now: the enemy is trying to make us afraid and is confident that we'll be weakened as we continue to promote the Gospel in the face of the ongoing assault on the Word. But we can't overpower that ourselves: we need to call on God to strengthen our hands in this work.

And it's written that this resolve brings results: "And it happened, when all our enemies heard of it [that the wall had been rebuilt in 52 days], and all the nations around us saw these things, that they were very disheartened in their own eyes; for they perceived that this work was done by our God." (Emphasis mine.)

So we need to hang in there. Keep focused. Don't lose our resolve to spread the Gospel, heal the sick, bind the brokenhearted, love our enemies (especially love our enemies) and remember that the Word has always been and always will be. And part of the payoff is this: when we persevere and our own "wall building" project is complete, the naysayers, the lukewarm ones, will see that the work is done by our God, and -- who knows? -- they'll embrace the Truth, themselves.

We need to keep pressing forward, not listening to the barking cur of doubt, but praying with all supplication for the saints (Eph. 6:18), that is, both those who dismiss the Word of God and the people overseas being kidnapped, tortured and killed for its sake. We need to focus on spreading the Gospel, and most importantly, living the Gospel, so that people will see our good works and glorify God (Matt. 5:16).

Leaving room for God

That's an expression used in an HBO film about Albert Einstein that came out last year: the notion that in his calculations on the workings of the universe, Sir Isaac Newton allowed for the possibility that God was at work and that we can never come up with any exact answers. The film's premise was that Einstein actually did come up with a precise calculation and -- although it wasn't stated in as many words -- we didn't have to look to God for answers anymore.

The premise of my book, A Very Convenient Truth - or, Jesus Told Us There'd Be Days Like These, So Stop Worrying About the Planet and Get With His Program!, is that, for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the current state of the environment, the Bible provides us with some definite solutions. In it, we can see how we've been sinning by our treatment of God's creation, can repent and be redeemed through Jesus' sacrifice on the Cross, and that if we turn back to God, He promises to heal the land. 

The book also posits that what we are seeing now has been prophesied as preceding Jesus' return, although that's not an excuse to sit back and "let things happen": we have a job to do -- which is also distinctly spelled out.

Sadly, so much of our world today refuses to "leave room for God". Indeed, I've heard some professing Christians state that Jesus made the Old Testament, where the specific instructions -- like tithing and the Land Sabbath -- can be found, irrelevant.

I don't agree with that, but that's a discussion for another time. I was reminded, however, of a statement by one scientist/explorer/naturalist who most definitely left room for God in his thinking: Thor Heyerdahl.

In 2000, Heyerdahl was speaking at a conference in Victoria, which I covered for the radio station where I was working at the time. The quote that stood out for me was, "science has even come up with its own interpretation of God: the 'Big Bang'."

Now, recall that Heyerdahl's entire life was devoted to drawing attention to the way we've been treating the Earth -- God's magnificent Creation that He entrusted us to manage and nurture. 

His inference was pretty clear to me: scientific theories try to replace God and make Him irrelevant, and we do that at our peril; because by declaring that the earth, the universe and all that's in them to be the result of a series of random events that just happened to come together in the right place at the right time, we're taking away the notion of accountability. 

It wasn't the only time Heyerdahl had raised the issue of accountability to God. In his memoir, In the Footsteps of Adam, Heyerdahl says, "there still had to be superhuman and supernatural powers to trigger such a conflagration, not least to create order out of ensuing chaos ... [and] the heat from the Big Bang would have been so extreme that an act of creation would have been required to make life on earth afterwards." 

Can we really, individually or collectively, hold ourselves accountable to humans like David Suzuki, or Al Gore, or accords drawn up in Rio, Copenhagen or Kyoto? I know I can't. But eventually, I'll have to face the Big Sir and answer for what I've done in my life, including the things I've done to use His handiwork beyond my ability to replenish it (Genesis 1:28).

The challenge, as I see it, is for people in the environmental movement, many of whom reject the Bible as the Word of God and unquestioningly refer to God-denying concepts like evolution and adaptation, to consider even the remote possibility that the solutions that they seek and the comfort that they desire about the state of our planet are handed to them on a silver platter in those 66 books.

===

A Very Convenient Truth is available as an e-book through most online bookstores, including Chapters/Indigo, Inktera and PaperPlus.

The right to speak: the responsibility to not offend

The Globe and Mail has been under fire in the past couple of days for its editorial explaining why it has refused to re-print the cartoons that apparently led to the massacre in Charlie Hebdo’s offices last week. Commenters both on the website and elsewhere have accused the Globe’s editors of being “cowardly” and knuckling under to bullies and terrorists. Some (and it’s interesting how many of these people hide behind pseudonyms on the internet) have stated, darkly, that they hope the Globe editors remember their own words if someone writes something offensive to Christians or Jews.

(Frankly, the Globe and Mail frequently prints articles and opinion pieces that Christians might find offensive, so perhaps this current controversy will give the editors pause to consider. But that’s not my point.)

First off, I don't think it’s cowardly to decline to re-print another publication’s material, after several of its employees got killed because of it: fanatics tend to be guilt-by-association types, and if the Globe had decided to re-publish those cartoons, anyone associated with the paper – even those who disagreed with that decision – might have become a target.

But almost lost in the name-calling was a very salient point: why bother offending someone for their beliefs? It’s been long established that caricaturing the Prophet Mohammed is offensive to Muslims, SO WHY DO IT?

Is this a freedom-of-speech issue? Yes, but only to a point. With freedom of speech comes responsibility: the responsibility to be truthful and the responsibility not to offend. That’s especially true when it comes to matters of one’s belief. I've had my beliefs attacked – some in subtle ways, that make me think that maybe I'm just hearing the other person wrong; some in not-so-subtle ways.

I've been asked, in an interview for a job in a radio newsroom, if my Christian beliefs would color my news judgment (I had been in and around broadcast journalism for over 35 years when I was asked that). I’ve heard someone close to me mutter “oh, shit” when I declared that I believe the Bible. And those are mild, compared to the offences other Christians suffer (being beheaded by fanatics, for example), but they still hurt. And we are not to inflict that same hurt on others.

Indeed, Christians legally have freedom of speech, but when we come to Christ, we willingly surrender that right. It’s like the old joke about the Model T Ford: “you can have any color you want, so long as it’s black”. As Christians, we can say whatever we want, so long as it’s from the Holy Spirit. The Apostle Paul tells us, twice, not to offend people. “Give none offence,” he says, “neither to the Jews, nor the Gentiles, nor the Church of God” (1 Corinthians 10:32). Later, he says, “Giving no offence in anything, that the Ministry be not blamed.” (2 Corinthians 6:3)

Paul also reminds us, “That we henceforth be no more children … but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things, which is the head – even Christ.” (Eph. 4:14-15 – emphasis added)

Or, as Jerry Savelle puts it, “If you can’t speak the Word of God, shut up!”

Does it really work to the general good to offend someone else? Or does it only serve to reinforce the comfort of hating someone else? And is this really a hill to die on for freedom of the press, when so many journalists in Latin America are murdered for reporting on drug cartels and corruption, and those deaths barely rate a sentence? And as the Guardian finely put it yesterday, why do the deaths of a dozen people at a magazine bring hundreds of thousands of protesters into the streets, when the killing of thousands in Nigeria got little attention?

Truth tends to offend people, anyway, as Jesus, Paul, Peter, Stephen and a whole bunch of others can tell you first-hand. There’s no use in exacerbating it by getting personal and going out of your way to offend. This is why Jesus told us that, when we are called out for our faith in Him, not to worry about what we might say, but to wait for the Holy Spirit to do the talking through us and for us. That way, it doesn't turn into an argument over who’s right: it doesn’t get personal and people don’t get hurt.

The elephant in the room -- revisited

As World War III develops, the words of George Galloway keep coming back to my mind.

Less than a week after the 9/11 attacks, as the evidence continued to point towards Osama bin Laden as the mastermind and the "Coalition of the Willing" was forming around the US and Britain to throw military might into the arena and crush the enemy, Galloway, the British MP for Bradford West -- then a Labour Party member -- declared that if they killed Osama bin Laden today, 10,000 more bin Ladens would spring up tomorrow.

So here we are, 13 years later, and doesn't it seem like his prophecy has come to pass? ISIS, ISIL, Boko Haram and other Muslim extremist groups are terrorizing, well, the whole world, and yet the best those who want to stop the terrorism can offer is more military might. That over-worked definition of insanity, attributed to Albert Einstein -- doing the same thing over and over, hoping to get a different result -- is spot-on.

To be sure, my perspective is different from Galloway's in that he also contended that the West was the author of its own misfortune and what had happened on 9/11 was a drop in the bucket compared to what Iraqi civilians had experience because of sanctions and other actions taken by the US and others.

For me, that was no time to say, "I told you so - you had it coming!" But as a Christian, I believed then -- and believe now -- the best response to 9/11 should have been no response. Or more accurately, that any response should not return evil for evil. Bury the dead, mourn them, remember them always -- and get on with life. But do not rise to the bait. Pray for the attackers and their supporters, Resiliency would have shown the terrorists that they cannot win. Living well, as they say, is the best revenge. Above all, I said, do not let the victims' collective epitaph be World War III.

I wrote that in a primitive (by today's standards) chat session -- a series of emails among a bunch of people who would just hit "reply all" to make their comments. One of them -- a Canadian comedian and social commentator of some note -- ripped into me for a weak, cowardly position and then demanded to be dropped from the mailing list. His sister -- a good friend of mine -- sent me a separate note, "my brother is an idiot: don't mind him", but I backed off the discussion.

But the inconvenient truth is, we're not dealing with a human army: we're dealing with an ideology, and recent history has shown that overpowering it with worldly weapons kills people, but not ideas. The Allies won WW II, but has Nazism or anti-Semitism gone away? France and the US spent more than 20 years trying to keep Communism out of Vietnam, and how well has that worked? Martin Luther King, jr., set out to end racial discrimination through means that, I believe, Jesus would have endorsed, and it was beginning to work; but he was killed and the Black Panthers stepped up with their "kill Whitey" message and 40 years on, I still hear "you people have been f**king up my people for 400 years!"

So how long has the West been battling Islamic extremism? And how well has it been working?

The fact is, God told us this all would happen back at the beginning. He said that the descendants of Ishmael -- the Arabs/Muslims -- would always be at odds with everybody else (Genesis 16:12 --[Ishmael] shall be a wild man; his hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him.); Jesus also told us, two thousand years ago, that we would see the events we're seeing now (Matthew 24:4-14).

But along with these warnings, the Word of God gives us hope, in the knowledge that Jesus' return is at hand, and also gives us keys to handling the adversity by renewing our minds (Romans 12:2) and by following Jesus' instruction to "resist not evil" (or, as some translations put it, "do not resist the evil person"): do not fight back when attacked. Rather, He says, pray for that person, reach out in love and FORGIVE.

In the meantime, we go into spiritual warfare, using the weapons Jesus gave us as we receive Him: the weapons the Apostle Paul says are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds. (2 Cor. 10:4) That is the only way we can battle an ideology.

At the same time, we live our own ideology -- our faith in Jesus Christ and the Royal Law of Love -- we are better able to show people who embrace the terrorists' ideology that there is a better way of living -- and people get saved.

As we do this, we draw closer to God, and as we draw closer to God, He promises to heal the problems in our lives. I get this image of God, watching His creation from the outside, saying, "Have you had enough yet? ... Had enough yet? ... How about now?"

Psalm 46 says [God] makes wars cease to the end of the earth; He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two; He burns the chariot in the fire. God -- not man -- makes wars cease.

There is an elephant in the room and His name is Jesus. I've said that before, and it's still true. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life 100% of the time. People may reject out-of-hand the idea of using a Christ-based approach, but the fact is, we haven't tried it -- and maybe it's time that we did.