Canadian Mennonite
Volume 11, No. 10
May 14, 2007
Letters
This section is a forum for discussion and discernment. Letters express the opinion of the writer only, not necessarily the position of Canadian Mennonite, the five area churches or Mennonite Church Canada. Letters should address issues rather than criticizing individuals and include contact information. We will send copies of letters referring to other parties to them to provide an opportunity to respond in a future issue if their views have not already been printed in an earlier letter.
Please send letters to be considered for publication to letters@canadianmennonite.org or to Canadian Mennonite, 490 Dutton Drive, Unit C5, Waterloo, ON, N2L 6H7, “Attn: Letter to the Editor.” Letters may be edited for length, style and adherence to editorial guidelines.
Empowering Egyptians a naïve concept
Re: “‘Pen’sive in Egypt” article, Feb. 5, page 11.
I was struck by the strong emotional appeal presented, but on further consideration I realized that the single statistic relating the cost of a pen to a teacher’s daily wage left me with more questions than answers. So I discussed the article with a Coptic Christian friend from Egypt from a prestigious university there.
It quickly became clear that the article only dealt with a segment of Egyptian society and did not speak to a much larger and more complex situation.
First, there is no shortage of pens in Egypt. The problem is the tremendous difference in income between and within various professions. Teachers may make as little as $187 Cdn a month or up to 10 times that amount and more. There likely are teachers who would have difficulty buying two pens with a day’s wages, as Plett notes, but there are also teachers who drive Mercedes. It is legal for a teacher to do private tutoring that could multiply a meagre government teaching income many times over. Then there are private schools, where salaries may even be comparable to those in North America.
The government of Egypt is not short of funds, as it is in partnership with large international oil companies operating in the Red Sea. It is the strategy of the government to ensure that the people all have means sufficient for subsistence, but no more. In many ways, this strategy is the same as that used by the Egyptian pharaohs.
To speak of “empowering” the common people to improve life in their country in the face of a system that has existed there for more than 6,000 years, seems rather naïve, which the people themselves clearly recognize, if the Pletts do not.
Climate change evidence convincing
In his letter, Clyde Ovens criticizes Canadian Mennonite for supporting efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (“Better to cope with climate changes than try to reverse it,” April 2, page 13).
In particular, he bases his scepticism about the role of carbon dioxide as the culprit in the warming problem on the argument that “climate is just not that simple.” Well, to any atmospheric scientist, this aspect of climate is, in fact, that simple. There is the same amount of solar energy coming into the atmosphere as previously, and less of it is leaving now because of the carbon dioxide build-up, so the temperature increases. The amount of temperature increase is the same as that predicted for such a carbon dioxide increase by the world’s best simulation models, and in the atmospheric science I’ve worked on as a professional researcher for the past 40 years, that’s pretty convincing evidence.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change trumpets the warning against carbon dioxide emissions because all the scientific community—except the geologists working for oil interests—have been begging them to do so. The American Geophysical Union has seen fit to editorialize this warning as good science adamantly for years, and I’m grateful to them for it.
I’m all the more grateful that Canadian Mennonite has seen fit to editorialize the warning in the name of Christ, to avert even further oppression of the world’s poor.
‘The real…truth’ arguments a farce
I read Phil Wagler’s article, “The real inconvenient truth,” April 16, page 13, and I can only conclude, from both the tone and the content, that this is intended as farce, since it has neither serious biblical nor scientific bases.
Does he mean that we can change the content of the air by, well, changing the content of the air (adding CO2 etc)? That we can drive species to extinction by destroying their homes? Surely Not!
Or that seven billion people on the planet have more impact than seven million? Laughable! Dirty water, bad air, more severe storms and climate change are merely punishments from a nasty God to teach us all lessons! We have no responsibility! Hurray!
The ‘real inconvenient truth’ divisive, not uniting
I was saddened and disappointed to read Phil Wagler’s latest “Outside the box” column (“The real inconvenient truth,” April 16, page 13). In it, he presents Al Gore and those involved with—or supporting—the documentary An Inconvenient Truth as being proponents of a “renewed paganism that places humanity at the centre of all things.”
Wagler goes on to suggest clearly that those of us who would want to encourage Gore for his efforts, or be thankful for the documentary (which Wagler feels the need to refer to as “Al Gore’s claim to Oscar fame”), must “believe we are weather gods” who have “dismissed a sovereign Creator God from our worldview.”
I feel the need to ask Wagler: Is it really necessary to portray Al Gore (an avowed Christian), the documentary and its supporters in such a light? Is that the way to be bridge-building, so that together we can all learn to become better stewards of the beautiful creation that God has given us?
Please don’t misunderstand me: I’m not at all certain that Gore and company are entirely right in their positions—or as right as they may think they are. However, I certainly do suspect that the approach Wagler takes in presenting his own position tends to be more a part of what may be our greatest problem—disunity and division, fuelled by inflammatory comments—than the solution that will get the job done.
Finally, with regard to our common environmental predicament and the shortcomings of both Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and the “business as usual” position, Wagler maintains that “the solution to all this is deeply spiritual.” Here, I’d like to encourage Brother Wagler as being on the right track. Let’s all look more deeply as to how the Spirit would have us relate to others with whom we may disagree, be it on this or any other important issue.
—Ron Hiller, Waterloo, Ont.
A baseball metaphor: three strikes, we’re out
The April 16 issue of Canadian Mennonite gave me the poignant image of a batter in a softball game. Three balls were thrown, right over the plate, all in the strike zone. Not once was the ball hit.
The first pitch was Ross W. Muir’s editorial (page 2), with the question, “Are we ready to die…are we ready to live” to the Anabaptist call? Ron Sider threw the second pitch (page 15), challenging our Mennonite lifestyle of conformity and comfort. The third pitch—from Walter Klaassen (page 7)—gave us batter angst. His straight pitch showed our “affluence, conformity” and compliance with the tainted “capitalistic economic system.” In this image, the Canadian Mennonite Church team stood paralyzed.
Klaassen says that living faithfully is hard because there is no cost. It is confusing because we are not sure of our faith. The basis of our faith keeps shifting.
But we are at the plate. Let’s pick up the bat and boldly hit that ball. God will honour a bunt or even a base hit. The crowd of Vietnamese, Colombian and Ethiopian Anabaptists are all cheering.
Tourists need to visit real Palestinian villages
How nice of Nazareth Village to shill for Israeli tourism (“Nazareth Village ready for its close-up,” April 2, page 16)! But if we want to know what village life in occupied Palestine was really like for Jesus, tourists need to go to Palestinian villages today, where the realities of brutal occupation forces give a clearer picture of life than cutesy close-ups of woolly lambs and docile donkeys.
A complicated wealth
New Order Voice
My Anabaptist sensitivities took a hit when I heard Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) charged $500 a plate for an April fundraiser. It struck me as elitist, given our community-mindedness and inclination toward simplicity. I think of the biblical widow putting her last small coins in the temple offering and Jesus counting that as more than the “large amounts” of others. I can’t imagine that story being told at the CMU banquet.
Either we climb way down the ladder of global wealth or we find a way to justify our lofty position on it.
Likewise, I was alarmed to see that the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS) annual report uses 18 of its 24 pages to list donors, with an asterisk for each donor who gave more than $1,000 to the seminary. I thought we Mennonites didn’t let our left hand know what our right hand was doing! And the story of the widow seems to warn against asterisks. What happened to the idea of passing up earthly recognition in favour of a later reward?
The message these actions send is that wealth will be honoured: Blessed are those who can give much. Immersed as we are in a society choking on its own affluence, I think a more creative message is possible.
But for CMU president Gerald Gerbrandt, issues of wealth are trickier than the simple Bible passages I cite. When I asked whether the “big bucks” dinner contradicts Mennonite teachings about simplicity, he told me life is complicated. If we question $500 dinners, he said, we would need to question nearly all aspects of our lives. As for the widow’s mite and the discretion of the right hand, he believes we should stop seeing money and wealth as dirty, and actually be more open about how much we give. He says CMU is teaching generosity, not glorifying wealth.
“It all boils down to what our motivation is,” said AMBS vice-president Ron Ringenberg. “The gift of creating wealth is a spiritual gift,” he said, citing Deuteronomy 8. When asked about the Matthew 6 passage about the right hand not informing the world of its good deeds, he was quick to go back to Matthew 5, in which we are told to let our light so shine that people may see our good works and glorify God. As for the asterisks, he said, “the Bible talks about us not all getting the same reward.”
One of the main challenges facing the North American church is the justification of our wealth. We (myself included) are much richer than the majority of our fellow humans and we need some way to make that seem acceptable. Either we climb way down the ladder of global wealth or we find a way to justify our lofty position on it.
While the reasoning presented by Gerbrandt or Ringenberg could encourage stewardship and generosity, it can also be used to justify and sanction North American affluence. We must ask whether it is okay to use far more than our share of the world’s resources and participate in a degree of affluence that is corroding the Earth—just as long as we are generous and our motivation is pure.
We can certainly find verses to support conspicuous wealth—and I have no doubt that God’s grace extends even to us rich North Americans—but our world needs a different kind of witness. There are enough voices blessing wealth. Our heritage of modesty, simplicity and not raising some above others is just what society needs. I hope our centres of higher learning can help us hang on to these characteristics and graciously become a community in which the best banquets are saved for the proverbial widows.
Church of the Holy Binocular
Outside the box
I am currently on a day retreat with two friends. Time with them gets my motor running—causing me to think more deeply, honestly, confessionally and prayerfully—and they always uncover a question or two that begins to gnaw away at my wiring.
So, here is the question du jour: How do we build a church that thrives in a cultural empire imploding upon itself?
How will we be the church that thrives in this shaky and crumbling empire?
That is a loaded question and perhaps far too negative for your liking. But do you not know, have you not seen, the culture we inhabit is akin to a Northern Pikes’ song that states, “She ain’t pretty, she just looks that way.” While there is much to be thankful for and celebrate within the current cultural milieu, there is also something clearly out of sorts. Like most empires after a long season of success, the one we know is like a Ukrainian Easter egg—stunning on the surface but internally empty and susceptible to a swift and complete collapse.
Economically, we are built on the premise of high wages and low prices. We do not value work as a means of mutual survival that barters gift and blessing, but we endure work as the unfortunate requirement to satisfy our unquenchable thirst for pleasure. Hence, we are increasingly dependent on the service, technology and amusement sectors. Our solution to woe is to shop or amuse ourselves out of it. Careers are increasingly valued for their rewards, rather than the offering of our individual strengths for the common good. And so we laud the celebrity and chastise the farmer.
Institutionally, we are built upon bureaucracies that control and dominate, rather than serve, people. The intention to help is there, but the systems make such assistance a red-tape nightmare consisting of indecipherable documentation and impersonal phone mazes. We are slaves to bureaucracies and policies that prevent good from happening speedily and are squeamish and suspicious of anything with a human touch.
Relationally, we are built on tolerance that sounds nice but actually avoids depth of knowing. We apparently celebrate differences, but unconsciously find that philosophy disengaging us from one another into indifference, regionalization and confusion that leave us uneasy around conviction. All the while we hunger and thirst for meaning and to be known, which is difficult when we do not know ourselves. We are even uncomfortable defining ourselves relationally. “Partner” has replaced “husband” or “wife,” and our career title gets championed over “mother” or “uncle.”
How will we be the church that thrives in this shaky and crumbling empire? Will a market-driven gospel transform consumer culture? Will building more new church buildings only be visited as the museums of a previous institutional age? Will running our programs as disconnected generational enclaves bring reconciliation and maturity? Will parroting the culture’s philosophical conclusions change anything? Will continuing on with business as usual—as if it were 1957 or ’77—miraculously inspire a great retro-revival?
We are not the first Christian generation to ponder such questions, so there may be much to learn about going forward by looking back. The church has previously survived the fall of cultural frameworks because of her rest on one foundation—Jesus Christ. The time has arrived for a more historical vision—to be the Church of the Holy Binocular—so that as culture crumbles again we learn from the successes and avoid the pitfalls of times when the foundations were revealed for what they really were.