{"id":2272,"date":"2012-08-22T13:57:52","date_gmt":"2012-08-22T20:57:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/richarddahlstrom\/?p=2272"},"modified":"2012-08-22T13:57:52","modified_gmt":"2012-08-22T20:57:52","slug":"camp-china-reminders-of-what-really-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/richarddahlstrom\/2012\/08\/22\/camp-china-reminders-of-what-really-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Camp China – reminders of what really matters…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

It had been years since I\u2019d thought about Tienanmen Square<\/a> until last night.\u00a0 Like the rest of the world, I thought about it when it happened, and then I thought about again a few years later when I was speaking at a retreat of international students.\u00a0 I was sitting with some of the students and each of them were sharing in turn why they did or didn\u2019t believe in God.\u00a0 I remember this man from China, then studying Physics at University of Washington.\u00a0 He said, \u201cI was in Tienanmen Square during the protests.\u00a0 After the bloodshed, I somehow ended up reading \u2018The Brothers Karamazov\u201d and I will never forget what Dostoyevsky wrote:\u00a0 \u2018If there is no God, everything is permitted'\u201d<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 Silence hung in the air as we waited for his next sentence:\u00a0 \u201cI have seen with my eyes how humans behave if there is no God \u2013 and so I believe that there must be a God.\u00a0 Otherwise, why would there be any love or justice at all?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a powerful word, resuscitated from the recesses of my memory last night because at the special meal we have during this Bible conference<\/a>, my wife and I were privileged to sit with a couple, she from China, he Canadian.\u00a0\u00a0 Conversation ranged, as we lingered over a beautifully prepared meal, from American, to Chinese, to Canadian politics.\u00a0 WTO and the riots when Vancounver lost game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals; attitudes to wealth in China and how different and similar attitudes are over here.\u00a0 The benefits of democracy, and the benefits of dictatorship (along with the liabilities of each, of course).\u00a0 This woman was in high school during the Tienanmen Square protests and \u201cunderstands both sides of the argument\u201d, a statement that\u2019s nearly incomprehensible to western ears.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are two sides?\u201d\u00a0 we think to ourselves, filled as we are with stories of the destructive affects of totalitarianism and Communism.\u00a0 But, as it turns out, there are two sides, and wise is the person who\u2019s able to see both.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been privileged to know people who\u2019ve grown up in the midst of totalitarian regimes, and I can tell you this much:\u00a0 they see our brave new world through an entirely different lense than we do.\u00a0 Consider the words of Malcom Muggeridge in \u201cA Third Testament\u201d<\/a> (read them slowly)<\/p>\n

Standing on the Berlin Wall I tried to imagine what would have been Dietrich Bonhoeffer\u2019s feelings if, instead of being martyred, he had lived on into post-war divided Germany. Eastwards, I could see the familiar scene of desolation and oppression, the bedraggled houses, the empty shops, the somehow muted traffic and people in the streets; westwards, the other sort of desolation and oppression, equally familiar, the gleaming neon and glass, the exhortations to spend and to consume, the banks for churches and the erotica for dreams. The pursuit of power versus the pursuit of happiness, black-and-white television versus color, the clenched fist versus the raised phallus, guns before butter and butter before guns. And in between, the no-man\u2019s land or limbo of vigilant sentries on watch-towers, dogs and land-mines and armed patrols. Was there anything here to risk eternal damnation for, or for that matter to live for? The strip-tease joints and the garish posters announcing the mighty achievements of the triumphant German proleteriat, equally fantasy. Plastic flesh and fraudulent statistics \u2013 where\u2019s the difference? <\/em><\/p>\n

Nowhere \u2013 that\u2019s where the difference is.\u00a0 They\u2019re simply different forms of depravity.\u00a0 And yet I sometimes get the feeling every election season that one party is closer to Christian ideals than another \u2013 purer, better.\u00a0 I think I thought that for a season about each party.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if its because I\u2019m older or for some other reason, but I care less and less about who wins, and more and more about what it means to make Christ visible in my life, family, city, and world.\u00a0 That commitment is both freeing and constraining:<\/p>\n

1. Freeing<\/strong> \u2013 It clear that Christ\u2019s life can be made visible no matter what the regime.\u00a0 Sophie Scholl and Dietrich Bonhoeffer revealed Christ right in the midst of the nightmare of 1942 Germany;\u00a0 Desmund Tutu, the same in South Africa;\u00a0 John Perkins, the same in Mississippi.\u00a0 If Christ can be revealed in the midst of all this, I promise you this:\u00a0 I\u2019ll be unfazed by the election results in November, knowing full well that whoever wins, and whatever major or minor tweaks happen in the political structures of my country, the ability to fulfill my calling won\u2019t be hindered.<\/p>\n

When people don\u2019t believe this, they\u2019ve ceded power to the state that it doesn\u2019t deserve.\u00a0 Left or Right, my calling is the same:\u00a0 do justice, love mercy, walk with God \u2013 make Christ visible whenever and wherever I can.\u00a0 What\u2019s more, this will happen, if I\u2019m walking with God.\u00a0 This, I think, is the point of Romans 8, which promises me that there are no contingencies \u2013 God can shape us to look like Jesus, no matter our circumstances.\u00a0 Because of this, I\u2019ll take a deep breath and relax.<\/p>\n

2. Constraining<\/strong> \u2013 On the other hand, taking my calling to make Christ visible seriously will mean that I need to I need to take Christ\u2019s life seriously.\u00a0 I need to pursue friendship with Jesus relentlessly, pruning that from my life which doesn\u2019t contribute to that important goal.\u00a0 Frankly, that means less debates about chicken eating, and more conversations about how to love people with whom I disagree.\u00a0 It means less time wringing my hands over Obama\u2019s and Romney\u2019s negative ads, and more time wrestling with what it means for me to cross social boundaries the way Jesus did; less time arguing about health care, and more time helping people be and become healthy.<\/p>\n

I see the problem already.\u00a0 Blaming policy people in the other Washington is way easier to do than taking up my cross and following Jesus.\u00a0 Plus, arguments about \u201cthe gays\u201d or \u201cthe gay haters\u201d gain a much wider readership than conversations about faithfully pursuing intimacy with Christ \u2013 day after familiar day.\u00a0 Let\u2019s face it: We love pontificating and throwing stones from our supposed moral high ground \u2013 or at the very least I\u2019ve been guilty of that at times.<\/p>\n

A meal, though, with people from around the world, reminds me that my moral high ground isn\u2019t all that moral \u2013 or high.\u00a0 In fact, I\u2019m increasingly convinced that the only moral high ground that exists is at the foot of cross, on top of a hill called Golgotha.\u00a0\u00a0 May we learn to go there often.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It had been years since I\u2019d thought about Tienanmen Square until last night.\u00a0 Like the rest of the world, I thought about it when it happened, and then I thought about again a few years later when I was speaking at a retreat of international students.\u00a0 I was sitting with some of the students and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23359,27,56,23363,23366],"class_list":["post-2272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-church","tag-culture","tag-discernment","tag-justice","tag-rule-of-life"],"yoast_head":"\nCamp China - reminders of what really matters...<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It had been years since I'd thought about Tienanmen Square until last night.\u00a0 Like the rest of the world, I thought about it when it happened, and then I\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/richarddahlstrom\/2012\/08\/22\/camp-china-reminders-of-what-really-matters\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Camp China - 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