stillhaventfound.org

International Development:

1) Supply Chain Management Review: The Greening of Wal-Mart’s Supply Chain.

2) William Easterly on How, and How Not, to Stop AIDS in Africa.

3) Jeffrey Sachs on Making Development Less Risky.

4) Slate: The environmentalists, economists and poverty activists who are turning against corn fuel.

5) Worldpress.org: The Power of NGOs: They’re big, but how big?

Politics & Economics:

6) PopMatters: 65 Great Protest Songs.

7) Salon: Hillary is from Mars, Obama is from Venus.

Progressive Christianity:

8) The Africans have so little, but they are so rich.

9) Christianity Today: The Gospel According to J.K. Rowling.

Others:

10) The Myth of Consistent Skepticism.

Sara never quite understood the love of the Father or her identity in Christ. Her own earthly father was a successful entrepreneur and businessman. He only knew how to demonstrate love to her through giving money – and most of the time only when his heavy expectations were met. The pressure to succeed in her studies and life took a great toll upon her. With this past, when she became a Christian, she never knew what it meant for her heavenly Father to love her unconditionally. She found it hard to grasp the identity she had in Christ – forgiven and uncondemned.

After high school, she went overseas to study – partly to get away from the pressures of her parents. Her father wanted her to get a commerce degree so she could take over his business one day. Away from home, she struggled and failed time and again. However, after years of failure, she started to slowly get her life back on track.

Without her parents’ knowledge or approval, she studied in Bible College in a search to know more about God. She loved her Bible College. It wasn’t one that focused merely on the intellectual. It wasn’t one where super Christians came to train to become pastors. There were many Christians who were facing their own problems in life, but who wanted to know more about God.

During one of her class breaks, her lecturer sat down and talked to her - perhaps prophetically - and she shared her past with him. He told her that she didn’t know her identity in Christ or understand the Father’s love and recommended her to see a counselor who could help her. She started to attend counseling sessions. But she wanted so much to grow that she continued to email him to ask him what it means to not know her identity in Christ. Because of her earthly father, she was still struggling to understand how the heavenly Father was one who would love her and not judge her. But she was well on her way there.

Before the new term started, Sara decided to move houses. She remembered eating out a few months back and encountering a nice lady who owned the restaurant. This lady not only came from the same country she was from but was also a Christian. She raved about her church and pastor and talked a lot about spiritual things. The lady offered to rent out a room to her for a very cheap price, as Sara was also a Christian.

So Sara contacted that lady. As the lady was out of town, they agreed to meet upon her return. Sara was quite excited. Not only was the rent cheap, but this lady was a committed Christian, seemed very nice and could take care of her like a mother who loved her unconditionally – something she lacked in her own family life.

They met on a Sunday. As the lady showed Sara around the house, she asked Sara which church she went too. Sara responded that she didn’t go to any church. On that response, the lady changed totally and started criticizing her:

How can you attend Bible College and not even attend church? You don’t know God. You’re not like the other person I’ve rented the room out to. He’s a good Christian. You’re a bad Christian.

The lady went on and on criticizing Sara. She also increased the rent! Sara couldn’t defend herself. Years of hurt, rejection and fear have left her unable to stand up for herself. In her heart, she was angry and hurt. After some time of accusations, she ended the conversation and left the house. She started to cry. And cry. Throughout the day, she couldn’t get the incident out of her head. Everytime she thought about what happened, she just cried. “How can Christians be so judgemental?”

The lady never knew Sara’s past or her struggles. She didn’t know that what kept Sara away from Church was precisely Christians like her who loved to judge other Christians. Pharisees, they call them in the Bible. What Sara needed was love and acceptance. She needed grace, not judgement. Isn’t that what Christianity is about?

“I’m sorry for being so straightforward. God bless”, the lady SMSed Sara after she left the house.

Sara will face another day. She’ll overcome this and grow stronger. Thanks to some Christians, it’ll just take a little longer.

International Development:

1) Emily Oster’s TED 2007 presentation on Everything we know about AIDS in Africa is wrong.

2) Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion, on Poverty Reduction in Africa.

3) The Washington Post: Stop Trying To ‘Save’ Africa.

4) Harvard Business Review on Forward-Thinking Cultures.

5) The Age: James Lovelock on our sick planet.

Politics & Economics:

6) The New York Times: In Economics Departments, a Growing Will to Debate Fundamental Assumptions.

7) Michael A. Lebowitz’s 8 part video on Building It Now in Venezuela: Socialism for the 21st Century.

Progressive Christianity:

8) Boston Globe: What it means to be a Christian after George W. Bush.

9) The New York Observer: Are conservatives more authentic in their religious faith than liberals and progressives?

Others:

10) Infoshop: An Evolutionary Argument for Decentralism.

While there is nothing wrong with having material possessions, extravagance that comes at someone else’s expense is sin. Indeed, extravagance is no better than burglary when it exists in the face of need, for we commit robbery not only in what we take from others but also in what we keep for ourselves. The Bible condemns extravagant lifestyles, especially the book of Amos, which contrasts the complacency and opulence of the rich with the misfortune of the poor and oppressed:

Woe to you who are complacent in Zion, and to you who feel secure on Mount Samaria, you notable men of the foremost nation, to whom the people of Israel come! … You lie on beds inlaid with ivory and lounge on your couches. You dine on choice lambs and fattened calves. … You drink wine by the bowlful and use the finest lotions, but you do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph (Amos 6:1, 4, 6).

As J.A. Motyer points out in his commentary, The Day of the Lion, “It was a shrewd thrust for Amos to describe the nation as Joseph - the lad who wailed his heart out in a deep pit while his brothers sat down to eat (Genesis 37:23-25; 42:21).” Rather than mourning with those who mourn and weeping with those who weep (Romans 12:15), the affluent Israelites of Amos’ day engaged in brazen acts of extravagance which deprived the poor of their basic needs. Amos was intent on jarring his audience into an awareness of how their extravagant lifestyles affected the welfare of those around them.

(Taken from Extravagance at the Generous Giving website)

International Development:

1) Poor Bono, they’re all against him: Covering Africa Through Celebrities by Julie Hollar, What Bono doesn’t say about Africa by William Easterly and Africans to Bono: ‘For God’s sake please stop!’ by Jennifer Brea.

2) William Easterly is at it again in The Ideology of Development. Easterly’s favorite target Jeffrey Sachs, however, agrees with Easterly that ideology isn’t the answer in How I’d fix the World Bank. Dani Rodrik responds to Easterly, characterizing his arguments as “too rhetorical and counterproductive at times”, which I fully agree. Check out another good post by Rodrik here.

3) Stanford Social Innovation Review: Microfinance Misses Its Mark. See also Not Another Cure-All Pill for Poverty.

4) The Economist on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) here, here and here.

5) Times Online review of The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier.

Politics & Economics:

6) Foreign Affairs: A New Deal for Globalization.

7) Project Syndicate: The Three Swedish Models.

Progressive Christianity:

8) Reason Magazine on The Aquarians and the Evangelicals: How left-wing hippies and right-wing fundamentalists created a libertarian America.

9) Christianity Today: Africa’s rapid embrace of prosperity Pentecostalism provokes concern - and hope. See also First Church of Prosperidad.

Others:

10) The 6 myths of creativity.

But taking a serious look back… I do have one big regret.

I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world—the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.

I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economics and politics. I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences.

But humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries—but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity—reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.

I left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.

It took me decades to find out.

(Bill Gates, Commencement address to the Harvard University class of 2007)

International Development:

1) Ha-Joon Chang on infant industry protection for developing countries.

2) Lots of good stuff at Financial Times‘ Corporate Citizenship and Philanthropy report.

3) The American: Hernando De Soto for Chief Economist.

4) Niall Ferguson on Africa: Its Own Worst Enemy.

5) More on George Monbiot’s book on Climate Change - Heat - here and here.

Politics & Economics:

6) In much of the world, conservatives clamor for subsidies while liberals fight big government. In the United States, it’s the other way round. See here also for hybrid conservatism.

7) ‘Housing first‘, a radical new approach to ending chronic homelessness, is gaining ground in Boston.

Progressive Christianity:

8) Christianity Today: Have you prayed for bin Laden today?

9) Commonweal: Homosexuality & the Church: Two Views.

Others:

10) Psychology Today: Ten politically incorrect truths about human nature.

The reason many of us ignore the formation of our character, says Johnson, is because it will slow us down. Many ministry leaders want success, a big church, or a crowd. But how many of us want a real life? How many of us want a life in God? We can have that, Johnson believes. We can have a character that produces love, peace, patience, kindness…but it will slow us down. It might mean the church won’t grow as big as quickly. It might mean the crowd will get smaller.

But the alternative is both devastating and all too common. The alternative is a ministry of high impact but shallow character. As only Johnson could say it, “In the bible it was a miracle when God spoke through an ass. Now it happens everyday.” Translation: God is speaking powerfully through many pastors, but their characters show nothing of God’s life. These leaders, along with their anger, pride, bitterness, and cynicism, are tolerated by many churches because they are able to “fill the room.” Their powerful spiritual gifts, like Samson’s, deflect the flaws of their characters.

(Success Covers a Multitude of Sins)