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The tendency in our spiritual life but also in our more general attitude toward love is that our feelings are all that is going on. And so to us the totality of love is what we feel. But to really love someone requires commitment, fidelity and vulnerability. Mother Teresa wasn’t ‘feeling’ Christ’s love, and she could have shut down. But she was up at 4:30 every morning for Jesus, and still writing to him, ‘Your happiness is all I want.’ That’s a powerful example even if you are not talking in exclusively religious terms. (Brian Kolodiejchuk, editor of Come Be My Light)

International Development:

1) The Economist on Latin America’s economies, Latin America’s middle class and Chile: Destitute no more.

2) Newsweek: Cornflake makers and socialists alike are pointing to green fuel for high food prices. Are they right?

3) Harvard International Review: Why AIDS is Not Threatening African Governance.

4) The Situationist: The Situation of Ethical Consumption.

5) The Economist: The poor world is getting the rich world’s diseases.

Politics & Economics:

6) The Washington Post: Barack Obama needed more than talent and ambition to rocket from obscure state senator to presidential contender in three years. He needed serious luck.

7) The Economist: Is America turning left? and The American right.

Progressive Christianity:

8) Christianity Today: It’s emptiness, not fullness, that Jesus blesses and Sometimes the most loving prayers are not all that nice.

9) The Toronto Star: Is the Christian right withering?

Others:

10) Adbusters: São Paulo: A City Without Ads. More pictures of São Paulo here.

International Development:

1) BusinessWeek: Stuart Hart, founder of “base of the pyramid” economics, talks about terrorism, poverty and the next big corporations. See also how “base of the pyramid” economic development theory classes are proliferating at business schools around the world.

2) Economic Affairs: Entrepreneurial Responses to Poverty and Social Conflict: The Enterprise Africa! Project, Markets, Institutions and the Millennium Development Goals and Half a Cheer for Fair Trade.

3) Newsweek: Global Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine.

4) Radar: Why Eco-Hypocrisy Matters.

5) The Economist: Laboring in Chinafrica.

Politics & Economics:

6) The Washington Post: Barack Obama needed more than talent and ambition to rocket from obscure state senator to presidential contender in three years. He needed serious luck.

7) Freakonomics: The Economics of Street Charity.

Progressive Christianity:

8) Christianity Today: In wake of abductions, Korean Christians take heavy criticism.

9) Opinion Journal: Evangelicals worry about the behavior of their brethren.

Others:

10) Scientific American: Is Greed Good? & The New Psychology of Leadership.

In response to Pyromaniac’s Emerging Church motivational posters, Emerging Grace created some great ones reflecting a more generous view of the Emerging Church. Below are some of my favorites, which also represent what I believe:

International Development:

1) Bunker Roy on how the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) actually increase rural dependence on knowledge and skills from urban areas - at the expense of community empowerment.

2) Two articles on YaleGlobal Online about the need to recognize that there are losers in the globalization process.

3) The Economist on the UN Global Compact and how it draws corporations into the development process.

4) The American Prospect’s review of Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion.

5) The Economist: In praise of usury.

Politics & Economics:

6) Michael Ignatieff on Getting Iraq Wrong. A response to Ignatieff’s confession here.

7) Foreign Policy: The Olympic Games are inherently political - and it’s time we admit it.

Progressive Christianity:

8) Christianity Today: True Christian mission addresses issues of power and poverty.

9) Christianity Today: Christians have better and harder things to do than transforming the world.

Others:

10) Axess: Contrarianism has a proud intellectual heritage, but in its postmodern flowering it merely became juvenile, complacently smashing up the entire interlocking crossword puzzle of human knowledge.

We are told that many Western missionary organizations pull their workers out of a place as soon as there is any sight of trouble. Advance will be very slow with such a mentality! If self-preservation is so important then there is no point going in the first place. God is always looking for children who are willing to die for Him if necessary. The countries in the Back to Jerusalem vision do not welcome the Gospel and there will be certain trouble when anyone attempts to take it to them. All the way through the Bible there was trouble when God’s people proclaimed the truth. Elijah was called the “troubler of Israel” (1 Kings 18:17). When Paul and Silas appeared before the authorities in Philippi their accusers said they “are throwing our city into an uproar.” (Acts 16:20). Indeed as you read through the Book of Acts it seems every time Paul preached the Gospel there was one of two reactions: revival or riot!

We understand that there is a time for caution and a time to escape, such as when the Apostle Paul was placed inside a basket and lowered over the Damascus city wall to escape those who wished to kill him (see Acts 9:22-25).

But there is also a time when Christians should march forward regardless of danger. Consider the courageous words of the Apostle Paul when he said,

And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me – the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace (Acts 20:22-24).

Making trouble is inevitable for any believer who truly wants to obey God. Anyone who wants to avoid conflict and maintain the status quo will not achieve much for the Lord. The structures that keep countless millions of people enslaved to sin and Satan must be confronted before they will crumble, and when you confront evil there will always be trouble.

This is the main reason house church Christians in China have been persecuted for decades. They are not persecuted just because of their faith in God. If they chose, they could all settle down in a Three-Self Church, worship God each Sunday, and live relatively stress free lives as long as they keep their beliefs to themselves and don’t try to share them with others.

The reason house church Christians are arrested and imprisoned in China is because they cannot keep still. They cannot possibly keep their mouths shut because Jesus has revealed Himself to them and they have been radically changed from the inside out. They understand how the prophet Jeremiah felt when he said, “If I say, ‘I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,’ his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.” (Jeremiah 20:9)

Western Christians often ask us why we think there is persecution in China and other countries and not in the West. There are several different things to say about this, but one question we would like to ask is this: “Do you boldly preach the truth of God’s Word to sinners inside and outside your churches?”

If you do, you will soon find out there is persecution wherever you are. “Those who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12). This Scripture does not say “might” be persecuted, but “will” be persecuted. If you are not being persecuted, the problem isn’t with God’s Word. Perhaps the question should be asked, “Are you truly desiring to live a godly life in Christ Jesus?” Persecution may take a different form in one country from another, but there will be persecution.

As the Back to Jerusalem vision unfolds, we know there will be many troubles, but “A righteous man may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all; he protects all his bones; not one of them will be broken.” Psalm 34:19-20

The Muslim and Buddhist nations can torture us, imprison us, starve us, but they can do no more than what we have already experienced in China for many decades. Thousands of young men and women will go as missionaries who are not afraid to die for Jesus. They are not afraid to bleed, as they know their bodies are merely temporary tents to be used in the Lord’s service and that one day they will be in paradise where there is no pain and no tears. They are not only ready to die for the Gospel, they are expecting it.

(Taken from What about security? What plans do you have to protect Back to Jerusalem workers?)

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So true, yet something we seldom hear in the Church today! For more of my thoughts on missions and persecution, see Christianity and Idealism. Also, my friend Zach has written some extremely thought-provoking stuff on this topic and his case against secrecy in missions here. I think it’s only when we keep the eternal perspective in mind will we be able to face persecution without fear.

International Development:

1) Stanford Social Innovation Review: Foundation boards should demand failure.

2) Spiegel Online: Can Gates, Soros and Branson create a better world?

3) The Globalist: Corruption in a Developing Country Context.

4) The Economist: Investors eye Africa, globalisation’s final frontier.

5) Toronto Star: Have media drunk enviro-Kool Aid?

Politics & Economics:

6) The New Republic: A good discussion prior to the good.

7) Ludwig von Mises Institute: Why Government can’t make decisions rationally.

Progressive Christianity:

8) Taki’s Top Drawer: Hitchens’ Hubris.

Others:

9) The Situationist: Al Gore - The Situationist.

10) The New Republic: How Harry Potter explains the world.

Ever since I first became interested in climate change 20 years ago, there was something nagging in the back of my mind. I’d heard this story before and I couldn’t pin it down; I just couldn’t. And then one night I was trying to get to sleep, but my brain was racing too fast, and it suddenly came to me. It was Faust. Both Doctor Faustus in Christopher Marlowe’s version, and Faust in Goethe’s version could be metaphors for climate change.

In Marlowe’s version, Doctor Faustus strikes a deal with the devil that if he can have 24 years living in luxuriousness, the devil can then have his soul. He prepares himself for this by denying that hell exists, and at the end, he’s carried off.

Faust is humankind - always striving, curious, restless, never satisfied, wanting to discover more, to explore more, to consume more, create more, destroy more. He is all of us. And, indeed, Marlowe intended that he is all of us.

The years in which he can live in all voluptuousness are the years of extraordinary freedom that we have been granted by fossil fuels; to do things which previous generations have only dreamt of doing; to have magical powers very similar to Faust’s powers.

Now in Goethe’s version, Faust strikes his bargain with the devil, but it’s a slightly different bargain. He says, “You can have my soul after 24 years, but on one condition: only if I become complacent and smug, and stop striving and stop questioning.”

So he begins by living in all voluptuousness, getting everything he wants, the wine, the women, the amazing food and the power to astonish people. He enjoys all that for a few years, and he thinks, “I’m wasting these extraordinary diabolical powers that I have been granted. I ought use them for the good of human kind. I want to create better conditions for people to live in.” And he strives to use these powers - fossil fuels, in my reading - to create a world that didn’t require diabolical powers, in which everybody could be comfortable without having to call on the devil.

(George Monbiot)