Water to a Stranger

Is it wrong to give a thirsty stranger a drink of water?

An American teacher was charged with a crime for feeding and sheltering two needy people. The teacher’s actions were similar to ones mentioned by Jesus as a sign of those who follow him (Matthew 25, New Testament). Apparently, however, these kinds of deeds are crimes if the people so helped are undocumented immigrants.

The right to secure borders should not preclude actions like dropping off water bottles to human beings dying of thirst or taking sick ones to a hospital.

Jim Wallis, of Sojourners, has said of the charged teacher (later acquitted): “He is being prosecuted for following the command of Jesus, which is to feed the hungry, refresh the thirsty and invite in the stranger.” (Quoted in “I can do no other,” Economist, June 15, 2019.)

It’s the Institutions, Stupid

That’s the title of an article by Julia Azari in Foreign Affairs (July/August 2019). The American political system, she says, has disappointed us because of a growing mismatch. The country’s political institutions no longer match political realities.

We operate under a system devised in the late eighteenth century, something of a dysfunctional dinosaur today.

Our system developed in a time when, for all practical purposes, “country” to the average American meant local or state governance. Few Americans traveled beyond the next town or read (if they were literate) anything other than the local paper.

Paulette Jiles’ novel News of the World paints a picture, even after the Civil War, of small town citizens willing to pay a fee to hear world news read to them. They knew little of the outside world, much less enjoyed our instant communication.

Today we move from San Francisco to Houston or Indianapolis to Nashville or across the country to other urban areas all the time. Some small towns and rural areas have been depopulated while cities are weighted down with massive growth. Yet we still tie our elections to the states through our constitutionally mandated electoral college.

Until we have the courage to change our system to represent the actual reality of our national concerns, Azari indicates, our government will continue to flounder.

Community in Small Acts of Grace

“ . . . confronted with the possibility of genuine community, people become fascinated, captivated, entranced. That’s because we humans know that living as isolated individuals or families is not how it’s meant to be.’”
(Brandon McGinley, “Small Acts of Grace: Building Urban Community in Pittsburgh,” Plough Quarterly, Winter 2020)

A few individuals may feel called to the path of the desert mystic. Most of us, however, are community creatures, compelled to gather in groups of one sort or another.

Some groups are decidedly unhealthy: criminal gangs, ethnic groups bent on destruction of other groups, drug cartels, and the like. If we lack the nurture of healthy groups, we may search for it in unhealthy ones.

Community in developed countries needs repair. We have substituted politics for care, group drunkenness for sharing over a meal, rants of hatred instead of listening to each other.

What’s the antidote? Probably no one answer suits the need for community among disparate individuals: introverts and extroverts, doers and thinkers, political and apolitical.

But each of us can seek out healthy group interaction. The article writer wrote of several families in Pittsburgh who moved into the same community, voluntarily, to be close to each other. It’s not a communal type of living, but rather for them “a rebirth of community-based Christian witness for decades and generations to come.”

They comfort when a an expectant mother suffers a miscarriage. They care for each others’ children. They share smaller gifts: walking to each other’s house for cookouts or birthday celebrations, or a game of cards. In the author’s words, they are “simply living as genuine friends.”

Welfare Versus Opportunity

My son benefitted from the educational benefits given to veterans. He served a few years in the U.S. army, then received help with his tuition after he entered college. The vocation he now follows is possible because of that aid.

After World War II, millions of veterans took advantage of the “G.I. Bill of Rights” to receive aid for education and vocational training. That generation spurred the economic growth and unprecedented prosperity of the United States in the years following.

Welfare programs to meet basic needs are a part of any humane society. However, we would do well to give special attention to programs that enable ordinary people to find meaningful, rewarding work.

The Black Stallion

A series of books about a boy and a horse enlivened my childhood. The horse was a black stallion out of Arabia, featured in a series by Walter Farley. I was not particularly drawn to horses themselves, as some children are, but the stories intrigued me, especially the second in the series, The Black Stallion Returns.

In the first book, The Black Stallion, Alec Ramsey, a boy on his way home to the United States from visiting his uncle in India, is shipwrecked. He is saved by a black stallion, also being shipped on the boat. Alec is able to hold onto a rope around the horse and is pulled to dry land.

By the time they are rescued, Alec and the stallion have become friends. Alec begins training him and enters a race.

However, The Black Stallion Returns was my favorite of the series. The supposed owner of the horse (an Arabian chieftain) appears, claims the animal as his own and takes him away to Saudi Arabia. Eventually, Alec follows them to that country to reclaim his horse.

This strange country intrigued me. Who knows—it may have contributed to my choice of Saudi Arabia for two of my assignments in the U.S. Foreign Service.

Books can be powerful influences, especially on children.

I would have missed much in my fortunate life if I had lacked public schools and public libraries and parents and teachers who cared.

Ukraine: Flash Point

The end of the Cold War in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s now seems like ancient history. Almost forgotten is the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl and the place of Ukraine as a major center of nuclear weapons.

In those days, the United States was anxious to remove nuclear weapons from Ukraine, not wishing it to become another nuclear power when it became independent of the Soviet Union.

“In exchange for parting with all its weapons, Ukraine would get assurances of territorial integrity—not guarantees, a meaningful difference, but one that seemed not to matter so much in the heady, hopeful post-Cold War world.” (Serhii Plokhy and M.E. Sarotte, “The Shoals of Ukraine,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2020)

Of course, as it turns out, the lack of iron clad guarantees that Ukraine would remain independent has mattered a great deal.

The authors continue: “Decades after they supposedly disappeared, Moscow’s imperial ambitions—which Putin pursues through the network that runs from the Kremlin through Ukraine to the White House—have now unsettled American democracy itself.”

Despite Ukraine’s efforts to decouple from Russia, Putin wants Ukraine back. Russian troops invaded the country to force it back into the Russian orbit.

In addition, Putin wants the Trump administration to abandon any American help for Ukraine. Donald Trump has always been stung by revelations that Russian interference in the 2016 election may have helped him win the election.

He was more than ready to believe, instead, Putin’s assertions that Russia never interfered. Against all evidence, Putin persuaded Trump to believe that Ukraine was the one who interfered.

Trump was willing to delay military help to Ukraine in its fight for survival against Russian forces. He was willing to block money funded by Congress for the Ukrainians. He was even willing to use it as a bribe . The bribe would be paid only if the Ukrainians searched for something unfavorable against a possible Democratic nominee against him in the 2020 election.

Rather than use our own processes set up for investigating corruption (FBI, congressional committee, etc.) Trump chose to bribe a foreign government with taxpayer money in a hidden deal.

Learning About The Green Book

The Green Book was a travel guide for black Americans who wanted to travel–or had to travel for personal or family reasons. It was a guide to lodging places where they could stay—“were allowed”—to stay.

I didn’t learn about The Green Book until a few years ago, but one day as a child, I learned why it was necessary. It was perhaps the beginning of my education about racism.

My family was white. We liked to take trips. At that time, a family could afford modest trips—for us a day’s journey into the Smoky Mountains, for example—at a cost that didn’t break the bank. We stayed in inexpensive cabins and ate picnic lunches to avoid a lot of eating out.

One day we stopped at a gas station. A black family had experienced car trouble. They stood to one side, out of the way, while their car was worked on. No nearby motels or restaurants for them if the car took a while to fix.

I began to notice signs. No Coloreds and Whites Only.

I realized people without white skin couldn’t stay where we stayed. They couldn’t eat where we ate.

Black cooks worked in kitchens of restaurants where only whites were allowed to eat. It seemed so unfair. And it was.

That was only a modest dent in my understanding of white privilege. It didn’t speak to larger issues of voting and jobs and schools. But that day was when I first realized the restrictions on a simple family outing if you weren’t the right color.

Guarding Democracy

The newer democracies—the Philippines, Turkey, Tunisia, Argentina, Russia, for example—find it hard to maintain their democracy against strong men like Putin.

The United States is one of the oldest democracies, but even this country struggles against undemocratic trends.

From an article by H. David Baer:

“ . . . ancient tyrants used their rule to pursue private gain with complete disregard for the common good. In Aristotle’s view, tyrannical regimes, dedicated as they were to personal self-aggrandizement, combined the worst features of democracy and oligarchy (Politics, Book V 1311a10).

“Like democratic leaders, the tyrant appeals to the people, but he does so through self-serving demagoguery. The tyrant’s true aim is that of an oligarch, namely, the accumulation of wealth. So, too, in our time, modern autocrats employ populist strategies to disguise the kleptocracies they create, which they use to accumulate massive personal fortunes. “

(H. David Baer: (“The Return of the Tyrants and the Price of Democracy”; The Cresset; Trinity, 2018.)

“So this is how liberty dies, to thunderous applause.”

These words were spoken by Natalie Portman in her role in a Star Wars movie, The Revenge of the Sith, in 2005, as an autocrat took power. Some have taken to quoting the line as “So this is how democracy dies, to thunderous applause.”

The Star Wars franchise, as we all know, has made millions for its creators, a capitalist enterprise that has done well.

But perhaps its staying power, beginning a generation ago in 1977, is due to its light versus dark struggle. Its timing mirrors clashes in the real world between falling empires and ideologies: collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990’s; a war in Iraq in 1991; the 9/11 attacks in 2001; the following wars in Afghanistan and later Iraq; and more recently, engagements with Iran and other Middle Eastern countries, not to mention China and North Korea.

In a recent review of the book How Dictatorships Work, the reviewer writes: “…today’s would-be dictators . . . go after the courts, intimidate the press, hamper civil society, and use parliamentary majorities to push through new laws and constitutions. . . . Even in places where formal institutions are more robust, such as the United States, the informal norms that uphold democracy have become fragile.” [The book is by Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright, and Erica Frantz; the review is by Anna Grzymala-Busse in Foreign Affairs, January/February 2020, “Paths to Power.”]

The reviewer’s “informal norms” suggest a certain decency, a regard for one’s opponents, a healthy humbleness.

No better example exists of regard for these norms than the late Senator John McCain’s concession speech on losing the presidential election to Barack Obama on November 5, 2008.

He said in part:

“Tonight — tonight, more than any night, I hold in my heart nothing but love for this country and for all its citizens, whether they supported me or Sen. Obama, I wish Godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my president.”

How would you judge each presidential candidate today beside McCain’s example?

Entertainment Malls and Affordable Housing: Skiing But No Houses

Recently, our newspaper’s business section carried an article about an entertainment mall in the populous northeast. The mall features snow (manufactured within the mall) and skiing. The mall plans more than half its space, not for shopping, but for entertainment. (The Seattle Times, “The Mall of the Future? “February 5, 2020)

Included or under construction are an ice rink and a theme park. Apparently, investors believe malls now are candidates for “experiences” as well as for shopping. They hope this change will rescue the empty malls cluttering our landscape.

The same business section featured a commentary on the need for affordable housing in the United States. (“The puzzle affordable housing poses for America”)

According to the commentary, “Half of families who rent and nearly one-fourth of homeowners pay more than 30% of their monthly income toward their housing costs. This level is widely considered unsustainable.”

Perhaps the articles are not related, but to me they illustrate a grand division forming in the United States: the haves with money to spend on nonessential entertainment and the have-nots, who struggle merely for the basic necessities of life.

Homelessness is a condition we read about every day, but this commentary was basically not about the drug addicted or the mentally ill. It touched on working families who can barely survive in our society.

One does not need to be a socialist to see the devastating cleavage in our country. The different political factions—conservative, liberal, and in-between—face a crisis. Basic shelter, medical care, and education and job training are public needs that must be addressed if we are to survive as a successful democracy.

White Evangelical Reckoning

Two editorials in Christianity Today, one by Mark Galli, editor of the magazine, and the other by Timothy Dalrymple, president and CEO, rocked the evangelical world and sent waves into the secular media.

The off-quoted figure of white evangelicals who supported Donald Trump in 2016 is 81 percent. On December 19, Galli called for the removal of Trump from office following his impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives. So many people tried to sign on to the magazine’s website, that it temporarily went down.

On December 22, Dalrymple wrote his own thoughtful opinion piece. He spoke of the reaction by the magazine’s readership to Galli’s editorial. Some readers were moved and said they no longer felt alone. Others were incensed and insulted.

Speaking of Galli, Dalrymple said: “While he does not speak for everyone in the ministry . . . he carries the editorial voice of the magazine. We support CT’s editorial independence and believe it’s vital to our mission for the editor in chief to speak out on the issues of the day.”

He went on to say, “We are happy to celebrate the positive things the administration has accomplished. The problem is that we as evangelicals are also associated with President Trump’s rampant immorality, greed, and corruption; his divisiveness and race-baiting; his cruelty and hostility to immigrants and refugees; and more. The problem is the wholeheartedness of the embrace.”

Long before Trump, some evangelicals shifted toward politics to enforce a religious agenda.

As white American evangelicals began to identify with political parties, their young people drifted away and attendance fell in their churches. Rightly or wrongly, they are associated in many people’s minds with a particular political agenda, not with the good news of Jesus.

A religion seeking to use secular power to enforce its beliefs almost always becomes corrupted by that power. Witness what happened to European Christianity during the Middle Ages. Eventually, religious wars devastated the continent and led to a weakening of the Christian faith.

In a democracy, individuals vote, and Christians certainly have the duty to vote wisely, and to become involved in government. But all human activity is subject to error and should be undertaken in humility and with respect for those who disagree. Holding up any political party as chosen by God is, I believe, a dangerous position.

Jesus knew the dangers of worshiping power. When people wanted to make him a king, he sent them away. When finally the time came for him to present himself publically, he entered Jerusalem, not on a charging white steed, but on a poor person’s donkey.

Christ’s model is not political power. It is healing and kindness and the embrace of outcasts. It remains the model for today.

Why was the Christmas Eve service so meaningful this year?

I have been to many such services in my life in all sorts of different places and times of life. So, as my husband and I walked the short distance to our church this year, perhaps it was more out of habit than hope.

But the familiar message—I’ve heard it enough to have it memorized—helpless babe in a manager, come into a hate-filled world full of hurting people.

But this year, tears glistened in my eyes, evidence this time of the message going deeper.

Why? Perhaps because this year, this end of 2019, the times appear especially hopeless, and we are desperate. We’ve been through a deluge of hate-filled, hurting words. Homeless men, women, and children are everywhere. Some have become so desperate that our birth rate is falling and the death rate of young and middle aged people has been hastened by overdoses and suicides.

And, we are told, 2020 will not be any better, maybe worse: impeachment trial, bitterly fought elections, a world with almost daily evidence of climate change affecting millions with droughts and floods.

Yet, in that way grace has of coming at the oddest moments, the message, the familiar carols, struck deeper, became beacons of hope for this time.

Somebody loved us and came to us, then preached love that has affected people mightily since that time: death didn’t stop him: His weak, sinful people have been transformed time and time again, overcoming even their own misreading of his message.

Slavery was abolished and racism, though still strong, is challenged. Women have entered public life. Young people are concerned about climate change.

When the times are right, those touched by this season’s message have always found pathways to counter the worship of wealth, power, and greed.

Waiting in a Troubled Time

“The furred magnolia buds we bring to warmth
here in the heated room soon bloom and sicken;
the tree without keeps its own secret time.”
(Jane Tyson Clement; “Out of a Difficult and Troubled Season”)

Sometimes patient waiting is our best choice. Not idle waiting, but rather a recharging kind of waiting.

Maybe we touch base again with family and friends. Maybe we read poetry. Maybe we use a winter’s day to ponder while watching flames of a small fire in our fireplace or the rain spattering on our windows.

We do the necessary tasks, but we admit our limitations. We look for ways to appreciate those with whom we disagree.

We turn off the shouting and the tweeting. We go slowly, thoughtfully for a while. We wait patiently for the turning.

Survival Migration

“What Europe saw in 2015 and what the Americas are witnessing today are not simply refugee flows or market-driven population movements but rather ‘survival migration’ . . .” writes Alexander Betts (“Nowhere to Go,” Foreign Affairs, November-December 2019).

According to Betts, many refugees today aren’t traditional refugees fleeing persecution nor are they economic migrants seeking jobs. They are fleeing “failed or fragile states, violence, and economic insecurity.” They are seeking to stay alive.

The governments of the countries from which they flee, whether to the United States or to Europe, are often incapable of governing. Corruption and crime are high and dominate politics and business. In addition, drought and crop failures increase food insecurity.

Betts suggests international cooperation to fight crime and develop stronger local governments, including economic development in home countries.

Some have suggested a “Marshall Plan” to overcome radical need as for Europe after the devastation of World War II.

Whether such strategies succeed over the long term probably depends on whether large numbers of citizens in developed nations realize the need for global answers. Perhaps enough citizens may finally understand how survival migration affects the world as a whole.

Citizens of more prosperous nations might also be moved by simple human kindness.

The quaint art of conversation and reading with your children

We often discussed ideas at the dinner table when I was growing up. My parents read a lot.

It had nothing to do with the level of their education. My mother had no schooling beyond high school. My father didn’t even finish high school because of the need to support his parents and younger siblings when he was a teenager.

My lower middle class parents were readers who loved to learn for its own sake, then discuss their ideas with each other and their children. Reading became as natural to my brother and me as walking.

According to several reports, including one in The New York Times, an inexpensive child rearing technique to help you raise responsible children is to read to them. (“Reading aloud to young children has benefits for behavior and attention,” 16 April 2018)

Parent to child reading not only encourages intellectual growth, studies show, but also tends to curb aggressive behavior and other troublesome activities.

The first years of a child’s life are the most important for a child’s development. Spending time with them, including talking with them and reading to them, costs little in the way of money.

Not the Differences, but the Tone of the Differences

“What is dangerous is not that people have serious differences. It is the tone—the snarl, the scorn, the lacerating despair.”
–James Mattis, “The Enemy Within,” The Atlantic, December 2019

Suppose we stop treating supporters of Donald Trump like ignorant fools? Suppose we stop calling the impeachment inquires a witch hunt?

Suppose we listen with sympathy for those touched by the need for women to control their own lives? Suppose we listen with equal sympathy for those touched by vulnerable life in the womb?

Why do some call those who testified in the impeachment hearings unpatriotic? They were serving their country. Honest disagreement with conclusions is acceptable. Insulting the integrity of the witnesses is not.

Concern with the source of news is valid. Calling respectable newspapers “fake news” is not.

Yes, of course extremists exist, but the opinions of the vast majority of citizens spring from reasonable assumptions, results of needs as they see them. The differences are honest, not perfect, always in need of constant revision, but worthy of honest consideration, not condemnation.

As Mattis goes on to say: “Virulent, take-no-prisoners attacks on the media, the judiciary, labor unions, universities, teachers, scientists, civil servants—pick your target—don’t help anyone.”

From Fall of the Wall to Quid Pro Quo

Thirty years ago, in November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. Country after country of the former Soviet Union took fledgling steps toward democracy.

Writes Louis D. Sell, a U.S. Foreign Service officer in Yugoslavia at the time: “No one who has ever had the opportunity to witness people standing with patient enthusiasm in long lines to vote for the first time in their lives . . . could ever doubt the power of democracy as an ideal.” (“1989: Seen From Yugoslavia,” The Foreign Service Journal, November 2019)

But we in Western democracies couldn’t comprehend the difficulty of people who had no tradition of democracy attempting to make it work.

Western democracies have centuries old traditions of struggle for people power, from at least 1215, when the Magna Carta limited the power of English king. A free press was a unique Western invention.

Many of the former Soviet nations lacked these traditional defenses against tyranny and against powerful oligarchies seizing wealth and power from collapsing regimes. Democratic practices in some of the countries began to reverse, governments coming under the sway of corrupted newly rich.

The United States and its allies began diplomatic policies to support the fight against corruption in these countries.

Imagine what the secret efforts of a U.S. president to bribe officials in one of those countries, Ukraine, for political gain have done to compromise these policies.

Buying an Ambassadorship

All U.S. politically appointed ambassadors were ordered to quit their posts by the Trump administration when Donald Trump took office. Career ambassadors stayed. This is the usual practice when a new president takes over.

I spent most of my career in the State Department under career ambassadors, for which I was grateful. Of the two politically appointed ambassadors I served under, one did a credible job. The other appeared to be there mostly for the political trappings. Many such appointments are awarded for significant campaign contributions.

One politically appointed ambassador to a small European nation was known mostly for refurbishing the ambassador’s residence.

Politically appointed ambassadors rarely serve in impoverished developing nations or in those on the front lines of war. After all, more ambassadors have been killed than generals. You certainly don’t want that to happen to a party faithful.

Some political appointments do work out well, such as that of Pamela Harriman to the U.S. embassy in Paris. A wealthy socialite once married to the son of Winston Churchill, Harriman was noted for her keen political instincts. She no doubt spoke French very well.

The typical political appointee, however, doesn’t speak the country’s language, unless it’s English, and often knows more about NFL scores than about the foreign country’s history and politics.

Other democracies appoint their most seasoned foreign service officers as ambassadors to the United States. Dictatorships are prone to send cronies to their diplomatic posts.

Time-Starved

Who’s minding the kids?

Who has time to mind the kids?

Who has time to read newspapers?

Who has time to work with the homeless? Or in youth shelters? Or with the handicapped?

Who has time to read or think or write or paint?

As we seek to balance our work lives with other roles, we find ourselves time-starved for anything outside of work.

With the industrial revolution, paid work became limited mainly to men. They went out—to the city, to the office—and women stayed home to raise the children. Only jobs with children and the sick remained open to them, usually with much less pay than the men earned.

Western culture cleaved: men worked at paying jobs; women worked at home. Home became increasingly separate from vocation.

Then women began to notice the cleavage. Having worked for the entire history of the world until that time–on farms and in small family operations—they began to question why they now were kept from the economic work force. They began joining this work force.

However, since most economic activity now takes place away from home, it means no one is around to do home things—taking care of children, the elderly, the sick and the needy.

Our vocations are in need of newer forms: parental leave, fewer penalties for dropping out of the work force for a while to follow other pursuits: family/people/spiritual activities. Replacement of the standard 40-hour work week.

The patterns for work and home need restructuring.

Ann Gaylia O'Barr

Culture and World Events from a Christian Perspective