Hidden Costs
People are good at hiding from themselves the true cost of anything they really want to do.
If I want a new car, my actual reason might be as basic as the fact that Spring has infected me with new car fever. How can I justify such a purchase? Hiding certain costs from myself will help. I can ignore the increased cost of insurance, the impact of a car payment on my budget, the cost of having to worry about scratches and dents, and the cost of lost freedom that debt always brings.
Or take low prices for example. We all love them, which is why we shop at the big box stores that deliver cheap shirts and cheaper TVs. But is there a hidden cost behind low prices? If low prices require a child labor force in Malaysia or environmental catastrophe in China, or if they produce a growing underclass of low-wage workers here in America that need government help to survive, we had better count the cost up front and be ready to pay the whole thing.
What about war? It’s too easy to hide the costs of war. That’s why I appreciate an online display I found recently called Faces of the Dead. It’s simply a creative display of the photos of every U. S. service member killed in Iraq, from Jay T. Aubin on March 21, 2003 to David Stelmat on March 22, 2008. These 4,000 men and women are only part of the cost – which includes civilians, families, businesses, hopes, dreams and billions of dollars – but let’s never allow these people to be hidden.
Perhaps the essence of sin is to hide the real costs of our actions and focus on short-term pleasure or profit. If David could have seen from his rooftop the awful cost of his sin, would he have sent for Bathsheba? If Judas had known the personal price he would pay, would thirty pieces of silver have seemed like such a good bargain?
If you and I would simply take a little time and sift out the hidden costs behind our cherished sins, would we choose to live differently?
Jesus doesn’t want anyone to follow him on false pretenses. He doesn’t hide costs. He puts them out front: “Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple”, he says in Luke 14:33. Jesus never says that discipleship will be cheap. He says that it will be worth it.
For the April 2008 MHCC newsletter – 3.25.8
Sermon: A culture of life for everyone
Sermon: A culture of life for everyone. Looking at life-issues (abortion, war, capital punishment, etc.) as a seamless garment.
Listen (stream)
MP3 (right-click to download)
.
In praise of subtlety
Over the past month or two, we have been watching at our house the new Battlestar Galactica, which (thankfully) bears only a passing resemblance to the 1978 series (pictured at left, along with a “futuristic” computer). The new Battlestar began in 2003 and has developed simultaneously with the Iraq war, so it isn’t surprising that it draws on images and themes from Iraq. Over the first two seasons, the writers did a subtle job of evoking current events without being (I hate to use this term) “preachy”.
But in the first episode of season three, subtlety went out the airlock (temporarily, at least). Characters started talking about “winning the hearts and minds” as the occupiers tried to recruit and train locals to run the police force, and there was an insurgency and suicide bombers. It seemed like the show’s creators were trying too hard to make their points, and it turned me off. The show righted itself and returned to subtlety by episode 3, so I’m still watching.
I recently visited a Knoxville business where the owner is exceptionally up front about Jesus - Scriptures on the wall, Christian music on the speakers, staff telling me to “have a blessed day”. I always have two concerns about such an obvious joining of faith and business:
- Will it scare non-Christians away? What seems godly to us may look cultish to them.
- Is Christ being used to market a product? If so, the Gospel is cheapened. Besides, people who market with the name of Jesus tend to be judged more strictly (”How can you call yourself a Christian and not fix my brakes for 25 cents?”) Churches and pastors get hit all the time with such Spirit-filled marketing. A college friend of mine recently posted this blog entry on the topic.
I’m all for living our faith publicly, but I wonder if subtlety might be the way to go? (I DON’T mean in the Genesis 3:1 KJV sense 
). Battlestar is at its best when it raises tough issues without telling me what to think. Maybe witnessing should at least begin the same way.
Is Christianity a religion of peace?
My father-in-law recently pointed me to an interesting article called “Who Gets to Define Islam?”, a review of a new book by Lawrence Wright called The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11. George W. Bush, Muhammad Ali and a host of other public figures say that Islam is a religion of peace (and therefore terrorists cannot be true Muslims). But it isn’t that simple, as Prothero says in his closing paragraph:
The Looming Tower gives the lie to the idea that there is one Muslim world. It also steers clear of the pious foolishness that no real Muslim could crash a plane into a building of innocents. After all, those who steered those planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were convinced that no real Muslim would refuse such an honor.
OK, but what about Christianity? Who gets to define it? What would a real Christian do or refuse to do? The problem for Christians, as for Muslims, is that there is no one Christian world. The two presidents in my lifetime who were the most vocal about their Christianity are George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, two men with entirely different ideas about faith and war. Which is correct? Is either?
Is Christianity a religion of peace? From the things Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, you’d think so. But many of us seem to prefer an Old Testament style of conflict resolution. No wonder Christianity, like Islam, has a bad image problem.
Ken Burns and “The War”
I just marked Sunday night, September 23 on my calendar. That’s when a new documentary by Ken Burns begins to air on PBS. This one, called The War, is a fifteen-hour look at WW2 from ground level, the perspective of the soldiers and their families back home.
In an interview on Fresh Air, Burns said that he decided to ignore the more typical focus of WW2 documentaries - on celebrity generals, strategies, maps, time-tables, weapons…and Hitler - to concentrate on the battle experiences of those who fought. Clint Eastwood recently covered similar ground in Flags of our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima (from the Japanese perspective). Burns focuses exclusively on the soldiers and families from four American towns. From the previews, it sounds great.
I’m a big fan of Ken Burns, though I haven’t actually seen his masterwork The Civil War. It was Baseball, his 1994 documentary of eighteen-hours (and nine innings) that won me over.
Death rates in Iraq and Detroit
Friends are still sending me emails that say that the death-rate of US soldiers in Iraq isn’t all that different from the murder rate in big cities like Detroit. The implication, I guess, is that people die everywhere, so why get upset over some deaths in Iraq? Or maybe the idea is that our troops are as safe in Baghdad as Detroit.
Come on! If you need to defend our Iraq activities, put some thought into it and stop sending me this nonsensical data.
First off, if ever there was an apples -to- oranges comparison, it has to be US soldiers to Detroit civilians. Put these well-trained, well-armed and (hopefully by now) well-armored men and women in Detroit and their death rate drops to zero.
CNN says that 113 American troops died in Iraq in December 2006, 102 from hostile action. For 2006, the number of American deaths was 814. If I read this chart right, the Detroit metro area suffered about 440 murders in 2005 (the most recent year of complete data), so our men and women in Iraq are dying at twice the rate of murders in Detroit (I can’t believe I’m stooping to make this point, but that was the comparison in the email).
But the real story is the CIVILIAN causalities in Iraq. Today CBS News quotes a UN report that says that nearly 35,000 Iraqi civilians were killed last year. (I presume CBS means these people were killed in war-related violence, but shoddy reporting makes it hard to say for certain). Compare that to 16,692 murders in the US in 2005 and you have a better comparison (and remember that Iraq has less than 10% of our population).
Now I’m not saying that US troops are killing all these civilians (I don’t believe that for a minute, and I am VERY pro-troops), and I’m not saying that an immediate US withdrawal would end the violence (though I think us getting out would help - four years on, I’m pretty anti-war too).
I am saying: Quit sending me emails that downplay the deaths of our soldiers and ignore the civilian causalities. When Christians forward this nonsense, we reveal how knee jerk our political views are and how little thinking we do about Jesus, violence and our faith.
In fact, don’t send me any emails that you don’t write yourself.
