It’s a landmark day. Today marks the opening of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China. Unlike any opening ceremony in Olympic history, China has outdone itself, and the sleeping giant awakens.

My niece, Karen, recently returned from China with her school band. The Catalina Foothills High School Marching Band (Tucson, Arizona) was chosen to perform in the 2008 pre-Olympic festivities in Beijing, and she was the most excited 16-year-old girl you could imagine. She plays clarinet and oboe, and did the U.S. proud.
You can read about the adventures of the Catalina Foothills High School band on their blog, and see if you can spot my niece. Here she is in this photo from a Peking Duck dinner, on the far right.

The band played atop the Great Wall of China, at the Juyong Pass, as well as a Forbidden City performance, along with tours of Tiananmen Square, the Summer Palace, the Peking Opera, the Temple of Heaven, the Beijing Zoo, and much more. I loved this photo of the driving hazards enroute to Beijing.

All in all, still not sure why the Olympics are being held in a country that practices infanticide, extreme censorship, communism, and very limited religious, political, or social freedom.

Part II

Moving across the continent to Eastern Europe, the news is anything but festive. Russia has invaded Georgia.

Reuters reports that Kakha Lamaia, a member of Georgia’s National Security Council, says that the two countries are “very close to war.” World powers around the globe are calling for an end to the violence, which is fierce and is escalating.

“If it’s not war, then we are very close to it,” Lamaia said. “The Russians have invaded Georgia and we are under attack.”

Immediately after President Bush and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin enjoyed the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, mentioned above, these two world leaders met to discuss the situation between Russia and Georgia–more specifically, a separatist territory of Georgia known as South Ossetia. Most South Ossetians hold Russian citizenship and have close ties to Russia. Russia is claiming there is ethnic cleansing going on in South Ossetia, and thus they need to come in and save the day.

My take is that Russia wants to take back part of its territory, once held for most of the two hundred years prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union. And they see an excuse to move in, with the unrest in South Ossetia. Russia is mad that Georgia has sought NATO membership–why should they care unless they feel that this move is in defiance of their rulership, and of course a threat to their security?

Still not sure why President Bush is convening with a dictator-on-the-rise like Vladimir Putin.

Part III

Proceeding along to the North American continent, the biggest news comes right out of my cozy home. I was served breakfast in bed, for no apparent reason, by my seven-year-old daughter.

I rolled over to a fried egg and a little voice that said, “Mommy, I made breakfast for you!” She served it up with a cup of coffee and a piece of toast, all to my utter surprise about where this flight of fancy originated. Never mind that the egg was over-easy and let me stress the “easy,” and the coffee was cold, its origins uncertain, the only option being the left-over coffee still in the pot from yesterday, which would explain the temperature. But the toast was excellent!

Not to settle for anything minimal, my daughter continued her morning homemaking. “Mommy, put on your best dress and come downstairs,” she called through the door. Curious as the mother hen that I am, I quickly complied, and entered the kitchen-converted-to-a-ballroom.

JJ had picked out some music, one of my old Amy Grant albums, and had created a festive atmosphere everywhere I turned. Surely this rivaled Beijing. Streamers were hanging from the ceiling, the table set with this unique combination of childhood and womanhood–fine wine glasses accompanied by paper plates and plastic silverware wrapped in crepe paper. I twirled and danced with my girls, and even my boys.

Apparently, the egg and toast were not enough, so she proceeded to make French Toast for the whole family (minus Dad, who was already gone to work).

I wrote out the instructions for her, and left to give her some space. I was called down in what seemed record time, and enjoyed a slightly soggy French Toast breakfast-after-breakfast. I silently noted the plastic bread bag melted to the side of the griddle, but she did turn it off when she was done. “Mommy,” she confidently declared, “I’m going to be a great cook when I grow up.” Yes, indeed, my dear.

Still not sure why I got so lucky as to have breakfast in bed for no reason at all.

photo credits: CFHS blog, FoxNews

Technorati Tags: children, children cooking, Olympics, China, Georgia, family life, Russia, Vladimir Putin, Catalina Foothills High School

This new Home School Talk radio show is hosted by Dana of Principled Discovery, who has written extensively about the homeschooling situation in Germany. The guest tomorrow is Rina, an Irish woman who homeschooled her children in Germany for a period and faced constant harassment from German authorities. Rina kept a blog updated through Dec. ‘07 if you’d like to follow some of her saga there, as well as stories of many other German homeschoolers who dealt with similar harassment, fines, criminal penalties, loss of custody of children, and jail - just for homeschooling. Also a great source of updated information on German homeschooling is Kinderlehrer’s blog, Educating Germany, dedicated solely to this issue.

Whether you’re a homeschooler or not, I’d encourage anyone who cares about basic human rights, parental rights, educational choice, and living in a free and democratic society, to tune in and educate yourself on this issue. If you’re not able to listen live, but have a question, comment, or encouragement for Rina, consider emailing Dana with your thoughts to pass on to her guest.

I don’t promise much better at this point because the topic of religious liberty is so vast and convoluted by bizarre interpretations of the First Amendment that I can’t think straight. I’ve been looking at early original writings on religious liberty, a church history book, and modern writers on the subject. Then there’s the ACLU, the atheists, and the activist judges who muck it all up.

Here’s what we all know from the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.— The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

The horrors of the Old World still near in their minds, the Founders in the New World wanted a fresh approach. The high price of enforced religious conformity, with its untold thousands of martyrs, was the climate in which the Founders were seeking true religious freedom of conscience.

I was listening to a Focus on the Family broadcast a few days ago, featuring historian David Barton, in which he talks about the large percentage of people who actually think the term “separation of church and state” appears in the Constitution, and mistake the Founders’ intent for the government to leave people alone in regards to their religion, with some twisted idea of a religion-free public life.

Here is an excellent piece on the Founders’ view of religion in public life:

The Founders’ View of Religion in Public Life

But far from wanting to expunge religion from public life, the Founders encouraged religion as a necessary and vital part of their new nation. They sought the official separation of church and state in order to build civil and religious liberty on the grounds of equal natural rights, but never intended–indeed, roundly rejected–the idea of separating religion and politics.

The Founders opposed the establishment of a national church (though the federal government did not do away with state establishments); church doctrine would not determine the laws, and laws would not determine church doctrine. However, the Founders did favor government encouragement and support of religion in public laws, official speeches and ceremonies, on public property and in public buildings, and even in public schools.

Indeed, the official separation of church and state allows and encourages (just as true religious freedom depends upon) a certain mixing of religion and politics. On the day after it approved the Bill of Rights, Congress called upon the president to ‘recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of Almighty God.’ President Thomas Jefferson regularly attended church services held in the House of Representatives and allowed executive branch buildings to be used for the same purpose. Jefferson seemed to find nothing wrong with the federal government supporting religion in a non-discriminatory and non-coercive way.

Even after the ‘republican revolution’ of 1800, President Thomas Jefferson praised America’s ‘benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter.’ From The Meaning of Religious Liberty by Matthew Spalding, Ph.D.

The phase “separation of church and state” comes from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association, and can be read here in its entirety. In fact, this letter is the only record of Thomas Jefferson ever mentioning this phrase, and none of the other 90 or so men involved in the writing of the Constitution ever talked in terms of a “wall of separation between church and state,” but in the past 50 years, it’s been cited over 3,000 times by the courts, typically to justify the eradication of religious expression from public life.

Here’s what’s taken terribly out of context: these Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut were opposed to a “religion clause” even being in the Constitution at all. The reason is because they feared that religious privileges would thus be viewed as “favors granted” from the state, not as inalienable rights. They felt that the government guaranteeing religious liberty was a “degrading acknowledgment” and “inconsistent with the rights of freemen.”

Jefferson replies that the Danbury Baptists need not worry, that he completely agrees with them that “religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God.” The assurance of the “wall of separation between Church and State” that Jefferson mentions in this letter is a promise and commitment to this group of Christians that the language of “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” was simply meant to “restore to man all his natural rights.” Coming from the religious tyranny of England, it’s no wonder the Founders felt a need to be very explicit about religious freedom.

I discovered an interesting phrase in this very letter in which the “separation of church and state” is mentioned by Thomas Jefferson. It’s an overlooked phrase, one that has incredible bearing on current events regarding religious liberty and free speech. Are you ready?

“…the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions…”

Wow. I’ll be discussing Free Speech next week, but for now, I’ll just say that I find it quite ironic that the “separation of church and state” phrase has been latched onto and used mercilessly to eject any and all Christian thought from American public or political discourse, but this phrase has been conveniently disregarded. This phrase, were it made law by the Supreme Court, as has the “separation” phrase, should preclude such religious intolerance and government meddling like telling public schools what prayers they can or can’t say, what language is acceptable and what is not, or telling a private photography company that it violated state law by refusing (for religious reasons) to take a job photographing a lesbian commitment ceremony.

Those Danbury Baptists had some very valid concerns and clearly anticipated the religious/political landscape we now call Post-Modern America. I’m grateful for the inclusion of the Establishment Clause, however, America needs a return to the intent of the Founders before her people find themselves again under total religious tyranny at the hands of the government.

Technorati Tags: American Revolution, religious liberty, religious freedom, First Amendment, Establishment Clause

Italy’s most prominent Muslim commentator, a journalist with iconoclastic views such as support for Israel, converted to Roman Catholicism Saturday when the pope baptized him at an Easter service.

As a choir sang, Pope Benedict XVI poured holy water over Magdi Allam’s head and said a brief prayer in Latin.

“We no longer stand alongside or in opposition to one another,” Benedict said in a homily reflecting on the meaning of baptism. “Thus faith is a force for peace and reconciliation in the world: distances between people are overcome, in the Lord we have become close.”

An Egyptian-born, non-practicing Muslim who is married to a Catholic, Allam often writes on Muslim and Arab affairs and has infuriated some Muslims with his criticism of extremism and support for the Jewish state.

Allam also explained his decision to entitle a recent book “Viva Israel” or “Long Live Israel,” saying he wrote it after he received death threats from Hamas.

“Having been condemned to death, I have reflected a long time on the value of life. And I discovered that behind the origin of the ideology of hatred, violence and death is the discrimination against Israel. Everyone has the right to exist except for the Jewish state and its inhabitants,” he said. “Today, Israel is the paradigm of the right to life.”

I will pray for Allam, and many like him, who has already received death threats from Hamas, and he now faces additional danger, as converting from Islam is apostasy and punishable by death. Though killings are rare, Islamic legal doctrine does call for the death penalty for rejecting Islam.

Peace of Christ to you on this blessed Easter.

HT to Crunchy Con

The story of Brother Yun is inspiring, painful, seemingly incredulous, and certainly in season. The Heavenly Man details the life and ministry of this Christian house church leader in his own words, also interwoven with accounts from his wife, Deling. A large portion of the book describes the countless ordeals of intense torture that would kill any man, but these reports are offset by Yun’s testimonies of miraculous healings, visions, dreams, and many other supernatural events. In fact, that is the theme of the book: with great persecution, the Church will see the miraculous hand of God and will grow.

Brother Yun, Liu Zhenying was his given name, was born in 1958 in Nanyang in the southern part of China’s Henan Province. He spent his childhood in a farming village of 600 people, in a little mud house with a straw roof. He worked the fields like most poor children, along with his four siblings, and received little schooling.

China became a communist nation in 1949 and thus Brother Yun was born into a spiritual and political climate that was void of all Christian fellowship and Bibles were nowhere to be seen. Mao Tsetung (Zedong) ushered in communism and death; his policies of the suppression of counter-revolutionaries centered on mass executions, and Mao himself claimed to have killed 700,000 during the early years of his founding of the People’s Republic of China. However, the U.S. State Department puts the number at several times that amount. Not only were Christian missionaries and their Chinese converts slaughtered, Mao targeted the leaders of the former government, former employees of Western companies, rural gentry, and anyone whose loyalty was suspect. His policies of forced collective ownership, including a ban on all private food production and a ban on private land ownership, led to what is thought to be the largest famine in history, resulting in the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese peasants between 1959 and 1962. Brother Yun reports that in his Henan Province 8 million people starved to death.

In 1974, Brother Yun was 16 years old. His entire family became Christians overnight when his father was healed of cancer. Yun’s mother, who had heard the gospel in the 1940s from a Western missionary, had become a Christian, but in the ensuing decades of Mao’s dictatorship, was spiritually starved. However, this one night when her husband lay dying, she heard a voice say, “Jesus loves you.” She immediately recognized the voice of God, and told her children that “Jesus is the only hope for Father.” They all prayed throughout the night, and by the next week their father was completely healed. Yun relates that this was such a powerful event in his family’s life that today, over 30 years after Jesus healed his father, all five of his children still follow God.

Yun’s mother couldn’t remember much of the Bible, but she told all she knew to her family. Yun began to long to read the words of God for himself, but this was during the Cultural Revolution when Bibles were scarce. People were allowed to read only Mao’s little Red Book, and if caught with a Bible, it would be burned and the owner would be publicly and severely beaten, along with his entire family.

A most curious series of events followed, as Brother Yun, a mere 16 years old, began to fast and pray for a Bible, such was his passion to read God’s word. He had a vision one night, in which two strangers gave him a bun of fresh bread, which they pulled from a red bag, and upon putting it in his mouth, it turned into a Bible.

His mother and father were afraid their son had gone mad, as Yun frantically searched the house for a Bible. But lo and behold, a knock came to the door, and the same two men from Yun’s vision were waiting there, and slipped through the door the same red bag, which contained a Bible. Yun later finds out that these two men were sent by an evangelist from a far off village, who had received a vision from the Lord instructing him to give his Bible, hidden underground for safekeeping, to a certain young man.

This young man was Brother Yun, and despite having only three years of education, began reading his Bible, one character at a time with a dictionary at his side. After reading through the whole Bible, Yun memorized entire chapters at a time. Within the first month, he memorized the Book of Matthew, and then on to the Book of Acts. During this time, Brother Yun received another visitation from the Lord. He felt a tap on his shoulder and heard a voice tell him “Yun, I am going to send you to the west and south to be my witness.”

Yun started preaching at age 16, and because no one had a Bible, his preaching consisted mostly of reciting the books of the Bible that he had memorized. People would stay up all night just to hear him speak, because they too longed to hear the Word of God. Within that first year of preaching in neighboring villages, Brother Yun led over 2,000 people to Jesus. Persecution was immediate. All of the new Christians in the first village where he spoke were arrested and beaten. Yun’s name was on the Public Security Bureau’s “Wanted” list because of his evangelizing.

Soon after, Yun was married to Deling, through the matchmaking of their mothers. She is a lovely Christian woman and shares parts of this amazing story as well. She recounts the story of her and Yun going to the marriage registry office to apply for their marriage license. After waiting a long time, Yun didn’t come out.

Only later was I told that when Yun wrote his name in the registry office, the clerks noticed that he was wanted by the PSB for being an illegal preacher, so they arrested him on the spot! They already knew he had been preaching the gospel all over the province. This was the start of our life together!

The pressure against Brother Yun and other Chinese Christian house church leaders mounted, and the torture and abuse at the hands of the Chinese police and other government officials is unspeakable. In his 23 years of ministering in China, Brother Yun and his family were continually on the run, he was imprisoned three different times for a total of seven years, and yet people came to Jesus by the thousands.

Woven throughout the most intense scenes of torture is always the strong presence of God. Yun shares many personal accounts of divine healings, people being delivered from demons, and other miracles. During his first imprisonment, Brother Yun survived a 74 day fast. His second time in prison, the PSB beat his legs so badly that he was crippled, yet he walked out the front doors of the prison and escaped. Yun describes that escape of May 5, 1997, walking past guards and through open gates:

Somehow the Lord seemed to blind that guard. He was staring directly at me, yet his eyes didn’t acknowledge my presence at all. I expected him to say something, but he just looked through me as if I was invisible!

When I arrived at the main iron gate leading out to the courtyard I discovered it was already open! This was strange, as it was usually the most secure gate of all.

After many trials and long periods of agonizing separation from his family, Brother Yun finally escaped China and now lives in Germany with his family. The last several chapters of The Heavenly Man are his reflections on the Western church as well as a description of his new focus on the Back to Jerusalem movement.

I understand why many people are deeply moved by this book. Reading about a man a world away who has to beg, pray, and fast for months just to get his hands on a Bible, while I have ten on my shelf, makes me a bit uncomfortable. Brother Yun has some sharp words for the Western church:

On some occasions I’ve struggled while speaking in Western churches. There seems to be something missing that leaves me feeling terrible inside. Many meetings are cold and lack the fire and presence of God that we have in China.

……..

When I’m in the West I see all the mighty church buildings and all the expensive equipment, plush carpets and state-of-the-art sound systems. I can assure the Western church with absolute certainty that you don’t need any more church buildings. Church buildings will never bring the revival you seek. The pursuit of more possessions will never bring revival. Jesus truly stated, “A man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” Luke 12:15.

The first thing needed for revival to return to your churches is the Word of the Lord. God’s Word is missing. Sure, there are many preachers and thousands of tapes and videos of Bible teaching, but so little contains the sharp truth of God’s Word. It’s the truth that will set you free.

……..

When revival came to believers in China, the result was thousands of evangelists being sent out to all corners of the nation, carrying fire from the altar of God with them. When God moves in the West, it seems you want to stop and enjoy his presence and blessings too long, and build an altar to your experiences.

I’m trying to keep perspective here, because I realize that different nations have different battles and their own unique burdens, and it’s not always fair to make direct comparisons. However, Brother Yun’s experiences in China have much to teach us in the West.

Brother Yun’s incredible ordeals in China have led him to a deep desire for not only Chinese brothers and sisters to know Jesus, but all the world. In chapter 24 of The Heavenly Man, Yun describes the Silk Roads, key trading routes that first brought herbs, spices, treasures, new religions, and invading armies in and out of China. Some accounts say that Christianity first traveled down one of these roads from Jerusalem to China just decades after the resurrection of Jesus.

It is the goal of Brother Yun and the Back to Jerusalem movement for the gospel to travel full circle, out of China and back to Jerusalem. The nations along the Silk Roads are home to the three strongholds of Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, with more than 90% of the people groups who haven’t heard the gospel living here. Yun describes meeting Simon Zhao in 1995 in Central China, a believer who spent 31 years in prison for his involvement in the first Back to Jerusalem movement in 1950:

The Lord had already placed the Back to Jerusalem vision in my heart, but after meeting Simon Zhao it became the primary focus of my life. I came to understand clearly that the destiny for the house churches of China is to pull down the world’s last remaining spiritual giants: the house of Buddha, the house of Mohammed, and the house of Hinduism, and to proclaim the glorious gospel to all nations before the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ!

You need to understand that when we speak about “Back to Jerusalem,” we’re not saying that Jerusalem is the main goal. We are not planning to rush there for a big conference! Jerusalem was the starting point for the gospel two thousand years ago, and we believe it will circle the whole world and return to its starting point. Our aim is not merely to evangelize the city of Jerusalem, but the thousands of unreached people groups, towns and villages located between China and Jerusalem.

Fascinating. The Heavenly Man, the remarkable true story of Chinese Christian Brother Yun is a powerful book that I recommend to all Christians wanting to challenge their Western faith and enlarge their Christian worldview.

This review is part of the Chrysalis November Christian Book Fair.