Nuclear War Is A Greater Threat Than Ever

small box on the left represents all of WWII Allied bombing

1945: total allied bombs dropped in WW II    1985: world's nuclear weapons equals                                     (3 megatons )                                       6,667 WWII's  (20,000 megatons)

According to the 1985 Center for Defense Information graph above, the world reached a peak of some 20,000 megatons of nuclear weapons thirty years ago, most of them in the possession of the US and the USSR. Thanks to various diplomatic efforts since then, the world now has just over 6,500 megatons, but that still represents over 2000 times the destructive force of all of the bombs detonated in all of World War II. 

This is both utterly unimaginable and absolutely immoral, and represents a flagrant violation of God's first recorded command to our human ancestors, to "tend the earth and care for it".

Early this year the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists advanced its doomsday clock to only 2.5 minutes to midnight, their highest alert since 1953.  According to a January 26, 2017, New York Times piece, two of the group’s officials said, “In 2016, the global security landscape darkened as the international community failed to come to grips with humanity’s most pressing threats: nuclear weapons and climate change,” and went on to say:

“Making matters worse, the [U.S.] now has a president who has promised to impede progress on both of those fronts. . . . Mr. Trump’s statements and actions have been unsettling. He has made ill-considered comments about expanding and even deploying the American nuclear arsenal.”

North Korea's recent aggressive tone, and its development of missiles capable of reaching US targets has of course added to the danger, along with the President's repeated provocative and derogatory statements about its leader, Kim Jong Un. For example, in his address to the United Nations (lauded by evangelist Franklin Graham as "his best speech ever"), President Trump literally threatened to destroy North Korea:

“The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.”

Our threatening to call off the Iran nuclear agreement is another of other factors that may inch us closer toward a nuclear Armageddon. Needless to say, there has never been a time when our efforts at urgent prayer and active persuasion have been more needed.

Six Decades Later, I Remember With Tears

Memories of Highland Retreat will forever be with me.

Four ducks on a pond, 
A grass-bank beyond, 
A blue sky of spring, 
White clouds on the wing; 
What a little thing 
To remember for years-
To remember with tears!

- William Allingham

At Highland Retreat Camp's annual dinner last night I was asked to share some memories of being a part of the leadership of the Camp's fledgling summer camp program in the early 1960's. Board member Rowland Shank and our good friend Gerald Good asked me to be an assistant director for the 1964 season, and asked my soon-to-be wife Alma Jean to help with the food.

I didn’t realize then how that summer would change our lives, leading us to continue working there for the next two years as camp directors, with my home economics major bride managing the kitchen. After that I was privileged to serve on the Highland board for many years, and helped raise money for Highland’s first swimming pool and other projects. Later our own children enjoyed summer camps there and served as counselors.

Preparing for my little talk got me in touch with a rich reservoir of emotional memories I will always cherish. I can still hear Gerry Good’s boisterous voice and hearty laugh, the quieting sound of Capon Run in the middle of the camp grounds, the enthusiastic singing around the campfire, which I loved. Some of those songs still sing themselves in my head: 

I love the mountains,

I love the rolling hills,

I love the flowers

I love the daffodils,

I love the fireside
When the lights are low..

Ah, the firesides. I can still see the weekly "log cabin" campfires blazing in the dark and finally collapsing in a dramatic burst of flames. And I can see the circle of campers all around the pond in a late night candle lighting ceremony, and the quiet candle-lit walk back to camp for the night. And then the  intense competition between tent groups in the last morning's fire building contest.

I can still smell the weekly tinfoil dinners, the pancake and eggs breakfasts around each group's campfire, the Friday evening chicken barbecue provided by Carl Harman, and the taste of lots of great food, enriched by the surplus USDA butter and cheese and peanut butter that were in plentiful supply in those days. 

I can re-experience all this in a deeply visceral way, suggesting the power of this kind of weeklong experience in the company of God’s world and God’s people in a setting like Highland.

I remember one summer particularly, when outstanding counselors like Ron Moyer, Paul Beiler, John Fairfield and others regularly got up well before breakfast to go on bird a walk with whoever wanted to join them, just for the sheer love of nature, and how joining them was seen as really cool by a lot of the kids who looked up to them as role models. 

I recall parents saying things like, My son or daughter couldn’t stop talking about camp and their friends and their hikes and their adventures. And I remember hardworking but fun loving kitchen workers. Not above an occasional prank, one of them once put some ex lax in some chocolate chip cookies packed for a counselor's all day hike, as revenge for his habitually complaining about the food.

So many random things come to mind, mostly the blessings that came our way in spite of our youth and inexperience, and in spite of how primitive everything was those early years. For example, there was the famed “Wayne’s Motor Lodge”, a slightly renovated and very small chicken house which served as the first kitchen, our having to carry water from the bath house for cooking until the first real kitchen was built, the little camper we lived in the first summer we were directors, and of course the army surplus tents that housed the campers in those early years.

So with all camp supporters, I hope we can keep creating these kinds of memories, and always keep the program simple, close to God, close to nature, close to our hearts and always in our prayers.

Highland annual dinner

Getting Past Our Black And White Thinking

Thankfully, God made us all "people of color".

Question: How many Americans are white, and how many are black? Answer: None. Zero. Unless artificially painted for some clown or minstrel act, no human being can be described as either “white” or “black”. Rather, each of us represents one of an infinite number of shades in God’s vast palette of skin colors. In other words, we are all “people of color,” neither ghostly white nor bituminous black, but some shade of pink, brown, peach, tan, coffee or dark olive.

So why think in terms of color-based categories at all?

I’m not suggesting we become color blind, but rather color-honoring, appreciating and celebrating the variety of shapes, sizes, hues and other unique features represented in the human family.

Having said that, we’re faced with an urgent need to address long-standing, racially-based inequities and injustices in our country. These have been with us ever since the original “white supremacists,” our European ancestors, claimed the right to arbitrarily occupy North American land and to conquer and destroy any who dared resist them. Both their beliefs in the “Right of Discovery” and the principle of “Manifest Destiny” represented a racial bias that remains all too common today, consciously or unconsciously held by members of a dominant culture that takes certain advantages and privileges for granted.

In the United States, race still stands out as a major factor associated with people having greater or lesser power, status and influence — power defined here as what helps people achieve their goals. Wealth plays a large role as well, along with other factors like ethnicity, education, national origin, and religious affiliation. Each of these can affect the chances of people getting a desired job, living in the neighborhood of their choice, being admitted to a quality school or receiving a just outcome in court.

Of course, enjoying the typical advantages associated with being part of the dominant culture, like growing up in a well-to-do family rather than a poor one, having access to a good education rather than an inferior one, being part of a mainline Christian denomination, rather than being a Muslim or a Hindu, or being of Western European ancestry rather than of Asian or African descent, do not guarantee anyone’s success. Nor does not enjoying any or many of these advantages doom one to failure. But these factors do tend to create strong headwinds or tailwinds that greatly affect the likelihood of success.

So those of us who are members of a social class formerly known as WASPs (White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants) must acknowledge that we remain “western European people of privilege” who tend to have a head start in the race for success. If we deny that, we should ask whether we would be willing to trade places with those among us who are of non-European descent.

So let’s work at righting past wrongs and creating a truly level playing field for people of all shades of color and all kinds of ethnicities.

Raqqa, Syria: Liberation Through Obliteration

How is this kind of massive bombing not an act of terror and genocide?

To most western observers, finally freeing Raqqa from ISIS control is unmitigated good news, a victory worthy of great celebration.

But at what cost? And who pays?

According to an AP report in today's paper, 80% of this once prosperous city along the Euphrates (about the size of Richmond) is no longer habitable. Hundreds of civilians have been killed or maimed for life by massive bombing and drone strikes that have decimated the population and rendered those who survived homeless and with little hope for their future.

So what constitutes a military success? Have we completely lost our moral bearings and our credibility as a nation that supports human rights for all, including the inherent right to life itself? In the interest of achieving victory at any price, do we justify any and every means of achieving it? A nuclear strike? Chemical warfare?

It's just not possible, in my mind, to make any meaningful moral distinction between the terrible atrocities committed by ISIS and the equally unthinkable terror caused by massive bombing raids.

According to today's article, "Associated Press drone footage taken Thursday showed bombed-out shells of buildings and heaps of concrete slabs piled on streets littered with destroyed cars. Entire neighborhoods were turned to rubble, with no sign of civilian life--testimony to the thousands of bombs dropped on the city mainly by U.S. warplanes."

Someday history will judge us for condoning this form of holocaust. 

May God have mercy on us all. 

For Which Pledge Should We Be 'Kneeling'?

Can Christans pledge unqualified allegiance to the Bible, the Christian flag AND the American flag?

There's been a lot of controversy over certain NFL players kneeling during the singing of the national anthem at football games, with large numbers of patriotic Christians recently vowing to boycott NFL games until something is done to punish them for not standing during this familiar ritual.

My first thought is that such an NFL boycott might be way overdue, given the fact that American sports have become a Mammon-driven, nationalistic religion that demands huge investments of money, time and devotion of its followers and tends to take precedence over faith, family and almost every other loyalty.

But the question of whether Christians should stand with their right hand over their heart and pledge allegiance to a nation's flag remains an important one, assuming we take such forms of oaths seriously. Some Quakers, Amish, Mennonites and other believers, including Jehovah's Witnesses, choose not to do this, based on their belief that they are fundamentally and first of all members of an alternative worldwide kingdom ruled by the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. They argue that we wouldn't expect people who are citizens of some other nation pledge allegiance to our flag, would we?

Other Christians choose to stand out of respect for the government of whatever nation in which they reside, but use the time to pray silently for those in positions of governmental responsibility, as commanded in the New Testament.

The original pledge, written in 1892 by Baptist minister Francis Bellamy, well over a hundred years after the nation's founding, simply said, "I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." The phrases "of the United States of America' and "under God" were added later, the latter in 1954 at the height of the nation's fervent resistance to a godless communism.

In addition to the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed, here's a pledge I would gladly join with others to kneel for:

I pledge unconditional allegiance to the cross-bearing life of Jesus Christ,
and to the worldwide community of beleivers
whom he has called and redeemed,
one people of faith and obedience
offering life, liberty and love for all.

Having said that, I would never insist that others recite this with me. Freedom of speech, conscience and religious expression are among the things that clearly make America great.

How Mammon-Driven Technologies Are Programming Our Kids' Brains

This is more subtle, and more dangerous, than we realize.

According to former Google product manager Tristen Harris, millions of us, and notably our children and teens, are being brainwashed by forms of media that are highly addictive and potentially destructive. "We as individuals can try to use our devices more responsibly," he says, "but it's our willpower against hundreds of engineers who are paid to keep us glued to the screen." 

Here are some of the examples he gives of this kind of highly sophisticated and personalized programming:

YouTube autoplays more videos to keep us from leaving.

Instagram shows new 'likes' one at a time, to keep us checking for more.

Facebook show whatever is known to keep us scrolling, based on our history of use.

Snapchat turns conversations into streaks we don't want to lose.

Our news media turns events into breaking news to keep as many of our eyeballs on the screen as possible.

The primary goal of the entire newer media industry is not to inform, or even to entertain, but to seduce us into buying products and services we and our children are generally far better off without.

It is here that our Old Order Amish and Mennonite friends who shun such technology may be far wiser than they realize. They know intuitively that not everything modern is in their best interest, and that simpler and more direct forms of communication may be best for all of us of all ages. 

Harris's answer, however, is not to abandon technology but to "change the  technology industry to put our best interests first".

Which sounds good, but who gets to determine what those 'best interests' are?

Meanwhile, it had better be each of us, along with others in our communities of faith.

Check this link for a CBS 60-Minutes interview with Harris: 

https://www.cbsnews.com/videos/brain-hacking/

Tristen Harris, CBS 60-minutes photo

Adopted By A Family Of Former Strangers

Ruth Ann and Al Shirk, Alma Jean and I, Gladys and Jesse Yoder,
Orpha and Lloyd Gingrich, Freda Zehr, Lloyd and Beverly Wert
Siblings in the front row are in order of their age, except for
Lloyd, on the right, who should be between Ruth Ann and Alma 
Jean, and Freda, who should be between Alma Jean and Gladys.

Last Saturday Alma Jean and I attended a reunion of the remaining six members of her family (and many of their descendants) at Landis Homes near Lititz, Pennsylvania. Already deceased are her oldest brother Harold (and Mary) Wert, older sister Alene (and Mark) Yoder, and brother-in-law Vernon Zehr.

The Michael and Alma Wert family grew up in rural Juniata County, Pennsvania, at the foot of scenic Shade Mountain, and I met and married beautiful Alma Jean at Eastern Mennonite College (now EMU) in the early sixties.

All of this has blessed me in indescribable ways. The Wert family couldn't have been more welcoming, and I have bonds with them that are comparable to those of my own blood ties (By the way, I'm not related to the Delaware based Yoder brothers who married two of Alma Jean's sisters, but they also adopted me like the rest).

It's wonderful how this works. We leave our own family of origin and become united to an unrelated clan that immediately gives us new siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, parents and a host of nieces and nephews. These chosen bonds add to the wealth of family that adds to our feeling of identity, security and great joy.

It's an amazing grace, and I can never thank God enough for it.