Last Thursday night, ABC's Nightline featured a face-off on the topic of whether Satan exists or if the whole concept of Satan is fabricated.
While there appeared to be some confusion between the four debaters about what exactly was being debated -- the devil and his appearance, more mythical demon creatures, or a larger idea of evil and its source in the physically-undefined character of Satan (this last idea as well as Satan's ability to manifest in the form of demons being Christian ideas) -- and while complex, unrelated questions associated with today's hot topics (Feminism: Is God male or female?) were brought up by the opposition, it seemed to me, as defense mechanisms when the debate got heated, to my eyes it was Mark Driscoll and Annie Lobert who successfully won the debate in favor of Satan's existence.
While their arguments are obviously affirmed by my faith, their arguments also seemed to answer the secular question that asks why evil and violence and hunger and everything bad in the world continues to permeate the farthest corners of the earth. Deepak Chopra insisted throughout the debate that everyone has a bad side/evil side within themselves, but he failed to provide a greater answer regarding the origin of that inner evil. Bishop Carlton Pearson, while obviously concerned about the power of words and experience to influence our perceptions of reality and truth, did not appear to have a full grasp on his own beliefs and also could not separate Satan from ignorant, racially-incorrect physical descriptions of the devil or of God, nor could he provide a better answer than the protagonist side for the origin of the world's problems.
But thank goodness Satan IS the answer to our question of the origin of evil! When we know the source of our problems, we also can be sure we know the solution to the problems. Thank goodness we can rejoice in the answer found in our Heavenly Father and Lord Jesus Christ!
Go to the ABC News Nightline site for the video of "Does Satan Exist?" (The full video may only be available for a limited time.)
"The Colbert Nation is at it again. This time the comedian has asked viewers of his show to write in his name on an online vote to name the new room of the international space station. Unfortunately, the official rules of the NASA ballot say that the space agency is not bound to comply with voting results. If they welsh on this one, we should boycott space ..."
http://www.relevantmagazine.com/main/slices/culture/16253-the-colbert-universe --- Go here for the full article on Yahoo.
And go here to vote in the Space Station "New Room" contest.
-------------------- Yesterday, Seth "tower" Hurd (a radio host of Shine.fm in Chicago, one of the largest Christian radio stations in the country) posted an article to RELEVANT magazine called "The Christian Music Conspiracy". I highly recommend you check it out, as it asks us to branch out in music taste and do our part to help end the somewhat bad rap that contemporary Christian music often receives.
While I really liked the article overall, I also enjoyed reading much of the follow-up commentary by readers. I have to agree with some of the commentators that it's often easier for me to connect spiritually to the themes and the artistic direction of so-called "secular" music than to the campiness and old-school-ness of some overplayed mid-1990s Christian music that proliferates the radios and contemporary Christian church services alike. So, while I enjoy actually participating in large worship gatherings that revolve around new Christian rock-Gospel of the Hillsong and Casting Crowns variety, if I am simply listening to or watching a band, I will just as often see God in the music when it's a secular group than when it's a Christian group.
One such example is the punk-rock band Linkin Park. The band has found its niche in the secular realm, though much of its style and themes may have been influenced by the band's members' Judeo-Christian backgrounds. (SeeChristianity Todayfor a greater analysis.)
But just listening to the lyrics and absorbing the band's art direction makes it easy to understand how powerful a song, regardless the genre or industry, can be on one's heart.
Watch Linkin Park's "What I've Done" Video here for more proof.
--------------------- My verse of the day from Sojourners:
Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob and chiefs of the house of Israel, who abhor justice and pervert all equity, who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with wrong! Its rulers give judgment for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets give oracles for money; yet they lean upon the Lord and say, "Surely the Lord is with us! No harm shall come upon us."
- Micah 3:9-11
*We cannot insist that the Lord is with us and acting on behalf when we are not committed to His justice, His mercy, His grace, His equity, and His peace. Not our definition of it, not our sham of a version of any of it, but His.
--------------------- So I've been reading the education-related sections in Dick Morris's Outrage book, and let me tell you, he's got me outraged..at him!
In the chapter titled "How Teachers Unions Block Education Reform", Morris correctly infers that teachers unions block reform and keep change from coming to ineffective and outdated practices, and he also, in my opinion, correctly identifies charter schools as the route to successful schooling practices. He also nicely observes that probably the biggest benefit of No Child Left Behind is that it finally gives the blue-collar and lower middle-class parents of failing school districts the opportunity to have a say-so in their children's educations, without being forced to suffer the life-long consequences of ineffective teachers and inadequate learning.
However, I started throwing air-punches at Morris when he mentioned these ideas for parents to advocate on their students' behalves after scoffing at and failing to address the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)'s very real concern that the standardized testing mandated by NCLB "fails to take account of differences among schools" and "doesn't do enough to recognize the special problems of urban schools." Does Morris seriously think that the parent of an urban child stuck in a failing school -- a parent already disassociated from her child's education because she herself 1)is a junior-high drop-out, 2) works two jobs to try to make ends meet, and 3) has several other children to worry about at home -- is going to really understand her options for finding her child a better school, have the time and resources to go about getting that child into another school, be able to provide safe transportation to a more distant school site, and, if necessary, fight for a new charter school or reformed local school board?? Does he really think that will happen? Clearly Morris doesn't know an urban school from a suburban one, or stay-at-home mom from a struggling single parent.
Morris also made me want to throw up when, on page 191, he tries to convince us readers that the common teacher complaint of having to "teach to the [NCLB standardized] tests" is no complaint at all and is actually a good thing.
"The idea that "teaching to the test" is wrong is especially absurd when the exam measures basic reading and math abilities. We're not talking about flights of logic or philosophy classes. If teachers teach to reading and math tests for elementary and junior high students, so much the better!"
Ummm, barf. Clearly Morris has not talked to college admissions officers about how, since the advents of NCLB reform in the early 2000s, admissions essay quality has plummeted and creativity has significantly disappeared from applicants' writing pieces. Then, you might ask, don't the students at least show a mastery of basic writing skills? Here, too, the basic reading instruction of elementary and junior high -- tailored to the tests, of course -- is incomplete and lacking, just as I've found that in the two high schools in which I work -- schools that, mind you, receive high "passing" marks by NCLB standards -- many of the students don't understand basic functions of middle school grammar and often have difficulty expressing their thoughts on paper, even in the most basic, typical, overused, and restrictively uncreative 5-paragraph essay.
Dick Morris, I know you have lots of high-end experience in political consulting and analysis, but please, before you go ranting and raving about how you think public schools should and do work, go do your homework.
One of the many, many blessings of pursuing ministry with TeachOverseas is that God continues to teach me more about Himself through the ministry -- and that's pretty darn great, considering I haven't even begun training with the organization! Yesterday, God showed me once again to rely fully on Him and to trust Him with real abandon.
Recently, in Young Life Leadership discussions and in my own reading, I had been learning more and more about how to pray and about what to pray and about what it means to petition God for things. John 15:7 (NIV) tells us, in words directly from Jesus's lips, to pray expectantly, that we may know we will receive that of which we ask God: "If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you." I've been reading daily in the devotional Voices of the Faithful, and in Beth Moore's introduction to March -- a month devoted to the theme of prayer -- she adopts this attitude.
"Many of us are making God's will harder to find than it is. If we have an active relationship with God and expose our hearts and minds fairly regularly to God's Word, our prayers are very often going to fall within the bounds of God's will... In other words, the words of God work dramatically to conform our desires to the will of God. That's what the Psalmist meant when he told us that if we'd delight ourselves in God, we'd receive the desires of our hearts (Ps. 37:4). The more God overtakes our passions and fills our minds with His words, the more readily we can pray and have what we desire."
I think Beth Moore has understood this lesson correctly: that our heart's desires and petitions to God will be in line with God's own desires and plans for our lives if we are in faithful communion with Him.
Eugene Peterson interpreted Jesus's words in John 15 this way in The Message:
"I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you're adjoined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can't produce a thing. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire. But if you make yourselves at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon. This is how my Father shows who he is -- when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples."
This week, I wondered, am I maturing? Where is the proof in the pudding? Where is the proof of my beliefs? Is the harvest abundant? I can talk of my faith all I want, but have I given God the opportunity to show me how my faith lives? I returned to this conversation of expectancy in prayer, and I thought, shouldn't I have this attitude ALL the time?
So yesterday, as I was driving home from work, knowing I was going to go directly to my mailbox to check if I'd received any other responses from potential supporters of the TeachOverseas ministry, I prayed specifically that I would hear from a particular couple. They are the parents of an old friend, and I knew their support -- in prayer, in spirit, and possibly in finances -- was something that would really encourage me and help arm me in the Spirit for the battle ahead. I prayed, Lord, please show me that [this couple is] on board with this ministry. Please give me their support, and show it to me today. You are all-powerful, and I know this is not beyond you.
I ran some errands and then drove back to my apartment, pulled into the drive, got my mailbox key, and checked the box immediately to find two TeachOverseas responses, including one from this couple from whom I'd just prayed for a response! In their envelope was an incredibly encouraging letter, a promise of daily prayer support, and a check in addition!
Wow, God is good. He holds steadfastly to His promises that He will be there for us in our needs, however big or small. He desires us to cling to Him, not only because He cherishes relationship and knows how much better it makes life for us, but also so we can be sure that, if we're "at home" with Him, then we can be sure to "ask whatever [we] want and it will be done for [us]" (John 15:7, Message & CSB).
Yesterday, when my prayer was answered, I know God was showing me both His power and His intimacy in my life. I don't know how exactly it happened. Perhaps because my heart was at home with God's desires, he granted my request by having the couple's letter ready for me. Or, perhaps the Holy Spirit was already at work within me, and It caused me to think of this particular couple when I prayed, knowing their letter was waiting for me at home. Either way, it was an extraordinary act of God, and a wonderful gesture of affirmation.
So what then is my response to God, here? God, please, continue to show me Your Glory in marvelous, magnificent ways -- throughout this process with TeachOverseas and my whole life through. Now that I've seen it, I certainly don't ever want this intimacy and its promise to ever, ever escape me.
Back on February 8th, my Young Life team met to study what a ministry of reconciliation is and what it is to grow one. Specifically, we studied the following passage by the Apostle Paul.
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
16 From now on, then, we do not know anyone in a purely human way. Even if we have known Christ in a purely human way, yet now we no longer know Him like that. 17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come. 18 Now everything is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed the message of reconciliation to us. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ; certain that God is appealing through us, we plead on Christ's behalf, "Be reconciled to God." 21 He made the One who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
Essentially, in verse 21 we see exactly how Christ atoned for our sins on our behalf by offering himself as a sin offering in our place. As a result, Christ allows us, through his perfect sacrifice, to once again have a piece of that righteousness of God.
Righteousness of God!
That is the coolest part to me -- because we are no longer bound to sin, because we have a real example in Christ of how to lead a godly, fulfilling life in which chains to an ugly existence unplanned by God for us can no longer hold us back from true life, we in fact have the opportunity and immense honor of being the righteousness of God. And if righteousness -- a word that encompasses holiness, rightness, morality, purity, and the absence of guilt -- is gracefully bestowed on us, then we are truly growing in God's image. Which is what was intended by God in the first place, right? To be creations in His image.
So by accepting Christ's great atoning sacrifice, therein we recognize God's original plan for all creation and express our desire to be a part of it. It is the first step of reconciliation.
That the word "reconciliation" is used in this passage is crucial. Reconciliation, by definition, necessitates a full reparation of injury and restoration of friendly relations. When two friends are reconciled together, there is the requisite apology and the forgiveness that follows, but there is also a full restoration to what the friendship was like before the wrongdoing. Otherwise, the forgiveness is shallow and reconciliation hasn't really happened. Likewise, even after we have accepted God's forgiveness and have acknowledged Him, if there is no effort to pursue His true design for our lives -- one in which we are also reconciled to the people around us and to the earth itself -- then there is no full reconciliation to God.
And God loves us too much to not want us to run after Him, to not crave His very being, to not want even a glimpse of the magnificence of His plans for our lives. He says, Please, do not let your lives be limited by living in a "purely human way" or by the flesh, or material possessions, or any sense of unworthiness. He says, You are worthy of carrying this banner, and your lives will be enriched by it.
So, too, if we wave the banner boldly, do we have the opportunity to become more and more Christ-like and, in so doing, serve as Christ's ambassadors. It is not a light task, but it is the only fulfilling one. If we allow God to inspire our lives, then others too may see and know the joy of living a rich and purposeful life.
And for the ministry of Young Life, specifically, this is the whole point.
2 Corinthians 8:9
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: although He was rich, for your sake He became poor, so that by His poverty you might become rich.
We may give up much to follow this path, but we do it anyway: because Christ before us sacrificed everything for us, and because even in renouncing old ways, we find a richness that is neverending and completely priceless.
I watched this video this past weekend with 700 other Young Life leaders and committee members, who, at the video's end, felt a collective sense of urgency and empowerment to do something - anything - to help end injustice worldwide. For Young Life leaders, that is among high school students, in whom we hope to surmount general apathy and lives lived by pop culture's example, and to spread the hope of Jesus and the peace of the Holy Spirit. For me next year in the Czech Republic, the challenge will be related, now simply taken up in a land dominated by secularism and distrust of religion and the idea of a God. For so many others, the tasks are endlessly different: offering aid, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, empowering the poor, etc.
Matthew 9:35-38 (NLT) "35 Jesus traveled through all the towns and villages of that area, teaching in the synagogues and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom. And he healed every kind of disease and illness. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 He said to his disciples, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. 38 So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields.” [emphasis added].
Jesus is in charge of the harvest. It is not up to us! We can, however, be used by Him as compassionate, loving, persistent tools of this holistic evangelism.
The battle against human trafficking and modern-day slavery is raging in this country.
Good news found on yahoo.com:
FBI, police rescue child prostitutes around US
By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer Devlin Barrett, Associated Press Writer – Mon Feb 23, 3:05 pm ET
WASHINGTON – The FBI has rescued 48 suspected teenage prostitutes, some as young as 13 years old, in a nationwide sweep to remove kids from the illegal sex trade and punish their accused pimps.
Over a three-night initiative called Operation Cross Country, federal agents working with local law enforcement also arrested more than 571 suspects on a variety of federal and state prostitution-related charges, the bureau said.
The teenage prostitutes found in the investigation ranged in age from 13 to 17.
"We may not be able to return their innocence but we can remove them from this cycle of abuse and violence," said FBI Director Robert Mueller.
Meanwhile, in Memphis, Tenn., a man pleaded guilty Monday to federal civil rights charges for sex trafficking in minors. Leonard Fox faces at least 10 years in prison after admitting that he arranged for underaged girls to engage in sex for money.
"To sexually prey upon young girls in this manner for financial gain is particularly damaging to the victims and an affront to the society in which we live," said Loretta King, acting head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.
Historically, federal authorities rarely play a role in anti-prostitution crackdowns, but the FBI is becoming more involved as it tries to rescue children caught up in the business.
"The goal is to recover kids. We consider them the child victims of prostitution," said FBI Deputy Assistant Director Daniel Roberts.
"Unfortunately, the vast majority of these kids are what they term 'throwaway kids,' with no family support, no friends. They're kids that nobody wants, they're loners. Many are runaways," Roberts said.
Most of the children are put into the custody of local child protection agencies.
Agents in cities from Miami to Chicago to Anchorage, Alaska took part in the operation.
Special Agent Melissa Morrow of the FBI's Washington office said the operation has put them on the trail of a particular 16-year-old prostitute they still haven't found.
Adult prostitutes arrested during the operation provided key tips about the girl, the agent said.
"She is currently 16 and started when she was 13. Now she is out there recruiting other juveniles as well," said Morrow, adding that finding the girl is "at the top of our list."
The federal effort is also designed to hit pimps with much tougher prison sentences than they would likely get in state criminal courts.
Government prosecutors look to bring racketeering charges or conspiracy charges that can result in decades of jail time.
"Some of these networks of pimps and their organizations are very sophisticated, they're interstate," said Roberts, requiring wiretaps and undercover sting operations to bring charges.
The weekend's roundup marked the third such Operation Cross Country, and is part of a broader federal program launched in 2003 to crack down on the sexual exploitation of children.
One of the repeating themes in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success is that all of the individuals who are identified by society as most successful at their trades -- Bill Gates, professional athletes, 19th century entrepreneurs, pioneering lawyers, etc -- did not surf their way to success on intelligence and hard work alone. True, they no doubt possessed some natural ability and, at the very least, the drive to push themselves, but they also were children of exceptional circumstance whose successes were the products of so many different factors that popular press normally ignores. One of these is the fact that they put in an extraordinary amount of time practicing their trades -- many upwards of 10,000 hours -- before big time success ever hit them. I bring this up in relation to education because in its constant practice -- either in a classroom or through self-education in one's own time -- is the cause of a person's climb to success. This is especially important to defeating the old class explanation for why the educational gap exists; this class explanation, particularly relevant to geographic regions strongly dominated by an additional race-class paradigm, suggests that middle- and upper-class achievement is the result of an innate intelligence greater than that of the lower-class. I hope all agree with me that this argument is completely unfounded, on top of being disgusting.
Gladwell points out, though, that in the face of this class intelligence argument not holding water, public opinion and educational policy professionals have transferred responsibility for the educational gap to the schools themselves. "An enormous amount of time is spent talking about reducing class size, rewriting curricula, buying every student a shiny new laptop, and increasing school funding -- all of which assumes that there is something fundamentally wrong with the jobs schools are doing (259)." Gladwell, on the other hand, has done his homework and agrees with sociologist Karl Alexander that the research shows schools are, in fact, doing a fine job. In analyzing standardized tests given at both the beginning and end of any given school year, from first to fifth grade students of lower-class actually make more academic progress than the wealthiest of students. So how does the gap occur then? It's in the summer months away from school during which lower-class students fall behind. Wealthy students reap the benefits of being cultivated by their parents and by being surrounded by books, and intellectual conversation, and summer camps, and extra classes. In other words, they get to continue to practice their knowledge and gain some of the 10,000 hours other big shots like Bill Gates earned before he really stood out from the crowd. Their counterparts, on the other hand, are limited by their background and don't get to practice academics over the summer, which also means they forget some of what they learned during the year, and they're academically farther behind their wealthy peers at the start of the following school year.
This is especially true in my schools in Washington County, where the school year is traditionally several days shorter than many schools across the country, so as to allow students to help their families during planting and harvesting seasons. That may happen less these days, but the legacy of a farming calendar endures. Then add to it a 2 1/2 month summer vacation and schools in which students too often wander the halls and sign up for courses where homework can be completed during class, and you have the perfect formula for a culture in which students at an early age under-perform their peers across the country and therefore become more and more discouraged from making academic progress as they grow older. Hopefully they make it to high school graduation, but for many the next step is to drop out. This scenario is just another reason I have a job; this is how a college-going culture has escaped so many towns in rural Southwest Virginia.
So what is the solution? Gladwell says it's really a lot simpler than we'd think: "[Karl] Alexander, in fact, has done a very simple calculation to demonstrate what would happen if the children... went to school year-round. The answer is that poor kids and wealthy kids, would, by the end of elementary school, be doing math and reading at almost the same level (259)." And this, I failed to mention earlier, is in spite of poorer children starting at a disadvantage to the wealthy children. In Alexander's study, in the first standardized test of the 1st grade, poor children scored a full 32 points (significantly) below the high-income average. Summer schooling would more than help students make up for this initial disadvantage.
Highlighted as an example in Gladwell's books are the famous KIPP schools -- schools that don't require an intelligence test or entrance exam to be admitted, but merely a commitment to attend classes longer than an average school, to do extensive homework in the evenings, and to go to school for three weeks in the summer. It's the added classtime that enables success in students of all economic and racial backgrounds. Sure, it takes great sacrifice on the part of teachers, parents, and students themselves, but if working extra hours and changing the vacation schedule are the solutions for finally providing equal educational opportunities for all, then I think it's a sacrifice that I, personally, can be more than willing to make.
I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Outliers: The Story of Success, and found that several of his points, though all were well outlined and supported, struck a special chord with me after working for the past 19 months in two rural, low-income high schools based in communities where the traditional occupation is farming.
Following a discussion on the relevance of genius level IQs to an individual's chance for success (there was discovered to be a threshold after which additional intelligence provides no special advantage), Gladwell provides markedly different life trajectories of two individuals who have been considered to be smarter than, well, just about everyone. Gladwell explains how this could have happened by diving into a study by sociologist Annette Lareau, in which she found the single influencing factor in the success of third graders was class. While we'd think there'd be more more divergent results -- not merely two options -- on the assumption that there are endless philosophies on parenting, Lareau instead found that "wealthier parents raised their kids one way, and the poorer parents raised their kids another way (104)."
At first, this doesn't appear to be much of a surprise; wealthier children have many obvious advantages: particularly, access to money, books and educational resources in the home, parents who have more free time to devote to them, and a greater variety of extracurricular activities (such as dance and sports and music lessons, all of which normally require the availability of extra spending money and parents who can shuttle their children to and from all of their appointments). We all understand the basic advantages of being born rich or being born poor, and how poor parents are often stretched thin on resources and time, with little left to give to their children. But what I previously didn't realize, before reading Gladwell's book, was in what way the differences in parenting styles caused by the availability of resources to people of middle/upper and lower classes influences the future success of children.
Gladwell really does put it best: "Lareau calls the middle-class parenting style 'concerted cultivation.' It's an attempt to actively 'foster and asses a child's talents, opinions and skills.' Poor parents tend to follow, by contrast, a strategy of 'accomplishment of natural growth.' They see as their responsibility to care for their children but to let them grow and develop on their own. Lareau stresses that one style isn't morally better than the other. The poorer children were, to her mind, often better behaved, less whiny, more creative in making use of their own time, and had a well-developed sense of independence. But in practical terms, concerted cultivation has enormous advantages. The heavily scheduled middle-class child is exposed to a constantly shifting set of experiences. She learns teamwork and how to cope in highly structured settings. She is taught how to interact comfortably with adults, and to speak up when she needs to. In Lareau's words, the middle-class children learn a sense of 'entitlement' (104-5)."
Gladwell takes care to emphasize this is entitlement not in the negative way that we normally think of it, but in a way that implies individuals have "'the right to pursue their own individual preferences and to actively manage interactions in institutional settings'(105)." Because individuals coming from poorer backgrounds typically have not had parents who could (1) devote the time and effort to the concerted cultivation of their children, nor (2) recognize the importance of concerted cultivation because they themselves grown up poor and remained poor, the individuals lack the comfort in institutional settings and skill of speaking up and advocating for themselves that is so defines the most successful of individuals. Indeed, it can make or break those with even the highest measurable IQs. That is because, in many settings, individuals coming from poor backgrounds are distant and distrustful and unable to tailor their environments to their personal use (105).
When reading this in Outliers, a light-bulb turned on for me. It completely explains how my students, 14-18 years old with habits and traits ingrained in them from childhood, much more often than not do not take advantage of so many opportunities presented to them. They fail to meet deadlines, they don't bring in materials when I ask, they are afraid to call any person of "authority" on the phone, they are wary of involving their parents in their schooling, and they don't understand the importance of going the extra mile (especially in relation to college applications and proving themselves worthy to their choices schools). And when things don't go their way as a result, they shrug off their dreams, calling them opportunities lost.
The saddest part of it, of course, is that just as often, those dreams are not lost. They would still have been capable through further work and research and finding the right people with which to converse. And on top of that, better opportunities are oftentimes presented in the face of these "lost" opportunities, but my students are so consumed with discouragement that they cannot see them. This phenomenon is crystal clear in the life of the high school football star profiled on Diane Sawyer's recent 20/20 special on Appalachia (Children of the Mountains). This student was homeless, living in a truck because his family was taken over by violence, alcoholism, drug dealing, and poverty, but he received a football scholarship to a nearby college. After a first semester struggling to keep up with his peers, both in classes and (especially) in a college social life where money was necessary to keep up, he dropped out, moving back to the poverty of the hills, hoping for any job to come his way, facing a coal mining future, and picking coal off the side of a highway hill to warm his family's home.
This attitude of defeatism is perpetuated all around me in the hills of Southwest Virginia, too. It's like, if one thing ever goes wrong in someone's life, it's a sign for him/her not to push through it because the world doesn't want him/her to succeed. And so they don't push through, and of course they never climb that ladder. It's all because these people don't have the attitude of entitlement instilled in them by their parents. And what follows is nothing less than heartbreaking.
TeachOverseas has placed me on the Czech Republic team for the 2009-2010 school year! I am really looking forward to serving the Lord in the land of Kafka, Kundera, Knedliky, and castles! I will be placed in one of five cities, so stay tuned for more info about that.
