new blog site

Well I have converted.  Please change your subscriptions and links to my new blog address 

joshjsmith.wordpress.com

Everything is pretty much the same just decided to move to a different host.  

Peace and Love

beauty

Beauty is mysterious.  The question of what makes something beautiful is always answered, but never really understood.  Beauty is achieved when it emerges from ugliness.  In other words beauty is order out of chaos.  

What is beautiful about the creation story is that we encounter the God of beauty.  How that beauty came about is not as important as who.  In the creation story we see God separating water from sky, land from water, sky animals from land animals, land animals from sea animals, and humans from all the other creatures. From this story, beauty emerges from nothing, chaos, ugliness.  In essence, it is God’s first act of redemption.  

Beauty then defines what it means to be human.  From the beginning God’s has given humans a creational mandate to subdue and have dominion over the earth.  Therefore, God gave us the responsibility of taking what he has created, and continue to make it beautiful.  The human ability to separate, organize the elements of creation for the betterment of life provides a glimpse of God’s desire for creating humans in his image. 

A White Lotus is a gorgeous flower.  But the beauty of this flower is not merely explained in its intricate design and bright color.  I think the beauty of the white lotus is found in its roots, in its story.  The white Lotus is a flower that grows out of swamp like conditions and blossoms right above the water.  What ends up happening is the the flower redeems surrounding murky water.  

White Lotus is not only a flower, it is a mission that exists in Phenom Pehn Cambodia, that provides a safe place for young girls who have been forced into the prostitute industry.  

Extreme poverty forces families and individuals to make extreme choices to keep their families or them self from dying of hunger or disease.  One choice for a family is to sell their daughter to the prostitute industry to get a substantial amount of money.  The younger the better because that means th more virgin they are.  Once the girl is sold to a brothel, then she is oxygen off to highest bidder (most likely a foreign man).  

International Justice Mission and White Lotus work hard to make sure that these girls are rescued from the brothels and put into a safe place.  In addition, make sure that the brothels are properly prosecuted.  The organization then provides job training and reconnects the girl with her family if possilble.  

That is beautiful because IJM, White Lotus, and these young girls are able to demonstrate an alternative story from the murky nature of people’s lost identity in the creational mandate.  

I began to think about gospel and realized that gospel does not bring beauty it is beauty.  Gospel is not Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in our NIV bible.  Gospel is beauty.  Gospel is IJM and White Lotus where they are living an alternative story, the story of Jesus who emerged from death to bring life.  

In the same way, Jesus followers are called to separate death from life where ever we can though the love of God.  The challenge is that we have to get murky, we have to encounter death so that we can be agents of restoration and reconciliation.

Opportunity | Oppressed

The beauty of visiting another place is not merely seeing the different colors and faces of a culture.  It is not only experiencing the night-life and tasting the food.  Much of the beauty lies in the subtle change that emerges in my own thinking that occurs as a natural part of engaging another culture.  

From my western/American point of view, life is acquired through opportunity.  Depending on what kind of family, neighborhood, or school, opportunity is either given or it has to be taken.  Thus, opportunity is simply a choice for me to capitalize  on to make my life what I want it to be.  

My understanding of opportunity became obvious to me when I engaged the Kmer people.  It became even more noticeable when I walked through the Killing Fields Museum where deep graves with articles of clothing still remain from the genocide that happened only 30 years ago.  Just like every other museum, it tells a story, but it is not a great story… yet.  

The implications of genocide are deep and cannot be resolved through a couple of political programs or foreign support.  In addition, the genocide that happened in Cambodia was not generational or racial.  In attempt to make the country completely communist the Kmer Rouge thought it was only fair to eliminate all the educated leaders in the society.  All doctors, leaders of other political groups, teachers, university teachers, etc.  Once the Kmer Rouge was neutralized, Cambodia had already been paralyzed developmentally.  

The sad thing about this story is that all the people living in poverty and the families who have been torn apart had no choice in the matter.  The awkward thing about it is that when I engage Cambodia I am disturbed by the fact I had no choice in my extreme wealth.  But in my extreme wealth I have a choice to do something about their poverty.  While opportunity is not much of a choice in Cambodia, I can help make it become a choice.  

All this to say, it does not come down to choice for everyone to improve their living situation.  The story goes deeper.  It is not simply a story of economics and choices.  It is a story of oppressed and blessed.  It is a story of being truly human.  It is a story of living imago dei (in the image of God).

The genocide is over, but the oppression is not.  The wake of the genocide is visible when I see extreme poverty and extreme wealth.  The line between rich and poor is so bold that the rich keep getting richer and poor get poorer.  And when I think about gospel, all I ask is, "How can the church bring heaven to earth for the Kmer people?"  When Jesus brought the kingdom of God, he rescued the poor and challenged the rich; he forgave the repentant and challenged the righteous.  I think he did this because the gospel is not supposed to eliminate social classes, but challenged the rich and righteous to bless the poor and oppressed.  Also, the gospel forces me to question whether I am the poor or the rich, the repentant or the righteous.  Regardless of income, social status, and number years as Christian, I think Jesus challenges us to be poor, to be repentant.  

Finally, the gospel challenges me to think when I need Jesus, or when I need to be Jesus.  

story

It just occurred to me as I was sitting listening to my friend John Song, that story brings us together. This epiphany started last night when I sat down for a chocolate chip cookie and a mocha latte in a coffee house called common grounds.  I was quick to open my laptop to get online and my friends demanded my attention because the manager at the shop had visited Washington D.C.  I guess the conversation started because two out of four of us are noticeably white and we all spoke english in. 

This small conversation led us to talk about the coffee shop and its desire to be a positive influence in Cambodia.  Minutes later we were talking with the misionaries who started the coffee shop and learned about the english classes, computer classes, orphanage, tutuoring, and the fact they employ 21 Cambodians at the shop.    

The irony of this occurrence is that it is exactly what my friend John Song is trying to do in Cambodia.  It is called business as mission.    

John Song’s story starts three years ago for me.  I met him and thought that he was extremely angry.  Three years later, now, I realized I am not angry enough.  

John moved to the Philly area to go seminary at Biblical with the hopes of moving back to Utah to plant a church with some people he met from Seminary. It did not take long for him to realize that God had started to shape our stories in the opposite direction of Utah.  In the course of those years our seminary cohort experienced a lot changes.  For John and his family, they realized God was calling him to Cambodia and not Utah.  

Tonight we all sat on the roof top of our hotel sweating and leaning in to hear John’s voice over top the hundreds of motor scooters crawling through streets below us.  John told us about the corruption, the unjust history, and the need for Cambodian people to experience redemption.  Redemption not just through a “saving knowledge” but through the gospel of Jesus that reaches out to heal people.  Redemption that touches the sick, carries the cripple, feeds the hungry, empowers the powerless.  Redemption that provides jobs at fair wages, eliminates corruption, and educates people so that selling a child into prostitution is not an option.  

That is when it occurred to me.  My story is not mine.  It is John’s, yours, and everyone else’s.  I thought about the story of common grounds, John’s journey to seminary for the hope of making a couple friends, and the fact that all 39 of us were sitting there listening to his story, which is my story… our story. 

Cambodia Day 1

“Its like doing a dance,” said my friend Dave referring to the traffic habits of Cambodia.  At first I was completely taken back by the mass confusion of hundreds a mopeds criss-crossing in front, behind, and next to our van traveling along the road.  It is shocking at first because I am used to american ways of driving, get there as fast as I can at the expense of everyone else.  

There is a fundamental difference here. Every driver trusts the other person.  When I was sixteen my dad taught to drive defensively because it wasn’t me that he did not trust, it was the other drivers.  In cambodia you can pull out in the middle of traffic, switch lanes, and even cross a buys street and trust that people will go around or stop.  

It really is like doing a dance.  I dont know much about dancing, which is enough to know that when I try to dance with Gina, my wife, there more discension than harmony because I don’t know enough to decide whether to swoop when she dips, step when she stops, or slide when she hops.  

That being said, if someone, like myself, came in and saw that the raffic was horrible because it was not organized, they would bring more harm than good trying to structure something that is already organically structured.  Grant it, you cannot go 70 mph, but I have not seen a car accident yet, and there are far more vehicles and “disorganization” than american road systems.  

While I am on the subject of organic growth.  I have seen it in other forms of Cambodian culture besides the traffic.  One of the coolest things I saw today was the Olympic stadium.  It was left open for everyone to come play sports, walk, and do aerobics.  They had a pool, track, soccer fields (in the parking lot), etc.  As we made our way through the parking lot we noticed the intensity and talent of the games to lessen in the direction we walked.  The more talented players seemed to have the bigger areas to play, and lesser the smaller areas.  There was no tournament administrator, no scoreboards, no chalked lines, and no cooperate sponsoring - which means no money.  

In addition, to the soccer.  Around the sop of the stadium, as the sun would settle, people would come and set up big speakers and play music.  Within minutes there would be someone leading an aerobics workout session.  Again no companies, no sign-ups, no fees - no money.  Several of these little aerobic classes would set up around the entire stadium. There are hundreds of people exercising together to different types of music, and different styles of exercise.  It was beautiful.  

Cambodia is developing very fast.  On the surface this seems good.  But my friend John Song who has been ministering here for a couple years, says that rich companies and people are buying property developing it and selling it to make a quick buck and leave.  Most of the tie it is foreign investors.  The problem is that the investors motivation is not the people and the Cambodian economy, it is their own wealth.  So while Pnom Pehn seems to be developing well, a huge gap between the rich and poor is emerging.