Bearing Witness (Iran)

Today as Americans celebrate our liberty, it is proper to consider the plight of those who struggle under oppression:

Over the last few weeks I have closely followed the news out of Iran. The highly suspicious election results spurred large protests throughout the country followed by a media blackout and a violent crackdown. Now most of the public protests have been crushed, and the protesters are being executed or tortured into making false confessions.

I justified spending so much energy on this because I have occasionally helped by passing messages for protesters so they can hide their identities from authorities, but I have wondered how much of my interest was just morbid curiosity for sensational events? For this reason I have hesitated from posting about Iran on my blog.

Last weekend we went to a candlelight vigil with Iranian students here in Georgia. They emphasized that they don't want US government intervention, which would play into the hands of their oppressors. Many Americans asked what they could do. A young Iranian man said, "the people of Iran need your support and praise."

This is Iran's struggle. But many protesters risked their lives to get this documentation of their movement out to the world. Iran needs the world to witness their boldness and suffering. Their love of liberty is deeper than ours.

Therefore this post is to bear witness and respect their courage:


A video about the election aftermath posted 6/19/09:



To show their number those who oppose the government go to rooftops each night and call out "God is great" the same as happened a generation ago during the 1979 Revolution. This is a video taken by a young woman:



Police on roof firing at protesters in the street below:



The death of Neda Soltan, a young woman shot in street on 6/20/09 by militia for protesting for freedom: (Warning: Graphic Video only watch if you feel you are able.)

To read more about Neda Soltan click here.


A protester calling CNN on 6/24/09:


An Iranian propaganda film blaming the West for meddling and justifying rounding up students and intellectuals who espouse democratic ideals:



Today as we celebrate our freedom and liberty, let us not forget those around the world who struggle under oppression, especially our brothers and sisters in Iran.

Killing in the name of...

As a blog that often espouses Pro-life ideas I think it is important along with all the pro-life community to soundly condemn the murder of George Tiller. Tiller was a well-known abortionist who did late pregnancy abortions. He was shot yesterday in the foyer of his church.

Being pro-life means trusting that killing is not the right way to fix problems. Tiller had most certainly killed thousands of children, but stepping outside of justice and killing him is evil and inexcusable. Murder and mayhem for a good cause is still murder and mayhem. It is sad that many in our society believe violence is the path to goodness and peace (apparently even a few isolated pro-lifers).

It is encouraging to see the pro-life community as a whole condemn this violence. I hope that the understanding that even the killing of so bad a person as Tiller is wrong will lead the movement to oppose other such behavior such as capital punishment and unjust wars. I am still hopeful that someday our culture will find common ground on a Consistent Life Ethic that defends and respects all human life.

Covenant College In Trouble Again!

If you are unfamiliar with my Alma Mater you can ignore this post, but if you care at all about that school read on...

Covenant College is in trouble again! A couple years ago Covenant got in it so deep The Integrator had to come out of retirement to rescue the school. Thankfully this year no cartooning is needed. Wise President Nielson will save the college from the worst menace it has faced in years: Professors!

Professors at Covenant have a long history of distracting young people with tests, lectures, and a whole lot of discussion on books and such. Back when I was a student they seemed to think we should spend a majority of our time learning things. All that learning takes a lot of the fun out of college.

It's about time the President stood up to those professors! Out of 70 professors he's firing 10 of them. They call it "right sizing" but the other 60 professors will get the message: stop bothering the kids with all that book learning! An added benefit is this frees up some cash for what really makes a college great: competitive athletics!

If we could fire 30 or 40 more worthless professors we might be able to produce an athletics program capable of losing in the first round of the NCAA tournament! Just think how much pride that would bring to Covenant and the PCA!

Let's face it: graduating year after year of intelligent, Christian liberal arts graduates was getting dull. It is time the college stopped being so hung up on education and moved on to bigger and better things. Thanks to the visionary leadership of Neil Neilson Covenant can become what God intended it to be: the world's greatest Presbyterian Sports Camp!


*If you happen to sympathize with those backwards-minded students and alumni that still want Covenant to give liberal arts education you can oppose President Neilson's brilliant plan by working with others on Facebook, Twitter, or write a letter directly to him.

To Prepare A Face

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions

From "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Profrock" by T. S. Eliot

Ecuador Photo Essay

I have been wondering for several months how to write a post about the time I spent in Ecuador. I am still at a loss for good words to describe the experience of Ecuador and the people of the Andes. Considering how my own nation and culture are in many ways still a mystery to me, I doubt I could do justice to the world of Ecuador. Instead I'm posting my first photo essay of images from Ecuador.

Click on the photos for larger images.

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He's Not White Or Black

All the recent media coverage celebrating our “first black president” makes me recall an interesting article in the Washington Post entitled He's Not Black.

Being in a interracial marriage and raising an interracial son, debates on ethnic identity sparked by Obama's election have a sense of urgency to me. How do I raise my son to be himself when society cannot decide what he is?

Barack Obama calls himself “Black” although his mother was a white woman from Kansas. He has brown skin and coarse hair. He identifies himself as what he looks like rather than what he is. Obama was raised during a time of racial tension in America when those with mixed heritage were often stuck in a cultural no-man's-land. In a sense he was forced to pick a side. In his book “Dreams From My Father” he says that he felt as a young man that people that identified themselves as interracial were betraying their fellow blacks as just “ordinary niggers.” (His words)

That young man eventually got his bearings and achieved greatness. The America that elected him president is very different than the one into which he was born. The political tensions surrounding race have dissipated, something America seems to have only fully realized once a brown-skinned man became president. Cultural assumptions based on ethnicity, however, are as prevalent as ever. Jamie Foxx commented at an inaugural ball that Obama's dance moves were proof “we definitely have a black president.” We are right to assume that culture and upbringing have an effect on a person, but it is absurd when we assign cultural identities to a people just because of their skin. Obama was raised by a white Kansan mother in Indonesia, but that doesn't matter. He is just “black.” You are what you appear to be.

It is this racial destiny assigned by looks that gave me anxiety when my wife was pregnant. I wondered how I a white man would raise a son that was identified by everyone as a black man. An unusual genetic shuffle, however, produced the opposite of what I anticipated. If Barack Obama is black, then my son is certainly white. His skin is lighter than mine and his hair is very straight. Even thought he looks just her, people seem to assume his beautiful, black mother is his babysitter. Throughout his life people will think he is white and make assumptions about him based on assigning him to this racial group.

My son may be light-skinned but he is not white nor do I want him to be. Obama may be dark-skinned but he is not black even though he calls himself that. Even the American categories of “white” and “black” are imprecise groupings of people of many ethnicities that where artificially created to justify slavery and segregation. It is true that culture and family affect an individual, but assigning culture based on skin tone is backward. Perhaps eons ago when humans rarely moved one could make accurate judgments about lineage and culture just by looking at a person's features, but in our interconnected world assumptions based on skin are more likely to mislead than inform.

Obama described his first innocent encounters with the world when “I was too young to realize I needed a race.” He doesn't need a race, nor does my son. Nor does anyone. A person's physical description doesn't necessitate a cultural classification. My son will probably always be fair-skinned, but that doesn't make him white and it definitely doesn't make him less his mother's child. He is who he is, and he can be proud of all of his heritage without having to pick or have one assigned to him.

The Washington Post wrote “We are racially sophisticated enough to elect a non-white president, and we are so racially backward that we insist on calling him black. Progress has outpaced vocabulary.” Racism may be nearly eradicated but Race with all its presumptions and misjudgments is alive and well. We can discuss our cultures and bodies without needing to draw these artificial lines between us. I hope my son is proud of all of his family and his heritage. He doesn't need to claim a color in order to have identity. He is himself and that should be enough.

Sanctity of Life

I recently found a blog post by a pastor on "Sanctity of Life Sunday." It is a holiday I think only Conservative Christians would even be aware of. I was very impressed with his words. I think his perspective is something more of us should consider: That protecting all human life is a deeper and wider calling than the foolish Right vs. Left bickering in which our energies are so often mired.

"I hate Sanctity of Human Life Sunday because I’m reminded that we have to say things to one another that human beings shouldn’t have to say. Mothers shouldn’t kill their children. Fathers shouldn’t abandon their babies. No human life is worthless, regardless of skin color, age, disability, economic status. The very fact that these things must be proclaimed is a reminder of the horrors of this present darkness."

You can read his entire post here: Why I Hate Sanctity of Life Sunday

Christmas and its Discontents

I had been irritable recently because I had to work so much around Christmas. Time with my family and friends is in such short supply now, and I had so little during the holidays.

My dissatisfaction made me more sensitive to the general unhappiness of this season. The quiet discontentedness of people I see in my office in December is overwhelming. One patient put it bluntly, “Christmas is depressing.”

This unhappiness is not due to the materialism that ads try to sell each holiday. Not one of my miserable patients was obsessed with presents or possessions. It is the wholesome things about Christmas that create the misery: the peace, joy, and family happiness. None of these things happen much in real people's lives.

Against this shinny myth of merriness real holidays seem so ugly. Modern Christmas is a microcosm of our American Dream: a belief that harmony and happiness will always be our natural state. As a result we are miserable when we discover that our own lives and families fall short of our expectations. Materialism never destroyed the wholesome holidays. Ravenous buying is the degrading way we seek consolation once we realize the “perfect Christmas” we hoped for was a lie.

If we expected Christmas to be merry it is because we misunderstood the celebration. Christ was born because we are always so far away from hope and wholeness. Even the most jolly of families hides flaws, cruelty, and contradiction. These blemishes are most obvious when we try to manufacture a joyful occasion. Christ was born on Christmas day to save us from ourselves. We should rejoice because he came. We rejoice because He died for us, not because we imagine our lives or families to be anything worth celebrating in themselves.

Dancing on a Midsummer Night 1935

I was looking through a gridbook and found this review of the 1935 film of "Midsummer Night's Dream" written by myself as a sentimental 21 year old college student. I find it even more interesting as a man with a job and family who will turn 31 tomorrow:

Old Film can be dangerous. It undermines the illusion that the present is eternal. We will not always overflow with vitality, strength, and beauty. Tonight we watched the 1935 Midsummer Night's Dream. It was breathtaking. What affected me most were the long dance scenes of the fairies and goblins. The dance was beautiful and stunning. It embodied life and death, magic and love, passion and sadness, sexuality and strength. It made me want to rise and dance around campus.

But that dance was not tonight, it was 65 years ago. All the dancers (even the children) are either broken with age or long dead and decaying. Film gives us something entirely different from a live performance. A live dance lets us become lost in the furious passions of this moment. In this moment I feel bold and strong, and the women in my life are as beautiful and graceful as the dancers.

Seeing a dance from 1935 doesn't allow such thoughtless joys. We must celebrate with those long dead. We cannot help but see this spellbinding pathos of the dance within the context of time. This forces us the acknowledge that even our own nights of dancing out the youthful life that pulses in our veins will end. We too grow old and die. We are aging even as we dance.

Film lets us partake in these mad revelries with past generations, but it caries with it a sad taste of mortality. As T.S. Eliot declared, “The dancers are all gone under the hill.” The dance may be eternal but the dancers are not.




Unfortunately the first video I posted was deleted. This is another section of the film.

Hope and Politics

It is with mixed emotions that I congratulate Barack Obama on becoming the president of the United States. It is an historic landmark for America to choose a man with brown skin to be our leader. After listening to my wife's grandfather, the grandson of a slave, tell stories of all the discrimination he received as a soldier fighting for his country, I understand why America needed this—and why my African American wife was excited to vote for Obama. Obama really is a great man, and having a president capable of articulating a vision for America will be a welcome change after 8 years of a president who seemed incapable of explaining his ideas or decisions.

As proud as I am to have a president with a similar interracial makeup to my son, I am also dismayed that this president would have wholeheartedly supported us in killing our son 6 months ago if we had decided he was inconvenient—even offering government funds to help terminate him.

My wife says that I am foolish to hope for leaders that always guide us toward what is better. America will never choose a president like Joe Schriner. Politicians (at least the ones capable of being elected) won't or can't save America from itself. Perhaps trying to stop evils committed by our nation through voting is misguided. After all politicians only enable us to do the injustices to our fellow man that we have already decided as a society that we wish to allow.

This election cycle has me discouraged about the willingness of American to vote for any real improvement in this nation. Several state ballot measures to limit abortion lost badly. It seems that the much touted “values voters” are only really energized to ban gays from getting marriage licenses, but aren't willing to stop the murder of unwanted infants (just as most “pro-life” politicians haven't done a thing to limit abortions). The unpopularity of the war in the campaign was only rivaled by Obama, who opposed the war, falling all over himself to assure us that he is very willing to strike other countries. It seems voters don't have the stomach to accept the sacrifices required either for war or sustained peace. American voters seem to expect war to be convenient, easy, and bloodless—things war will never be. Obama had to repeatedly reassure voters that he will not “spread around wealth,” because Americans would not tolerate being required to share their means with the needy. In the end this election was about the economy. The results imply that Americans vote for their money and convenience; right and wrong doesn't factor into most voters decisions at all.

After spending a great deal of time on politics here at the Gridbook Blog I wonder if I have fallen into the pitfall of imagining that real change can be effected through government. This election has been touted as a reemergence of “hope” in the political process. As much as I admire Obama personally and what he symbolizes as an interracial president, I have very low hopes for him. Just as our nation gets beyond the horrors of racism, we only more deeply ingrain our policy of infanticide. Having seen first-hand the devastation of abortion, the fragility of human life, and knowing that Obama supports this atrocity makes me skeptical of all the other good intentions he has.

But perhaps this is the problem of hope in politics—we hope for too much. I had high hopes for Bush 8 years ago too, and he has been a sore disappointment. The problem isn't politicians. It is ourselves. Humans are naturally a violent and selfish species, and no law or government will undo this tendency. It can only be changed from the inside, supernaturally.

So I have learned to vote my conscience, but without as much hopefulness that the political process can cure the ills of our society. Rather than hoping for the law to enforce social justice, non-violence, equality, and treatment of all with dignity, perhaps I must work harder to live out these values in my daily interactions. I may not change the world, but if I change the lives of a few people it will likely be worth more than every vote I ever cast.

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Going to Ecuador

This morning we are going to Ecuador for a month. We will be in the city of Cuenca. We hope to learn a lot of Spanish by immersion as well as volunteer at a hospital for the poor there. For us it will be an excellent chance to learn a language that is increasingly important as we serve in America, as well as an opportunity as a family to take a while and serve in a new environment and have a chance to reflect on what the impact of our lives should be.

Hopefully we will have a lot of interesting stories and thoughts when we return.

For the next month The Gridbook Blog will be silent. I don't know if we will be able to get much internet access but if we do we will try to post updates on my personal blog. Keep us in your prayers.

Presidential Endorsement: A Wasted Vote?

The Gridbook Blog proudly endorses Joe Schriner for President of the United States. Most of you are probably asking "Who?"

Out of all the people running for president this election (there are options other than the two you always hear about) Mr. Schriner is the only candidate who espouses Consistent Life positions. His political stances are consistently compassionate. His unyielding focus on human dignity and social justice is to be applauded. Although both major party candidates are honest and likable people, they both have serious defects in their positions on basic human rights. Schriner is usually right where the Obama and McCain are wrong.

The next question everyone asks is, "Why waste your vote writing in a candidate no one has even heard of?" I admit that Schriner will not win the election this year. I suppose if I choose the lesser of two evils and pick the Democrat or Republican ticket I would perhaps get to vote for the one who will become president. I would also ensure that every 4 years we would continue to get nothing but liberals and conservatives from which to select our leaders.

When I was 2 years old my parents got to vote for either Carter or Regan. Every election since with all the different names on the ballot the basic stances haven't changed. Americans are weary of both parties and their morally bankrupt conservative and liberal ideologies, but if we keep voting for Democrats and Republicans that have a chance to win no other party or ideology will ever have gain enough traction to be noticed. I don't want my infant son to grow up and have to pick the lesser of two evils from two candidates with different names but the same ideas as McCain and Obama.

Are you bold enough to waste your vote so our children don't have to waste theirs? Read up on Joe Schriner. You might find yourself excited about writing in a name Republicans and Democrats have never heard of.

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