Massacre of Syrian Soldiers in Iraq Raises Risk of Widening Conflict

By Duraid Adnan and Rick Gladstone, NY Times, March 4, 2013
BAGHDAD—More than 40 Syrian soldiers who had sought temporary safety in Iraq from rebel fighters along the border were killed on Monday in an attack by unidentified gunmen as the Iraqi military was transporting the soldiers back to Syria in a bus convoy, the Iraqi government said.

At least seven Iraqis were also reported killed in the attack, which appeared to be the most serious spillover of violence into Iraq since the Syrian conflict began two years ago.

Ali al-Musawi, a spokesman for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, accused “armed groups from the Iraqi and Syrian side” of coordinating the attack, which he described as an ambush. He said Iraq would deploy more security forces on the border. Middle East experts said such a move raised the risk that the Iraqis could become more directly enmeshed in the Syrian conflict, underscoring how it threatens to destabilize a wider swath of the region.

“We will not allow any terrorist to enter the Iraqi lands,” Mr. Musawi said in a telephone interview. He said the ambush was partly the consequence of “sectarian speeches that encourage people to hate each other.”

The attack threatens to inflame the sectarian tensions that already divide Iraq, where a Sunni minority sympathizes with Syria’s overwhelmingly Sunni opposition.

Mr. Musawi did not specify which armed groups he considered responsible for the attack, but it was clear that he meant Sunni militant extremists affiliated with Al Qaeda in Iraq. These groups have become increasingly emboldened by popular Sunni resentment against Mr. Maliki, a Shiite who is accused by critics of trying to marginalize Iraq’s Sunni population since the American occupation of Iraq ended in 2011.

The Al Nusra Front, a Sunni insurgent force in Syria that has become known for its audacious attacks on government targets, has links with Al Qaeda in Iraq, and American officials have blacklisted it as a terrorist organization. But many Iraqi Sunnis sympathize with the Syrian insurgents, who are overwhelmingly Sunni and whose clan relations span national boundaries.

“A number of us have been saying that Iraq is the one most affected by the meltdown in Syria,” said Joshua M. Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma and curator of the Syria Comment blog, which has chronicled the Syrian conflict.

“In that region, the tribes go right across the Syrian border, and most of the people are related by blood,” he said. “They’re in one common struggle.”

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The Media Doesn't Get Religion

By John Stonestreet, Christian Post, March 1, 2013
Describing the Pope’s last public mass, Anthony Faiola of the Washington Post wrote about young seminarians taking notes with tears in their eyes and tour groups straining their necks to catch a glimpse from the rear of the church.

Then he got around to describing Benedict’s procession. As Faiola told Post readers, “He walked with a gilded cane in the shape of a cross” as people cheered “Long live the Pope!”

The “gilded cane in the shape of a cross” he’s referring to was actually a crosier, the shepherd’s staff that symbolizes a bishop’s role as the leader of his flock.

The Post isn’t alone in its apparent ignorance of this most ancient of Christian regalia. Eight years ago, the New York Times, referring to the same object, called it a “crow’s ear,” which given the anatomical improbability of the phrase, should have caught an editor’s attention.

But it isn’t only Catholicism: Scarcely, a month goes by without some major news outlet referring to Evangelicals as “Evangelists.” Similarly, these outlets often use the word “evangelical” and “fundamentalist” interchangeably, and their work suggests that most of what they know about us is limited to what they have gleaned from the world of politics.

As Terry Mattingly documents regularly over at “Get Religion,” the media doesn’t “get religion.”

And given the centrality of religion to so many people’s lives, this ignorance and tone-deafness is bizarre. Imagine a sportswriter repeatedly referring to the “last two innings of the Super Bowl.” You would rightly question his competence and go elsewhere for your sports news.

Yet something very much like this kind of ignorance pervades mainstream coverage of religion. Please note: I’m not talking about bias, of which there’s plenty. I mean people writing about a subject they just don’t understand.

Yet people who don’t know a crosier from a crow’s ear pontificate (pun intended) on whom the next pope should be and what the Catholic church “must” do to become relevant.

And people for whom Joshua, Judges and Ruth is, at most, an album by Lyle Lovett, report on people for whom the Bible is the guide to life.

I say this in sorrow much more than anger. It’s a painful reminder that we’re really living in a post-Christian culture.

Chuck Colson loved to tell the story about the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk in World War II. As the British people awaited news of their fate, they received a three-word message: “And if not.”

As Chuck said, “It was a reference to the words of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego standing before King Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace. ‘Our God is able to save us … and if not, we will remain faithful to him anyway.’”

The British people understood the message, and organized what is considered a miraculous evacuation.

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to imagine something like that happening today. Neither the media nor, to be fair, much of the audience, would get the reference.

To call ours a “post-Christian” culture isn’t so much a statement about individual people’s beliefs as it is a description of the role Christianity plays in shaping the imagination of our culture. For much of our history, Christianity played a central role in this shaping. Non-believers made and understood biblical allusions.

Now, even the most basic references go right over our heads. Everyone is a fundamentalist and popes carry birds’ ears. We just don’t get it anymore.

And we should note that sometimes we are guilty as Christians of the same ignorance. It’s not uncommon to hear Baptists misrepresent Pentecostals, or Calvinists caricature Arminians and vice versa. Or Protestants and Catholics repeat falsehoods about each other.

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Debts and Debtors

A compilation

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As the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.—Psalm 103:11–121

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If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, serve you.—Psalm 130:3,42

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I know what it’s like to be wrongfully hurt. I know abuse. I know suffering. You know the story of My life on earth. You know what men did to Me, at the instigation of evil men. You’ve read the Bible. Most of you have seen the movies and gotten a good idea of the extreme agony and torture I endured. You’ve thought and meditated on the sacrifice I made in dying for you. My example of forgiving those who tortured and killed Me, of the pardon I granted them, is often referred to. But think about it for a minute; meditate on it, and on what it means to you.

You know that I came to earth to save you, to take your sins on Myself, to redeem you so that you could be reunited with Me and My Father, to die so that you might have eternal life. My coming to earth, My suffering for you, My atonement for your sins was the ultimate act of forgiveness. My act of suffering and dying in your place was a choice made out of love—love for each individual that makes up humanity.

That love was not limited or selective. That love was for all. That love even included a love for those who tortured and executed Me, and a love for those who loved Me but fled in My hour of need. I forgave them all. And throughout history, I have accepted and forgiven anyone who has come to Me to receive My salvation.

Forgiveness, while not easy, is simple. Salvation and forgiveness are both a part of My divine nature, and a part of My nature that you can share in. When you accept salvation, you accept My love, and you accept My forgiveness; and you also receive divine power to help you to love and forgive others.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy3

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“Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”—Isaiah 1:184

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Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.—Matthew 6:12, 14, 155

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Then came Peter to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”—Matthew 18:21–226

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Resentment comes from two Latin words meaning “to feel again.” When we resent, we allow the negative emotions we feel at the time of a hurt—a disappointment, a betrayal—to recur long after the event is over, flooding our systems with their poisons over and over again. Because of its effect on the human mind and body, it does not matter how “justified” the resentment is. In my 27 years as a practicing psychiatrist—and in the 15 years before that when I was a medical doctor—I have come to regard resentment as a cancer of the personality that is as deadly as any physical growth.—James A. Stringham

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One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody, everything, every night before you go to bed.—Bernard M. Baruch

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My idea of forgiveness is letting go of resentment ... ridding yourself of negative thoughts. All they do is make you miserable. Believe me, you can fret and fume all you want, but whoever it was that wronged you is not suffering from your anguish whatsoever.—Della Reese

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When we bring our sins to Jesus, He not only forgives them, He makes them as if they had never been.—Corrie ten Boom

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Forgiveness is the act that helps another’s wrong to not become your wrong as well.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy

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A person who has an unforgiving spirit is always the real loser, much more so than the one against whom the grudge is held. Unforgiveness, by its very nature, prevents individuals from following through on many of the specifics of the Christian life and practically necessitates that they walk by the flesh rather than by the spirit. …

By refusing to forgive and by waiting for restitution to be made, individuals allow their personal growth and development to hinge on the decision of others they dislike to begin with. They allow themselves to be held hostage. They say, “If he apologizes.” “If she comes back to me.” “If he rehires me.” “If they invite me.” They play the game of waiting for others to make the first move. In the meantime they allow an unforgiving spirit to weave its way into the total fabric of their lives.—Charles Stanley7

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Holding on to hurt is like grabbing a rattlesnake by the tail: You are going to be bitten.—Charles Stanley8

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We must view those we have forgiven as tools in our lives to aid us in our growth in and understanding of the grace of God. Joseph of old certainly understood this principle. After all his brothers did to him, he was able to forgive them. He saw them as the instruments of God to get him to Egypt and to be in such a position of power that he could save his family when famine destroyed all the crops.—Charles Stanley9

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Remember that forgiveness is for our benefit. The other person’s behavior may never change. It is up to God, not us, to change that person.—Charles Stanley10

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Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.—Ephesians 4:3211

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Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.—1 Peter 4:812

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Love lets the past die. It moves people to a new beginning without settling the past. Love does not have to clear up all past misunderstandings. The details of the past become irrelevant; only its new beginning matters. Accounts may go unsettled; differences remain unsolved; ledgers stay unbalanced. Conflicts between people’s memories of how things happened are not cleared up; the past stays muddled. Only the future matters. Love’s power does not make fussy historians. Love prefers to tuck the loose ends of past rights and wrongs in the bosom of forgiveness—and pushes us into a new start.—Lewis B. Smedes13

Originally published 2008. Updated and republished February 2013.
Read by Bethany Kelly. Music by Michael Dooley.


1 KJV.

2 NIV.

3 Originally published in 2008.

4 NIV.

5 ESV.

6 NIV.

7 The Gift of Forgiveness (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2002).

8 The Gift of Forgiveness (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2002).

9 The Gift of Forgiveness (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2002).

10 The Gift of Forgiveness (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2002).

11 NKJV.

12 NIV.

13 Love Within Limits (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989).

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Alguns Benefícios da Oração Pessoal

Uma compilação

Um dos frutos da oração, além dos resultados e das respostas visíveis é o efeito e o fruto na sua vida e no seu espírito. O ato de derramar o coração para Mim o mantém próximo de Mim, fervoroso, no Meu Espírito, e o protege de influências negativas. A oração é uma das suas maiores proteções, e contribui para manter limpos o seu coração e espírito.—Jesus, falando em profecia[1]

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Por que orar? Eu tenho feito essa pergunta praticamente todos os dias desde que me tornei cristão, principalmente quando Deus parece estar longe e fico me perguntando se a oração é um ato religioso de diálogo interior. Já fiz essa pergunta durante uma leitura de teor teológico, indagando de que adianta ficar repetindo algo que Deus já deve saber. Minhas conclusões vão se desenrolar gradualmente, mas começo aqui porque a oração para mim se tornou muito mais do que uma lista de pedidos, como uma lista de compras, a serem atendidos por Deus. Ela se tornou um realinhamento de tudo. Oro para que a verdade seja restaurada no universo, para eu ter um vislumbre do mundo, e de mim, para ter a perspectiva de Deus.—Philip Yancey [2]

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A oração acima de tudo nos permite observar o nosso próprio coração e alinhá-lo ao coração de Deus. A oração não é um monólogo no qual nos imaginamos tendo comunhão com Deus. Pelo contrário, é um diálogo por meio do qual Deus molda o nosso coração e torna realidade o sonho dEle para nós. É sem dúvida um tesouro o seguidor de Jesus poder receber respostas tanto objetivas como subjetivas, e assim começar a amar a Deus por quem Ele é, não pelo que pode nos proporcionar.—Ravi Zacharias[3]

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A oração é uma expressão do que nós somos -- um espaço incompleto em movimento. Somos uma lacuna, um vazio em busca de realização. —Thomas Merton

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Eu oro por necessidade, pois preciso me lembrar que existe algo lá em cima e que é bom. Oro para ser ouvida, mas, na realidade, o ato da oração na minha vida tem uma profundidade única. O ato e a atitude de oração me reconectam com algo que muitas vezes escapa das minhas mãos, algo que pode ser puxado como um barbante. A oração amarra o barbante de novo. A oração diz: Eu sei que você está aí; acredito em você; vou conseguir, sei que você é bom. Orar é admitir que existe algo ais além do que consigo ver e fazer. Existe algo por trás de tudo o que é possível ver.—Shauna Niequist[4]

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Na oração eu separo o meu ponto de vista do meu egoísmo. Escalo acima das árvores e olho para mim mesmo lá embaixo, minúsculo como um grão de poeira. Contemplo as estrelas e me lembro do meu papel e do papel de cada um de nós em um universo que vai além da compreensão. Oração é ver a realidade pela ótica de Deus.—Philip Yancey[5]

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A oração nos faz trilhar o caminho iluminado por Deus e nos capacita a reconhecer com convicção: “Sou humano, e você é Deus.”—Henri Nouwen

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Depois que começamos a caminhar com Deus precisamos apenas continuar a caminhada com Ele e a vida será um longo passeio, causando uma sensação maravilhosa.—Etty Hillesum

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Assim como as asas para o pássaro e as velas para o barco, também a oração é para a alma.—Corrie ten Boom

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Orar pelos outros está totalmente relacionado ao amor. É o amor colocado em ação no espírito. Você não apenas pensa na pessoa e quer ajudá-la, mas faz algo concreto por meio da oração.

Oração de intercessão requer doação em amor. Aumenta o seu amor pela pessoa por quem ora. O seu amor o leva a clamar a Mim para ajudá-la.

Um dos resultados mais lindos é que ao orar pelos outros passa a ter uma visão mais altruísta, enche o seu coração com mais amor pela pessoa, porque o seu amor por ela o faz querer ajudá-la. Orar por alguém o mantém fervoroso por essa pessoa, de modo que a sua vida não gira só em torno de você. Você estende a mão e Me pede para ajudar alguém mais.

Orar dessa maneira é um exemplo de abnegação, de dar mais valor aos outros do que a si mesmo. É amor em ação. Você ultrapassa as suas próprias necessidades e intercede por alguém. E como você se esforça para ajudar os outros, Eu recompenso o seu sacrifício e amor usando as orações para mudar e melhorar a sua vida também. Além disso, se alguém sabe que você é fiel em orar por ele, também o apoiará em oração quando você precisar.

Orar é uma maneira de se doar altruisticamente sem esperar nada em troca, mas rende dividendos. Experimente e os sentirá.—Jesus falando em profecia[6]

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Eu acredito que quando oramos pelos outros Deus enche nossos corações de doçura e ternura, porque estamos nos comunicando com Aquele que é misericórdia plena, beleza e amor totais, onipotente, e a gentileza em sua plenitude. Quando oramos a Deus, Ele nos transforma e nos torna semelhantes a Ele.—Frank Alcamo

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Por que na Bíblia o Senhor constantemente nos admoesta a orar, sendo que Ele, melhor do que ninguém, sabe o que precisamos e os pedidos que vamos Lhe fazer em oração? Às vezes, Ele até diz que antes de orarmos Ele responderá. Devemos orar principalmente para benefício próprio, não de Deus. Ao orarmos estamos reconhecendo que dependemos de Deus.—David Brandt Berg

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Nas asas da oração nossos fardos se vão
E nossos cuidados leves se tornam,
Nosso coração pesado ao alto é levado
e pelo bálsamo do maravilhoso amor de Deus é curado.
O Pai amoroso entende nossos problemas, medos e angústia,
E nossas lágrimas por Ele secas são,
Quando Lhe entregamos tudo nas asas da oração.
—Helen Steiner Rice

Publicado no Âncora em fevereiro de 2013.
Tradução Hebe Rondon Flandoli. Revisão Denise Oliveira.


[1] De http://anchor.tfionline.com/pt/post/o-que-oracao-faz/, Março 2011.

[2] Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? (Zondervan, 2010).

[3] The Grand Weaver (Zondervan, 2010).

[4] Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life (Zondervan, 2010).

[5] Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? (Zondervan, 2010).

[6] Publicado originalmente em 2000.

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How Israel Gets Away With Torturing Palestinians to Death

By Charlotte Silver, Al Jazeera, Feb. 25, 2013
Six days after Arafat Jaradat was arrested by the Israeli army and the Shin Bet, he was dead. Between the date of his arrest—February 18—and the day of his death—February 23—his lawyer Kamil Sabbagh met with Arafat only once: in front of a military judge at the Shin Bet’s Kishon interrogation facility.

Sabbagh reported that when he saw Jaradat, the man was terrified. Arafat told his lawyer that he was in acute pain from being beaten and forced to sit in stress positions with his hands bound behind his back.

When it announced his death, Israeli Prison Service claimed Arafat—who leaves a pregnant widow and two children—died from cardiac arrest. However, the subsequent autopsy found no blood clot in his heart. In fact, the autopsy concluded that Arafat, who turned 30 this year, was in fine cardiovascular health.

What the final autopsy did find, however, was that Jaradat had been pummelled by repeated blows to his chest and body and had sustained a total of six broken bones in his spine, arms and legs; his lips lacerated; his face badly bruised.

The ordeal that Arafat suffered before he died at the hands of Israel’s Shin Bet is common to many Palestinians that pass through Israel’s prisons. According to the prisoners’ rights organisation Addameer, since 1967, a total of 72 Palestinians have been killed as a result of torture and 53 due to medical neglect. Less than a month before Jaradat was killed, Ashraf Abu Dhra died while in Israeli custody in a case that Addameer argues was a direct result of medical neglect.

The legal impunity of the Shin Bet, commonly referred to as the GSS, and its torture techniques has been well established. Between 2001 and 2011, 700 Palestinians lodged complaints with the State Attorney’s Office but not a single one has been criminally investigated.

Writing in Adalah’s 2012 publication, On Torture, Bana Shoughry-Badarne, an attorney and the Legal Director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, wrote, “The GSS’s impunity is absolute.”

Israel’s High Court has been extravagantly helpful in securing the Shin Bet with its imperviousness to accountability to international law, and thus enabling widespread and lethal torture.

In August of 2012, Israel’s High Court rejected petitions submitted by Israeli human rights organisations Adalah, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and PCATI to demand that Israeli attorney general, Yehuda Weinstein, carry out criminal investigations into each allegation of torture by the Shin Bet.

And in the first week of February, two weeks before Arafat was killed, the High Court of Justice threw out Adalah’s petition that demanded the GSS videotape and audio record all of its interrogations in order to comply with requirements of the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT) to which Israel is a signatory.

In May 2009, UNCAT condemned Israel for exempting the Shin Bet’s interrogations from audio and video recording, noting that such oversight is an essential preventative measure to curtail torture. Yet despite this admonition, in 2012 the Knesset extended the exemption for another three years.

Rationalising its failure to comply with this most basic requirement of recording interrogations, the State maintains that it is in the interests of “national security” that its interrogation techniques not be made public.

Arafat was killed under torture. Torture is routine. But the following is not routine: upon the announcement of his death, thousands of Palestinians, in solidarity with the Palestinian hunger striking prisoners, responded in force. At least 3,000 prisoners refused their meals; thousands poured into the streets of Gaza and impassioned demonstrations erupted across the West Bank.

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Israeli Oscar contenders force citizens to confront uncomfortable questions

By Chelsea Sheasley, CS Monitor, February 23, 2013
Jerusalem—A former spy chief is making gripping statements about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but at Jerusalem’s chic Cinamatheque, two university students can’t keep their eyes on the screen. One sends text messages and checks Facebook; the other shifts uneasily.

“I felt uncomfortable in my chair,” says one of them, Shay Amiran, a former combat soldier, after the screening of Oscar-nominated “The Gatekeepers.” He especially bristled at a comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany during World War II.

“The Gatekeepers,” which interviews six former heads of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency, along with “5 Broken Cameras,” which captures a Palestinian family’s life amid protests against construction of Israel’s separation wall, are the first Israeli-funded films to receive Academy Award nominations for best documentary since 1975. While winning international acclaim, the movies are riling people on both sides of the political aisle in Israel—from those who see them as government-funded “self-flagellation” to those who see the movies as raising crucial issues that the Israeli public and government are unwilling to address.

“It’s an incredible achievement for the Israeli film industry,” says Amy Kronish, an Israeli film critic. “Both of these films deal with issues that are not being grappled or tackled by the Israelis at this time.”

While the movies were initially pigeonholed as boutique films that would draw only a fraction of Israelis, “The Gatekeepers” recently became the first documentary to be shown in commercial theaters in Israel and is the second-highest grossing Israeli film of the year.

The overriding message of the films, which both received indirect government funding through subsidies to the Israeli film industry, is that the status quo in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is unsustainable. What sets them apart from the many other films on the topic is the rarity of the voices that share the message: Israelis from the heart of the defense establishment in “The Gatekeepers” and a young Palestinian boy in “5 Broken Cameras.”

In the opening scene of “5 Broken Cameras,” Palestinian Emad Burnat, who shot the footage and co-directed the movie, describes the birth of his children as symbolizing different phases of the conflict. His first son was born, he says, “in the optimism of Oslo,” his second at the start of the second intifada. His third son, Gibreel, was born in 2005 at the same time his village began protests against construction of the Israeli separation barrier through their farmland.

The movie captures Gibreel’s first words: “wall” and “soldiers.”

In “The Gatekeepers” all six former heads of Shin Bet call, in varying degrees, for collaboration with Palestinians. Sitting calmly in suspenders or polo shirts, the former chiefs reflect on the moral dilemmas they faced, such as deciding whether to drop a one-ton bomb on a Gaza militant if it meant others in the neighborhood would be killed.

The movie portrays the ex-chiefs as questioning whether they succeeded at a tactical level, but lacked a broader strategy to bring lasting peace.

“We’re winning all the battles,” says Ami Ayalon, Shin Bet chief from 1996 to 2000, in the movie. “And we’re losing the war.”

The directors and their supporters say that Israel’s policies toward the Palestinian territories are ultimately undermining the longevity of the Jewish state.

Dror Moreh, director of “The Gatekeepers,” says he intended his film for Israelis plus an international audience that would exert pressure on the Israeli government.

“I wanted this movie to change things, to stir up debate, to stir up beliefs and to challenge people who believe in one thing,” he says. “The message [is] that the occupation of the West Bank is bad for the safety and security of Israel.”

Guy Davidi, the Israeli co-director of “5 Broken Cameras,” also believes pressure should come from Israeli society and abroad if government policies are to change.

“I don’t believe that change comes from just inside, or just outside,” he says. “It’s natural to want pressure from other countries to stop occupation because from my point of view stopping occupation is something good for Israel.”

For some Israelis, however, the films present an incomplete portrait of a complex conflict. Some see them as part of a broader asymmetry, in which the international community focuses disproportionately on Israeli missteps without regard to transgressions by Palestinians—like in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which seeks to penalize Israel financially and isolate it internationally for its policies toward the Palestinian territories.

There’s also a sense that those abroad are overly critical of Israel without understanding the security concerns of its citizens, many of whom have had to contend with violence in their daily lives—whether through army service, suicide bombings, or rocket attacks.

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How Mexico Got Back in the Game

By Thomas L. Friedman, NY Times, February 23, 2013
MONTERREY, Mexico—IN India, people ask you about China, and, in China, people ask you about India: Which country will become the more dominant economic power in the 21st century? I now have the answer: Mexico.

Impossible, you say? Well, yes, Mexico with only about 110 million people could never rival China or India in total economic clout. But here’s what I’ve learned from this visit to Mexico’s industrial/innovation center in Monterrey. Everything you’ve read about Mexico is true: drug cartels, crime syndicates, government corruption and weak rule of law hobble the nation. But that’s half the story. The reality is that Mexico today is more like a crazy blend of the movies “No Country for Old Men” and “The Social Network.”

Something happened here. It’s as if Mexicans subconsciously decided that their drug-related violence is a condition to be lived with and combated but not something to define them any longer. Mexico has signed 44 free trade agreements—more than any country in the world—which, according to The Financial Times, is more than twice as many as China and four times more than Brazil. Mexico has also greatly increased the number of engineers and skilled laborers graduating from its schools. Put all that together with massive cheap natural gas finds, and rising wage and transportation costs in China, and it is no surprise that Mexico now is taking manufacturing market share back from Asia and attracting more global investment than ever in autos, aerospace and household goods.

“Today, Mexico exports more manufactured products than the rest of Latin America put together,” The Financial Times reported on Sept. 19, 2012. “Chrysler, for example, is using Mexico as a base to supply some of its Fiat 500s to the Chinese market.” What struck me most here in Monterrey, though, is the number of tech start-ups that are emerging from Mexico’s young population—50 percent of the country is under 29—thanks to cheap, open source innovation tools and cloud computing.

“Mexico did not waste its crisis,” remarked Patrick Kane Zambrano, director of the Center for Citizen Integration, referring to the fact that when Mexican companies lost out to China in the 1990s, they had no choice but to get more productive. Zambrano’s Web site embodies the youthful zest here for using technology to both innovate and stimulate social activism. The center aggregates Twitter messages from citizens about everything from broken streetlights to “situations of risk” and plots them in real-time on a phone app map of Monterrey that warns residents what streets to avoid, alerts the police to shootings and counts in days or hours how quickly public officials fix the problems.

“It sets pressure points to force change,” the center’s president, Bernardo Bichara, told me. “Once a citizen feels he is not powerless, he can aspire for more change. … First, the Web democratized commerce, and then it democratized media, and now it is democratizing democracy.”

If Secretary of State John Kerry is looking for a new agenda, he might want to focus on forging closer integration with Mexico rather than beating his head against the rocks of Israel, Palestine, Afghanistan or Syria. Better integration of Mexico’s manufacturing and innovation prowess into America’s is a win-win. It makes U.S. companies more profitable and competitive, so they can expand at home and abroad, and it gives Mexicans a reason to stay home and reduces violence. We do $1.5 billion a day in trade with Mexico, and we spend $1 billion a day in Afghanistan. Not smart.

We need a more nuanced view of Mexico. While touring the Center for Agrobiotechnology at Monterrey Tech, Mexico’s M.I.T., its director, Guy Cardineau, an American scientist from Arizona, remarked to me that, in 2011, “my son-in-law returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan and we talked about having him come down and visit for Christmas. But he told me the U.S. military said he couldn’t come because of the [State Department] travel advisory here. I thought that was very ironic.”

Especially when U.S. companies are expanding here, which is one reason Mexico grew last year at 3.9 percent, and foreign direct investment in Monterrey hit record highs.

“Twenty years ago, most Mexican companies were not global,” explained Blanca Treviño, the president and founder of Softtek, one of Mexico’s leading I.T. service providers. They focused on the domestic market and cheap labor for the U.S. “Today, we understand that we have to compete globally” and that means “becoming efficient. We have a [software] development center in Wuxi, China. But we are more efficient now in doing the same business from our center in Aguascalientes, [Mexico], than we are from our center in Wuxi.”

Mexico still has huge governance problems to fix, but what’s interesting is that, after 15 years of political paralysis, Mexico’s three major political parties have just signed “a grand bargain,” a k a “Pact for Mexico,” under the new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, to work together to fight the big energy, telecom and teacher monopolies that have held Mexico back. If they succeed, maybe Mexico will teach us something about democracy. Mexicans have started to wonder about America lately, said Bichara from the Center for Citizen Integration. “We always thought we should have our parties behave like the United States’—no longer. We always thought we should have the government work like the United States’—no longer.”

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Don’t Worry About It

By David Brandt Berg

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There’s one thing for sure in this life, and that is change.

In times of change, this has always been my favorite passage to read—the 11th chapter of Hebrews. “Faith is the substance”—the title deed—“of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

Verse 8 says: “By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out…” Someday you’re going to be called to go out. Don’t get so settled that you let the roots grow down and you think you’re going to be where you are forever.

But at the same time, don’t worry about it. When people get upset and worried about things, you say, “Don’t worry about it.” And if anybody could say that to us, it’s the Lord. Don’t worry about it. You’re His child and He’s going to take care of you no matter what happens.

So what about Abraham? “He sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country.” Here he’d been promised a whole country, and it was full of a bunch of enemies and aliens. He must have thought, “My Lord, I don’t know if I even want this country; it’s a mess. And what do we do with all these terrible people who hate us and fight us and try to kill us?” But there he was, “dwelling in tabernacles”—that means tents—“with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise.”

So Abraham started wandering. He’d apparently lived in Ur of the Chaldees all of his life, and then all of a sudden his father said, “We’ve got to move. God’s called me to Canaan.” So they started on their way to Canaan. But they only got about a third of the way there, and I guess poor Terah was getting old and tired and sick, so they settled down there to rest him up and he died. So after his father was dead, the Lord said to him, “Abraham, get thee out of thy father’s tents and come to a land that I will show thee and give thee.”1 So Abraham carried on.

“With Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise” Why? “For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” Hallelujah! It says “which hath foundations.” How many foundations has it got? It says twelve foundations, think of that.2 “Whose Builder and Maker is God.”

Verse 13 says: “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off.” Just think, one after the other of the patriarchs died without ever getting there, without receiving the promise, without receiving the Promised Land, much less the city of God. Think of it. But they all believed and they kept traveling and they kept on going for God and spreading the message, evangelizing the world, witnessing. They were witnesses to faith in God and His Word.

“But having seen them afar off.” Probably some of them never dreamed they were 2,500 or 3,000 years away. Abraham was nearly 4,000 years away from that city, and yet he was traveling for it. That took a lot of faith.

“These all died in faith, not having received the promises.” He hadn’t even received the Promised Land yet; it was full of enemies. “But having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” There’s no place on this earth that we can go without being strangers and pilgrims. “For this world is not our home, we’re just a-passing through; our treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue”—the old song goes. “The angels beckon me from heaven’s golden shore.” It’s not ocean shore, it’s those golden streets up there. “And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.”

The Lord loves us so. He knows we’re not completely at home here. He knows we have no resting land, no place where we’re going to be able to stay for eternity.

I believe we ought to enjoy what we have while we’ve got it. A lot of people can’t enjoy what they’ve got for worry about tomorrow.—Like the old lady who, when they asked her how she felt, said, “Well, I feel pretty good today, but oh, when I feel good I always feel bad, because I know it’s not going to be long before I feel bad again.” That’s the way some people are. But I believe in getting as much as we can out of each day.

We should enjoy life, do our job, do our work, enjoy it, enjoy each other, enjoy our beautiful home, enjoy our comforts: the good beds, food, and pleasures that the Lord has given us. God will bless you as long as you put Him first and love Him and worship Him above all and seek Him with your whole heart. He’ll give you the desires of your heart. If you seek Him first, all these other things shall be added unto you.3

Look at the things God has added unto you—things you didn’t even ask for. Hasn’t He been good to you? As Jesus said to the disciples, “Lacked ye for anything?” They said, “No, Lord, we had more than enough.”4 He sent the seventy out by faith, and they came back shouting and praising the Lord for the marvelous victories, the healings God gave and the souls won. They said, “Even the devils are subject unto us”—much to their surprise.5 Jesus had told them that they would be, but I guess it was hard for them to believe. But they tried it, casting them out in the name of Jesus, and it worked, He worked, and even the devils were subject to them.

Some people can’t enjoy what they’ve got now for worrying about the future. Some people can’t enjoy the present for worrying about the past—and the future. We children of the Lord ought to be able to enjoy every day to the full. We don’t have to worry about the past; the Lord has washed that away in His blood and cleansed us from all guilt and shame and sin. And we don’t have to worry about the future. He’s going to take care of that too.

Have you ever been homesick? Sometimes you have a little qualm of nostalgia and you think about those good old days and those beautiful places. It reminds me of that old verse, “Turn back, turn back, O time, in your flight and make me a child once again for the night.” Everybody gets nostalgic sometimes. Everybody remembers happy memories and you think how wonderful it was sometime. So enjoy today. Enjoy the moment. Enjoy right now. There’s just something about human nature that we tend to look back through rose-colored glasses. It’s wonderful how God made you to remember the good memories and to forget much of the bad. You’re already enjoying a little bit of heaven on earth, happiness, work for the Lord.

These people in Hebrews 11 never got what they were looking for on earth. “But now they desire a better country.” We’re not satisfied with this world. We’re not satisfied with all that we have here and now. Watch out if you get satisfied with it. We’re looking forward to a better country—heaven. Like that song, “There must be a better place than this—heaven.” “But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly.” There it is, clear as day.

“Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God.” Boy, that is one of the most amazing statements in the whole Bible to me. What does that mean? If God’s not ashamed of you, what is He? He’s proud of you. Why? Because you’re not satisfied with this world, you’re not settling down here. This world is not your home, you’re just a-traveling through. You’re seeking a better country, a better city, that hath foundations, a better land.

This world doesn’t satisfy your heart; it doesn’t fulfill your longings, your desires for the heavenly.

I am a stranger here within a foreign land.
My home is far away, upon a golden strand.
Ambassador to be, of realms beyond the sea,
I'm here on business for my King.

This is the message that I bring,
A message angels fain would sing.
Oh, be ye reconciled, thus saith your Lord and King,
Oh, be ye reconciled today.

We’re ambassadors of the greatest kingdom the world is ever going to know, the greatest country, the most beautiful.

“Therefore God is not ashamed to be called your God.” He’s proud of you because you’re not satisfied with this world. You’re working hard and willing to be pilgrims and strangers and to go wherever God calls.

And because you’re willing to do that, you’re willing to be reshuffled whatever way God designs, whatever way God can best use you, God’s proud of you. God is thankful for you. I just hardly know what other word to use to express it, but He’s proud of you.—Just like you’re proud of your children when they do well.

When you’re in school, you call it passing when you go from one grade to the other. Our kids are passing all the time; they’re making progress. When you’re traveling along in a car, how do you know when you’re moving? You know you’re moving and you’re making progress because you’re passing things. Maybe in your spiritual life the same is true, when you start letting it pass. You don’t worry about it, you don’t hold it against somebody for some idle remark or something foolish that they did, something they said. You don’t get hypersensitive and upset about it and hold it against them. You just let it pass; you forgive them. You’re passing things.

You’re passing through this world too; that’s another sign of progress. You’re ready to go, ready to stay, ready to do His will. So God’s proud of you. He says it right here: “So God was not ashamed to be called their God.” Isn’t that wonderful?

So thank God, God is thankful for you, because you are willing to be a pilgrim and a stranger. He knows you’ve got the right spirit, He knows you seek a better country.

Thank You, Jesus, for Your kingdom which is going to last forever. We’ve already got it in us, Lord, and we’re in it already as far as You’re concerned. Wherever Your children are, it’s Your kingdom. You said You’d give us the uttermost parts of the earth for our possession, and the heathen for our inheritance, Lord.6 So we’re conquering the world, we’re conquering souls for Your kingdom. We’re taking it over, Lord, until that day when You’re going to have the final complete takeover. It’ll all be Your country then, not the Devil’s kingdom anymore, but “Thy Kingdom Come.”

Originally published May 1985. Updated and republished February 2013.
Read by Simon Peterson.


1 Genesis 12:1.

2 Revelation 21:14.

3 Psalm 37:4; Matthew 6:33.

4 Luke 22:35.

5 Luke 10:17.

6 Psalm 2:8.

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The Benefits of Exercising Outdoors

By Gretchen Reynolds, NY Times, February 21, 2013
While the allure of the gym—climate-controlled, convenient and predictable—is obvious, especially in winter, emerging science suggests there are benefits to exercising outdoors that can’t be replicated on a treadmill, a recumbent bicycle or a track.

You stride differently when running outdoors, for one thing. Generally, studies find, people flex their ankles more when they run outside. They also, at least occasionally, run downhill, a movement that isn’t easily done on a treadmill and that stresses muscles differently than running on flat or uphill terrain. Outdoor exercise tends, too, to be more strenuous than the indoor version. In studies comparing the exertion of running on a treadmill and the exertion of running outside, treadmill runners expended less energy to cover the same distance as those striding across the ground outside, primarily because indoor exercisers face no wind resistance or changes in terrain, no matter how subtle.

The same dynamic has been shown to apply to cycling, where wind drag can result in much greater energy demands during 25 miles of outdoor cycling than the same distance on a stationary bike. That means if you have limited time and want to burn as many calories as possible, you should hit the road instead of the gym.

But there seem to be other, more ineffable advantages to getting outside to work out. In a number of recent studies, volunteers have been asked to go for two walks for the same time or distance—one inside, usually on a treadmill or around a track, the other outdoors. In virtually all of the studies, the volunteers reported enjoying the outside activity more and, on subsequent psychological tests, scored significantly higher on measures of vitality, enthusiasm, pleasure and self-esteem and lower on tension, depression and fatigue after they walked outside.

Of course, those studies were small-scale, short-term—only two walks—and squishy in their scientific parameters, relying heavily on subjective responses. But a study last year of older adults found, objectively, that those who exercised outside exercised longer and more often than those working out indoors. Specifically, the researchers asked men and women 66 or older about their exercise habits and then fitted them all with electronic gadgets that measured their activity levels for a week. The gadgets and the survey showed that the volunteers who exercised outside, usually by walking, were significantly more physically active than those who exercised indoors, completing, on average, about 30 minutes more exercise each week than those who walked or otherwise exercised indoors.

Studies haven’t yet established why, physiologically, exercising outside might improve dispositions or inspire greater commitment to an exercise program. A few small studies have found that people have lower blood levels of cortisol, a hormone related to stress, after exerting themselves outside as compared with inside. There’s speculation, too, that exposure to direct sunlight, known to affect mood, plays a role.

But the take-away seems to be that moving their routines outside could help reluctant or inconsistent exercisers. “If outdoor activity encourages more activity, then it is a good thing,” says Jacqueline Kerr, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, who led the study of older adults. After all, “despite the fitness industry boom,” she continues, “we are not seeing changes in national physical activity levels, so gyms are not the answer.”

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'I'm a monster': Veterans 'alone' in their guilt

By Pauline Jelinek, AP, Feb 22, 2013
WASHINGTON (AP)—A veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, former Marine Capt. Timothy Kudo thinks of himself as a killer—and he carries the guilt every day.

“I can’t forgive myself,” he says. “And the people who can forgive me are dead.”

With American troops at war for more than a decade, there’s been an unprecedented number of studies into war zone psychology and an evolving understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder. Clinicians suspect some troops are suffering from what they call “moral injuries”—wounds from having done something, or failed to stop something, that violates their moral code.

Though there may be some overlap in symptoms, moral injuries aren’t what most people think of as PTSD, the nightmares and flashbacks of terrifying, life-threatening combat events. A moral injury tortures the conscience; symptoms include deep shame, guilt and rage. It’s not a medical problem, and it’s unclear how to treat it, says retired Col. Elspeth Ritchie, former psychiatry consultant to the Army surgeon general.

“The concept … is more an existentialist one,” she says.

Killing in war is the issue for some troops who believe they have a moral injury, but Ritchie says it also can come from a range of experiences, such as guarding prisoners or watching Iraqis kill Iraqis as they did during the sectarian violence in 2006-07.

“You may not have actually done something wrong by the law of war, but by your own humanity you feel that it’s wrong,” says Ritchie, now chief clinical officer at the District of Columbia’s Department of Mental Health.

Kudo’s remorse stems in part from the 2010 accidental killing of two Afghan teenagers on a motorcycle. His unit was fighting insurgents when the pair approached from a distance and appeared to be shooting as well.

Kudo says what Marines mistook for guns were actually “sticks and bindles, like you’d seen in old cartoons with hobos.” What Marines thought were muzzle flashes were likely glints of light bouncing off the motorcycle’s chrome.

“There’s no day—whether it’s in the shower or whether it’s walking down the street … that I don’t think about things that happened over there,” says Kudo, now a graduate student at New York University.

Kudo never personally shot anyone. But he feels responsible for the deaths of the teens on the motorcycle. Like other officers who’ve spoken about moral injuries, he also feels responsible for deaths that resulted from orders he gave in other missions.

The hardest part, Kudo says, is that “nobody talks about it.”

As executive officer of a Marine company, Kudo also felt inadequate when he had to comfort a subordinate grieving over the death of another Marine.

As the military has focused on fear-based PTSD, it hasn’t paid enough attention to loss and moral injury, Litz and others believe. And that has hampered the development of strategies to help troops with those other problems and train them to avoid the problems in the first place, he says.

Lumping people into the PTSD category “renders soldiers automatically into mental patients instead of wounded souls,” writes Iraq vet Tyler Boudreau, a former Marine captain and assistant operations officer to an infantry battalion.

Boudreau resigned his commission after having questions of conscience. He wrote in the Massachusetts Review, a literary magazine, that being diagnosed with PTSD doesn’t account for nontraumatic events that are morally troubling: “It’s far too easy for people at home, particularly those not directly affected by war … to shed a disingenuous tear for the veterans, donate a few bucks and whisk them off to the closest shrink … out of sight and out of mind” and leaving “no incentive in the community or in the household to engage them.”

Troops who express ethical or spiritual problems have long been told to see the chaplain. Chaplains see troops struggling with moral injury “at the micro level, down in the trenches,” says Lt. Col. Jeffrey L. Voyles, licensed counselor and supervisor at the Army chaplain training program in Fort Benning, Ga. A soldier wrestling with the right or wrong of a particular war zone event might ask: “Do I need to confess this?” Or, Voyles says, a soldier will say he’s “gone past the point of being redeemed, (the point where) God could forgive him”—and he uses language like this:

“I’m a monster.”
“I let somebody down.”
“I didn’t do as much as I could do.”

Some chaplains and civilian church organizations have been organizing community events where troops tell their stories, hoping that will help them re-integrate into society.

Some soldiers report being helped by Army programs like yoga or art therapy. The Army also has a program to promote resilience and another called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness to promote mental as well as physical wellness; some clinicians say the latter program may help reduce risk of moral injury but doesn’t help troops recognize when they or a buddy have the problem.

Forgiveness, more than anything, is key to helping troops who feel they have transgressed, Nash says.

But the issue is so much more complicated that wholesale solutions across the military, if there are any, will likely be some time coming.

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