Open Doors, Religious persecution and human rights

I had a presentation from Open Doors a few days ago which really didn’t resonate with me at all. I heard about the 66 countries where Christians is being persecuted, and some alarms went of. Mexico (94% Christian), Colombia (95% Christian), Peru (90% Christian) is all on the list. Sub-Sahara Africa is on one of the lists, one of the growth points of the church in the world at the moment (figures taken from Operation World book), and he couldn’t really explain why this is so (except for a short comment about Roman Catholics persecuting Christians in Latin America…).

But my discomfort grew as time went on, and I started wondering WWJD (What Would Jesus Do/Deconstruct).

The world is a battlefield of religious, ideological, gender related, class related, race related persecution. A reality which we have to fight with everything in us. But I struggle to imagine a Jesus who would fight against the persecution of only one religious group. I struggle to imagine a Jesus talking about the persecution of Christians without mentioning the persecution by Christians (and since Open Doors doesn’t limit itself to institutionalized persecution, but include what happens on a local or even personal level, persecution by Christians should also make out a long list on their website).

If we stick to fighting for our own, we are misunderstanging Luke 4 completely! God cares about the other, the outsider, those who are different. From a different nationality, and, in Luke 4 and the Jewish world, from a different religious background.

If only my friend from Open Doors would have told me about religious persecution, about human rights violations because of lack of religious freedom, we would have had much to talk about. But now he sound more like the Sanhedrin of olds, working for the protections of their own against Roman religious persecution, than Jesus that was nearly killed in Nazareth because he was preaching about a better world for all.

friends, Friends, family and communal living

“It’s about sex, love, relationships, careers, a time in your life when everything’s possible. And it’s about friendship because when you’re single and in the city, your friends are your family.”

This was the words used by producers David Crane and Marta Kauffman and Kevin Bright, when first pitching it to NBC. I’ve played around with the understanding of “family” a lot over the past few years as well. Living in the liminal space of post-school pre-marriage life, when you’re “family” is hundreds of kilometers away, and you are creating a new life, pushes the definitions we use. I often asked myself the question: “who would you instinctively call when you are in serious trouble right now?” To make it practical I’d ask: “who would you call if it’s 3 AM in the morning, you’re 200 km from anyone you know, and you’re car broke down somewhere?”

There is people who are friends. You visit them from time to time, you share experiences, you spend time together because you enjoy it, you share stuff because you trust each other. And then there are friends who doesn’t fit the description of “best friends”, but rather become “family”. YOu share life together, you irritate each other, you accept each others faults, you know that even if you don’t see each other for months, there is some kind of bond which keep you together. In this world where extended families in many cases really doesn’t work, and especially for those of us who only have family on a distance, friends are our family.

And then you get living together. I’m finishing up another year of communal living, and starting a next. Moved into community with 6 other people on December 31 2008, and got married on January 4 2009. And spent our first year of marriage in community. And even though we are married, friends became our family.

You can spend years deciphering the critique of postmodern philosophers and theologians on individualism, and on listening to the “other”, and it would have worth. But try living with the other, try giving up your individuality by sharing the space you have with another, outside of the nice pre-set rules modern society lay out for the nuclear family, or whatever form of family you might find yourself in. This become part of the critique of modern society, of consumerism and individualism, in practice.

Film review: Gamer – the underside of virtual worlds

It’s not the first movie to play around with the dangers of  virtual worlds, and probably not the last. But some serious questions will have to be considered in the coming years concerning social networks and virtual worlds. Gamer portrays a world, 25 years in the future, where a social network is created in which you play another person. A virtual world, but it’s not virtual and not virtual people. The poor in society can sell themselves, their brains get wired up, and then someone can pay to play their bodies. The user sits behind his computer and play someone else.

This “society”, is portrayed by the film as a place where users guide the “bodies” to create a place of sexual experimentation. Maybe taken to an extreme, but it does show something of what happens when an anonymous world is taken where no responsibility needs to be taken.

A game is then created, where you can control a death-row inmate in a first person shooter game… to death (for the inmate). A literal game, a virtual game. People really die, but this while being played by kids.

The film opens up questions on virtuality and reality, and although not doing it very good, it does point to some of the dangers of what may happen to morals when actions are viewed as just virtual. Death and sex become mere virtual experiences.

Although I don’t agree with the general rating from RVA Magazine, it’s critique needs to be taken seriously:

It is a film that demonstrably hates its primary audience. It is a film that tries to criticize the commercialization of violence, even though it itself is commercialized violence.

I wonder about a film that criticizes virtualized violence, and then create a film of 95 minutes, of which a large part goes into just another violent scene: virtual violence.

I’ll give it 2/5 at best, but would consider it worthwhile to stimulate a few conversations.