Why must we give to the poor?

Do not lose by saving, but gather in by scattering. Give to the poor, and you give to yourself. You will not be allowed to keep what you have refused to give others.

- Saint Peter Chrysologus

India's Christians See Rise in Hostility

That is the title of an article in the February 8th issue of Christian Science Monitor. The article goes on to say:

Ms. Bai, A Christian, was hosting a prayer meeting on January 16 when 50 Hindu extremists from a gruop calling itself Dharma Sena (Army for Religion) arrived. They beat up several men and set fire to 10 motorcycles and a car....

In the neighboring state of Orissa, over Christmas, mobs destroyed 55 churches and 600 hoouses - "the worst anti-Christian violence in India since independence in 1947."

Hindus say that the Christians are responsible for the violence. They are converting Hindus by all means possible.

Arun Pannalai, general secretary of the Chhattisgarh Christian Forum, says that sometimes the evangelizing style of new Christians appears insensitive. "We've been trying to teach them that you don't have to criticize other gods and goddesses when you preach."

A popular way to target evangelical Christians, as a result of the state's conversion law, is to accuse them of forcible conversions to get them arrestsd. "Few of those cases go to court..." says Pannalal, "But by then the extremists have done their job, which is to terrify people."

Help is two clicks away!

Every morning when I begin answering emails two websites pop up and I first give my attention to them.

When I click on the following website I am helping children around the world have better health care.

http://www.thechildhealthsite.com/tpc/ERC_021908_CHS

The next website I click provides a cup of food for a child.

http://www.thehungersite.com/tpc/ERH_021908_THS

I have been doing this for many years and I do hope neither is a hoax. The companies do this in order to introduce people to the products they sell. Buying their products is also said to help children around the world.

Clicking these websites seems to be the least I can do.

Words of prayer are commitments.

Words of prayer are commitments. We stand for what we utter. The word of prayer is like a pledge in the making.

- Abraham Joshua Heschel

Faith as big as a mustard seed?

I think over and over about ways I could help the Christian schools in India...schools for the very poorest children. Every one of those schools has such needs. Money could help each school so much.

When I was a child I often thought about Jesus saying that if we had faith as great as a mustard seed we could move mountains. I just knew my faith was greater than a little mustard seed. So I decided to try it out on the barn. I tried hard to move the barn over by the chicken house.

It just didn't work!

Now I realize that my Dad would not have wanted the barn to be by the chicken house. And think how surprised the cows would be...to say nothing of the chickens.

But surely God would like Siani and Suphala in Orissa to have a new school for all of the 600 local students. So, I will keep praying...and trying to think of ways to help them.

from Michael Essenburgh

Question: Is it important for your students to apply a Biblical perspective to course content?

If you answered “yes,” keep reading.

You think it’s important for your students to apply a Biblical perspective to course content. Three questions:
(1) What course content could your students apply a Biblical perspective to?
(2) During which units could your students apply a Biblical perspective to course content?
(3) On what types of assessments could your students apply a Biblical perspective to course content?

Bottom line:
(1) What course content will your students apply a Biblical perspective to?
(2) During which units will your students apply a Biblical perspective to course content?
(3) On what types of assessments will your students apply a Biblical perspective to course content?

Target Biblical perspective. Today.

(Post shared by Michael Essenburg, Christian Academy of Japan. For more information on integrating Biblical perspective, see his web site: http://closethegapnow.org)

Christian Schools in India

I want to tell you today about teaching in India and rote memorization. I have always felt uneasy when people in North America speak disparagingly about rote learning…memorizing something even when you don’t completely understand it. As children we all have had to do some of it and as a teacher I used rote memorization for multiplication tables, for Bible passages, and for poetry. Of course we try to make certain students understand the concepts they are memorizing but some of them don’t reach the moment of “Aha! Now I get it!” until some time afterward.

During the past two weeks I have visited many Christian schools in India. They are always schools that serve children from extremely poor families. The schools are the best schools available to these children and the teachers are loving people who teach for little money. But you would be as sad as I was to see what the classrooms are like. In some schools whether the children are pre-kindergarten or grade 10, they sit very tightly together on old metal benches, often with no desktop or table in front of them. If they have any lunch with them it is a little pot of plain white rice. Worldwide Christian Schools has a lunch program in which North American children save their change in a special bank and the money is used to provide lunch for Indian children who have little to eat at home.

Teaching and learning go like this in some of these schools. The teacher says a sentence. All the children shout the sentence after her. (Most teachers in these schools are women.) Or the teacher asks a question and all the children shout the answer. I asked a principal how they might know whether or not a child had difficulty learning and she said that none of them do. “After they have heard the answer over and over, they will have memorized it and then they will have learned,” she said.

The singing sounds exactly like the shouting. No clear melody is discernable unless one knows the song well. Then you can sort of hear the tune.

I was told over and over that the grade ten students must do well on their examinations. And they told me in every school how well their grade ten students always did on exams. I asked what the exams are like. Every question and answer comes directly from the textbook and so the entire grade ten year is a matter of memorizing those questions and answers. Outside examiners come and give the tests. Often the question is omitted and the students must supply the answer from memory. Often there is a blank with no surrounding words and the students must fill in the blank. In one school I said to a teacher who has become a friend, “The test makes no sense at all. It is not a test of learning.” She said, “You are exactly right. It makes no sense.”

Of course there are much better schools than these in India. But the students who live in slums like Beggars’ Valley in Mumbai (Bombay) cannot afford to go to the good schools. The public schools available to these children have lazy teachers who often don’t show up at all. The great blessing in the Christian schools is that the teachers are loving, caring people.

When there is a chalkboard there are beautiful flowers on it drawn by children. They are talented in drawing and dancing. I keep thinking how talented they would be in many other areas if they just had a chance.

We provide a conference for the teachers once each year. They have asked for new methods for teaching. However, having seen 50 or 60 children crowded onto benches, most of the methods we use wouldn’t work in such small spaces. Still, story mapping and story grammar, along with other things like that, would surely be helpful to them in learning to think.

Of course I have also seen very good Christian schools for poor children. Education in India is very, very good for some students. The U.S. outsources typing from dictation to graduates of these schools. And at Calvin College I have known many Indian students who have had excellent elementary and secondary education. Those are young people who have gone to good secondary schools and have succeeded there.

The way I understand the life of Jesus Christ, it seems to me that he gave special loving care to the poorest people. Hindus do not allow lepers into their temples but Jesus touched them and healed them. When I watch these very poor children the phrase, “Made in the Image of God,” is always on my mind. Most of the children in these schools are from Hindu families. Many of them come to believe in the saving grace of Jesus Christ and some even have led their families to believe.

I just wanted you to know about this very different way of teaching.

Are we doing any good?

I was feeling so very sad about the poor children of India and Julia, my daughter, sent the following. It was very helpful to me.

Oscar A. Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, in El Salvador, was assassinated on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass in a small chapel in a cancer hospital where he lived. He had always been close to his people, preached a prophetic gospel, denouncing the injustice in his country and supporting the development of popular and mass organizations. He became the voice of the Salvadoran people when all other channels of expression had been crushed by the repression.
The following prayer was composed by Bishop Ken Untener of Saginaw, drafted for a homily by Card. John Dearden in Nov. 1979 for a celebration of departed priests. As a reflection on the anniversary of the martyrdom of Bishop Romero, Bishop Untener included in a reflection book a passage titled "The mystery of the Romero Prayer." The mystery is that the words of the prayer are attributed to Oscar Romero, but they were never spoken by him.

It helps now and then to step back and take a long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of
saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession
brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives include everything.
This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one
day will grow. We water the seeds already planted
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects
far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of
liberation in realizing this.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning,
a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's
grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the
difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not
messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.

-- Archbishop Oscar Romero (martyred on March 24th 1980)