:: in.a.mirror.dimly ::

While chatting with a fellow blogger about writing the other day, he asked me about my favorite writers and wondered in particular if I was a a fan of Donald Miller. Of course I was. You can’t be a Christian writer and NOT like Donald Miller.

Duh.

Now, here’s the dirty little secret about just about every Christian writer since Miller published his landmark, game-changing book Blue Like Jazz: we compare ourselves to Donald Miller in one way or another when pitching books and talking about fellow writers. “My proposed book is a theological memoir thriller pastiche of Donald Miller, Beth Moore, Snoopy, and The Left Behind Series…”

So I wasn’t surprised when he compared Sarah Cunningham to Miller. That’s just what we do.

I replied, “Yeah, you could say that.”

After reading Sarah Cunningham’s latest book In Search of Eden (note the cover image that our rabbit nibbled on, presumably to get to that dandelion), I wouldn’t say it’s an equal to Blue Like Jazz, but she has managed to write powerfully with her own voice and to share her thoughts in a very authentic and humorous way. In other words, she has found how to tell compelling stories as Sarah Cunningham much like Donald Miller tells authentic stories as Donald Miller. You don’t feel like you’re reading a Miller clone, but you do have someone who knows how to tell a good story, to share self-deprecating scenarios, and to reflect on meeting God in the everyday scenes of life.

Basically, whenever you see a book with Sarah Cunningham’s name on it, you should consider buying it. She is one of the top writers in the Christian fold.

Overall

In Search of Eden is a great memoir that hits at the most basic issue for Christians: seeking God in midst of personal failures and faults. It’s particularly good vacation reading if you ask me, even if I take issue with a few points, as I’ll explain below.

Reviewing Two Books

The first two-thirds of In Search of Eden unfolds as a captivating spiritual memoir. I was hooked by Sarah’s stories of growing up in the church and figuring out what it means to follow Jesus. She has a way of relating typical Christian scenes without jargon and without a sense of déjà vu. As the stories unfold she issues gentle challenges, leads by example, and humbly admits her failings.

The last third of the book didn’t click with me. I’ve been through this over and over in my head, asked friends about what I’m missing, and got sick to my stomach over this part of the review. During the last third of In Search of Eden it felt like I was reading a fairly different book about striving to live a holy and obedient life as Sarah shares her list of flaws and her efforts to overcome them. She rounds off the book with a commitment to follow Christ that is moving and right-on, but falls short of resolving the significant amount of time given to weeding out her flaws that take up the last third of the book.

No matter how I look at it, though Sarah’s writing is top-notch throughout the book, the last third of the book left me feeling deflated. While she said nothing wrong, I feel the book fell short of delivering a solution to our flaws and struggles with sin. There was no mention of the Holy Spirit or the process of sanctification where we receive God’s righteousness. For someone whose life changed upon reading in Romans 3:21 that “ now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known,” I finished the book feeling like a huge part of God’s solution was lost in the ending metaphor of weeding our own gardens.

Cunningham’s Response

I didn’t want to end my review on that note, and I didn’t want to only present my reactions to this book without giving Sarah a chance to respond. My sense was that, regardless of my reaction to her book, she knows fully well about sanctification and had her reasons for writing her book the way she did. She really doesn’t need some seminary student shooting off a snooty e-mail with Bible references! In addition, just because the last third of the book didn’t work for me, isn’t to say that it couldn’t connect with other readers.

After mentioning my above concerns via e-mail, Sarah shared that she’s fully aware of the sanctification issue and plans to tackle that in a future book. Over the course of our correspondence I got the sense that she wanted to say more about her conversion and commitment to become a disciple in this book rather than the process of becoming holy. While I can’t change my reaction to the last third of her book, I can appreciate where she’s coming from and what she’s aiming to do. And the writing really is brilliant.

Thankfully, Sarah plans on writing future books, and whether or not my critique is spot on, I look forward to her future work.

When trying to figure out what I should give up for Lent, I’ve decided to make a list of what I can’t live without and to pick one item from that list. However, this season I ran into an interesting twist.

I began to think of what I’m longing for—what I lack and desire but have not been able to find.

My list of things I can’t live without would include my computer, the internet, social media, coffee, nice pens, nice journals, etc. However, I realized that this Lent I needed to create some boundaries in order to cultivate space where certain things could happen that have not been happening lately.

I think my professional life has some decent boundaries in and of itself, but the problem is that my professional life has crept into my personal time. Since I’m working on writing and speaking full time, it’s very hard to know when to stop—and I rarely stop once evening comes.

My wife always looks at me in shock on the few occasions when I sit on the couch reading a book. That is not good.

I need to stop more. I need to create some boundaries from the internet and my work. I need sacred space.

While I admire those who are giving up social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter for Lent, my larger problem is when I fritter my time away on social media, blogs, and web stuff in the evening when I should relax, pray, read, or let a rabbit climb all over me. I don’t feel like these things invade my professional life too much, but they are a problem at home.

So this Lent I’m creating two boundaries.

The first is a space of roughly 20 minutes each day for worship. This means worship music, prayer, or whatever. Some of this needs to be time specifically set apart for worship without any other distractions, but I’m also planning to focus on playing worship music while working throughout the day.

The other is a 6 PM internet cut off time. After 6 PM I am not allowed online, save for the few occasions when I’ll have to check my e-mail for something important. Even then, I’ll only use my wife’s computer where I don’t have any social media or blog settings saved—and it’s frittering my time away on social media and blogs that I’m far more worried about.

It’s already been wonderful. I fought off the urge last night to go online, even if Lent hadn’t begun, and enjoyed reading and journaling for a few hours. One rabbit hopped onto my lap and furiously licked my jeans and the pillow next to me.

I have a feeling that Lent is going to be wonderful for my soul… and my rabbits.

The thing we don’t want to know about evangelism is that we tend to preach to people just like us.

If you’re in a well-off church, you start thinking of billboards and gimmicks to draw people in. You talk about purpose and fulfillment and the emptiness of life without Christ. In one sense, I am very sympathetic to such thinking. I applaud the genuine desire to share the love of Christ with others.

However, such thinking is limited in scope and does not take into full account the ministry of Christ that began with a declaration of good news to the poor. When I look at these evangelism strategies, I now see one thing that I haven’t wanted to see all along: I want to share the Gospel with people who are just like me: the same social standing, background, and goals.

If we preach to people just like us, then we’ll know a thing or two about how to relate to them. They won’t question our values or our choices. They won’t rock the boat in our congregations and in our lives.

When such a critique is leveled, the automatic response is to point out the effectiveness of a particular evangelism strategy. Someone can be paraded out to show that it worked and if we had not hosted this event, plastered this billboard around town, or handed out tracts to people on the sidewalk, Jimmy would never have been saved and if we dare question the method that reached Jimmy with the Gospel are we saying that we wouldn’t want Jimmy in our church or worse yet, in hell?

The methods worked, back off.

With all due respect to Jimmy, my greater concern is that we may be working extremely hard to save people like Jimmy with expensive advertising campaigns and resource hungry gimmicks to reach a relatively small portion of the population. And truth be told, this portion of the population may not be all that interested in the Gospel or God for that matter, making them a particularly tough nut to crack.

Thankfully, I don’t think we are faced with an either/or situation with respect to brother Jimmy and his affluent colleagues who want nothing to do with God. We can become a strong witness to the Kingdom of God and the Good News of its coming while also reaching the people that our advertising campaigns and evangelism tricks pass by.

This isn’t anything all that new. Lately there are a number of people who are suggesting the feasibility of such an approach. From Richard Stearns of World Vision to Shane Claiborn of the Simple Way, Christians can maximize their Gospel-preaching by giving away their resources, caring for others, and preaching the Gospel to the poor.

Wouldn’t that say volumes more than a billboard? Wouldn’t people respond to that?

While visiting a church plant in one of America’s poorest cities I stood outside chatting with a friend before the service. This guy I’ll call Raul walked up to us and asked my friend if he could bum a cigarette off him. We soon got into a conversation about himself, his family, and his church background. We told him about the church, and he asked, “So where is it based out of?”

“Right here,” my friend replied.

“For real?” he asked in unbelief.

Why would a group of otherwise well-off Christians embody the Kingdom of God in a neighborhood that has been abandoned by our government and written off by society? Why would Raul be so surprised to find that a group of Christians would set up shop in his neighborhood?

That is the kind of message that a billboard, event, or tract can never communicate: the immediate power and presence of God’s Kingdom among his people.

UPDATE:  I forgot to mention that I began thinking up this post after reading Bill Kinnon’s thoughts the other day.

Before you read this piece of satire, I wanted to say that I’ve been feeling quite convicted that I take myself a bit too seriously sometimes. I wrote this piece with myself in mind—I am the target of this piece, but I know I’m not alone. I think a lot of us in America do this. I hope after reading this we’ll all be encouraged to tone down our debates over theology.

ROME—The historic Christian faith that has endured persecution at the hands of emperors, papal corruption, a divisive Reformation, colonialism, and modernism currently hangs in the balance over a struggle to define the nature of truth, justification, and how to interpret the Bible between warring factions in the white American church.

The Pope has declared a day of fasting, asking faithful Christians of all denominations and all nations to pray that the true expression of Christianity will emerge victorious.

Pastors in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East have stopped all ministry among their congregations and communities, encouraging their flocks to join the Pope in prayer and to check regular updates on the internet among the key blogs and news sites involved in the struggle for the future of Christianity.

The Theologians in Corduroy Blazers (TCB) faction has been gathered in meetings around the clock in New York City, planning their strategy to prove that truth is defined by multiple perspectives, justification is accomplished by Christ’s victory over evil, and that culture plays a significant role in the interpretation of scripture. Blog posts, podcasts, and online articles have been appearing faster than you can say A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative, Mystical/Poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-yet-Hopeful, Emergent, Unfinished CHRISTIAN.

TCB leader Rick Heckman shared, “We are living in the most important period of Christian history. Everything pivots here. What these courageous leaders decide to do today will forever change the course of Christian history.”

Not to be outdone, the Theologians in Tweed Blazers (TTB) have assembled a broad coalition of bloggers and media superstars in Seattle to spread their message that truth is absolute and certain, justification is a legal transaction, and that culture pollutes the truth of scripture. They have countered with a staggering number of blog posts, articles on mainstream media web sites, and reports on Christian radio that make Calvin’s commentaries look like a pocket guide.

In a press release, Paul Shoutman of TTB declared, “Without a clear definition of truth we run the risk of allowing anyone to define Christianity in any way they want. With so many individualist Christians operating as if the bulk of Christian tradition has nothing to do with them, we have no recourse but to fight for a rigid formulation of truth and interpretation for the faith to survive.”

In a separate and possibly related event, Wikipedia has repeatedly crashed as theologians in the developing world have been looking up entries such as postmodernism, inerrancy, and absolute truth in an effort to figure out how they relate to their ministries in preaching the Gospel and serving the poor.

We’ve seen Christians latch on to enough movie stars, beauty queens, and politicians to realize that we are in the midst of legitimacy crisis. This is rooted in wanting to be viewed as legitimate, powerful, and influential in both our government and in popular culture.

Our situation speaks to not only an identity crisis, but a legitimacy crisis. Are we truly making ourselves and the Gospel we preach more legitimate by leeching on to celebrities?

You can probably guess what my answer is going to be…

When Jesus said that all authority on heaven and earth have been given to him, he was locating the source of influence and power in the world in himself. A crucified Messiah who overcame the world through his death and resurrection leads us down a path that helps us fulfill the Beatitudes today: blessed are the poor, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the meek.

In such a Savior and in such actions are where we find our identity and legitimacy.

The Messiah did not establish his Kingdom by fighting for influence on the top. He did not recruit “role models” to his cause. He initiated a mustard-seed style Kingdom that makes a mockery of our celebrities and politicians.

How can Christians find legitimacy and influence in the world today?

To quote a wise man: Sell everything you have, give the money to the poor, start following Jesus, and claim your treasure in heaven. To be perfectly blunt: we need to lose.

We can’t beat the world at its game because Jesus never intended to play that game. The more I consider what it looks like to follow Jesus, to pick up my own cross, and to die to myself so he can live in me, the more I’m beginning to realize that Jesus peals away all that we value so that we can trust in him more perfectly.

What do we want more than Jesus?

Judging by the way some Christians fawn over supposedly Christian celebrities as their standard bearers and fight for political power and influence, I think we can ID a few things pretty easily. However, bloggers such as myself treasure influence and readership, theologians crave being right, and the list goes on because we all have our idols to identify.

Once we identify those things that we want, disciples of Jesus need to give them up. Stop worrying about them. Stop fighting for them. Lose.

It is only in losing the fading things of this world that we experience not only the intimacy of Christ, but are enabled to speak to our world with true influence and power: the influence and power of Christ. We can’t speak with the authority and power of Christ fighting for influence, recognition, and power at the top. 

Paul reminds us that we are seated with Christ in heavenly places—not earthly places. Let us throw aside all that we crave, all that overshadows Christ so that we can claim our true identity and influence as loving servants of God’s Kingdom who are poor, meek, and peaceful.

My church celebrates communion each Sunday and follows it with a time of prayer and songs of worship. It’s always deeply moving and powerful, standing in stark contrast to the first half of the service that is fine, but doesn’t affect my spirit so deeply.

I don’t intend to be critical of one part of the service over another. Simply put: I’m moved by one part and not so much by the other. It just happens.

Perhaps some things are best left unexplained, but when I think about the communion table and the celebration of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, I’m reminded of what some in my family have described in their approach to church: gathering around the person of Jesus. I find it striking that communion moves us around Jesus in both word and deed, acting out his saving work, confessing our sins, and then drawing near to worship in gratitude.

This is highly significant, as Jesus essentially ensured that when we gathered as Christian communities we would focus directly on him and his saving message. Maybe we don’t need to roll out the bread and juice each week, but the one essential should be Jesus himself.

“Does this focus on Jesus?” becomes our litmus test in determining the value of all we do. We may want to focus on truth and the Bible, but unless that truth is the truth of Christ and the Bible as it leads to Christ, we have only succeeded in putting together a nice service, rather than a gathering around Jesus.

That helps me a lot. It keeps things simple. It makes me realize that we have included communion services in our worship because it’s hard to screw up, to make it about ourselves. It’s quite hard to break bread and then think about the latest theology debate or political campaign.

When we participate in this sacrament that has endured for 2,000 years, we are tapping into a reminder that Jesus himself instituted. He didn’t leave us with a Bible and tell us to preach from it, though there’s nothing wrong with that. He told us that our gatherings should focus on him, and he provided a visual aid just in case we ever forgot.

Christians, especially evangelicals, should be concerned about Sarah Palin’s book that releases on November 17th. It’s not quite on par with the coming of the apocalypse or government-sponsored death panels, but I think we have real problem on our hands.

It doesn’t have to do with Sarah Palin the author.

I don’t begrudge Sarah Palin writing a best-selling book. Good for her. I hope it pays the college bills for her kids and helps her grandkid. I know I was really excited about the release of my book, and I’m sure Sarah Palin is too.

It doesn’t have to do with Sarah Palin the politician.

Folks who drink up politics will certainly find it an interesting read, and I have no issue with the book as a political work. Does Palin want to lambaste the McCain campaign staff? Go for it. Does she want to raise her profile before running for President in 2012? Huckabee may not be happy about that, but don’t worry about me.

Go for it Sarah. I have no qualms with that. It’s a free country made up of mavericky, real Americans who will love her book. Some don’t think she should run for public office, but I’m not going to debate that because I know as little about politics as she knows about the Sunnis and Shiites.

We should be concerned because Sarah Palin knows her only shot in an election is mobilizing the conservative evangelical base. If we think Christianity has been overly-politicized now, we should shudder at the thought of what Palin can do.

In addition, as Palin stakes her claim as a “Christian” politician, Christianity and evangelicals in particular will continue to be painted as right-wing political affinity groups. Lost in the mix is the Gospel, Jesus, and the Great Commission. Will those on the left, who need to hear the Gospel, believe that Jesus comes with a Palin 2012 bumper sticker?

Read Palin’s book. Campaign for her. Vote for her. That’s fine with me.

But we should be concerned that the effectiveness of the Gospel message will be blunted because it is being associated with the Republican party, and Palin may need to do that all the more to solidify her place. Christians may play right into this by holding her up as a model Christian, a standard bearer for evangelicals.

Let’s remember that some could hold up President Obama up as an ideal Christian as well. For those on the right, such a notion should help communicate the polarizing effect of upholding Palin as an evangelical leader.

A Suggested Way Forward

Whatever we think of Palin, Obama, and their Christian beliefs, let’s resolve to carefully select spokesmen and spokeswomen who aren’t politically polarizing and who are best known for their faithfulness to Jesus, the Messiah and Prince of Peace. We could pick those who have passed from this world or we could pick those still among us.

We could talk about Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Wendell Berry, C. S. Lewis, Billy Graham, or any other model Christian who has a solid record of preaching the Gospel, serving others, and gracefully representing the cause of Christ. Christians cannot afford to let a politician represent us because politicians have to take sides. For those called to reach the whole world with the Gospel, that is a mistake we cannot afford to make.

Another installment of my fictional series Sarcastic Saturday:

Earth–In a surprising development for Christians devoted to social justice and loving one another, the Kingdom of God appeared because enough Christians have taken a bold stand for the truth. Michael the Archangel appeared in the heavens and proclaimed the victory of truth over error and relativism.

People who love truth everywhere are rejoicing that they were right. “We knew that if we exposed enough error and took a bold enough stand for truth, sound doctrine, and watered down Christianity emphasizing service that God’s Kingdom would show up,” said one self-proclaimed truth activist. “I’m not surprised that we were right,” he added.

“Here I thought my worship was meaningless because of the injustices Christians have been ignoring,” shared one pastor who works among the homeless. “As it turns out, the only thing God has cared about all along is if we get our doctrines correct.” 

Christian social justice ministries have since shuttered their operations, opting to commit to further study in order to sort out their doctrines in light of the Messiah’s second coming.

“What a shocker,” shared one member of Christians for Social Action. “The next thing they’ll say is that sarcasm can be redemptive.”

There is no doubt in my mind that Ed Dobson, a former pastor and author of The Year of Living Like Jesus, has some tremendous insights for the church today. Who can’t respect someone with a few years to live because of ALS who devotes a year to live like Jesus?

The simple fact that Dobson has set out on this project is reason enough to admire him. In addition, his attitude throughout the book is one of both compassion for others and a personal passion for the Gospel. Dobson has so much to teach us, and yet I was disappointed by this book because it promised far more than it delivered.

The Absurdly Short Review

Do you believe Christians should only vote for Republicans? Read this book. Did that question strike you as a silly one? Then read Shane Claiborn’s Irresistable Revolution and Jesus for President instead of this book. Not sure yet? Then read this:

The Long Review

While I can’t give this book a positive review, I can’t say enough good things about Dobson. The book reads like a personal journal, and therefore I don’t want to take away from the gains he made in his one-year project. A lot of good stuff happens in this book, but to put it bluntly, the book’s presentation as a year of living like Jesus doesn’t work. Perhaps he could have just listed a few lessons learned after immersing himself in the Gospels rather than claiming he was “living like Jesus.”

The first sixty five pages alone drag on with insignificant details and fretting over silly things like whether to use electronics during a plane’s take off or whether he should eat shrimp. Such passages zeroing in on minutiae are far too common throughout the book. In addition, any project like this needs parameters and Dobson doesn’t really set up hard and fast ones to follow, which could have saved a lot of ink and paper later in the book as he confronts the limitations of his ALS.

Was he going to follow all of the Old Testament? Was he going to live like Jesus in light of Acts 15? He doesn’t really tell us, and so he does a little of each, spending a lot of time worrying about what to do and talking about the Jewish customs he picked up along the way.

In addition, while Dobson wants to focus on praying more so he can be like Jesus, I can’t quite figure out why he’d pick up the Rosary and the prayer beads of the Eastern Orthodox. While his openness to these things is admirable, it’s hard to see how they fit in this book, which brings us back to his project’s parameters and the way it has been marketed.

The book’s main problem is that it still presents living like Jesus in a fairly tame form where we have to think a little harder about how we vote, make ourselves a little bit uncomfortable by picking up hitchhikers, give away a few things, and read the Bible more. These are all good steps that I want to honor, but when I read about the folks  living sacrificially in the communities of folks such as Shane Claiborn and Mark Scandrette, I can’t help but feel this project didn’t quite go far enough.

Though Dobson is careful to set his own course in order to distinguish himself from A. J. Jacob’s The Year of Living Biblically, I think the book would have benefited by interacting with some other Christian leaders beyond the few clergy he sought out. Wouldn’t it have been amazing for a former assistant to Jerry Falwell to sit down for a chat with someone like Jim Wallis or Shane Claiborn?

Dobson is honest about some of his failings, such as not visiting someone in prison or giving up more of his possessions, but at the same time there is a failure throughout the book to tackle some of the teachings of Jesus that many American Christians would find most difficult to stomach. If the publisher knew Dobson hadn’t done these things, then why not present the material in a slightly different light?

It was nice that Dobson gave away some suits and even sacrificed his preaching gig at his gated community in Florida, but his example of trusting his wealthy friends to buy him dinner didn’t exactly strike me as the kind of thing worth recording in a book about living like Jesus.

Dobson takes admirable risks at times and reaches out in wonderful ways to those outside the church, but there are plenty of awkward moments where he uncritically mentions his corvette and his gated community without wondering how the story of the rich young man could apply to them. He very well could have justified either of them, but his lack of attention to them makes them a glaring oversight that makes this book a bit difficult to digest at times.

I have really struggled to review this book because it does some things well, but also has some glaring weak points in light of the way the material is presented: a year of living like Jesus. The bar has no doubt been set high, but in reality we have a series of journal entries from a gracious and compassionate brother who benefits greatly by devoting more time to prayer, scripture reading, and attempts to live like Jesus.

As far as the benefits of this book, pastor Dan Kimball notes that Dobson has a passion for those outside of the church and has a lot of great stories to share from his year of trying to live like Jesus. Just taking a gander at the comments on Kimball’s blog you can see how some Christian brothers and sisters can’t stomach a discussion in politics beyond abortion, and to the extent that Dobson helps broaden the pro-life agenda and add nuance to our discussions, his book has made a valuable contribution to Christianity.

This book was reviewed as part of Zondervan’s blog tour.

I used to live 15 minutes from a naval air force base. Large military escort planes often hummed over our neighborhood, and some evenings I would drive by as they swooped in over the road. All around the base a series of shopping malls and various businesses offered everything a military base could need.

Over the years the local politicians debated the wisdom of having a military base on the edge of Philadelphia. Throughout the region similar debates cropped up from time to time about similar bases.

More often than not, the bases remained open. While some could make an argument for each base’s importance and function in the grand military scheme of things (though a “naval” base north of Philly strikes me as a hard sell), the loudest and most repeated argument proposed for keeping the bases was the local economy.

“If our little Naval Air base closed down, the local businesses around the base would experience a loss in business and put a lot of hard-working Americans out of work.” So we almost always kept the bases, kept spending our tax dollars on them, and kept folks employed.

A few years later, I began to notice that a lot of my friends had fathers who worked for a local business that built all kinds of stuff for the military. In fact, one of these companies still employs thousands of people in the Philadelphia area, doing business in both the civilian and military sectors.

A few years after that I began to notice that a lot of scientific research at universities is also funded by the United States Defense Department—which used to be aptly named the “War” Department. Some folks at universities can’t talk about their research projects from time to time because they are classified.

These scattered memories came to mind while I watched several commercials during the World Series that aim to support our troops and their families. It’s a nice sentiment to wish them well with the fast approaching holiday season and to pray for their safe return to their families.

However, while we may sing Christmas carols about peace on earth, pray for the safety of our soldiers, and the coming of the Prince of Peace, the three examples above hint that the stability of our economy depends on none of those things taking place. We need our soldiers to be placed into harm’s way even as we wish them the best. We need wars, we need enemies, and we need a military to fight them all so that we can keep our bases, businesses, and overall economy running.

I’m not willing to say that we need to scrap the entire military of the United States. Every secular state needs to make provisions for national defense (though the nature of that defense is debatable). What bothers me is the way our nation’s economy depends so heavily on military spending, keeping our soldiers in harm’s way, even while we’re told to honor them and to wish them season’s greetings

We could invest more money into nation-building, diplomacy, education, and development, but we already have an economy that depends on defense spending, so it’s way more comfortable to keep manufacturing arms and tearing apart families through lengthy deployments. But don’t worry! We are united in the support of our soldiers and wish them a happy holidays.

That should make things better, right?

The truth is that America has become cowardly and defeatist in its approach to the economy and to innovation. We have bought into the fear that we can’t survive economically by supporting global education, development, and peace. War can be good for business, and so we stay addicted to it.

Save an unnecessary military base for the sake of local jobs? Absolutely. Pump money out to defense contractors as we continue our fight in Afghanistan and keep Americans working in the production of war material? Of course! Seek other options for global peace and local economic development?

Nah. Let’s just keep putting our soldiers in harm’s way.

We tell ourselves that our soldiers like being honored, even if they have to risk their lives, get exposed to carcinogenic explosives, endure post-traumatic stress disorders, and miss out on irreplaceable time with their families. The American soldier is no doubt courageous, but in the midst of honoring them we fail to discuss our nation’s cowardice, our unwillingness to make sacrifices, and our fear of changing our systems and economy.

Perhaps we are guilty of hiding behind the bravery of our soldiers because we fear being exposed for what we are. Before we rush to honor the sacrifices of our soldiers, perhaps we should first ask what we are willing to sacrifice.