This morning's BBC report discloses that the French government has refused to grant citizenship to man because he is forcing his wife to wear the 'full veil'. Because she is not free to 'come and go with her face uncovered', this man's values place him a category of person to whom the French government denies citizenship. It is recommended by the French government that anyone showing signs of "radical religious practice" be refused citizenship.I'm interested in your thoughts on this subject so I'll just toss some questions out:

1. The phrase 'radical religious practice' seems ambiguous. Isn't 'eating the flesh and drinking the blood' (see John 6, or your weekly communion table) also radical? Or living in community? What are the risks that this ruling becomes precedent setting for all manner of religious persecution? On the other hand, isn't the state obligated to protect the powerless (Romans 13), and isn't this woman being rendered powerless? But what if she wants the full covering?

There were many in the evangelical world of my youth (read: James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, et. al.) who decried the 'liberal courts' for overstepping their bounds by using the court as means of legislating, rather than limiting their responsibilities to 'upholding the constitution according intent of its framers'.  They viewed Roe v Wade as an example of, not merely ruling on a case, but of using a case to create and impose a new ethos that was far beyond the scope of the case at hand.   How dare those liberals do that!  If only conservatives ruled the court, such nonsense would cease, right?  

 Apparently not.  The court used the case of "Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission" as a means for overturning a century of campaign finance laws, ushering in an era whereby corporations (both American, and foreign ones with US subsidiaries) are granted the same freedom of speech rights as individual Americans.   The McCain/Feingold law that sought to limit the degree to which companies could influence elections (and thereby, influence elected officials) was overturned with this ruling.  

I recently read a survey that indicated 90% of American men self identify as being "above average fitness" compared to their peers.  When you do the math (and even I can do this math) it becomes these men don't have self image problems; but they are delusional.  Their problem comes, I suspect, from one of the oldest tricks in the book: confusing intention with action.  They want to exercise, want to eat right, want get enough sleep, want to cut back on coffee and alcohol.  They watch bow-flex commercials, drink low carb beer, and declare themselves 'fitter than average'.  Intent gets confused with action.   What's actually needed are objective measures of health; things like body mass index, resting heart rate, and the good/bad cholesterol ratio.   The harsh numbers tell the truth.  

Our church staff was looking at this article yesterday, which articulates some data from the Barna research people about how Christians are perceived by those who are not.  I wonder if the real Jesus, not the one conservatives and liberals have fabricated, would be perceived as boring (remember when he walked on water, remember the accusation that he went to the wrong parties, the ones with unreligious people), or judgmental (remember the women caught in adultery who, in accordance with Levitical law should have been stoned, and he found a way to forgive her?), or insensitive to others?  The people who hated him the most were the religious experts – seminary trained, with big Bibles that they used to prove to themselves that Jesus was a heretic worthy of death  (John 5:39, Acts 13:27).  They’re the only people Jesus angered, at least until those people nearly incited a riot in their efforts to get him killed.  Then Rome stepped and helped put him to death.

The school where I'm teaching this week is in the Bavarian region of Germany, a predominantly Catholic part of the country in contrast to the prevalence of Protestantism in the North. Both Protestant and Catholic claim to follow Jesus and declare without hesitation that "Jesus is Lord". The meaning of the declaration, though, was sorely tested between the late 1920's and the end of WWII in 1945, as Hitler rose to power by blending "God Words" with a call to nationalism in order to revive both faith and state. That he rose without substantive resistance in spite of his unabashed disdain for both the God of the Old Testament, and all Jews, is a study in itself, but not the point of this post.

I'm over in Europe teaching for the next two weeks for Torchbearers Missionary Fellowship. I'll be offering regular updates from Germany, Austria, and Prague, throughout the month. I hope you'll follow me, both here, and on Twitter, as I seek to uncover some lessons we can learn from Christians in Europe, both today and historically.

As we move into the advent season, I'm looking out the window of my room, located in southern Germany, on the shores of the Bodensee lake. I'm looking south, across the lake to the shores of Switzerland, only a few short miles away.  

I'm reading, "The Shame and the Sacrifice" while here in Germany, which is the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life, the German pastor who had the chance to remain in America as WWII was beginning, but elected instead to return to his homeland in order to walk with his own people through what he anticipated would be a dark and difficult time.There's a profound sense in which Bonhoeffer's return to Germany becomes a powerful and rich example of the very thing we celebrate at this time year:  "God with us."  

Jesus' words to his followers about us being the "light of the world", seems especially appropriate this time of year. It's the time of year when, up here, the light drops lower into the sky and the shadows are long. Leaves have blown away and naked branches shake. Here in raincity we've the added beauty of clouds creating interplays of light and shadow in an infinite array of patterns. It's a remarkable time of year, a time when darkness and light seem to be at war.

Thankfully, we live with the confidence that in just a few short weeks the darkness, which has seemingly been getting the upper hand, will once again enter its annual season of defeat as light inevitably triumphs. For some of us, the season is the most beautiful of all, not because we like the darkness so much, but because the darkness makes the little shards of light all the more poignant and powerful. A single candle in my home office at 6:00PM in May? Meaningless. On November 17th? Priceless.

We had a German student staying out our house twenty years ago this week and together watched the stunning news out of Berlin, as people armed with nothing more than hammers and picks dismantled the wall between east and west. We were stunned then and, as the subsequent weeks unfolded, even more so as nation after nation in Eastern Europe declared their freedom from the totalitarianism of the Soviet machine. I was privileged to travel through east Germany shortly after the wall had fallen and the east had opened. At the time the poverty was still palpable, evident in everything from food to architecture. Things are different now, where Berlin offers all the evidence of upward mobility and freedom, as people stand in line for lattes and the landscape rises with some of the most progressive architecture in the world.As I look back on both the opening up of Eastern Europe, there are lessons to be learned: