**This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**
Category: Education
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Sayeed’s Story
**This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**
Marti and I have a friend whom we love dearly; she lives in a majority-Muslim nation and regularly sends us stories about what the Holy Spirit is doing. Most of us read the disturbing stories about terrorism, tyranny and corruption in that part of the world, but there is a lot of very good news. Here is some:
This month, I had the privilege of traveling to Djibouti, a 99% Muslim nation in the Horn of Africa. I went to teach on a Discipleship Training School, the students were all Muslim Background Believers. One of the students was Sayeed from Somalia. He was born and raised in a very strict form of Islam. He was sent to Quranic schools and had the whole Quran memorized by the time he was 8 years old. Around that time, his family moved to Kenya as Somali Refugees.
He continued his schooling in Kenya and one day, in his early twenties, he was on his way home from his studies when he heard a debate on the streets of Nairobi. The debate was between a pastor and a Muslim Leader. As he was passing, he heard one phrase;
“Muhammad is dead but Jesus is alive – which prophet would you follow?”
This question hit his heart like an arrow. He stopped and listened to the debate for about 30 minutes. When he got home that night, he spent hours researching Jesus on youtube and became convinced that Jesus was the way, the truth and the life. He decided to follow Him that very day. He didn’t know who to talk to about his new faith so he chose to go to a fellow Somali Quranic teacher and share with him. He said to the teacher; “I have a very important secret, if I tell you, do you promise not to tell anyone? ” The Quranic teacher said yes, I will keep your secret. Sayeed told him that he had become a follower of Jesus and to his amazement the Quranic teacher said;
“I have been wanting to follow him also for about three years!!!” They committed that day to pursue Jesus together.
Through a long series of events, their families back home found out and the leaders of their Somali clan found out about their faith and came to find them to either bring them back to Islam or to kill them. Sayeed was captured and tortured several times and each time was able to escape his captors. In the meantime, they persecuted his siblings and even killed his mother because he had brought shame on the clan by following Christ. Sayeed’s latest escape brought him safely to Djibouti and into the arms of the DTS where I was teaching. We spent the week together, sharing stories, crying together, praying for one another and putting our trust in the Father for Sayeed’s future. He wants to eventually be a pastor to his own people back in Somalia. Wow.
Please pray for Sayeed, his protection, his journey with Jesus and his eventual returning home to bring others to know Christ. He is only 27 years old and has already lived several lifetimes. He is our brother – lets lift him up to the Lord and believe that God will use him mightily for the future of his nation.
with you for the Kingdom in the Muslim World,
Martha.
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Is Britain Going To Pot?
**This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**
You might be relieved to learn that this blog is not about Brexit.
This is about pot, weed, cannabis, marijuana, hashish, bhang, kif, Mary Jane, dope, skunk….My goodness, there are so many names for this stuff!
SOFTENING US UP FOR CHANGE IN THE LAW? My wife, Marti, and I are just back from a visit to Colorado, where cannabis has been approved for medical and recreational use for quite a few years, so we have some recent experience with the results of legalization. In the few days since we got back, I see that a number of national newspapers and several TV programs have focused on the pros and cons of legalizing cannabis. It is quite obvious that they usually lean towards the positives, especially since Canada just decided it was in the best interests of the nation to make it legal. When this kind of media onslaught appears, my experience tells me that it usually implies some measure of government and media coordination. Someone with quite a lot of clout has decided to change the law, so first they aim to change public opinion.
THE FIRST ARGUMENT The most common argument is summarized by this quote from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saying that it had become, “too easy for our kids to get marijuana – and for criminals to reap the profits.” So we asked around our friends and family in Colorado to see if legalizing stopped illegal dealing in the state. The answer was;
“No, there are always people who will grow and sell illegally because they want to avoid the state tax and the regulations which were the inevitable result of legalization. They can undercut the legal pot shops and make bigger profit.” So that seems to be one argument shot down, or at least seriously holed.
Since my home state, Colorado, led the USA in legalizing pot, it would be good to know what the Governor thinks now. In a recent interview with CNN, he explained that the crime rate has been rising since pot was made legal six years ago and he has not ruled out making it illegal again. He said:
“Trust me, if the data was coming back and we saw spikes in violent crime, we saw spikes in overall crime, there would be a lot of people looking for that bottle and figuring out how we get the genie back in. It doesn’t seem likely to me, but I’m not ruling it out.”
MY CANNABIS STORYAt this point, I should make a confession. In the year before I committed my life to the lordship of Christ, I smoked hashish (cannabis resin) at least a couple of times a week. I was attending the University of Colorado at the time. I enjoyed it a lot and wanted to smoke whenever it was possible. Although I was in my third year of a four-year electrical engineering degree, it was my first year completely away from home, as I had done the first two years at a junior college in my home town. When I got to the home of CU in Boulder, I joined in the party atmosphere.
I then proceeded to demonstrate an obvious truism; partying, drunkenness and pot smoking don’t contribute to an engineering degree! It wasn’t long before I was experiencing anxieties and there was a reason for that. It’s not much fun to go to a math class, having missed the two previous ones, only to realize that you can’t begin to understand what the professor is talking about. In those circumstances I could see two choices: I could stop partying and study with the “nerds” who understood, or I could reduce my anxieties with hashish. I smoked more.
The problem was I was only anxiety free when I was high. Every high was followed by ever more excruciating anxieties. Back to the young man who was prescribed cannabis to reduce anxiety: I notice that he is not addressing the reasons for his anxiety. He is still avoiding the hard choices required to make his life better, but the smoking makes him feel less anxious–at least temporarily. It seems quite clear to me that his prescription cannabis is not helping him lead a better, more fulfilling and satisfying life. All he gets is a temporary delusion that things aren’t as bad as he feels they are.
A BETTER CURE There are much better cures for anxiety. Since my conversion, I have aimed to live clear-conscience Christianity and that has given me the key to anxiety management. Where there are reasons for me to feel anxious, I should never avoid the circumstances causing the anxiety or attempt to anesthetize my conscience; I must face the reasons and make the choices that reduce my anxieties. However, sometimes anxieties arise for no identifiable reason. In those cases, once again, a clear Christian faith provides a pathway to overcoming. I have access to God’s presence, His promises and His reassuring love for me as an individual. When I focus on those realities, anxiety begins to shrivel.
I conclude that substance use, whether alcohol or cannabis or another something else, is no way to manage anxiety or fear. It is so much better to change the way I think and live and thus increase relational harmony and whole-person peace—shalom.
REVENUE FOR GOVERNMENTS I think the only obvious case for legalizing pot is the case for revenue. When a government legalizes and taxes pot, they will certainly increase their tax income. How much of that will have to go on extra policing is hard to say because it is so difficult to say that certain crimes are the result of pot use and others are not. But it’s not just a matter of policing. Some people will be able to use pot recreationally without it apparently affecting their behavior, but others will lose more time from work, withdraw from relationships, become less industrious and make more mistakes at work. Some of those mistakes can result in injury or death. How do we calculate the cost of that?
Driving under the influence of cannabis can be as dangerous as driving drunk. Note the following quote from a Canadian news service earlier this year,
As Canada prepares for legal pot, the federal government plans to spend as much as $80-million to train 750 police officers to smoke out high drivers. But how sound is the test? A Fifth Estate investigation raises serious questions, showing it can lead to false arrests, is prone to police bias and, according to one scientific expert, is no better at detecting high drivers than “flipping a coin”
The same article states that the Canadian government has spent as much as $80 million to train 750 police officers to “smoke out high drivers”. So where does all this leave the equation that all governments have to work out? (Revenue minus costs equals the overall financial benefit.) The answer is not clear, but it is not likely to be an overall positive income.
We become used to governments presenting this sort of decision in purely financial terms, but they are always more than that. This one is certainly about more than mammon. What impact will legalization have on the character of our nation? Will it be a help or a hindrance to young people as they grow up? Will it help develop more reliable and responsible citizens? The answer to that one is self-evident.
So is there a case for legalizing pot? Should Britain go the same way some other liberal western democracies have gone? Now that it seems many other nations will follow suit, so should we be among them?
A few months ago I watched a BBC documentary in which about half a dozen British TV celebrities were taken to Colorado where they talked to lots of people about pot. They toured pot farms and went to the specialist shops where they tried many different kinds of smokes and eats. They were older celebrities—I would say the average age was middle fifties—so their giggling and fooling around was quite entertaining. After their fascinating and picturesque tour was over, they were asked the big question:
“Would you recommend that pot be legalised in Britain?”
I was sure their answer would be yes. But to my amazement, each one had exactly the same answer. “After all we have seen and experienced on this trip—the answer is no.”
I agree.
Lynn Green.
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What does the Gospel say About Acid Attacks?
**This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**
As I write, this morning’s newspapers are headlining with a crime that is particularly horrifying and I think it is good to reflect on why we are horrified—as I think everyone is, or will be, when they read it.
A three-year-old toddler, sitting in his pushchair in a shop, had acid thrown over his face as his mother, helpless to stop the attack, screamed for her child. There would have been many tragedies this past weekend, as there are each and every day in this suffering world, so why is our attention drawn to the little boy?
I suppose it is because we can’t imagine how grown men could do that to a child. Four men have been arrested in connection with the crime. (No motives have been established and the toddler is now recovering at home after initial hospitalisation.) I wouldn’t be surprised if the police discover that it was vengeance attack on the father or another member of the family.
When vengeance is allowed to grow and find expression, we are capable of almost anything. Human history overwhelmingly illustrates that vengeance knows no bounds. Even Biblical history confirms the terrifying human capacity for inhuman behaviour when vengeance grows. A Hebrew poet exiled in cruel Babylon penned Psalm 37, which states:
“Happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us—he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.”
(Yes, Judaism as practiced in the OT era was vengeance-based and much of it still is today. So is Islam. No wonder we have an endless cycle of violence. Those who think it can be solved in a generation or less don’t understand the power of worldviews, which are usually generated by religion.)
Vengeance is at its worst when the powerful prey on the less powerful. That is why men in government are the most prolific murderers in history. Think of Stalin and Mao and Hitler; between them they killed vast numbers of the citizens of their own nations, with estimates running at over 100 million!
Looking at that, some people would say that the hierarchy of power is to blame and we need governments who believe in equality to do away with all hierarchy. But just a few seconds reflection on that conclusion reveals the inbuilt contradiction: you can’t do away with power by giving greater power to elite leaders.
That doesn’t mean that there is no solution. When the disciples of Jesus argued with one another about who was greater, they were jockeying for position in what they imagined would be the government that would soon emerge under Jesus, the King. In his response, Jesus did not say there would be no greater and lesser positions for people to fill, because their existence is an ineradicable fact of human nature. (Whether or not it was created to be that way or was a result of sin’s entrance into the world is another discussion.)
What Jesus said, in effect, confirmed the existence of power hierarchies, but prescribed how power should be used. “He who would be greatest among you must be the servant of all.” Elsewhere he said the humble would be exalted. Jesus did not come to do away with power and the idea of “greater and lesser”, although they will probably not exist in the new heaven and new earth. He commanded us to use whatever power we have to serve others and he said he would promote those who live humbly. The humble do not exploit the weak.
The gospel is both revolutionary and completely workable—although VERY demanding!
We react in horror when we learn that men threw acid on a toddler because the teachings of Jesus have saturated our culture for several centuries. In other cultures, that act could be accepted as necessary as long as one family or clan was “evening the score” on another. Not all cultures are equal!
This subject is another strong argument for missions and missionaries. The Good News about Jesus can transform the quality of life of any community—and illustrations abound!
But for now, evil men still visit violence on those who are lower down the power hierarchy. Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus!Lynn Green
Lynn Green 