THE WORLD IS A BOOK

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Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor

 

You know the old story of how, when the missionaries came to Africa, we had the land and they had the Bible. Then they said, ‘Let us pray,’ and we dutifully shut our eyes, and when we said ‘Amen’ at the end and opened our eyes, why, they had the land and we had the Bible. That seems to have been a bad bargain. But we are forever indebted to those indomitable men and women from across the seas who brought us the glorious gospel of God’s love for us and who helped to educate us in their schools and colleges and who helped to improve our heath with the clinics and hospitals and health care they provided. We are forever grateful to them.

Desmond Tutu

Hernando de Soto is a Peruvian economist who made enough money in Europe to retire before he was 40. Instead he began studying what makes some countries rich and keeps others poor. His advocacy for formal property rights to lift citizens of developing countries from poverty made him an assassination target for Shining Path, a Maoist terrorist group. He has outlived the Shining Path.

the bio at the end of de Soto’s New York Times Magazine piece, ‘Who Owns This Mess?’

Trailer for “The Business of Gold” - a documentary by Gregory Lassalle

Guatemalan Drug Gangs & Me: The Human Cost of Prohibition (HT @CentAmPolMike)

Video: Scientists look for mass graves in #Guatemala (via @AJEnglish)

When the ordinary person is convinced that there is little he can do to alleviate the misery and injustice that surround him, then avertive religion in one or another of its forms or some inwardness version of formative religion will prove irresistibly attractive, and the social activism inherent in world-formative religion will seem profoundly irrelevant. But just the opposite will be the case when the social situation appears fluid and open to influence in many different directions, as was the case in sixteenth-century Western Europe.

Nicholas Wolterstorff, ‘Until Justice and Peace Embrace’

The saints are responsible for the structure of the social world in which they find themselves. That structure is not simply part of the order of nature; to the contrary, it is the result of human decision, and by concerted effort it can be altered. Indeed, it should be altered, for it is a fallen structure, in need of reform. The responsibility of the saints to struggle for the reform of the social order in which they find themselves is one facet of the discipleship to which their Lord Jesus Christ has called them.

Nicholas Wolterstorff, ‘Until Justice and Peace Embrace’

Raising a single, pure, simple principle in politics can be powerful—but it is almost always dangerous. Complexity is the nature of politics. It is also the sign of a serious political thinker or candidate.

Michael Gerson (via Capital Commentary)

We must begin working together taking public life seriously because justice requires it, our neighbors depend on it, and the life of the body of Christ cannot come to full maturity without it.

James Skillen (via Capital Commentary)

They burned villages, killed children and, just a winding road away from here in 1982, the Guatemalan military also massacred hundreds of Mayan peasants, after torturing old men and raping young women. But now, all across these highlands once ravaged by a 36-year civil war, the region’s bloodiest anti-Communist conflict, Guatemalans are demanding the unthinkable — a strong military, back in their communities.

“Desperate Guatemalans Embrace an ‘Iron Fist’” by @damiencave (via New York Times)