Yang Caizhen Is Free





Good news on Yang Caizhen, the Chinese Christian woman who was imprisoned in November 2009 for organizing a prayer rally at an illegal "house church" in Linfen, China. Prisoner Alert, a ministry of Voice of the Martyrs, received word late last week that Caizhen was released from prison in February, several months ahead of schedule.

Prisoner Alert’s press release on Caizhen states: "Praise God that Chinese prisoner of faith Yang Caizhen was released from prison in February. Mrs. Yang Caizhen has been ill and in the hospital several times since her arrest. She was released due to her illness. She is reported to look very fragile. Please continue to pray for her as she recovers. Pray also for her husband, Yang Xuan, and Pastor Wang Xiaoguang, Yang Rongli and Zhang Huamei, who were arrested at the same time as Yang Caizhen, and who remain in prison."

Christians around the world protested Caizhen’s imprisonment, sending 544 emails to Chinese government officials and an astounding 1,821 letters to her prison. People in churches across the United States prayed for her, Christian news services worldwide picked up her story, bloggers wrote about her and the Linfen church, videos about her were posted to YouTube, and tweets decrying her treatment spread across Twitter.

It was a drumbeat of faith the Chinese government could no longer ignore.

For background on Yang Caizhen, see here for my original post on her and here for an update.

Guest Blogger Amy Maddox

I’m happy to welcome my friend Amy Maddox as guest blogger today. Amy is a talented writer who is working on her first novel while raising a husband and three children. You can read more of Amy’s thoughts—and see photos of her artwork—on her own blog, Something Deep and Witty. Without further ado, here’s Amy.

For the record, writing is art.

Of course, a lot of other things are also art: music, photography, painting, movies, sewing, gardening, cooking, crafts. The list goes on and on. And when I’m in the middle of making a lampshade (more on this later), it’s easy for me to understand that I am creating art. After all, I have glue and scissors. Aren’t glue and scissors prerequisite tools for art?

But writing? When I’m in the middle of it, I forget that it’s art. I read other people’s writing and can see the connection clearly. But when I’m doing it, I doubt. I struggle to find the words. I type, I delete, I stare into space. But just so we’re all clear, writing—even your writing, even mine—is art.

But back to the lampshade. I recently made one for my office. It was a long, sometimes tedious project, but I am very proud of the results. I’m proud of how nice the shade looks, for the money I saved, for the incredible blessing of having an office to decorate after months of unemployment. But I’m also proud of the expression of myself that is in the shade. In the process of reflecting on the project, I found myself wondering if I love the lampshade.

I don’t actually love the lampshade. It is, after all, an inanimate object with no soul. But there is also something of the eternal in this lampshade because I made it. There is something of the eternal God in me, both because I am created in his image and because he has redeemed my brokenness, and so because of the great care and time I put in making the lampshade, and because it is an expression of the art that is in me—art that is ultimately from God—there is something good and eternal in this shade, this art I have created. And so I guess it’s more accurate to say that I love God, but part of my love for God is reflected in the lampshade. He and I created it together. His expression of beauty and art, and more, his patience and care and grace, are all built into this silly little shade. So if I say I love the lampshade, really what I’m saying is that I love the art that God has created in my life.

I feel much the same way about writing—the writing that is, after all, art. In the same ways I used fabric and glue and thread to create art for my office, I use pen and paper (or, more likely, keyboard and screen) to create art. The lampshade is so much more than the sum of its parts, and so writing is so much more than just the words on the page. It is passion, aspiration, faith, doubt—the sum of the human experience can be expressed and understood in writing just as it is expressed in other types of art.

And ultimately, art is good and speaks to our souls because it expresses something of the eternal. This is the power of writing, of singing, of things we create that words cannot express. We are made in his image, all of us, and something of Elohim, the Creator God, lingers in us. But we who are redeemed—and whose art is redeemed—have a special privilege, a special responsibility. As God created, so we create. As he penetrates the soul with the word, so can our words be used by him. Writing is an act of faith-ing, of speaking, of yielding, of wielding. Our art can show life and light to the world.

And so, God—whether we actually use his name or not—uses art as a revolutionary force. A friend of mine recently said on her blog, "The heart can be a wall. But if you put hinges on a wall, it becomes a door. And culture [or art] is the hinge. What a revelation to me, the culture-lover! No wonder I am so in love with culture–it has opened up my heart to God."

When I was young, I enjoyed the hymn "How Great Thou Art." The words stirred my young soul, and my mind gave image to the timeless words:

O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder,

Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;

I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,

Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Then sings my soul, My Savior God, to Thee,

How great Thou art, How great Thou art . . .

The problem was, I didn’t understand archaic English at that age. When I sang "How great Thou art," I thought we were telling God how great his art was. Look at the worlds he’d made! Look at the stars! Hear the thunder! That’s some impressive artwork! It wasn’t until later that the truth hit me like the aforementioned thunder. "How great Thou art" really meant "How great you are!" I felt so silly and childish.

But, oh, isn’t it the deepest truths that sometimes come from little children? In the intervening years, I’ve returned to that original understanding and come to appreciate it, and God, and my own creativity, in new ways. And so when I sing, however infrequently, that old hymn, I choose to think, How great your art is, God.

And how great our art can be, too.

For more on creating art with our words and our lives, see Emily Freeman’s blog, Chatting at the Sky. She has been writing about art all this year.

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A Christmas Card in April

I like to take my two dogs for a walk in the cemetery near my house. If I get there early enough, I can let them run off leash for a while, and they love that. A month ago, while Sophie and Cooper were chasing squirrels and leaping over headstones, I found a creased and red-stained Christmas card in the grass. There were no headstones in the immediate area, no indication of where the card had come from. I opened it. The words inside were heartbreaking: “Merry Christmas in heaven. I’ll love you forever. I miss you so much.” It was addressed to a man and signed by a woman (I’ll call her Margaret).

About thirty feet from the card, I found an envelope, also stained red. The front of the envelope read “To My Dear Husband.” I imagine the stain came from a Christmas wreath with a red bow—such wreaths were everywhere in the cemetery, even in early April. Snow and rain had leached color from the bow onto the card. Someone had torn open the envelope, removed the card, and tossed them both to the wind. And for some reason I found them. I’ve been praying for Margaret ever since.

So why did I find the card? If you had asked me ten years ago, I would have said it was coincidence. Forget the fact that if I had arrived in the cemetery just one minute later, the wind, which was wild that day, would have blown the card far from the path I always walked. No, like any sensible twenty-first-century woman, I would have invoked coincidence.

But ten years have passed, and I’ve learned something: To believe in coincidence is to deny God’s infinite creativity. Coincidence is the product of a withered imagination. It reduces God to something more manageable in our minds.

Imagine a God who, on a windy day in April, would send a tattered Christmas card blowing my way. Who would allow one of His children the privilege of praying for another of His children and thereby have her take part in the Great Dance. Who would bless my simple walk in the cemetery. It boggles the mind, doesn’t it?

Still, some people prefer chance to a wily, artistic God. There’s safety in coincidence. For one thing, coincidence absolves us of responsibility. If coincidence sent the card my way, there’s no reason I should pray for Margaret. For another, coincidence turns God into a cosmic couch potato with little interest in His creation and no stake in how events play out. We hardly need bother with a God like that. He has no claim on us—and sometimes that’s just the way we like it.

Was God surprised that I took the card as a sign to pray for Margaret? How could he be? Did Margaret need prayer? Yes, I think so. And knowing how I think, the God who controls the wind sent the card my way. Only the unimaginative would call that coincidence.

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Cloud of Witnesses

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Hebrews 12:1

Those who make up this biblical cloud of witnesses—Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Rahab—are impressive figures, but most of the time, to me at least, they seem distant and untouchable. Almost not real. And because of that, they’re not quite the examples they’re meant to be.

But I have my own cloud of witnesses. I’ll bet you do too. Here are a few of the people who inhabit mine:

C.S. Lewis. Novelist, scholar of medieval and Renaissance literature, and Christian apologist (1898–1963). How many people can trace their conversion, at least in part, to a C.S. Lewis book or essay? Millions, I’m sure, including millions of children who learned to love the lion Aslan before they knew who Jesus was.

Thérèse of Lisieux. French Carmelite nun (1873–1897). Although Thérèse wanted to remain unknown, she also aspired to greatness—in God’s sight. Being “small” in her own eyes, her path to greatness was her “little way” of small (but costly) sacrifices. Her autobiography Story of a Soul, as it was later titled, written at the request of the prioress of Lisieux and published a year after her death, is one of the most moving and thought-provoking works in Christian literature.

Rich Mullins. Songwriter, singer, musician, and author (1955–1997). In the 1970s Rich Mullins was a youth pastor and music director at his Kentucky church. In the early 1980s he moved to Nashville and started a successful career in Christian music. And in the late 1980s he gave it all up. He went back to school, got a degree in music education, and moved to New Mexico to teach music to kids on the Navajo reservation. Rich probably earned millions of dollars in his lifetime, but he insisted on being paid each year no more than what the average salary in the U.S. was. He gave the rest to charity.

Keith Green. Songwriter, singer, and musician (1953–1982). Keith Green is the first contemporary Christian music artist I remember hearing, though I have to admit I’m not that fond of his music now. (It’s, well, very 1970s CCM.) It’s his life that interests me. Before he became a Christian, he delved into Eastern mysticism and drugs, fighting Jesus all the way. After he became a Christian, he opened his house to homeless kids and prostitutes. When he was released from his last record contract in 1979, he never again charged money for his albums or concerts. People gave only what they could, and the profits went to Keith’s Last Days Ministries. When I read articles and books about Keith, the same word keeps popping up: “radical.”

Corrie ten Boom. Dutch Holocaust survivor and author (1892–1983). Ten Boom was arrested, along with her entire family, for helping to hide Jews and resistance fighters from the Nazis. She was imprisoned at Ravensbrück concentration camp. Her father and sister died in the camps. Corrie survived and went on to write her memoir, The Hiding Place, among other works. After forty years, The Hiding Place is still in print.

What about you? Who is in your cloud of witnesses?

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Howls of Derisive Laughter





I recently saw a video of a speech Christian musician Rich Mullins gave in 1986 to a Christian youth organization in which he said he’d given up watching Monty Python movies. “This was a hard one for me,” he explained. “Because I love Monty Python movies, and I had to stop watching them, because I realized that they laugh at life and they scoff at life.”

Here was a guy who dove into living, who railed against Christians who try to construct neat little lives insulated and isolated from the rest of the world. Give up Monty Python? That harmless comedy troupe? Why not talk about giving up smoking, drugs, Tarot cards?

Maybe because laughing and scoffing at life—cynicism, to put it in a word—devalues life in a way that Tarot cards and a host of other no-no’s can’t. Cynicism refuses to treat God and life as good and precious. It views human beings as self-serving hypocrites. It’s too clever to fall for the “lie” that there is a God in heaven and meaning to life.

The cynic avoids natural sentiment because it makes him vulnerable. The Christian risks playing the fool. The cynic sees in Mother Teresa’s struggles with faith a “gotcha” moment—score one for atheism. The Christian sees a woman who persevered in serving God despite her doubts—the very definition of faith.

What makes cynicism so dangerous is that it’s too easy to be cynical in our culture. Beyond easy: you’re rewarded for it. Cynicism is a mark of intelligence, of a willingness to face the world as it is. It’s funny. It’s the robust, grown-up way to look at things.

But cynicism is none of those things. It’s gutless. It dislikes and distrusts beauty. It elevates ugliness simply because it is ugliness. It stands apart from the “unwashed masses,” commenting from on high. It’s passivity, not action. It’s the lousy abstract painting that any monkey with a brush can paint (and then call art).

It’s easy to mock life, to let loose with—as the Pythons say in one of their more famous sketches—“howls of derisive laughter.” All you have to do is cave into the culture. Let your thoughts fall into and roll down that old bowling-alley gutter. It takes effort to keep the ball out of that gutter and treat life as precious.

And I think that’s where giving up Monty Python comes in. We’re told to keep our minds on what is true, noble, just, and lovely (Phil. 4:8), and while that doesn’t mean we should spend our lives skipping through meadows and sipping drops of dew from flower petals, it does mean, I think, that we shouldn’t deliberately fill our minds with things that crowd out the true and noble.

The strange thing is, when I gave up Monty Python—among many other things, since I had such a taste for snarky humor—I found I developed a different perspective on life. I was no longer “feeding the beast,” so to speak, and a world of real, warm humor opened up to me. And Monty Python? They’re just not that funny anymore.

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A Little Thing

Last week I was up and out of the house early to drop a couple pieces of mail in the mailbox a few blocks from my house. I was looking ahead to all I had to do that day—not much of it pleasant—and as a result I was already in a gloomy mood. I was steeling myself for the day.

I parked the car and walked to the mailbox, and as I dropped the mail through the slot, I heard a cheery “Good morning!” I turned—on the off chance this happy voice was addressing me—and saw a man, maybe in his late sixties, heading for the same mailbox. Mail in hand, arms swinging, he smiled broadly at me. I replied with my own “Good morning!” and headed back to my car. Grinning.

We didn’t have a conversation at the mailbox, nothing more than a smile and a “Good morning” passed between us. But that man made my morning. And he got me thinking. Maybe if we realized that one smile or a couple of kind words could make such a difference in someone’s day, we’d be more willing to sprinkle those smiles and words around.

There are times when we feel we have nothing to offer. We’re drained ourselves and don’t have a drop to spare, or maybe we’re just in the kind of mood I was that morning and don’t see why we should spare a drop. I wonder what kind of day that man was facing. It might not have been any better than mine. It might have been worse.

It was such a little thing, but here I am, days later, thinking and writing about it.

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Christians Continue to Face Persecution



Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s only Christian

cabinet member, was assassinated on

March 2, 2011, for opposing Pakistan’s

blasphemy law, which is often used

against Christians.

After reading about mob attacks on Christians in Egypt this month—largely ignored by the media—I thought I’d research the current state of Christian persecution in Africa, India, and the Far East. What follows is a tiny sample of the persecution Christians in these parts of the world have faced in the past three months. 

• On March 4, in the village of Soul, south of Cairo, a local imam issued a call to “kill all the Christians.” The imam said Christians had no right to live in the village. Several hours after his call, a mob attacked the local church. They brought down its walls with sledgehammers and set fire to it, nearly killing the parish priest (some reports have it that the priest and three deacons were later killed).
• On March 5, also in the village of Soul, a mob of almost four thousand Muslim extremists attacked Coptic homes, setting fire to them. (There are an estimated twelve thousand Christians in Sol.) The mob prevented fire brigades from extinguishing the fires.
• I’ve written about Yang Caizhen before. She was arrested in November 2009, along with other church leaders, for holding a prayer rally the day after four hundred military police raided the church she and her husband pastor in Linfen, China. Last month, for the second time since her arrest, she was admitted to a hospital. This time her condition appears to be very serious. 
• Pastor Vijay Purusu of Bethel Church in India’s Orissa state says that Hindu extremists’ persecution of Christians in the area "has become a daily occurrence." There have been at least fifteen serious attacks on Christians between December 2010 and February 2011, including an assault on Pastor Mark Markani, who was beaten in his home by a group of thirty-five Hindu extremists, and an attack on Christmas Day in which some two hundred Hindus beat worshipers in a church and destroyed ten houses belong to Christians. 
• In February, Pastor Hari Shankar Ninama was stripped and beaten by Hindu extremists while he was praying in a home in Ambarunda for the recovery of an eight-year-old boy suffering from an illness. He’d been asked to pray by the boy’s mother. 
• For the ninth year in a row, North Korea is at the top of Open Doors’ World Watch List, an annual list that ranks countries by the severity of their persecution of Christians. In North Korea, Christians face torture, life in a labor camp, or execution—simply for being a Christian. Out of a population of twenty-three million, there are an estimated four hundred thousand Christians in North Korea, fifty thousand of them in labor camps.

If you want more information on the persecution of Christians, visit Persecution.org, Voice of the Martyrs, Open Doors, ChinaAid, and Help Linfen. All of these websites offer ways for you to write or email Christian prisoners.

 

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Why I Love Christian Fiction

There’s an interesting scene in the 1992 movie A Stranger Among Us, the story of Emily Eden, a tough New York City cop who briefly lives under cover in a community Hasidic Jews in order to solve the disappearance of a member of that community.

In this scene, Emily (Melanie Griffith) is introduced to the community’s rebbe (Yiddish for “rabbi”). Rather than have the sense to meet the rebbe wearing modest clothing, Emily wears what she’s used to: a short, tight skirt. Naturally, when she sits down to talk with the rebbe, her skirt rides up her thighs. In response, the rebbe’s daughter, Leah (Mia Sara), gently and without reproach drapes a blanket across Emily’s lap.

What I love about this scene, and what makes it remarkable, is that even though it occurs early in the movie, by the time the audience sees it, the tables have already been turned. It’s Emily, the perfectly nice and normal cop, who’s the outsider, not the “prudish” Leah. When Leah covers Emily’s legs, it’s not weird or intrusive—it’s just plain common sense.

And this is what love about Christian fiction. There are no apologies for characters whose actions are guided by a profound relationship with God. There are no faintly embarrassed presentations of modesty, decency, or whispered prayers—because in their modesty and decency the characters are acting out of common sense.

Christian fiction is not about unreal worlds populated by unreal people, it’s about the full reality of life, and that full reality includes millions of people who live their lives with God foremost in their thoughts. In secular fiction, just as in most movies, these people have to be explained. They’re the outsiders, the strangers. Or the lunatics and villains.

Christian fiction turns the tables.

The Ebook Revolution

Last month Amazon.com announced its fourth-quarter 2010 financial report, and for writers, myself included, who have decided to take the indie ebook plunge rather than go the traditional publishing route, it contains some exciting news.

First, Amazon is now selling more Kindle books than paperbacks. In 2010, for every 100 paperbacks Amazon sold, it sold 115 Kindle books. This statistic doesn’t include free Kindle books, so the figure is actually higher.

Authors, especially indie authors, will frequently offer their ebooks for free, or at a greatly reduced price, for a limited period of time. Check Amazon’s Kindle store and its Limited-Time Offers page for the latest, and if you’re on Facebook and Twitter, watch for authors' announcements of free ebooks and ebook specials. You can also find free out-of-copyright books at the Kindle store, including classics like Pride and Prejudice and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Second, Amazon sold “millions” of third-generation Kindles in the fourth quarter of 2010. That makes it the biggest selling product in Amazon’s history, even bigger than the previous record-holder, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I’ve got a first-generation Kindle, and I’m dying to get my hands on a Kindle 3.

Third, the U.S. Kindle store has more than 810,000 books, and that number is growing every day.

And fourth, Amazon has launched even more free Kindle apps, allowing ebooks to be read on devices other than the Kindle (including Android phones, iPhones, BlackBerries, and your PC or Mac).

Just a couple years ago the experts were saying that most people would never exchange an in-the-flesh book for an electronic one, but the Kindle (as well as the Nook and other e-readers) is proving them wrong. Publishing is undergoing a sea change. It’s an exciting time to be a writer.

The Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands

I was doing more research on wicca and paganism last week and I found this post on a pagan forum:

We have this ornamental cherry tree in the front of our house, and I like to go beneath her branches. . . . I sit under her branches and it feels like she is trying to embrace and protect me. I sing to her sometimes. . . . I lean against her trunk and just feel the energy and vibrations.

Most of the posters on forums like this are in their teens and twenties. They’re interested in spells, spirit guides, animal totems, magic, divination, amulets, and talismans. They want to channel energy, shield energy, scry, cast runes, and perform telekinesis. In fact, for young people, after the need to connect with others, the strongest draw to wicca and paganism is the need to experience and connect with the supernatural.

But what strikes me about the practices they discuss—aside from the fact that they are counterfeits of reality—is that they sanitize the supernatural. They present it in a safe and palatable way. (Hard-core dangerous practices such as astral projection are another matter. While all of the above practices are dangerous, especially in the hands of naive teenagers, some are quicker pathways to trouble than others.)

Wiccan spells are often rhymes invoking mythic figures such as the “Lord and Lady,” pagan amulets are beautiful jewelry fashioned with silver and gemstones, and pagan animal totems are kind wolves and wise bears. Wiccan rituals make use of oils, incense, and candles, and modern-day pagans follow pretty ethnic “paths”: druidry, shamanism, Celtic reconstructionism, Hellenic polytheism. If a path’s accouterments—music, deities, clothing, jewelry—aren’t aesthetically appealing, it has no followers.

When I read these forums, I always get the impression that wiccans and pagans want to keep the supernatural at arm’s length. They don’t want to embrace it, they want to catch a fleeting glimpse of it from a comfortable armchair. They seem more willing to consider the existence of fairies than the existence of God—and all that belief in God would require of them. I sometimes wonder what they would do if they encountered the mind-bending, bone-rattling supernatural reality of God.

The Bible is full of stories of everyday human beings coming face to face with the supernatural. Usually they react with great fear; sometimes they even collapse. One of my favorite such stories, about Elisha and his servant, is told in 2 Kings 6:8-17.

The king of Syria sent an army to capture Elisha at Dothan. The army moved at night, so when Elisha’s servant woke in the morning, he discovered that Dothan had been surrounded. It looked hopeless, and the servant was terrified. Elisha told his servant not to be afraid, that “those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” But the servant saw only the Syrian army—no help from God. Elisha asked God to open his servant’s eyes so that he could see the unseen reality around him, and God answered Elisha’s prayer. His eyes opened, the servant, to his amazement, “looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.”

That beats your hawk totem talking to you in your dreams.

The Bible contains many more encounters with the supernatural, of course, including a bush burning but not burning up (Ex. 3:3), water pouring out of a rock (Ex. 17:6; Num. 20:11), birds bringing food to a man (1 Kings 17:6), bread and fish multiplying when passed through Jesus’ hands (Matt. 14:17-21), a resurrection (Matt. 28:8), and—for the young pagan poster who loves his cherry tree—trees clapping hands (Isa. 55:12).
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The Hillerman Thesaurusectomy

Stephen King once said that “any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word.” I agree. You should never search a thesaurus for a specific word to replace another specific word in your work-in-progress, though I think a thesaurus is useful at other times for unsticking you and opening your mind to words and phrases you may not have considered.

But what King said got me thinking. What if you took a passage from a classic mystery novel and tweaked it using a thesaurus? So just for fun I took this paragraph from Tony Hillerman’s Dance Hall of the Dead. This is how it reads as Hillerman wrote it:

The moon now hung halfway up the sky, the yellow of its rising gone and its face turned to scarred white ice. It was a winter moon. Under it, Leaphorn was cold. He sat in the shadow of the rimrock watching the commune which called itself Jason’s Fleece. The cold seeped through Leaphorn’s uniform jacket, through his shirt and undershirt, and touched the skin along his ribs. It touched his calves above his boottops, and his thighs where the cloth of his trouser legs stretched taut against the muscles, and the backs of his hands, which gripped the metal of his binoculars.

This is what that same paragraph looks like with a moderate thesaurus tweak:

The orb of night now dangled halfway up the sky, the yellow of its ascension defunct and its face converted to scarred white ice. It was a wintertime orb of night. Under it, Leaphorn was cool as custard. He hunkered down in the shadow of the rimrock checking out the commune which called itself Jason’s Fleece. The cold percolated through Leaphorn’s uniform jacket, through his chemise and undergarment, and frisked the skin along his ribs. It manipulated his calves above his boottops, and his thighs where the fabric of his trouser limbs stretched taut counter to the muscles, and the flip sides of his hands, which clasped the metal of his field glasses.

But I couldn’t leave it there. I had to try a complete thesaurusectomy:

The orb of night presently dangled smack in the middle of the sky, the amber of its ascension defunct and its visage converted to traumatized alabaster permafrost. It was a wintertime orb of night. On the nether side of it, Leaphorn was cool as custard. He hunkered down in the obscurity of the rimrock checking out the municipality which designated itself Jason’s Fleece. The frigidity percolated through Leaphorn’s uniform threads, through his chemise and undergarment, and frisked the dermis along his upper trunk. It manipulated his calves above his footwear zeniths, and his thighs where the fabric of his dungaree limbs expanded snug counter to the muscles, and the flip sides of his mitts, which clasped the chemical element of his field glasses.

One thing I noticed, aside from how ridiculous the two thesaurus-ated passages read, is that Hillerman’s paragraph kept getting longer the more I tinkered with it. Hillerman knew what he wanted to say, and he said it succinctly, using just the right words. Even the short sentence “Under it, Leaphorn was cold” loses its punch if you change it, very simply, to “Under it, Leaphorn was chilly.” You can’t change one word of Hillerman’s prose. But that’s why he was a master of the mystery.
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Guest Blogger Melissa Nesdahl

It’s my pleasure to welcome guest blogger Melissa Nesdahl. Melissa and her coauthor Pam Stenzel have a new book out, Nobody Told Me, which helps young people understand the physical, emotional, and spiritual risks of sex outside of marriage.


Friends,

My name is Melissa Nesdahl and I’m honored to be guest posting here on Karin’s wonderful blog.

As readers with a heart for Christian issues and writing, I am excited to share with you my new book with Internationally known abstinence educator Pam Stenzel.

You see, everything that is written sends a message. The type of message it sends is critical because everything read has a ripple effect. It infuses the mind of the reader, influences their thought process, and impacts the conversations they have about the topic with others. There is a social responsibility to writing.

Knowing this—and completely in love with youth ministry (as well as equipping the adults that love them)—we recently released our first book together entitled NOBODY TOLD ME: What You Need to Know about the Physical and Emotional Consequences to Sex Outside of Marriage.

Pam speaks to over a half a million students world-wide about dating and sex each year. I join her in the trenches through crisis pregnancy ministry and together we share our insights and help to help people live out God’s best.

Sadly, today’s teens are often rushed into making adult choices without complete awareness of healthy boundaries. How far is too far? Am I really at risk? Do I need to see a doctor? How do I handle these consequences? What is God’s design? Does He really care? How do I say “no?” What are safe dating boundaries? Is it too late for me? These questions and more swirl through the minds of developing adolescents often times before their faith is mature, and they need helpful, honest, accurate answers now so that they don’t suffer tomorrow.

To help students understand Truth and recognize healthy boundaries, Pam and I took years worth of teens’ shared stories and questions about God’s design for sex, Scriptural encouragement, media influence, peer pressure, abuse, pregnancy, STDs, emotional heartache, and choosing abstinence until marriage and formatted in a way teens like to communicate. Using a fun Facebook-like style, we meet teens (and those who love them) where they are at and provide them with answers to today’s tough questions so that they aren’t the next to tearfully say to God, their parents, a physician, or a future spouse, “Nobody told me. I didn’t know.” Because it is in their authentic voice, it draws them in and helps adult readers to better understand their world.

The best part about this book is that it is applicable to every student regardless of the choices they have made. For those who have abstained, this book will offer a window into the heart of their peers, provide answers to difficult questions they still might have (and be afraid to ask), strengthen them to remain pure until marriage, and offer for them suggestions to help them live that out. If, on the other hand, a young person has made mistakes this book is still for them (making it unique to others) because they will hear stories of young people struggling right along with them, but laced within the message is clarity where there was confusion, hope where there was pain, experienced forgiveness from a loving God, understanding that their past choices don’t have to define their future ones, and practical steps to redeeming their future.

For parents, youth workers, crisis pregnancy workers, mentors, etc. this book is an excellent help because we live in a rapidly changing world. The consequences that they may have faced as a teen are no longer the same as the teens of today. The number of STDs has risen, media exposure delivers wildly different messages, and the people in the home and church haven’t always known how to effectively deliver an abstinence-based message that is both glorifying to God and powerful enough to pack a punch with the students who hear it. This book will place them inside of today’s teenage experience and bring them up to speed on current statistics to help them effectively communicate a message that empowers the teen they love to have a healthy future.

Appropriate for any student 12 and up, this book will help teens’ personal faith blossom, self-confidence grow, expect respect for oneself and the people they date, and live a life a wholeness.

Many Christian leaders have endorsed the book and popular musical artist Rebecca St. James is on the cover stating, “This book is relevant, powerful, and packed with truths that all young people need to hear.”

As Christians, we all have prayerful hearts that students will hear and stand on this counter-culture message. And, as those who care about the writing world, we have a responsibility to write and promote materials that promote a Godly life.

Please join me in spreading the message!

Melissa Nesdahl is a happily married wife, mother, author, writer, and volunteer who believes that when people recognize their identity and value in Christ they will experience life to its fullest. Combining her passion to write with her love of sharing Truth, Melissa frequently updates her Fill My Cup blog, writes product and curriculum with Pam Stenzel, and contributes to ModSquad. Melissa has served as a crisis pregnancy center counselor since 1999 and currently serves on the Board of Directors.

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Indie Ebooks: The Future of Publishing?

There’s been a lot in the news lately about how self-published (indie) ebooks are changing the publishing world. I have to admit that, like most writers, I used to look down on self-publishing, but after doing a lot of research on the subject I’ve changed my mind, mostly because of the great opportunities presented by ebooks.

Although publishing an indie print book can be a dicey financial adventure—there’s a good chance you won’t make back your investment, which can easily run into the thousands of dollars—publishing an indie ebook is much cheaper. In fact, if you don’t hire a cover artist (a good one can cost $200-300) or someone to format your book ($150-250 for average-length fiction), it costs next to nothing.

(Note: From what I’ve read, it’s best to hire a cover artist. Covers may be even more important with ebooks since you’re trying to persuade the buyer to purchase a product she can’t touch or see. If you have a good eye for design, though, you can try your hand at making your own covers, and you can even buy software that helps you do just that. You’re also probably better off hiring a formatter, at least for your first ebook, as well as an editor or copy editor.)

There’s another major difference between indie print books and ebooks. With print books, you haven’t got the widespread, easy distribution of ebooks (just try to get a bookstore to carry an indie print book). When you upload your ebook to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords, you have instant distribution—and no worries about paying for bookstores to return your unsold books.

There are four benefits to publishing your own ebook that are particularly appealing:

• You can bypass the traditional gatekeepers. I’ve never liked the idea of jumping through hoops, especially when those hoops seem arbitrary and consist mostly of waiting . . . then waiting some more.
• Author royalties are substantially larger with ebooks than with traditionally published books.
• Sales of ebook readers, such as the Kindle, Nook, and Sony Reader, are skyrocketing as the price for the devices decreases and the number of ebooks sold increases. Ebooks are no longer a tiny part of the market.
• You get to put your work out there. Don’t we write to be read?

If you’re interested in indie ebooks, the first place you should go is author J.A. Konrath’s blog. It’s a goldmine of ebook information. Check out Konrath’s links and his post archives.

Also check out Amazon.com's Kindle Direct Publishing, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble's PubIt, where you can both buy and create ebooks.

Walk the Line

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how Christians can be in the world but not of it. How do we become all things to all people (1 Cor. 9:22) while remaining rock solid in the faith?

We’re told we are the salt and light of the world (Mat. 5:13-14), and at the same time we’re told we shouldn’t be conformed to the pattern of this world (Romans 12:2) and we must sometimes shake the dust from our feet (Luke 9:5). It’s a tough balancing act, walking the line between “hard Christianity” and “cool Christianity.”

Some Christians, the hard ones, forget to be salt and light. They’re so intent on making converts and “preaching the Word” that they drive people from Christ. They like being called “hateful” because it’s proof they’re preaching the real Word of God—even if people run screaming from them.

But while hard Christians can do damage, they’re easy to spot. They don’t blend with the scenery.

Cool Christians, on the other hand—cool as in hip— blend with ease. They feel at home in the world. They like being called “reasonable” because they’re living in the twenty-first century, for crying out loud. Cool Christians are “refreshing.” They’re called “loving” by people whose definition of love leans toward lollipop acceptance and away from the image of an enraged messiah overturning tables outside a temple.

Cool Christianity is popular because while it appears to be forward looking—and who doesn’t like to be called forward looking?—it’s simply the path of least resistance. It’s the mind falling into the comfortable rut dug by the prevailing culture.

Which takes us back to the balancing act. It’s hard to be in the world but not of it. Although we shouldn’t speak the truth without love (hard), neither should we play it safe (cool). Christians should be dangerous—without becoming hard. They should pose a threat to secular culture, not embrace it.

It’s hard to walk that line.

Happiness and the New Pagan Chaplain



Norse pagans, Sweden 2008

“If being a pagan makes me a better person and makes me happy, that's all that matters.” —Mary Hudson, the first pagan chaplain at Syracuse University

“I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that.” —C.S. Lewis

In doing research for my novels, I sometimes visit pagan message boards (a task that’s both fascinating and sad), and I’ve noticed over the years a popular theme on those boards: I became a pagan because I wanted to be happy.

Not “I found happiness in paganism,” but “I searched for happiness and found it in paganism.” And there’s a difference. The search for happiness first and foremost will lead you astray every time. In most areas of life, certainly in matters of religion, the search for truth has to come first. You may find happiness—or better yet, real joy—at the end of your search for the truth, but if you search for happiness first, you’re likely to find it in the spiritual equivalent of a bottle of port.

And that leads me to the breathtakingly silly comment by the new pagan chaplain (a self-described “third-degree priestess”) at Syracuse University. “If it makes me better and makes me happy” is the sort of thing you hear from people who haven’t given truth much thought at all. It’s pop psychology. But it sounds good, doesn’t it? How could one object to someone being better or happy?

The first part of the chaplain’s statement depends very much on her definition of “better,” and I’m not that confident of her ability to draw sound conclusions. Her “better,” as I discovered through reading more about her, is a somewhat hazy concept that excludes outside judgment. Even the “deities” don’t judge her, she says. It’s a do-it-yourself kind of thing, putting a gold star sticker on your own forehead.

So how does Hudson define “better”? Being so self-contained, how does she even know what better is? The less-than-better become better by striving toward a something or someone separate from, and better than, themselves. But to do this, they must recognize that they are less than better, an impossibility unless they take notice of outside judgment. The less-than-better who refuse outside judgment have no idea what to aim for—they can’t. They have no compass point.

The second part of Hudson’s statement is nonsense. All sorts of things make people happy. Vapid things make vapid people happy. Evil things make evil people happy. The fact that something makes you happy is not, in and of itself, proof that you’ve found something good—or true. Happiness is a byproduct, not a goal.

But this is modern paganism, and part of why paganism today embraces so many different, often conflicting practices and philosophies. Because it’s not the truth of one or the other belief that matters, or if one actually believes in Celtic or Norse or Greek goddesses, or whether Cerridwen or Artemis could actually coexist, but the happiness it all brings.

I Don’t Belong: The Anne Rice Syndrome

There’s a joke that goes something like this: One Christian tells another Christian that he loves his church because the people there accept him, warts and all. “They love me for who I am, they accept me, and they don’t judge me.” The other Christian replies, “That’s not a church, that’s a bar.”

When I read last month that author Anne Rice declared, “I quit being a Christian” on her Facebook page, this joke came to mind. Not that Rice’s announcement or predicament is funny.

Her complaint? She still follows Christ, she says, but she wants nothing to do with Christians. It became “impossible” for her “to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider.” Two key words there: “belong” and “outsider.”

I became a Christian as a teenager during the Jesus People movement of the 1970s, much of which was about being the outsider. Not that our Christianity wasn’t genuine, but truth be told, in our worst moments and in the foolishness of our youth, we fancied ourselves a cut above the average Christian.

We thought we cut to the core of what it meant to be Christian. We were more like the apostolic church, and we weren’t weighed down by social and political nonsense, especially if it came from the Right. We didn’t care for hymns, we liked contemporary music. We reached out to what academics call the “marginalized.” We were different. Outsiders in the Body of Christ. Yay us.

Don’t misunderstand me. I firmly believe the Jesus People movement was a movement of the Holy Spirit. But many teenagers who became Christians at that time had a decided lack of humility when it came to their fellow Christians. This probably had almost as much to do with being a teenager as it did with the movement itself.

But I’m not a teenager anymore and neither is Anne Rice. Yet she stomps her feet like one. She declares that for ten years she tried and failed to belong. Failed how? What did she want? What would have been her measure of success? How do you follow Christ but fail to belong to the wildly diverse, wounded and wonderful entity we call the Body of Christ?

I can’t get past the suspicion that Rice never had any intention of belonging, that she kept her announcement locked away in her heart as a “Get Out of Jail Free” card so she’d never really have to be one of those people.

As C.S. Lewis noted, the Body of Christ “is not a human society of people united by their natural affinities.” The fact is the members of the Body are members (better translated “organs,” as Lewis said) because they are different. The Lord has no use for a Body full of heads or a Body full of hearts. We’re only called to unity on the essentials of the faith, what Bible teacher Beth Moore calls the “spine” issues.

Many young people in the Jesus People movement felt they didn’t belong around their more traditional fellow Christians. We often felt out of place, and we took a perverse delight in that, believing ourselves at the forefront of a new movement, with the old way of thinking crumbling into history.

We were wrong. We belonged. We were part of a Body that stretches back two thousand years and includes Orthodox and Catholic, Presbyterian and Baptist. If we felt uncomfortable around traditional Christians, that was as much our fault as theirs. If we felt unwelcome, it was partly because we cultivated that feeling and thought it a badge of honor. We never asked ourselves if our fellow members of the Body felt they belonged around us.

We wanted a church that would allow us to walk in as we were and walk out just the same. No meat replacing milk, no iron sharpening iron. It doesn’t, and shouldn’t, work that way. Of course a church must allow you to walk in as you are, but you must walk out a different person, eventually. If not, you’ve merely been bending your elbow at a bar.

You can choose to acknowledge your membership in the Body of Christ, with all its mad flaws, or you can choose to play the lonely rebel, refusing to even take on the name “Christian,” like a child who won’t acknowledge her last name because someone might know her embarrassing parents. The role of outsider may feel more comfortable, for a time, but it is an unhumble place to be.

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Playing with Names

I enjoy all the various task involved in plotting and writing a novel, but I think my favorite part of the plotting stage is when I get to make up names. Not just people names, but place names—the names of streets, mountain peaks, restaurants, and lakes. All the names that add flavor and a sense of place.

If the setting for your novel or short story is fictitious, you can’t use an actual town name for your town’s name or the name of a real canyon for your fictitious canyon, but there’s no reason you can’t take the name of an actual town, say, Big Timber (in Montana), and use it as the name of a hotel in your book, or that you can’t take inspiration from a place name, taking, for instance, Grizzly Peak (Colorado) and turning it into Grizzly Mountain Road.

Highway maps and atlases are the best places to go for place names, though I’ve also found some unusual names on my road trips through the Rocky Mountain West. I love the sound of Crazy Woman Creek in Wyoming. Each time I pass the “Middle Fork Crazy Woman” sign on I-25 I want to stop and take a photo. One of these days I’m going to use that name.

I may be biased, living in the West as I do, but I think place names in my part of the country are especially rich and evocative. There are names that suggest pine-covered mountains. Glen Haven, Black Forest, and Turquoise Lake in Colorado. Deer Lodge in Montana. And there are rough and crusty names, real western names, like Chugwater and Buffalo in Wyoming, Bear’s Mouth and Beartooth in Montana, and Battlement Mesa, Rifle, and Gunbarrel in Colorado.

The are the obvious Indian names—such as Shoshoni, Washakie, Gros Ventre, and Absaroka—and the not-so-obvious Indian names, such as Ten Sleep in Wyoming, named for the Indians’ way of measuring distance (the town was ten sleeps from Fort Laramie).

New Mexico’s various Pueblo peoples have been the origin of some wonderful place names, including Kewa, Ohkay Owingeh, Tsi Mayoh, and Pojoaque, the latter the Spanish rendering of the original Tewa Po-Suwae-Geh and pronounced poh-WAH-kee. How could you not love that word?

Place names of Spanish origin include Alamogordo (literally “fat cottonwood”), Vallecito, Ojo Caliente, and Cortez, and French trappers and traders in the nineteenth century left us with a host of French place names, many of them in Colorado, including Laporte, Cache la Poudre, De Beque, and St. Vrain.

If I come across a name that strikes my fancy, I stick it in a folder for future use. Antelope Hills, Yellow Jacket, Wolf, Grindstone, Never Summer, Wildhorse Mesa, Roundup, Burnt Ridge, Wintergreen, Nokhu Crags, Dry Rifle, Deadhorse—all tucked away.

And then there’s Stem Beach. A tiny town in Colorado. I’ve got that one tucked away too. The origin of the name is a total mystery to me. I could probably do an Internet search and find out how the two-building town south of Pueblo became Stem Beach, but I’d rather let my imagination run wild. I know there’s a story in that name.

Update on Yang Caizhen

Yang Caizhen (see my post of March 28), her arthritis and health reportedly worsening, remains in a Chinese labor camp. Sentenced in November 2009 to two years' imprisonment for being part of China's growing "religious problem," she spends 15 hours a day making cigarette lighters.

Caizhen's daughter, Esther, though worried about her mother (and her father, Pastor Yang Xuan, who also was sentenced to a labor camp), noted in an interview that her faith has grown as a result of her parents' arrest and imprisonment: "I had this faith before. But I found it is meaningful for me just recently. Before this, if you asked me to share some testimony, I would tell you God loves you, but I didn't want to share more. But now, I think it is really valuable, really meaningful for me."

If you wish to help Yang Caizhen, you can send her postcards supplied by Voice of the Martyrs for free by calling 1-800-747-0085 or emailing orders@vom-usa.org. Please specify the number of sheets (multiple postcards per sheet) you wish. The message on back of each postcard reads in Chinese: "We are praying for you, your family and the other prisoners. We are also praying for your release soon! Please know that we care about you very much. God has said, 'I will never leave you or forsake you.'" Each postcard requires a 98-cent stamp.

Living Hebrews 13:3

Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering. Hebrews 13:3.

While Christians in the Western world attend Palm Sunday services and look forward to Easter next Sunday, let’s remember fellow Christians who live in countries where simply being a Christian, let alone witnessing to one’s faith, brings hardship and even danger.

Many of these Christians live in places where they don’t dare gather; others gather quietly in “house churches.” Many of them liven in places where Christianity, though persecuted, is growing by leaps and bounds; others live in places where Christians are so brutally persecuted that it’s impossible to get a true idea of how many Christians there are.

In the Internet age it takes only a little effort and time to support Christians imprisoned for their faith. A number of websites are dedicated to spreading the word about persecution and helping those who wish to support their brothers and sisters in need:

HelpLinfen.com focuses on the persecuted Christians in Linfen, China. Last fall the Chinese government, unnerved by the explosive growth of Christianity, sent 400 police officers and other officials to physically destroy Linfen’s church, one of the largest in China. Many of those attending the church were beaten and imprisoned, including Yang Caizhen (pictured above), the wife of pastor Yang Xuan.

According to HelpLinfen, the fifty-five-year-old Caizhen “supported her husband’s ministry by giving up a successful medical career to help in the Linfen House Church and care for her family.” She was arrested on November 30, 2009, and sentenced to two years of “re-education through labor.”

When you go to HelpLinfen’s website, click on “Click here to Send a Letter of Encouragement.” You can then print out a letter, in both English and Chinese, to send to Caizhen and others in the reeducation camp. (Note: You must enable East Asian languages on your PC. For Windows XP: Start > Control Panel > Date, Time, Language, and Region Options > Regional and Language Options > click on Languages tab > check Install files for East Asian languages box > click OK.)

ChinaAid provides help for persecuted Christians throughout China. At its website you can read the story of Jiang Zongxiu, age thirty-four, who was arrested on June 18, 2004, for handing out gospel tracts in the local market. While in police custody, she was beaten to death. ChinaAid “paid the maintenance fee for her remains, sent two teams to her hometown to visit her family and provided funding to help cover the living and education expenses for her four-year-old son.”

On Voice of the Martyrs' website, you can find a wealth of information about the persecution of Christians around the world. One of VOM’s ministries, PrisonerAlert, offers opportunities to email officials and write to prisoners in some of today’s most dangerous countries for Christians, including North Korea, Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Nigeria, Myanmar, and Eritrea.

PrisonerAlert highlights the stories of Christians suffering for their faith, among them: 

• Girmay Ambaye, who was arrested by security police in Eritrea for witnessing about Christ to people on a city bus (the third time he’s been imprisoned for his faith). 
• Maryam Jalili, who was one of fifteen Christians arrested on December 24, 2009, in Pakdasht, Iran, while at a house church celebrating Christmas. 
• Asia Bibi from Ittanwali, Pakistan, who was arrested by police last June and faces blasphemy charges for witnessing to Muslim women about her faith. 
• Son Jong Nam, who has spent more than a year in a North Korean prison awaiting public execution. He risked his life returning to North Korea to preach the gospel.

PrisonerAlert’s website makes it easy to email officials and write letters to prisoners. Click on “Write an encouraging letter” on the home page. Such emails and letters throw an unwanted spotlight on the prisoners’ situations and have been known to shorten the prison sentences of Christians and even save their lives.

Bibles Unbound donates Bibles to countries where Bibles are scarce and Christians are treated with hostility. In some cases, Bibles are delivered by hand in covert operations, and those delivering them are at great risk. Thirty dollars supports the delivery of six Bibles. Except in the case of covert operations, you receive the names of those to whom your Bibles are sent.

Take a moment between now and Resurrection Day to offer comfort and support to persecuted Christians around the world.

Getting Ready for Genesis

Where does the time go? I take a break to get some work done and a month goes by. Most of the freelance copy editors I know experienced an uptick in work starting in early February, so maybe that’s good news for the economy.

But I’m not just copy editing. I’m working on my entry for the ACFW Genesis Contest—in particular, the one-page synopsis of my mystery novel. I already had an eight-page synopsis and a one-paragraph synopsis, but not this one-pager. It’s tough.

Synopsis writing isn’t fun, and for me, boiling down my plot to one page is especially difficult. Eight pages—okay. One paragraph—not too bad, because you’re so limited that it’s easy to focus on only the lead character and her three-sentence journey from problem to solution.

But one page? You’ve got to show the story arc, include much more of the plot. But how much? How many side (but important) characters do you mention? It’s a constant process of whittling down, going over what is now a one-and-a-half page synopsis time and again, striking out everything but the essentials.

Anyone else getting ready to submit an entry, or two, to Genesis? If you’re writing a synopsis, how’s it going?