The Islamization of Turkish Society

Daily life in Turkey is changing.  Most of us, myself included, are so frog-like that we don’t really notice the gradual environmental changes until someone points it out.  A recent article by the veteran Turkish journalist Mehmet Ali Birand highlighted a number of things which rang true with me:

1.  Religious language (i.e., once outmoded Arabism and Qur’anic expressions) are re-emerging in daily speech patterns of AKP politicians in particular and ordinary citizens in general. 

2. Body language is changing. In the past people shook hands or kissed.  Now the more stand-offish placing of a hand on the heart is in vogue.  Touching women is an iffy business, so a nod will suffice for them.

3. Eating and drinking patters are changing.  Alcohol, as Birand puts it, “is gradually leaving the tables. It is being kept in nooks and corners as proof of tolerance. It is served if it is particularly asked for, but that is all. You also have to be brave or audacious to actually ask for it. It is becoming more usual to drink liquid yogurt, orange juice or other fruit juice with meals.” 

4.  More women are donning the dour, black chador or the head scarf and long coats.  Cover-all bathing suits manufacturers are probably the only boom industry in the country at the moment. 

5. The separation of men and women seems to have become more prevalent.

6.  More people go to the mosque on Fridays for midday prayers

7. There is an increase in the number of newspapers and TV channels that promote religious values.

8. There is an increase in the number of religious foundations.

The full article from which the above was distilled can be found at http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=98857

“Chronicle in Stone” by Ismail Kadare

 The best way to begin understanding another culture is to read its novels; a good novelist can humanize that which seems incomprehensible, even demonic, to the outsider. 

While in Albania recently I picked up the novel “Chronicle in Stone” by the country’s Communist-era writer Ismail Kadare.    It is a beautifully written tale about social transition in a former pariah state as seen through the eyes of a young boy.   Two thumbs up!

My Spouse: God’s Will or My Choice?

A teenager recent asked me whether or not I thought one’s spouse was preordained. “Is there a specific person who is God’s pre-ordained, one-and-only plan for my life?” 

The issue is, of course, a subtopic of the larger question about how one discovers God’s will for one’s life.  Let’s approach it from two angles: 1) the practical, Christian walk/experiential angle and 2) the systematic theology angle.  The two differ.  Systematic theology is not the Bible and, as such, not the Spirit’s primary tool for convicting, leading and teaching His people.  In fact, systematic theology can confuse as easily as it can clarify.  Let’s look at the Christian-life perspective first.

To get the right answer to the question of knowing and doing God’s will you’ve first got to ask right question—and I don’t think “what is God’s will for my life with respect to this or that” is necessarily the right question!  Although it sounds pious, it is, ultimately a presumptuous and, as such, a selfish question.  It presumes that God has some kind of special personal blueprint for each of us which we must discover and which then becomes the key to our happiness and success.  There is no such thing as a special plan, a special blueprint for you. 

God has one master plan for all of His creation which He is working out, and He invites us to be used by Him in that process.  That being so, we should frame the question in more general terms, such as “I know that God is at work in this world all around me all the time.  What is He doing, and what adjustments do I need to make to fall in line with what He is doing?”  That question shifts the focus from mythical “personal plans” to the work God is actually engaged in. 

Of course God has specific purposes for His children, but these are nothing more or less than having them join Him in what He is actually doing in the world at any given time.  So, I repeat, knowing his will is not about having Him reveal private little plans, but our making the necessary ongoing adjustments to our lives so that it falls in line with His overarching purpose which, the Scriptures teach, is to reconcile His own to Himself.

Although God does lead His people specifically, He does not generally reveal the details of His plan up front (Exhibit “A”: Abraham).   Instead, He asks His people to make wise life-choices every day that nurture their love-relationship with Him and that are mindful of His overarching goal and desire.

The daily choices we make cause us to become more like (or unlike!) His Son, and that determines how our wills line up with His.  As we readjust our lives to what God is doing on an ongoing basis, as we make wise choices based on the Spirit’s guidance as revealed to us through His Word and through fellowship with godly men and women, we begin to see the pattern of God’s will for our lives unfolding.

(Note, incidentally, the absence in the above paragraph about “guidance through life circumstances”.  Of course God providentially uses circumstances.  However, God also wants to use His people to change circumstances!  They, in and of themselves, should not dictate our lives’ pattern.)

So how does all this relate to the question, “is there a specific person who is God’s pre-ordained, one-and-only plan for my life?”  Wrong question!  There are any number of fine women out there who love Christ and His people and who actively seek to adjust their lives on an ongoing basis to what God is doing in and around them with whom I could have fallen in love.  As it was, I chose to fall in love with just such a woman.  I eventually committed myself to her to the exclusion of all others.  Her name was Anna Hamill Kennedy!

For you singles this means you should pray for the wisdom and discernment to recognize potential life partners whose life-walk is in tune with (and constantly retuned!) to what God is actually doing.  Conversely, you need to be able to discern when fine-looking and fine-sounding people are NOT in tune with the Lord so that you can turn away from them!

When, in the fullness of time, you meet someone whose primary concern is to constantly readjust their lives to align it with God’s overall purpose, and you fall in love with that person, and ask him/her to marry you, the dynamic changes: you then make a life-covenant in which you bind yourself to that individual no matter what happens.  God’s will at that stage is clear: be faithful and stay married.  You make it work.  The relationship then becomes a reflection of God’s covenant to his bride, the church.

Now for a look at all of this from a systematic theology perspective.

First of all, I don’t think simply placing the issue on the Free Will versus Predestination axis is helpful.  Those two categories are too simplistic or, better said, too mutually exclusive.  It is more helpful to study the question within the framework of the doctrine of God’s providence and, more specifically, the doctrine of concurrence.   The doctrine of God’s providence teaches, essentially, that God is always involved in keeping, maintaining and directing every aspect of His creation to fulfill His purpose.  A sub-teaching of divine providence called concurrence teaches that God cooperates with His creation in the realization of that purpose.  This means, in effect, that most events (real miracles excluded) have a double causality: they are fully caused by God and have fully natural causes as well. 

Concurrence is true with respect to natural phenomena and international affairs, as well as with respect to the individual choices people make.  In other words, God may be the primary cause behind everything, but secondary causes, including human decisions, make a real difference.  The Bible teaches that you are responsible for your actions!  To phrase is another way, God created us with a specific property or characteristic, notably that the choices we make really matter!  The Bible doesn’t explain the relationship between this double causality—it just teaches that God created a real world with real people with an ability to make real choices which really matter! 

That brings us back to point 1, the practical, Christian walk/experiential angle with its fundamental question: “what is God doing around me today and what should I do fall in line with that?”  Discover that, keep making the necessary adjustments, and watch your life unfold!  One day you’ll meet a lovely person—maybe several—who think and act that way too.  You then have to make a choice—and if you decide to choose one of those people you are to remain devoted in love to your choice till death parts you for a season.

Note: For those of you who haven’t already discovered it, “Experiencing God” by Henry Blackaby and Claude King is a great guide to discovering and walking in God’s will.

Walter Brueggemann’s “In Man We Trust”: A Fool’s Guide to Wisdom Literature

 

Someone suggested I read Brueggemann’s “In Man We Trust”.  Bad advice.  I have rarely read a slimmer volume containing more rank nonsense. 

 

Brueggeman tenuous connections between “contemporary culture” and that of the united monarchy border on the ridiculous in terms of meaningless generalities:  “David’s times are not unlike ours: the breakup of the old conventional patterns of security; the end of the old theological assumptions and ecclesiastical institutions as viable forms of life; a new sense of the muscle of man and the potential of human ingenuity and self-assertion; a sense of exhilaration and a corresponding sense of confusion.” 

His pseudo-psychological analysis of David and Solomon is equally imaginative: “The freedom of David and the loss of divinity in man’s world were necessary counterparts.  They belong together.  As the royal man came to understand his own royal responsibility he came to have a new freedom with and toward things, a freedom which is not detachment, but in which man’s own wellbeing is very intimately linked to the wellbeing of all entrusted to him… The importance of David for this new notion of man in and over creation cannot be overestimated”.   

Of particular concern is Brueggemann’s insistence that David made a radical break with Israel’s previous religious history.  He evidently moved away from tabernacle centered worship, and “drove Israel to radical pluralism”.  Unlike his predecessors, he “views life as an essentially human enterprise” and “does not ask about the gods and the drama of heaven”.  As far as David was concerned, “man is not under law” and is trusted by God to “live as he wills to live”. God’s covenant with David was unilateral—God gave David a “blank check” for, no matter what David would do “Yahweh has thrown in his lot with this moment and man in history and he has left himself no way out”.  God was moved to trust people, rather than the other way around.

No mention is made of David’s love for the Mosaic law as expressed in the Psalms.  And wasn’t David’s concern to build the temple but an exalted version of the tabernacle centered worship?  In what way was God’s covenant with David any more of a “blank check” promise than the promise to Adam and Eve of one who would crush the serpent’s head, or of the Abrahamic covenant?

Breuggemann’s affirmation of man leads him to diminish the need for the incarnation and atonement of Christ, of which he speaks with embarrassment:  “To speak in terms of Jesus in terms of atonement of course stacks the cards in terms of man’s helplessness and need.”  Instead, he posits a Nietzschian Jesus: “But insofar as Jesus does make a difference in the lives of persons, it is to invite them to join in his style of manhood, which is life-affirming and life creating.  He does not ponder long the failure of man but invited him to change and act as a whole healthy person.  He embodies what the wise men said was possible”

Interestingly, Brueggemann is uneasy with is own theology: “My uneasiness is also linked to the suggestion that this theology is not really informed by the biblical tradition, but is an accommodation to current fads in the behavioural sciences…  I can only express my uneasiness and give no answer beyond those already suggested…”  Brueggemann’s own notions leave him speechless.  They leave me that way too…

Reasons I like Turkey

 

1. The Bosphorus.  Especially the panoramic view of Istanbul from the ferryboats.  But also the bridges, the  seagulls, Leanders Tower….
2. Mediterranean Coast.  Bodrum, Antalya, Alanya.  Concrete poured onto an inimitable coast.
3. Turkish literature.  Yashar Kemal, Orhan Pamuk, Elif Safak…  see elsewhere on this blog.
4. The enterprising street vendors.  On the ferryboats, at the train- and bus stations, in the most unlikely places he’ll fob off his trinkets or foodstuffs.
5. Turkish music.  Not all of it.  Some, however, takes even us Westerners into the contemporary Middle East.  Ahmet Kaya, Sezen Aksu, Nilufer, Orhan Gencebay…  All different, all authentic.
6. Turkish film.  Watch any movie starring Sener Sen, Cem Yilmaz, Turkan Soray…  Don’t forget the “Yesilcam” comedies, dramas and love stories of yesteryear starring Tarik Akan, Adline Nasit, Kemal Sunal, Halit Akcetepe…
7. The Southeast.  Rugged and untamed.
8. The North East.  The mountain pastures, the sense of loneliness…
9. Central Anatolia.  The empty feel of Central Asia.
10. Cappadocia.  Church history in awesome geography.
11. Turkish Cuisine.   Much of it is awful—some of it heavenly.  Try “kiremit guvec” if you can find it.
12. Turkish Bath.  Sweat and bond.
13. Beyoglu.  Nothing what it used to be, but still a great place to eat out, shop for books, people watch…  Enjoy the architecture from the Galata Tower, up Istiklal Boulevard to Taksim Square.
14. Turkish Cafes.  A coffee, a game of tavla or chess.  People watch.
15. Sultan Ahmet.  The St. Sophia, the Cisterns, the Blue Mosque…  History.
16. Turks.  Love some, can’t stand some.  Friendly, hospitable, hypersensitive.  Will tell you what they think you want to hear until they lose their temper.  Then they’ll tell you things you definitely don’t want to hear.

The Moral Vision of the New Testament

 

I’ve just completed Richard Hays’ remarkable work, The Moral Vision of the New Testament.  The claim on the back cover is true: this book isn’t just a breath of fresh air, it’s a hurricane blowing away the fog of half-understood pseudo-morality and fashionable compromise to reveal instead the early Christian vision of true humanness and genuine holiness.

Hays reveals a unified, very challenging, solidly New Testament-based ethic for modern man focused on the themes of “cross”, “community” and “new creation”.  One of the book’s strengths is the way Hays outlines his hermeneutical approach.  Although one may not agree with all the particulars, his handling of such issues as divorce, homosexuality, abortion, and violence merit careful reflection.  I found his undermining of the “just war” theory particularly convicting and convincing.

As might be expected from someone on the faculty of Duke Divinity School, he makes statements regarding the inerrancy of Scripture that more conservative Christians (including myself) would quibble with.  Oddly, the actual authority he grants a priori to the New Testament text in terms of letting it shape his ethics is something many a more ideologically-driven American Evangelical would do well to emulate.

Iraq: No Price too High!

   The situation in Iraq would make a stone weep.

   Churches and mosques, traditionally places of refuge, are callously set ablaze.  Acid-filled tankers explode in poor neighborhoods, cruelly blinding innocent passers-by, burning out their lungs.  The other day a bomb killed a bunch of kids playing soccer.  Were they Sunnis or Shi’ites?  They were just kids… 

   Nothing, no-one is sacred.  Both Sunnis and Shi’ites post videos of their brazen atrocities on the internet.

   America is rightly blamed for the fiasco.  If it hadn’t invaded the country on trumped-up charges, history would have taken a different turn.

   But just blaming America is too simplistic.  Those who target worshipers at prayer, shoppers in a market, and children playing soccer are also guilty.

   Civil wars are always messy affairs, but the religious dimension makes this one particularly brutal:  “Shi’ite?  You’re dead!”  “Sunni?  Off with your head!”

   Meanwhile, both sides try to convince the rest of us that Islam is a religion of peace.  Little wonder the faith has an image problem…

   The occupation forces suffer least in all this.  Local warlords realize that the Americans and their dwindling allies will not hang around indefinitely.  The real enemy is the rival religious group.  It must be browbeaten, eliminated as much as possible before the occupation leaves.

   Saddam failed to create a cohesive nation state; he managed, by force and fear, to keep the various religious and ethnic groups from devouring each other.  By removing him the Americans opened a Pandora’s Box; they have no idea how to put the genies back in and clamp the lid back on.  They’re not even trying—they’re talking “exit strategy”.

   Everyone decent person in Iraq is a loser.

   Every decent person?  I recently read a report on the increased interest in Christianity among ordinary Iraqis of all sects.  More Christian literature is distributed than ever before, and more people are writing to Christian websites, TV stations, etc.  As happened in Iran, as happened in the Kurdish North of Iraq subsequent to the 1991 Gulf War, as has happened so often in the course of church history, a sovereign God will go to any length and pay any price in terms of human or divine suffering to draw those on whom He has set His favor to Himself.

   In Christ there is neither Shi’ite nor Sunni.  The good news coming from Iraq is that a church of mixed Muslim background believers is slowly emerging.   And that, in the divine economy of things, is worth the price.

Send Some Rogues!

There is a myth among Christians working cross-culturally that there is a spiritual element to language learning.  Just because someone is born-again, meek, child-like, humble, full of faith, love and hope, and a Christian to boot doesn’t make them better language learners.  Nor do the meek and the mild necessarily relate better to their host culture; in fact, the opposite tends to be true!  Oddly, being a Charismatic doesn’t help either–in fact, it seems to work against you on both counts…

 

Furthermore, the American Christians’ anachronistic and increasingly ludicrous sense of their own cultural/political superiority (the old “beacon on a hill” nonsense) leads both to a deep resistance to adapt, and to an innate desire to recreate the rest of the world in their own image: witness the almost irrepressible urge to establish “Christian” grade- and high schools running typical American curriculums wherever monied American missionaries gather in groups of two or three.  The damage such schools have done to the work of Christ in the Middle East in incalculable.

 

The best language learners I know are adventurous rogues.  During the 1991 Gulf War I worked as a translator for several secular organizations.  While operating in those circles I was amazed time and again by the number of people (real rogues some of them) I met who had a thorough grasp of one or more of the region’s languages.  They included diplomats, relief workers, sociologists, journalists, businessmen, soldiers and, of course, translators.  Interestingly, many of them were not even permanent residents, thought their work often took them to the Middle East.

 

It is, of course, impossible to a statistical comparison with such an amorphous group.  I did begin to wonder, however, why some of them were just so good.  One of the conclusions I came to was that these adventurous rogues were not hampered by the conservative-evangelical socio-political baggage and Christian morality of the large, linguistically-struggling missionary community.  Some of the rogues had national wives, and many of them had local girlfriends, even when they had wives back home.  They all seemed to enjoy drinking, partying, and holidaying with national colleagues.  Some had local gay partners.  All seemed quite willing to risk puking out their guts, just to try some dodgy-looking food or drink.  They weren’t into “contextualization”, they were into the adventure of it, into experiencing it all for the experience of it.  Some of them took amazing risks.  At one stage I shared a room in Northern Iraq with Dr. Martin van Bruinessen, the author of Agha, Sheikh and State (a definitive work on the Kurds), a real adventurer and a brilliant linguist.  I asked him once what motivatived him.  “I’m an existentialist”, he said.  “The experience justifies itself”.

 

Although I’m not promoting existentialism or my former colleagues colorful life-styles,  I do wonder if Christian agencies should, at a more sanctified level, stimulate a sense of adventure, a “drive to experience” in their personnel.    How can they encourage their folk to push deeper, to press on till it hurts, to take it on board, to kiss their own culture goodbye for a season, to master the language, to relish the experience?

 

If they cannot do that, can they at least teach their people to be less prickly, less defensive when Christianity, the Bible, Bush, or his foreign policies are criticized?  Could they, maybe, teach them to laugh, shrug and hug?  Maybe, just maybe, they can help their personnel recognize real from misplaced guilt, thus enabling them to enjoy fullness of life in another dimension, and make real friends in the process.  That, you see, is the one thing my rogue colleagues have in common: they have local friends, not just “contacts”;  their own social needs are met, in large part, by nationals.

YouTube and “Love It or Leave It”

A popular slogan here is “Turkey: Love It or Leave It!”  That actually means: “If you don’t love Turkey they way we do, then leave it!”   This is nasty, ugly nationalism.  It presumes you’ve got to prove your love and commitment to the country in their way before you are free to say anything about it.

     The “Love It or Leave It” crowd organizes itself into “dernekler” (associations) like the Türkçü Toplumcu Budun ve Elbiriği Derneği (Turkish Collectivist People and Cooperative Association) and the Kuvayi Milli Dernegi (Nationalist Forces Association).  They make their vows on Turkish flags, Qur’ans, and pistols, and publish racist magazines like “İlteriş”.  Their ideology is a mixture of Shamanism, Islam and Fascism.  They are allergic to minorities, notably Kurds: Kurds must not be accepted into the civil service, should not be allowed to own property, and must not be accepted into universities.  Their breeding habits should be restricted.  If a Kurd marries a Turk the family’s bloodlines can only be purified by marrying Turkish for 5 generations (see Radikal 18 Feb. 2007).  It all has a rather pathetic, 1930s German ring to it.

     No Turk need prove his/her nationalist credentials.  A people that successfully ran an empire for centuries, fought a thrilling War of Independence, and in recent decades built a regional economic and military power need not feel insecure, need not fear coming to grips with its past.  In fact, it must do so if it wants to continue developing in healthy ways.

     This the Nobel winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk grasped.  He tried, ever so gently, to nudge his people towards a self-image that had integrity.  Sadly, Pamuk moved to the States recently.  His vision differed from the “Love It or Leave It” crowd; since they will kill their opponents, he took their threats seriously.

     The “Love It or Leave It” crowd is not interested in the unsolicited advice of the likes of me, a Christian and a foreigner… There are, however, some here who consider me a friend; in normal, healthy relationships, the opinion of friends matters. 

     This is what I’m hoping and praying and praying for:

     1. that Turkey will become a member of the European Union sooner rather than later.  I believe that will lead to both economic development and a healthier, more open society.

     2. that “love it or leave it” attitudes metamorphose into healthy, non-racists patriotism which embraces all citizens and seeks a better society for all—a society not based on racist or religious ideology but on contemporary Northern European liberal democratic principles.

     3. that the notion of freedom of expression and religion would be wholeheartedly embraced. 

     That last point is, I believe, the key.  Everything else will flow from it.  When nationalism and religion cease being prisons, when people are free to think outside prescribed boxes, then this society will, I am convinced, surge forward in new, challenging, and dynamic ways.  I hope I live long enough to see it!

     Hope is the substance of things not seen–we are certainly seeing the opposite of what we hope for.  The recent closure of YouTube in Turkey because “The State” didn’t approve of some Greek louts’ opinion of Turkey is an indication of much that is wrong: an over-sensitive nationalism overcompensating for a poor national self-image.

Great language learning site

Here is the link to the Foreign Service Institute’s language learning site:

http://fsi-language-courses.com/

It contains complete language courses, including audio, in a whole host of languages (including Turkish and Arabic) available on-line.