Afghanistan Archives - Chris Morton

This is the first reflecction from my goal of reading 40 Books in 2010.

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin is part biography and part field manual on how to truly make a difference in the world. Relin shares Mortenson’s story, growing up as a missionary kid in Africa, failing to summit K2, stumbling into the mountain villages of Pakistan, and creating an NGO to build schools for girls in those villages. Tea is a fun read, laying out a life that takes place on three continents and is filled with deeper love, danger, failure and success than most of us can imagine.

The book climaxes just before 9/11. Just as Mortenson’s organization, the Central Asia Institute, has just begun to catch some steam, he learns of his competition for the hearts and minds of impoverished muslims: Saudi funded Wahabi Madrassas and Mosques teaching and preaching jihad.

Mortenson’s argument is straightforward: the causes of terrorism are poverty and ignorance. With a little education (it cost about $12,000 to build a school) both of these can be eliminated.

With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dragging on, Three Cups of Tea serves as a canary in a cole mine, sounding disaster if we do not treat the roots of our problems.

Over the last few Christmases John and Yoko’s Merry Xmas (War is Over) has become my favorite Christmas carol. It asks us all, do we want to live in peace?

As I’m writing this blog post, I’m sitting and watching Braveheart with some friends. I love a good, violent war movie as much as the next Y chromosome, but I can’t help but think that even the most inspiring heroism of war is a twisted misrepresentation of the promise that came into earth at the birth of Jesus Christ.

In our world, we can’t seem to get out of Iraq or Afghanistan. I’ve been living paycheck to paycheck. I know people who are sleeping on the streets and in mud huts. The best that our most creative minds can imagine is blue cat-monkey people fighting our wars for us. It’s hard to imagine the truth of Christmas:

War is over.

If you want it.

I have chosen to trust the counter-intuitive promise of the gospel: a Jewish child, born the son of oppressed peasants in a cave full of animals, is the Prince of Peace. His birth heralds the end of all wars. I want it.

Believing in this prince means living in and for peace: seeking peace between within yourself, and between you, God, and your world.

As you come together for Christmas this year, you have to ask “So this is Christmas, and what have you done?” By next year, I hope answer: “I lived for peace.”

And so this is Christmas (War is over)
For weak and for strong (If you want it)

For rich and the poor ones (War is over)
The world is so wrong (Now)

And so Happy Christmas (War is over)
For black and for white (If you want it)
For yellow and red ones (War is over)
Let’s stop all the fight (Now)

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let’s hope it’s a good one
Without any fear

Archives For Afghanistan

Terrorism Can Be Stopped

War is Over (If You Want It)

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