Back of the Envelope

The folks at the Harvard Christian Fellowships are trying to motivate people to do something about the genocide happening in the Sudan:

As you may know, there is a genocide happening in the Darfur region of Sudan. Over 200,000 men, women and children have been killed, countless innocent women have been raped, and another 2 million Darfurians have been driven from their homes. President Bush and Secretary of State Rice have officially called it a genocide.

Unfortunately, the church is woefully uninformed about the Darfur genocide. Still, many Christian students have faith that Christ's body will witness to God's love and grace through this crisis. Moreover, many verses in scripture command us to respond to tragedies like this, and Proverbs 24:11-12 has particularly caught our attention.

To help inform churches of this issue, we have compiled a packet of information about the genocide that students can send or bring home to their pastors. The packet includes a letter to the church leader and several pages of suggestions on how to PRAY, SPEAK OUT, and ACT. It also references an article from Christianity Today about the need for Christian response to the Darfur genocide.

Darfur seems very far away, and it seems unlikely that anything we can do can stop it. However, that is not an excuse for doing nothing, and great things can happen through what at first appears to be a small, helpless movement. In fact, that seems to be the way God prefers to work.

The packet of information can be found here, along with other information. Be forewarned, iIt's a Word document.

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Update: The link was broken. It's fixed now.

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I was inspired by a footnote by Dean Esmay:

(* "Apologetics" is not a bad word. See this definition.)

Apologetics is, in fact, a very good word, it's just that we've forgotten where it came from. So, first to the dictionary, where Dean points, which says:

1. The branch of theology that is concerned with defending or proving the truth of Christian doctrines.
2. Formal argumentation in defense of something, such as a position or system.

In everyday usage, an apology is when you say you're sorry for doing wrong. This is actually a corruption of the original usage. Apology is from the Greek word apologia, which is a "verbal defense" or "explanation." It's a compound of two Greek words, apo meaning "from" and logos meaning "reason." (Logos, incidentally, is one of those Greek words with a rich and textured set of meanings, but we're sticking with "reason" here.) The instruction to be prepared for a verbal defense of the faith comes from Peter:

But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always {being} ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.

(1 Peter 3:5, NAS)

Where the word translated "defense" is apologia.

So where does the modern usage of apology comes from? Well, I don't know the specifics, but it's easy to guess. Where originally it might have meant a strong defense against all accusation of wrongdoing, it began to include the explanation of mitigating circumstances as part of a confession of wrongdoing, then over time took on the presumption of guilt, until you have the meaning today, which is equivalent to saying you're sorry.

The ironic thing is that today, people often say that it's not a real apology if the apologizer makes any attempt to explain or defend his actions. Whereas, going by the original definition, it's not a real apology unless the apologizer makes some attempt to explain or defend his actions.

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