Thank you for responding to our YouTube appeal to pray for Jim’s healing and to contribute, especially for our beloved Ukrainian Christian family. We’re looking forward to blessing some very effective front-line ministries, even while Jim’s being treated. Here are six ways you can contribute to our and their joint relief efforts to wounded, war-weary Ukrainian citizens:

• Secure credit card donation here. INSTANT AUTO-RECEIPT FOR TAX DEDUCTION! Please consider covering the credit card processing fee.
• Via Zelle to our Zelle ID: “office@jamesgilbert.org” at Bank of America. (Learn more about Zelle here.)
• Venmo (@JGM-32)
• Apple Pay (352-316-1212)
• PayPal (Click HERE)
• Check payable to Jim Gilbert Ministries to PO Box 141928, Gainesville FL 32614. Write the word UKRAINE on the memo line.

Remember to include your email or physical address in order to receive a receipt for tax-deductible giving. This is important for anyone wanting to keep Uncle Sam from wasting more money. We won’t add you to yet another list!

Thank you for your interest, trust, and prayers, as together we help relieve the suffering of these Ukrainian people.

Deepest thanks,

I’m headed to Poland and Ukraine for 3 weeks, my 3rd mission in 13 months. Our targets: 1) continue helping Ukrainian widows and orphans; 2) aid Kherson flood victims of Putin’s dam bombing; 3) deliver relief where supply lines are cut off; 4) supply funds for life-saving bandages that our close contacts are delivering to wounded Ukrainian civilians, especially husbands and fathers trying to save their homes. Casualties can drop by 70% with proper bandages and tourniquets; 5) minister in 5 Polish cities, conducting worship symposiums and aiding more refugees.

We American Christians must remain tenderhearted. I’m still awed by what happened a year ago in Poland when our daughter Lexi and I met smiling, hopeful 5-year-old Ukrainian kids who didn’t know that their daddies, who had stayed home to fight, were dead. We had brought them food and blankets, so they made beautiful, personalized cards to thank us, and gave us big hugs because our help changed their lives. But Lexi’s life was changed too, by a hug from one innocent, utterly vulnerable little girl. She still often tells people about it if they ask her about Ukraine.

Lexi and I will never unsee those little ones’ innocent faces. Never. So I’m asking you: On October 5th, please send me back to Poland and UKRAINE. Join us here to change lives there. Here’s how:

• Donate via Zelle, a no–fee, instant, 100% secure money transfer from any participating bank to our ministry account. Our Bank of America Zelle ID is also our email: office@jamesgilbert.org. (More on Zelle here.) NOTE: To receive a tax receipt, you MUST send an email address to us. We won’t add you to more lists.
• Donate securely on this page via credit card. Just click here. You’ll receive an automated receipt for tax-deductible giving. Please consider covering the credit card processing fee.
• Give via Apple Pay (352-316-1212); Venmo (james@jamesgilbert.org); or PayPal (@jimgilbertministries).
• Mail your check payable to Jim Gilbert Ministries to PO Box 141928, Gainesville FL 32614. Write the word UKRAINE on the memo line.

You know Dolly and me. We’ll do as much as you make possible. My heart is full. Let’s make it my pockets too. I promise to empty them wisely.

(Wanna see Poland & Ukraine for yourself? Click the video below.)

Deepest thanks,

Welcome to the Ukraine Rapid Relief Fund and jamesgilbert.org. We asked you to give in 2022! You gave $130,397 towards Ukraine relief, and we actually SENT $133,000, directly into Ukraine and to refugee efforts in Poland. But Putin’s monstrous war isn’t over, as he bombs not just military targets, but homes, schools—anywhere he can kill innocents. Just yesterday, as I write, air raid sirens sounded over the entire nation. So, WE MUST KEEP FIGHTING BACK, not with bombs, but with life-saving aid sent in Jesus’ name. Look, the worst thing now would be to let compassion fatigue overtake us.

I leave for both Ukraine and Poland in October, and as I said in my most recent Facebook video, this year we’re targeting three relief ministries in particular. All three get relief to areas hardly reached by others. Find out more by clicking the photo below. Then come back here.

For now, let me be bold one more time: No tipping. No “latte” money. Please give AGAIN! Look, when I was in Poland last September, I met smiling 5-year old kids who don’t know that their daddies, who stayed behind to fight, are dead. No more hugs and nightly tuck-ins. They’re gone. Forever. So you can see why I’m saying once again that You and I need to act now!

There are four secure ways you can give, listed in order of efficiency. NOTE: If giving via Zelle, you MUST send your email address to office@jamesgilbert.org in order to receive a receipt for tax-deductible contribution.

• Donate via Zelle, a no–fee, immediate, 100% secure money transfer from your participating bank to our ministry’s Bank of America account. Check your online banking page to see if yours is one of the rapidly growing number of banks using Zelle. (You may need to type the word Zelle in your bank’s search box.) Our Bank of America Zelle ID is 352-316-1212. Click here for more Zelle info: https://www.zellepay.com/how-it-works
• Donate securely via credit card by clicking the blue Contribute button on the upper right of this page. (On a smartphone, it’s in the upper-right drop-down menu.) You will receive an immediate receipt for your tax-deductible donation via email. Please consider covering the credit card processing fee.
• Mail a check payable to Jim Gilbert Ministries to our office at PO Box 141928, Gainesville FL 32614. Write the word UKRAINE on the memo line.
• Give via an app like Apple Pay, Venmo or PayPal. (NOTE: The Cash app has changed their non-profit rules, so we request that you avoid that app.)

Ukrainian lives hang in the balance and YOU AND I need to act now. Thank you.

Grace and peace,

Jim Gilbert Ministries

Last year the government of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region asked for our help. Please interview Christian leaders, they requested. What religious rights would they want to be specified in a new Kurdish Constitution? Would we then write recommendations spelling out these rights?

                                                Proud to be named honorary Peshmerga

I landed in Erbil on August 20, 2017. The very next day an armed Iranian militia—yes, Iranian—ambushed and detained our team near Mosul. For the next hour, some 100 militants surrounded us with AK-47 rifles, shouting and firing dozens of rounds into the air. We tried to turn around, but machine guns and a huge rocket launcher blocked us in. Thank the Lord, Iraq’s Prime Minister himself intervened and effected our release.

After interviewing Orthodox, Chaldean Catholic and Protestant leaders for four days, it was time to gather our notes and make recommendations.

Dr. Terry Law and I drafted seven articles focused on making Iraqi Kurdistan a safe haven for Christians. After an American constitutional expert signed off on the document, we submitted it. The Kurds’ response was wonderful. “We will do all this and more,” said the senior government official with a smile.

Last month that official asked us to return. It’s time to compose their new Constitution and they want our help in implementing the articles composed last year. I’m ready.

Will you send me back to Iraq?

Even Washington is taking notice, despite the imminent midterm elections. A few days ago, Dr. Law met with Vice President Pence about this mission. Since then we conference-called with a leading Congressman who wants to help. Please pray. Our goal is a particular letter of endorsement. (You’re welcome to read between the lines.) Such a letter would ease the process for the Kurds should Iran, Syria or some other neighbor object to this historic first.

Whether summoned to D.C. or heading off to Iraqi Kurdistan, I have to be ready to travel at a moment’s notice. But the costs of last-minute travel to Iraq are high.

Think about it:

How often do you and I have an opportunity to make a historic impact on the Middle East?

For 1,400 years Christians have suffered persecution throughout the Islamic world. Now, here they stand—your family in Christ, with real freedom of worship at their fingertips.

Thirty-one years ago a pastor and complete stranger prophesied to me. “I see you advising a Muslim government someday,” he said. I thought it absurd and put it out of mind for 30 years. Then last year “someday” came. Now it’s time to complete what last year’s mission started.

Will you send me back to Iraq? Regardless of whatever lies ahead, I’m ready to go.

Here am I. Send me.

Please click the blue contribute button at the top of this page to give via our secure online portal. Or you can mail a check payable to Jim Gilbert Ministries, PO Box 141928, Gainesville FL 32614. And more than anything else, please pray for us—especially our daughter, Lexi.

Soli Deo Gloria!

The election of President Trump, as well as rightward movements in Europe, are prompting US conservatives to speak of the death of socialism. This is abject blindness. It is socialists that are being rejected, not socialism.

America has already embraced socialism in the forms of public education, social security, and even healthcare, where we choose between the socialism of Obamacare on the Left and the socialism-lite of Trumpcare on the faux-Right. Our President is a pragmatic populist, not a principled conservative. Hence, when he ran for office he named conservatives to his cabinet because his base wanted them, but once in office has embraced socialism in healthcare because the electorate at large wants it. As for the philosophical differences between the two, they don’t matter to a self-styled dealmaker-in-chief.

Our nation’s political choices mirror the people’s mood, not their convictions. That’s because mood has replaced conviction, just as celebrities have replaced heroes. Our worldviews—and Christians have been lambs to the slaughter in this regard—are shaped, not by books and reading, but by videos, short social posts and the like. In turn, this enables demagogues, from Trump to Sanders, to disrupt our elections, if not our entire culture.

A sleeping man never sets his own alarm, hence cold-water posts like this one. American Christians had better awaken quickly. Facebook prayer requests accompanied by pictures of Jesus’ arms wrapped around President Trump are the Velvet Elvis of evangelicalism. They’re not merely corny—they’re offensive, because they portray both bad theology and bad taste. Did we post such requests for President Obama? Nope. But why? Was it latent racism? Contrary to the sincere beliefs of many African America Christians, (whose worldviews, as sloppily formed as those of their white brothers, but by different forces) the answer is another Nope. It wasn’t brown skin but the pink politics of Barack Obama that offended the intuitive, blind sensibilities of politically conservative Christians, whereas President Trump merely dulls those sensibilities. But Novocain is never a good subsitute for an alarm clock.

Want to hear the alarm? Ring, ring: it was Bernie Sanders’ popularity amongst the young, not Trump’s election by aging Boomers, that portends America’s future. And American Christians had better start putting a sharp scriptural lens to politics, economics and a host of other subjects if we want to avoid the paradise that used to be the Soviet Union and is now Venezuela.

It’s time to put the flag back in its stand and pick up a Bible.

(A post in which James toots his own horn, and thereby blows it)

Polar opposites in virtually every way except their common consecration to God and his Word, Mark Nauroth and James Gilbert, aka The Worldview Guys, are as unlikely a combination as waffles and fried chicken. In other words, bring these two together and things just work, especially when they’re writing, podcasting or hosting their brand new venture, The Worldview Course.

Ask the young millennial from California and the…uh, “older gentleman” from Florida why they’ve joined forces to become the “Guys” and you’ll get a single answer: “We’re out to win the culture, not the culture war.”

“The Worldview Course is a 13-session video series we wrote and cohosted for a target audience that includes both small groups and families,” explains Mark. We purposely staged it like a giant Apple commercial, and gave the whole project a fun and slightly irreverent tone.”

The course includes both DVD and online video, a sleek 145-page study guide with wide margins for journaling, online testing and more. “We’re both communicators: a writer and a web designer,” says James, “and we share a passion to connect the dots between God’s word and John Q. Public’s world.”

“Most biblical worldview teaching is long on philosophy and short on application,” adds Mark. “In The Worldview Course we concentrate on the latter, showing how the Bible applies to five key categories of everyday life: politics, economics, education, religion and social issues.”

Mark and James were first introduced by Dan Smithwick, founder of Nehemiah Institute, whose acclaimed worldview assessment tool, The PEERS Test, drew the interest of both men. James, an author and Christian missions statesman with extensive experience in cross-cultural communication and worldview studies, was quickly becoming Nehemiah Institute’s go-to instructor in educational settings. Mark, a successful “entreprenerd” whose expertise in Internet programming and design is rivaled only by his knowledge of church history and Koine Greek, had come to Smithwick with a plan to transfer The PEERS Test from its 20th-Century paper format to a 21st-Century home online. The result? PEERS is now an integral part of The Worldview Course.

The two men are odd bookends. Mark, a Millennial, quotes the early church Fathers with ease, while James, a preacher’s son born in the 1950s, is quicker to draw from today’s news, a Star Trek rerun or his latest mission to Cuba or Iraq. Together, these two form a sum greater than its parts. And they’re just getting started.

All around the world, there are tens of thousands of Passion-themed blog posts have been published this week, some showing more profound insight than others, but nearly all of them written from hearts and minds wanting to honor Jesus’ unthinkable suffering for our sins. I wish I could write one too, but…

It’s not that I have nothing to say. After 48 years in ministry, I doubtless do have insights worth sharing. Yet, right now, for some reason, they seem worth less—worthless—rather than worth more. I suppose the easiest way to explain is to quote the late Corrie ten Boom:

“The more I get to know God, the less I understand Him, but the more I trust Him.”

I was privileged to meet and host Corrie ten Boom a couple of years before she passed away at age 91. It didn’t take long to see that there was no pretense about her. When this stoop-shouldered, tiny giant of the faith said something that wowed us all, she wasn’t attempting to be profound; she was just being honest. Likewise, I just want to write something honest here.

I saw Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” on its opening day, 1994, at an IMAX theater in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and my most vivid memory of the experience is what happened after the movie had finished. The credits started to roll, but no one rose to leave. Nobody talked or even made a sound, save for some stifled sniffles of emotion. It was only as the screen finally went blank and the lights came up that we started to file out and head to the parking lot. Even outside, as people headed in all directions towards their cars and SUVs, there was silence.

What could we say? Like Ms. ten Boom, now we knew more, so we understood less. And really, the only people with a lot to say seemed to be those who knew nothing but thought they understood. Hence, effete movie critics, Hollywood’s self-appointed moralists and the Professionally Offended class all pronounced the film anti-semitic, which is like accusing the reporter who covered the Hindenburg airship explosion of being an arsonist.

I bought the movie as soon as it was released on DVD, primarily because I wanted to show it someday to my daughter, who was only two when it debuted. And so the disc sat shrink-wrapped on a shelf for a dozen or so years, until this week when our family sat down and watched it together.

The main reason we waited until now is that she is what most folks would call a “young” fifteen. Naïve. Innocent. Sheltered. Sheltered is an interesting word to me, because it should be a compliment, but most people employ it as a slight insult. The truth is, she’s a young fifteen by today’s standards only because her generation has been largely left unsheltered, from chatroom to schoolroom, and exposed to tons of junk that render them an old fifteen by traditional standards.

Yep, she’s sheltered, and with the exception of a radio station we recently banished from her clock radio, as well as the occasional damn or hell she might hear from the likes of Basil Fawlty or George C. Scott’s Patton, her mind has remained relatively unsoiled. (Losing screen privileges for a week has also worked great on occasion as a spot remover.)

We finally watched The Passion together because we want to make sure our daughter truly owns her faith in Jesus, so that it’s based on more than a prayer she repeated as a child, or because she wants to please her parents or fit in at church. We wanted to get a glimpse of what goes on in the deeper recesses of the mind and heart of a girl whose perpetually sunny disposition threatens to keep her in the shallow end of life.

It’s not an easy movie to watch, especially when the scourging of Jesus goes on and on…and on. She looked away more than once, but I reminded her that it’s time now to watch and see, and that Jesus didn’t turn away so neither can we. And so she watched.

Was there a payoff? Did she shed tears or ask us to pray? I would have been happy with either, of course, but she did neither. (Besides, I’d have had a hard time praying anything appropriate.) Instead, she was silent. Just like I was —like we all were—at the theater in 2004. She was silent because now she knew more, but understood less.

I’m fine with that.

Guilt for not praying and studying the Bible is only one of the spooks haunting the hallways of Christians’ minds. This unfriendly ghost has cousins–co-conspirators that work to keep you quiet and defeated. Every time the prospect of giving voice to your faith in Christ presents itself, the ghosts of Failure, Inadequacy, and Hypocrisy flit past your ear, whispering the lines that have worked so well ever since Saint Peter chickened out by a campfire near Calvary.

The ghost of Failure leads off with a whisper, dredging up memories of the few attempts you made right after you became a Christian:

• You got completely tongued-tied.
• He brought up questions you couldn’t answer.
• She got mad and has avoided you ever since.
• You hate knocking on doors.

The sound of forty pounds of wood slamming in your face is still fresh in your mind, when Inadequacy steps up to tell you you’re just not cut out for this, pointing out very good reasons for you to keep quiet:

• You’re not a good speaker.
• You don’t even understand the Bible yourself.
• You’re the last person your dad (cousin, brother) would listen to.
• You can’t take confrontation.

Finally, Hypocrisy chimes in, irritated with you for even bringing up such a ridiculous idea, in light of your obvious lack of ability and clear record of failure. Its tone is outright accusatory. Why pretend?

• You still wrestle with your own doubts.
• You have enough trouble with your own dirty mind.
• Your brothers have seen you at your worst; they know all your faults.
• You’ve lived next door for twelve years and never once mentioned God. What gives you the right to start now?

As quickly as it came to you, the idea of sharing your Christian faith makes tracks for the pit of your stomach, where it will remain suppressed until you meet someone else who needs the God you know. Then you’ll rehearse the same little episode again, feeling ever more the failure, as Guilt pedals through the cycle faster each time.

It would be nice to say these lines are all just devilish lies. But most of them are probably true, which is why they’re so effective. The Enemy of our souls is not opposed to the truth if he can make it do the work of a lie. But the truth about us is not the ultimate problem. The problem is the lie that Satan sneaks in with those ugly but accurate observations about you. Like the prize in a box of caramel corn, it’s hidden in every one. Here it i:

            You’ll never change. God wants you to, but you can’t.

Most of us swallow this one whole, accepting it as an immutable fact on the grounds that we know ourselves better than anyone else. But we’re wrong. God knows you and me better than we know ourselves. And He will change us as we spend time enjoying the pleasure of His company, and going about our daily lives just plain liking and caring for people.

           Even if all these obstacles are overcome, we’re still left facing one big hurdle: the hello-do-you-know-Jesus kind of witnessing feels like an unnatural act for most men. We instinctively see it as an act of aggression, and therefore something to avoid. Television’s Jay Leno once described a group of Christians who knocked on his door to ask him if he knew Jesus. “For a minute,” he mugged, “I was afraid they were going to try and gang-save me!” It’s a crude joke, but it sheds light on the way well-meaning Christians often are perceived. If a Catholic sister held a gun on you, your feelings would be mainly in reaction to the gun, not the nun.

As for me, I’d rather go golfing. Tee-to-green is better than door-to-door on any day of my year. Besides, the golf course is probably a better place to share your faith than ten inches away from someone’s screen door, which is an owner-installed device to keep pests out. Out on the fairway the scenery is gorgeous, and the footing is equal.

Okay, the middle of a golf game may or may not be ideal. (You don’t want to ruin your partner’s putting while saving his soul.) But the point remains: it is a great first step if you’re not comfortable going up on a stranger’s porch. And more natural, which means you’re more likely to say what you really want to say in the way you want to say it. Indeed, God has given us a brilliant “pre-qualifying” device, especially for winning people to Christ.

It’s called friendship. Now, find a friend and go get a burger.

I once heard a perennial local candidate say she was running for office for the umpteenth time because “I love politics,” as though her lust for authority were a qualification for it. In fact, it provided a compelling reason not to vote for her, just as one would not hire a marriage counselor who’s been to the altar several times. (I also heard the late Mickey Rooney say in all seriousness that his eight marriages demonstrated his commitment to the institution.)

Not voting for a bad candidate, however, should never lead to not voting at all, as was the temptation for many conservative Christians during the 2016 Presidential elections. To the contrary, we should participate in the process, not because we love politics, but because we love the God who ordained politics. Romans 13:4 calls the office holder “God’s servant for your good,” so that truth alone makes us responsible both to pray and vote, if not to run for office.

President Ronald Reagan’s awareness of his own accountability to God seemed to settle on him after he took office, and my affection for him grew along the way. Such conviction could never have come from loving politics, but only from a love for Truth. Not your truth vs. mine. Not new truth, but the Truth.

Today’s leaders, on the other hand, claim to love Truth but act as though it doesn’t exist. The Left espouses “preferences,” while the Right preaches “values,” both of them malleable substitutes for the inconvenient rigidity of absolutes. Reagan, by contrast, embraced those absolutes. He knew that God in heaven is not “whatever you conceive Him to be,” but that He is the Almighty Creator, Ruler of this world and all others. He understood that all authority belongs to God, and that the bits of it that He apportions to men are just that: bits, limited jurisdictions to be overseen in the clear light of accountability to Him.

We all were created to be lovers of the Truth, but failing that, we will love something else and call it truth. We will find another foundation upon which to stand, another throne at which to worship. For those on the Left, that foundation is politics, and its throne is civil government. They insist that we keep religion out of politics, yet politics is their religion. They believe in salvation by federal legislation. The state is their god, and the public school is their church. Thus, they harp at us to keep the God of the Bible out of both public office and the public classroom, because they have already enthroned their god there and fear the competition.

The god—goddess, actually—of the Left has a name, and Reagan identified it in speech after speech, even before he entered politics. It is Socialism, the spirit of Big Mother. Margaret Thatcher called it the nanny state. The junior gods of the Left, always ready to pass new laws in order to see what’s in them, see their Mother as an organ of nurture, a giant teat for suckling the unfortunate masses who can neither feed nor clothe themselves, but somehow excel at self-esteem and rights-marching. Hence the constant Progressive effort to offer new teats and new ways to latch on. Never mind that they’re dry; more teats are good.

Meanwhile, the intimidated denizens of the Right, trying to please both a brash new President and the same old goddess, offer up diet sacrifices to her, in the hopes that she’ll at least lose weight. She will not. Instead she’ll just scream “feed me” like some Audrey II in “Beltway Shop of Horrors,” until eventually they butcher a fresh pound of flesh from the national body.

Such collectivist arrogance gives no place to authority greater than its own, especially absolute authority. In fact, today’s American collectivists—nearly all D.C. Democrats and not a few Republicans—are paradoxically sure that truth is relative. They celebrate its many manifestations with words like diversity, tolerance, and even gender fluidity. You live by your truth and I’ll live by mine. Whatever you believe is okay as long as you’re sincere. Same sex marriage? No problem, as long as it’s “true” love. Abortion on demand? Well, I personally oppose it, but I can’t make that decision for someone else. [Cue gag reflex]

The alternative to this hideous mix of debauchery and demagoguery is not soft indulgence. The answer to a lie is not to repeat it in nicer tones. Yet that has long been the response of Congress’ counterfeit conservatives since at least 1994 and early signs are that it lives on in 2017. The problem is that values—the GOP’s go-to euphemism—are every bit as elastic as the Democrats’ sacrosanct preference. Values sounds duly religious, but it’s really just the old Progressive idol sporting a Republican halo.

At some point, Americans must acknowledge that both parties have become the people St. Paul warned his protégé Timothy to avoid: “lovers of themselves…having a form of godliness but denying its power.” Repentance and a return to the Founders’ first principles would be a good start. Yes, there were slave-owning hypocrites numbered among them, just as there are abortion-tolerant Roman Catholics and Protestants in office today. But even those counterfeits were fluent in the Scriptures, and knew our fledgling nation would live or die based on the foundation it supplied.

Getting back to real, non-poll-tested faith is not about winning the culture war, but winning the culture. And if we will take our stand upon the sure footing that all truth is God’s Truth, then we can lead the way to repentance for a nation that will gladly follow, not because we took over or imposed our doctrines, but because we served society so well that our accusers had nothing left to say.

“Let your light so shine before men,” Jesus said, “that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”

Representing Christ properly occasionally leaves you no choice but to stop a trash-talker in his tracks, to stomp the serpent’s head even if it means breaking someone’s toes in the process. But most Christians aren’t confident in their ability to obey St. Paul’s instructions to “put off falsehood and speak truthfully to [your] neighbor,” while being careful that “in your anger, [you] do not sin” or “give the devil a foothold” (Ephesians 4:25-27).

Gets harder as it goes, doesn’t it? Don’t lie; no problem. Tell the truth to my neighbor; well, sometimes I’d sooner let things pass. But be angry without sinning? Hah! Try doing my taxes sometime.

Anger needn’t become the launching pad for ongoing resentment, not if you understand that “righteous anger” is always founded on a righteous standard: the Bible. But, like spanking a child or punishing a criminal, displaying righteous anger also comes with a couple of rules.

• It is never to be exercised on non-scriptural grounds.
• It is never to be withheld on non-scriptural grounds.

So, when is it appropriate to blow your stack for Jesus?

My wife and I once found ourselves facing that quandary during a tour of Apartheid-era South Africa, where I was addressing primarily white congregations, challenging them to not merely express sorrow for past racism, but to actively, sincerely embrace their black brothers while time remained.

One evening at dinner with the family providing our lodging, we found ourselves joined by the husband’s brother who was in town for the night. We enjoyed a feast of fresh mussels and pasta before retiring to the sitting room for conversation. As usual the topic of apartheid came up. South Africa wasn’t America. Things were different there. Still, there was no excuse for discrimination anywhere. It was the kind of conversation where you hope your views are about the same, but you assume nothing.

The brother was quiet at first, but after a third or fourth glass of wine, he enjoined the discussion. “Our blacks are different from your blacks,” he began with too much confidence. My pulse quickened. Talking about people as though they were possessions made my torso flinch. My wife felt it, and squeezed my hand and winked, as if to say, “Don’t worry; we’re going home in an hour.”

More alcohol kicked in.

“I don’t allow my garden boy to shake a white woman’s hand. If he shakes her hand today, he thinks he can sleep with her tonight.” Our host, a dedicated Christian man who wanted to win his brother, tried to intervene. It didn’t work.

“I’ll tell you what should have happened. Hitler should’ve started down in the Cape and worked his way north….”

Suddenly I was off the couch and in the air. “No more!” I shouted. “Enough! I flew five thousand miles on donated funds in order to come here and preach the name of Jesus, not reminisce about Hitler.”

“Ach, forgive me if I offended—”

“Don’t apologize to me,” I roared. “You don’t offend me; you sicken me! It’s twenty-eight million black people to whom you should apologize.” I headed for the door. My collar was on fire.

The man walked to the door, adopted a look of regret and extended his hand, as if to make peace. But feigned peace wouldn’t do, not tonight, so I kept my own hand lowered, stared him in the face, and lowered my tone as well.

“I’ll not shake your hand. I’ll shake hands with your ‘boy,’ but I won’t shake yours.”

We turned and thanked our mortified hosts for dinner, bade them goodbye, and walked out into the cool African breeze. And somewhere deep in my pounding heart, I heard a small voice say, “Good job, son.”