Lift Up Your Hearts!

Two years ago, Stephan wrote an excellent summary of why Americans overseas bear an unfair and disproportionate tax burden.  It's still true, and you can help by e-mailing the House Ways and Means Committee by April 15—if you don't need all that time to prepare your own taxes, that is.  You could also, of course, e-mail them with your own thoughts about tax reform in general.  That's too much for me to contemplate at the moment, so I settled for writing on this subject.  Here's one of my two letters, minus a few details.  You'll note I cribbed a good deal from Stephan's post.

I am writing to ask that the International Taxation Committee of the Ways & Means Committee for Tax Reform seriously consider the proposal of the American Citizens Abroad (ACA) for reform to residency-based taxation (RBT).  (http://americansabroad.org/files/6513/6370/3681/finalsubrbtmarch2013.pdf)

The current policy of citizenship-based taxation is unique among developed countries:  all others levy taxes based on residence alone.  As I understand it, this taxation by citizenship is intended to prevent very wealthy Americans from avoiding taxes in the USA by moving abroad.  But do you remember when tuna fishing nets inadvertently caught and killed porpoises as well?  There are several unintended, unfair consequences of this tax policy for ordinary, non-wealthy US citizens abroad  Here are a few examples:

• The USA taxes its citizens abroad based on their income converted into US dollars. You might earn the same salary in year one as in year two, but be forced to declare an increase in income of several thousand US dollars because the dollar was devalued in that period
• If you are hired as an expatriate by a large company, you cost the company more in expenses and tax attorney fees, which makes you less attractive for hiring.   This competitive disadvantage of its citizens is damaging to the US economy, particularly in this climate of globalization.
• US citizens abroad run the risk of unintentionally becoming criminals because of the complex tax laws and agreements. The US tax code is complicated for US residents; it is worse as a citizen abroad. Additionally, IRS personnel rarely are able to answer questions you might have, so even if you try your best you run a very real risk of unintentionally running afoul of the IRS.
• US citizens abroad are being denied basic local banking services. Many local banks altogether refuse dealings with anyone liable to taxation by the IRS rather than running the risk of being sued.
• Because “any United States person who has a financial interest in or signature authority or other authority over any financial account in a foreign country, if the aggregate value of these accounts exceeds $10,000 at any time during the calendar year,” must file an FBAR, an American overseas may be denied employment or promotion since US tax law could require disclosure of the company account to the IRS.

Even though I, myself, reside in the United States, I am affected by this unjust form of taxation.  My American daughter and her American family are currently living overseas and thus are hurt by the problems above.  Furthermore, I have been unable to open a simple bank account in her town in which to keep a small amount of funds to use while visiting them.  The banks will not open accounts for Americans because IRS rules require them to break their own rules to do so.

A move towards a residence-based system would it be simpler and fairer for Americans living abroad, and would strengthen America’s global competitiveness.

Please consider the RBT proposal submitted by American Citizens Abroad (ACA).  (http://americansabroad.org/files/6513/6370/3681/finalsubrbtmarch2013.pdf)

Check out Janet's great article at Power of Moms!

No Time for a Break:  The Art of Resting when Parenting is Non-Stop

I knew the importance of rest going into motherhood, but for some reason, my beautiful and demanding son didn’t know that Sunday was my day off.   He somehow missed the memo that on this “day of rest” he should sleep through the night, take long naps, not need to nurse on my bleeding breasts, and not cry so that I can be refreshed and a good mother for the remainder of the week

Often as mothers we are either working or feeling guilty that we’re not working (and sometimes both at once!) We need to learn to rest guilt-free because rest isn’t restful if we’re feeling guilty!

Trust me (the objective, unbiased proud, excited mother), you'll want to read it all.

Lost Women of the Bible:  Finding Strength and Significance through Their Stories by Carolyn Custis James (Zondervan, 2005)

The Gospel of Ruth:  Loving God Enough to Break the Rules by Carolyn Custis James (Zondervan, 2008)

In mid-September of 2001, a friend pulled me through one of the most tumultuous times of my life.  (No, we weren't in New York City on September 11, but I was home alone, with movers packing up my earthly possessions, and scheduled to fly—yes, fly—to Boston in few days.)  This friend also gave me Carolyn Custis James' newly-published book, When Life and Beliefs Collide.  I need to read it again:  I'm pretty sure it was a good book, but as I said, life was a bit unsettled for me and I don't remember it.  Moreover, I was put off by the same problem that prevented me for more than a decade from seeking out James' subsequent books:  what I perceived at the time as a falsely positive reference to some very negative events in the life of our church.

So I'm a slow learner.  Judgements made on small evidence are useless at best.  My only defense for avoiding James' books is that the list of good books to read is always heartbreakingly longer than the time available to read them, anyway.  Reading these two books is part of an effort to recover the locust-eaten years.

On the surface, these books would appear to be primarily for women; that judgement, also, would be a great mistake.  I can't say better than to quote J.I. Packer's comment about When Life and Beliefs Collide:  "Her book seems to me to be a must-read for Christian women and a you'd-better-read for Christian men, for it gets right so much that others have simply missed."  I would add, however, that the adjective "Christian" is neither necessary nor helpful in the case of these two books, as most non-Christians would also have their conceptions of women and the Bible blown away by James' analysis.

Although both of these books tell great stories, their purpose is less narrative than theological and exegetical.  Therefore it is necessary to know something of James' abilities in these areas.  Since I'm not qualified to judge, I'll quote a few endorsements by people who are:

I have not read (nor, I expect, have you) a more discerning, humbling, thought-provoking, God-honoring, life-enhancing treatment of Ruth than this one.  It makes outstandingly fruitful study for believers of all ages and both genders. (J.I. Packer, Professor of Theology, Regent College)

Men and women will benefit from reading Carolyn James's engagingly written book.  In Lost Women of the Bible, she brings new insight to the biblical text and rightly expands our idea of what makes a woman godly.  I enthusiastically recommend this book.  (Tremper Longman III, Professor of Biblical Studies, Westmont College)

Carolyn Custis James gives the church a precious spiritual gift:  How ten unsung heroines of the Bible shaped and expanded the kingdom of God and continue to bolster the faith of the church.  Her penetrating and unforgettable biographies of these risk-taking biblical heroines are built on solid exegesis and a deft use of rhetorical criticism—though she never uses the term, seeing truths in the text that only a woman can see.  Her engaging style with lightning bolt sentences demonstrates the valuable resource God has given the church in her gifted daughters to minister in words and deeds.  This book explicitly challenges women of every social stratum to become the culture makers God intended them to be.  (Bruce Waltke, Professor of Old Testament, Reformed Theological Seminary)

So what do you think of Eve?  Carolyn James compares her with her own grandmother at the end of her life:

The vibrant woman I remembered—the woman God created her to be—was lost somewhere in a fallen, aging body that was no longer hospitable to her marvelous spirit.

The last time anyone saw Eve, she was only a shell of her former self too, a broken-down version of the woman God created her to be.  The original Eve was lost in Paradise.  Sadly, instead of remembering her in those earlier glory days, the world's memory of her was frozen in time at the worst possible moment—back in the Garden of Eden just as she swallowed a piece of forbidden fruit and served some to her husband. ...  We wouldn't dream of doing to my grandmother what we persist in doing to Eve.  We forget what Eve was like in her prime and try to reconstruct her legacy from the broken remnants that remained of her at the end.

James also turns the tables on our customary views of Noah's wife, Sarah, Hagar, Tamar, Hannah, Esther, Mary the mother of Jesus, and Mary Magdalene (reserving Ruth and Naomi for their own book).  It was the story of Tamar—the "bad girl" of the Bible, who played the part of a prostitute in order to seduce, and be impregnated by, her father-in-law—that took my breath away.  Read Lost Women of the Bible, and learn how a more careful analysis of the text and an understanding of her culture reveal Tamar as a righteous woman who rescued both the patriarch Judah and the human line of Christ.

Tamar shatters the traditional definition of what it means to be a woman by standing up to the most powerful man in her life. ... [S]he takes the symbols of authority away from the man who tells her whom to marry and where to live—a man who can sentence her to death without answering to anyone.  Before returning the articles ... she pointed Judah back to the God of the covenant, the only true authority over both of their lives. ... Judah gave Tamar the highest marks for her conduct and accepted her righteous rebuke. ... Her actions didn't emasculate or feminize him, as we are warned will happen if a woman takes the initiative.  She didn't rob Judah of his manhood.  To the contrary, he became a better man because of his encounter with her.  One wonders what would have become of Judah if Tamar had held her peace and remained passive.  The strength of a woman is a powerful weapon for rescue, healing, and peace when women like Tamar are "strong in the Lord."

The biblical Book of Ruth is often presented as a sweet romance, but the intense suffering and the questioning of God's goodness are more like the Book of Job than a love story.  And the heroic, other-centered, self-sacrificial actions of the three main characters—Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz—are an Old Testament prefiguring of the gospel in action.

Here are just a few more of the many quotes I could have pulled:

It's obvious to anyone who has experienced a significant loss that the sorrows of this world and the wounds they inflict in our souls cannot be compensated no matter how much good fortune and prosperity come our way.  Many holocaust survivors ended up wealthy, raised beautiful families, and enjoyed the good things in life.  But they never stopped hurting or felt their sufferings had evened out.  That's just not how life works.  To suggest that everything balanced out in the end for Naomi is to trivialize both her sufferings and also what God is trying to teach us through her story.

Naomi is completely unaware that the whole world is counting on the baby she cradles in her arms [grandfather of King David, and an ancestor of Christ] for the fulfillment of God's promises to redeem his people and put to right this fallen world.  Obed will not be the last boy born in Bethlehem to hold such a strategic place in the world's history.  Imagine the enormous responsibility of raising such a child.  You would want the wise men from the east to come.  Summon the teachers of the law, the priests, the rabbis.  God chose Naomi to be Obed's teacher.  And she is ready for the job, for Naomi has gained wisdom in the school of suffering.

A rescue effort is underway.  Lives are at risk.  There's a kingdom to build.  A planet to reclaim.  God doesn't intend to do any of this without us.  He burdens our hearts.  He opens our eyes to see faces, needs, and possibilities.  He is counting on his daughters to live and proclaim his gospel.  Whether we're tucking a child into bed; ministering to a friend; pursuing a heart that is hardened to the gospel; working in the corporate world, the church, and the community; or fighting for justice in some remote region of the earth—God is advancing his kingdom through our efforts and our gifts..  And you never know when some small everyday battle you are fighting may turn the tide for the kingdom in a big way.

I highly recommend both Lost Women of the Bible and The Gospel of Ruth.  Those who know me will understand more of how impressed I am with these books, because they know

1. As my previous reviews show, I'm decidedly unimpressed by both the content and the writing of much contemporary Christian literature.  (I use that final word loosely.)  Carolyn Custis James is a serious researcher, a clear thinker, and a good writer.
2. I've complained in previous reviews of authors who speculate about the conversations, thoughts, and emotions of the characters in biblical narratives.  A lot of that must happen in order to flesh out the Bible's spare descriptions of these women's lives, but here I don't mind it.  All I can say in my defense is that these speculations seem natural, believable, and fitting to the text, rather than awkwardly imposing modern thought on a distant culture.
3. One feature common to many contemporary Christian books is a "discussion questions" section at the end of each chapter.  I loathe this.  I always have, at least since its first appearance in my school textbooks.   Both of these books have that unpleasant feature (which I literally overlook), and yet I still love them.

Next up?  Steeling myself to reread When Life and Beliefs Collide (my mind knows I'll enjoy it; my gut still has issues), and requesting that our library add to its collection Carolyn Custis James' latest book, Half the Church, written to complement Half the Sky.

It's been more than a decade since a family tragedy forced me to look into how childbirth has changed in America since our chlidren were born.  It's still a major concern of mine, and so I read with heightened interest this profile of Suzanne Davis Arms in the May/June 2011 issue of the University of Rochester's Rochester Review.  (Yes, I realize that is two years ago.  Any regular reader of this blog knows I'm behind in practically everything.)

A few things made the article particularly interesting, beyond the basic subject.

• Arms is a University of Rochester (alma mater of three of the four people in our family, and of my brother as well).
• Betsy Naumburg, quoted in the article, was one of the doctors when Porter worked for the UR's Family Medicine Center.
• Arms wrote Immaculate Deception: A New Look at Women in Childbirth in 1975.  Although I hadn't read it, her book clearly influenced the attitudes and options that were prevalent when our children were born in the late 70's and early 80's.  Her revised edition, Immaculate Deception II: Myth, Magic, and Birth came out in 1995, not long before my forced re-entry into the world of childbirth.  Perhaps if I had read it then, I would have been forewarned of the return of over-medicalized childbirth.
  

The latest celebrity visitor to Fenwick, Connecticut.

I'm writing this post to remind myself how easy it is to order books from amazon.de—the German version of amazon.com—and for anyone else who might be considering such an order.

When you first go to amazon.de, the page can look intimidating, being mostly in German.  This is not a problem, for three reasons:

1. It's still Amazon.  You'll be able to guess most of the important words simply because they correspond in position on the page to what you're accustomed to from amazon.com.
2. If you're uncertain, Google Translate is a great help.
3. On the top left of the amazon.de page, you'll see "Hilfe".  This is "help" and will take you to a page where (on the left side) you can click on Information for English speaking customers.  This section is—surprise!—all in English.

The company clearly expects some very nervous English-speaking customers, because the Step-by-Step Guide to Ordering is excellent.

From the English guide you can also learn about the Amazon Currency Converter.  This is an option you can turn on or off in "Mein Konto" ("My Account"), from the main amazon.de page.  Prices at amazon.de are given in euros.  One payment option is to pay in euros with your credit card, letting the credit card company handle the exchange.  But if you enable the Amazon Currency Converter, which stays on or off until you change it, Amazon will make the exchange.  The primary advantage of this is that you know at the time of purchase exactly what charge will show up on your credit card bill.

If you're sending the order to Switzerland, you're in for two pleasant surprises:

1. Shipping is free, with no minimum order.
2. The price will be less than you expect, since the EU's VAT will have been subtracted.

More good news:

1. I don't know the legal technicalities of the connection between amazon.de and amazon.com, but it uses the same account information (passwords and such) and address books.
2. If you have an Amazon credit card, buying from amazon.de is just as 'way too easy as buying from amazon.com.

"Okay, so what's the down side?" I hear you ask.  There is one:  I've found books to be generally more expensive on amazon.de.  Even so, buying from them is cheaper, and a whole lot faster, than having amazon.com ship overseas.  And since the USPS got rid of its International Media Mail rate (Boo! Hiss!), buying from amazon.de is much cheaper (and again, faster) than buying from amazon.com and shipping the books yourself.

Why wrestle with how to express this story when thduggie has already done it so well?

Back in 2010, a German family was granted political asylum in Tennessee, because they had been homeschooling their children in a country that prosecutes, fines, and removes children from homeschooling parents. This immigration judge sent a strong message to the world: America is still a country where Liberty is writ large.  Today, the same family stands in danger of being deported back to Germany. Whether the appeal stems from a fear of offending an ally, or a fear of having immigration offices overrun (by legal immigrants), the message is the same: “We’re scared of our Liberty.”

The Romeike family's plight should be of concern to every American, because a threat to liberty, even—or maybe especially—on the part of an ally, is a threat to us all.  American homeschoolers, even though they currently enjoy educational freedom in every state, should be very concerned:  if our courts rule that educating one's own children is not one of the most basic human rights and responsibilities, that precedent could (and probably will) be used to attack our own hard-won liberty.

This is not, however, just a homeschooling issue.  If the forced removal of children from stable, loving families is not considered by the United States to be a heinous act, no one dare consider his family safe.

Even Al Jazeera has noticed the case.  Their article is actually the best summary I've seen of the situation.

I'm not, in general, a petition signer.  But today I registered with whitehouse.gov (a simple process) so that I could sign this petition to allow the Romeikes to remain in the United States, where they can educate their children without fear of unthinkable reprisals.

Here is the text of the petition:

We, the undersigned, respectfully request that the Obama Administration grant full and permanent legal status to Uwe and Hannelore Romeike and their children. The Romeikes, a homeschooling family represented by HSLDA, were granted asylum in 2010 because Germany persecutes homeschoolers with fines, criminal prosecution, and forcible removal of children from their families. Every state in the United States of America recognizes the right to homeschool, and the U.S. has the world’s largest and most vibrant homeschool community. Regrettably, this family faces deportation in spite of the persecution they will suffer in Germany. The Romeikes hope for the same freedom our forefathers sought. Please grant the privilege of liberty to the Romeike family.

If 100,000 people sign a petition within 30 days of its creation, the Obama Administration will officially respond.  As of today, almost 60,000 more signatures are needed by April 18 in order to reach that threshold.

Please consider signing the petition, writing President Obama and/or your representatives, or otherwise publicizing the Romeikes' dire situation and this opportunity to set a precedent for or against not only our basic educational freedom, but even more, our commitment to Liberty itself.

Update 5 April:  Here's a brief chronology (full article) for those who want more information but don't want to sift through the articles.  (Emphasis mine.)

German law mandates that children attend a public or state-approved school. The local mayor informed the family that they would face fines and could lose the custody of their children if they did not attend school. The parents also faced potential jail time.

The government fined the family heavily and at one point seized the children to force them to attend school.

After trying to secure an exemption from the law, the Romeikes fled the country and immigrated to Tennessee in 2008. They had been fined well over $10,000 by the time they fled and faced escalating fines if they continued to homeschool their children.

The family applied for asylum in the United States and an immigration judge granted it to them, citing a well-founded fear of persecution if they returned to Germany.

However, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), appealed the ruling to the Board of Immigration Appeals.

The board overturned the original judge’s ruling and ordered the Romeikes deported to Germany. The Romeikes appealed their case to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, where their case will be heard April 23.

[F]ailing to read in one's native language sends a negative message:  that the language and culture of native-language speakers are second-class, unworthy of widespread use. ... Learning to read and then to write in one's mother tongue sends the opposite message.  It reinforces the teaching that all people—and all languages—reflect the image of God. ... When people grow up learning to read first in a language they don't yet speak, they often miss the concept that reading is supposed to be a meaningful activity....  They can learn to decode, but they have no idea what they are learning.

These quotations are from a recent Christianity Today article on the advisability of teaching children to read in their native, "mother-tongue" language before introducing the complexities of a language that is foreign, even if it may be the country's official language.  In the Philippines,

Children in Lubuagan ... speak Lubuagan at home but learn a national language and an international language, in this case Filipino and English, at school.  (In case, like me, you were wondering what happened to Tagalog, which I always thought was the official language of the Philippines, according to the CIA World Factbook, the language is based on Tagalog but called Filipino.) ... In school, they learn to read in a language they don't really understand....  That makes it difficult for them to understand what they are learning.

The Philippines is one of many countries where emphasis is now being placed on first becoming literate in one's own language.  On the one hand, it's a much-needed change from a system in which children were punished for using their own language (much as Native Americans once were in school).

On the other hand, this approach misses the fact (as does the article) that learning in a foreign language is probably not the most important factor in low literacy rates.  Because the Swiss do it all the time, and Switzerland has a 99% literacy rate.

If you're a Swiss baby growing up in what is called German-speaking Switzerland, your native language is not High German—what we call simply "German"—but Swiss German (in one of many dialects).  But when you go to school, you learn in High German.  You learn to read in High German, because that's the official written language.

True, the Swiss have advantages that the Filipinos don't.  Swiss German and High German may have significant differences, but they're probably closer than many native and national languages.  Swiss children grow up surrounded by people who are literate and who read to them from books written in High German.  How they reconcile the differences between the language of speaking and the language of reading I don't know, but children are wonderfully adaptable.  Our grandson is equally fluent (at a two-year-old level) in English with Mommy and in Swiss German with Bappe.  For the moment he has found his own solution to the written vs. spoken problem:  When he "reads," following along with his finger, he moves his hand left-to-right when speaking English, and right-to-left when speaking Swiss German.

Nobody worries about the Swiss.

Even Wycliffe Bible Translators, dedicated for 70 years to the belief that "every man, woman and child should be able to read God’s Word in their own language" does not seem to care.  The Swiss missionaries I met had spent their lives translating the Bible into an African language—yet they laughed when I asked why Swiss German was left out of the vision.

Children are wonderful learners.  Whatever the problems are that lead to illiteracy amongst those whose native language differs from the national language, it's not from an innate difficulty in language-learning.  There are African and Indian communities in which it's common for people to speak at least three languages, often many more than that.  If, as the article states, children are "not learning to read until late in elementary school," decreasing their foreign language exposure can only be a stop-gap measure.

Children really do expand one's horizons.  Who would have thought that trying to keep up with them would lead us to New Zealand, Australia, Japan, France, Germany, Switzerland ... and to one of the 25 Least Visited Countries in the World?

Tied with Djibouti (sort of; the tourist counts are from different years), sandwiched between the Central African Republic and Sierra Leone, is beautiful Liechtenstein.  Here's the entire list:

1. Nauru (200 tourists)
2. Somalia
3. Tuvalu (1200 tourists
4. Kiribati
5. Marshall Islands
6. Equatorial Guinea
7. Turkmenistan
8. Sao Tome and Principe
9. Comoros (15,000 tourists)
10. Afghanistan
11. Solomon Islands
12. Micronesia
13. Mauritania
14. Guinea-Bissau
15. Libya
16. North Korea (35,000 tourists)
17. Bhutan
18. Timor-Leste
19. Tonga
20. Sierra Leone
21. Djibouti
22. Liechtenstein (53,000 tourists)
23. Central African Republic
24. Chad
25. Dominica (73,000 tourists)

There's a small chance we may get to Dominca on a Caribbean cruise, but the others are long shots, by a long shot.

Liechtenstein is a beautiful and pleasant country, and an easy day trip from many places in Switzerland.  I highly recommend a visit if you're in the neighborhood.

Perhaps we should have paid the 10 francs (each) to get our passports stamped while we were there!