I note this week the Pope says non-baptized deceased babies no longer must reside for eternity in limbo, forever excluded from heaven. This might not seem like much but to theologians it's cutting edge.
It overturns a millennium of Roman Catholic teaching that humanity is flawed by the taint of original sin upon conception. On one hand, the new stance aligns Catholics with today's Protestant evangelicals who also discount infant baptism in lieu of the drama of an adult born-again experience accompanied by a public confession and vow of repentance. On the other hand, evangelicals won't like it much if a baby is conceived unto a state of grace, and the door is open to universal salvation, even if the deceased baby was born to non-believers.
It's been said only an anti-communist like Nixon could go to China. This is the second trip to theological China for this perhaps not so reactionary Pope. The first was a hint it might be permissable for married African men with AIDS to use condoms. It's been suggested that "pressing" pastoral needs led to new things, yet I retain an inability to construct a logical edifice of systematic theology that doesn't begin with original sin. And they call me revisionist?
Like the ghost of Christmas past, a diminutive Dominican monk haunts my thoughts for it was with him in seminary that I first debated the concept of universalism. I asked how it could be that a dying man in Africa equates to a man on a date in Omaha; the former activity, sans condom, might result in the birth and slow starvation of a sick child; the latter, whether or not the Nebraskan gets lucky on a Saturday night. The monk replied the question implied one life was more valuable than the other. I still don't know after five years which he meant. Do you? If so, do tell.
A fellow seminarian, a future chaplain at a children's hospital, no less, enflamed by the debate, charged up the same anti-universalism hill, albeit in a more feminist way, wrote an angry term paper, and received a poor grade. I, on the other hand, submitted twenty pages, when five was the assignment, received the highest grade, and an encouraging note about my 'fuzzy' logic. For those who complain, you know who you are, Ann, Barry, et al, that the blog is too intellectual, now you know who to thank: a funny little monk in red suspenders. Apparently, there's gold in them ther hills; you just have to sift for the nuggets.
Perhaps the man once known as the Vatican's theological rottweiler is demonstrating a rare contemporary, most commendable, courage, and in the process, will no doubt disenchant many, not unlike my Dominican friend, who appear unable to think in anything but all or nothing terms. Please allow me to introduce another brave theologian, not so modern, 12th century, with the unlikely name of Abu al-Walid Muhammed Ibn Rushd, or Averros, for short, though I haven't a clue how the latter is short for the former. You'll easily grasp why he's one of my heroes; I note according to Al Jadid magazine, that "he never missed reading or writing except the day he married and the day his father died. I can do him one better - on the day I married Connie, in Vermont, the cable was out, a book was handy, so....
Averros, famed for the translations of a rediscovered Aristotle that secured a home for science in the West, and paved the road for the Renaissance, sought to integrate philosophy, and faith, as understood through revelation. He didn't read Scripture literally; but he thought analytic philosophy could confirm the truth of God. He wasn't able to determinedly prove Creation, but taught, rather, that humanity's existence in itself philosophically proves the existence of a God out of time that everlastingly recreates the universe, which, if not for the constant regeneration of the Creator, would cease to exist.
While Averros never claimed a dual equal truth for philosophy and theology, as attributed to him by his followers, the Latin Averroists, he offered that one truth can be comprehended on multi-linguistic levels from various perspectives. It's true for example that an elephant and a mouse are different; it's true they're both mammals; it's also true they're both animals. It just depends on your perspective. This is not an avocation of moral relativity, either, quite the opposite, it contends God's One truth lies at the heart of both philosophy and theology. It's nevertheless unsurprising that Averros was dually condemned as a heretic by the Church and Muslim fundamentalists.
I used to consider conscience as the final definitive proof of God. Then I read of an experiment where people in an office who weren't honoring the honor system to pay for coffee became gradually more honorable after someone painted an eye above the coffee-maker. It appeared to be a sort of group evolution at work, that when supplemented and enforced by an eye in the sky, increased prospects for everyone. You can explain it all scientifically. Or, per Averros, it could be explained from the perspective of evolution, and from God; that it's possible for people to transcend their inhumanity, in His presence, known through His Word (His eye), as revealed in a Godly language, intelligible to humans, that inspires progress through the adaptation of goodness.
Conversely, history shows an unguarded conscience, in the absence of a transcendent morality, can appeal to our worst instincts. I note a book by Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience, where she writes, "The perpetrators of genocide had a powerful sense of right and wrong, based on civic values that exalted the moral righteousness of the ethic community and denounced outsiders." Koonz demonstrates that this 'ethnic fundamentalism,' instilled as civic duty, extinguished "neighborliness, respect, and ultimately compassion, for all those banished from the ethnic majority."
Sometimes even a more well intentioned conscience is just as dangerous. Before the war, Lord Londonderry, an English aristocrat, as told in Making Friends, by Ian Kershaw, so strongly desired peace, he discounted Nazi persecution completely. Kershaw wrote that although Londonderry was aware of it and couldn't countenance the same in his own country, his single-mindedness enabled him to relegate the issue "as no barrier to closer relatoins with Hitler's regime," so that "its ferocious and pitless brutality ... posed an unnecessary obstacle to the better relations with Germany that he sought." In other words, it wasn't a showstopper.
When I hear, "Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength, for pardon only, and not for renewal," from Rite II, Prayer C, it never fails to startle. It's my intention, indeed, on most Sunday mornings, to seek solace only; now I'm ordered into the presence of a God who's not only going to grant that free gift, by forgiving me of my sins, but One that aditionally requires strength and renewal. What if I'm already too weary to carry that burden?
Yet, the exchange that takes place during the Eucharist dually reaffirms the mutual responsibilities of the old covenant and propels a new one with force to overcome the drag of the original sin I sense is hosted within my body and soul. Although I philosophically endorse mercy and grace, over anger and punishment, and heartily endorse the infusion of compassion as a deciding factor in doctrinal matters of faith, since it will end suffering, and save lives, is it necessary to throw the baby out with the font water?
Never fear; the Vatican is covered both ways. It has a way, as here, of publishing something new that reflects the Pope's thinking but is not an official teaching like an encyclical. This allows for a tacit nod and a wink that something warrants correction, but, not really, for then all those infant souls that weren't supposed to be in heaven over the past two thousand years, at the cost of the anguish of millions of fathers and mothers, might have been there all along.
You can't absolutely diminish the original doctrine of original sin or the logical foundation of all the Scripture that follows Genesis falls away. Or at least that's what the diminutive Dominican taught. I sure do like the implication, though, that the entire messy scope of human activity might better be examined on a case by case basis than adjudicated with a one size fits all univeralism. The Pope's got it right; whatever would my monk think?
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Thursday, April 19, 2007
One Small Answer
I note this week in the aftermath of Tech that rather than heartfelt prayers and regret, our local rag is filled with letters from gun control advocates, NRA members, anti-choice partisans, and many others with special interest axes to grind. The first words of condolence I heard from a politician were prefaced by a pledge of allegiance to the second amendment.
Josef Stalin wrote, "A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic." Are thirty deaths merely props for a cause? All I know for sure is that after Columbine, September 11th and Tech, I feel the same kick in the gut, the same loss in the pit of my stomach, the same desire to make some sense out of it.
After World War II it was written 'there can be no art after the Holocaust.' Maybe so. My path of solace leads towards my bookshelves. If art is too trivial, perhaps there are answers in the hard sciences. I found something by the dean of the Austrian school of economics, Ludwig Von Mises, from his book Human Action. He writes that all economic thinking is derived subjectively from the choices people make that bestow value on some things and not on others. "Choosing determines all human decisions. In making his choice, man chooses not only between various material things and services. All human values are offered for option. All ends and all means, both material and ideal issues, the sublime and the base, the noble and ignoble, are arranged in a single row and subjected to a decision which picks out one thing and sets aside the other. Nothing that men aim at or want to avoid remains outside of this arrangement into a unique scale of gradation and prference."
Where does killing your peers fall on the value scale? Von Mises says, rather clinically, all choice is rational - even if it appears insane, it's rational to the one who made it. At Tech, the killer produced an 1800-word video manifestatio. I don't buy any of it; any of his 'rationality,' when kids from my old church youth group now at other colleges are the same ages as his victims.
Von Mises paints a very cold picture of human action. Another economic text I picked up was written by Ayn Rand. She wrote, in order for people to enjoy the maximum fruits of liberty, all altruistic thoughts and acts must be eliminated. I didn't find the answer to Tech I sought in the sciences from Von Mises or Rand. I found instead a rationality that lacks compassion.
Last night Connie and I held our usual after-action debrief as we drove home from a ministry that provides food and money to the poor. We talked about how it may be true that some people aren't fully honest in describing the predicament that led them to seek charity. My reaction has been for a long time now that it doesn't diminish us if we fall for a phony story; that if someone is desparate enough to cheat us out of food or gasoline, or a Thanksgiving turkey, we remain sufficiently bountiful to afford it; to be content to be fools for Christ, if needs be, and not worry about it.
Working with the poor helped form my resistance these days to 'ism's, 'ologies,' or 'authority,' if, as concepts, they override compassionate response, and because I've learned things are invariably more complex than they first appear, and aren't cleanly reducible to the logic and structure of any one system. One night a man came into our shelter with a buddy, his tent-mate. The friend's face was bruised and swollen, the result of a beating. As he sat at the dining room table, the man poured all the beer from a 12-pack down the sink. As he emptied each can, he yelled , "This is what happens to people who owe me money."
I'm told folks who live in tents have their own ology - the code of the woods. Yet that didn't prevent this injustice, one of the cruelest acts I've ever witnessed. On another day that same man volunteered to clean a chair where an incontinent woman with dementia had just sat. How is it that this man could be so cruel and kind? Are these conscious ethical choices framed by an external code of conduct or whims compelled by an internal conscience seemingly present one day and absent the next?
Von Mises tries again. He writes, "The most popular objection raised against economics is that it neglects the irrationality of life and reality and tries to press into dry rational schemes and bloodless abstractions the infinite variety of phenomena." He objects to the objection since he recognizes that while we can with scientific preciseness chart observable human actions there will always be ultimate data that remains unknowable. In this, he is wise.
I once attended a lecture by Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and author. He was asked how anyone could believe in God after the Holocaust. He said he didn't know but nevertheless his job was to remember and write so that it could never happen again. I'm reminded of the orthodox Hasidic Jews in Auschwitz who one Friday as they worked conducted a heated debate over God's existence. The arguments flew back and forth. Finally they concluded it was not possible to have faith as an inmate of a concentration camp. At sundown, they ceased arguing because it was time to recite the Sabbath prayers.
I note this week an article about Ot Hakapara which was founded by German Protestants who don't think their church did enough to stop the Holocaust. The program sends young Germans to Israel for one year to work in nursing homes, libraries and community centers. It doesn't answer the question posed to Wiesel, or settle the debate of the Hasid's, but it's an answer in itself, like the story of Liviu Librescu, a professor, and Holocaust survivor, who was killed by the Tech gunman on Holocaust Remembrance day as he bought time for his students to escape.
There's no art, nor anything anyone can write, that adequately commensurates for September 11th, the Holocaust, for Tech, or accounts for the million of lives that constitute Stalin's death statistics. There's no answer to why. There's no answer to where was God. There are no valid partisan political cards to play in the aftermath that are appropriate. I choose in response only to perform small acts of charity I pray cause more good than harm; to be a fool for Christ and not care; to be present to hear hard luck stories that reach the pit of my stomach and rebound towards offering compassion to my family and friends, and prompt a desire to seek justice for strangers. This small answer is all I have.
Josef Stalin wrote, "A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic." Are thirty deaths merely props for a cause? All I know for sure is that after Columbine, September 11th and Tech, I feel the same kick in the gut, the same loss in the pit of my stomach, the same desire to make some sense out of it.
After World War II it was written 'there can be no art after the Holocaust.' Maybe so. My path of solace leads towards my bookshelves. If art is too trivial, perhaps there are answers in the hard sciences. I found something by the dean of the Austrian school of economics, Ludwig Von Mises, from his book Human Action. He writes that all economic thinking is derived subjectively from the choices people make that bestow value on some things and not on others. "Choosing determines all human decisions. In making his choice, man chooses not only between various material things and services. All human values are offered for option. All ends and all means, both material and ideal issues, the sublime and the base, the noble and ignoble, are arranged in a single row and subjected to a decision which picks out one thing and sets aside the other. Nothing that men aim at or want to avoid remains outside of this arrangement into a unique scale of gradation and prference."
Where does killing your peers fall on the value scale? Von Mises says, rather clinically, all choice is rational - even if it appears insane, it's rational to the one who made it. At Tech, the killer produced an 1800-word video manifestatio. I don't buy any of it; any of his 'rationality,' when kids from my old church youth group now at other colleges are the same ages as his victims.
Von Mises paints a very cold picture of human action. Another economic text I picked up was written by Ayn Rand. She wrote, in order for people to enjoy the maximum fruits of liberty, all altruistic thoughts and acts must be eliminated. I didn't find the answer to Tech I sought in the sciences from Von Mises or Rand. I found instead a rationality that lacks compassion.
Last night Connie and I held our usual after-action debrief as we drove home from a ministry that provides food and money to the poor. We talked about how it may be true that some people aren't fully honest in describing the predicament that led them to seek charity. My reaction has been for a long time now that it doesn't diminish us if we fall for a phony story; that if someone is desparate enough to cheat us out of food or gasoline, or a Thanksgiving turkey, we remain sufficiently bountiful to afford it; to be content to be fools for Christ, if needs be, and not worry about it.
Working with the poor helped form my resistance these days to 'ism's, 'ologies,' or 'authority,' if, as concepts, they override compassionate response, and because I've learned things are invariably more complex than they first appear, and aren't cleanly reducible to the logic and structure of any one system. One night a man came into our shelter with a buddy, his tent-mate. The friend's face was bruised and swollen, the result of a beating. As he sat at the dining room table, the man poured all the beer from a 12-pack down the sink. As he emptied each can, he yelled , "This is what happens to people who owe me money."
I'm told folks who live in tents have their own ology - the code of the woods. Yet that didn't prevent this injustice, one of the cruelest acts I've ever witnessed. On another day that same man volunteered to clean a chair where an incontinent woman with dementia had just sat. How is it that this man could be so cruel and kind? Are these conscious ethical choices framed by an external code of conduct or whims compelled by an internal conscience seemingly present one day and absent the next?
Von Mises tries again. He writes, "The most popular objection raised against economics is that it neglects the irrationality of life and reality and tries to press into dry rational schemes and bloodless abstractions the infinite variety of phenomena." He objects to the objection since he recognizes that while we can with scientific preciseness chart observable human actions there will always be ultimate data that remains unknowable. In this, he is wise.
I once attended a lecture by Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and author. He was asked how anyone could believe in God after the Holocaust. He said he didn't know but nevertheless his job was to remember and write so that it could never happen again. I'm reminded of the orthodox Hasidic Jews in Auschwitz who one Friday as they worked conducted a heated debate over God's existence. The arguments flew back and forth. Finally they concluded it was not possible to have faith as an inmate of a concentration camp. At sundown, they ceased arguing because it was time to recite the Sabbath prayers.
I note this week an article about Ot Hakapara which was founded by German Protestants who don't think their church did enough to stop the Holocaust. The program sends young Germans to Israel for one year to work in nursing homes, libraries and community centers. It doesn't answer the question posed to Wiesel, or settle the debate of the Hasid's, but it's an answer in itself, like the story of Liviu Librescu, a professor, and Holocaust survivor, who was killed by the Tech gunman on Holocaust Remembrance day as he bought time for his students to escape.
There's no art, nor anything anyone can write, that adequately commensurates for September 11th, the Holocaust, for Tech, or accounts for the million of lives that constitute Stalin's death statistics. There's no answer to why. There's no answer to where was God. There are no valid partisan political cards to play in the aftermath that are appropriate. I choose in response only to perform small acts of charity I pray cause more good than harm; to be a fool for Christ and not care; to be present to hear hard luck stories that reach the pit of my stomach and rebound towards offering compassion to my family and friends, and prompt a desire to seek justice for strangers. This small answer is all I have.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Why Good People do Bad Things and Not Know It
I note this week, same as a few weeks ago, that I didn't think the horse pills prescribed by a priest, formerly held to be reliably conservative by his comrades, could cure our critical, if not terminal, Church illness. I was none the less taken aback by reactions from his side of the aisle. This priest's tentative plan, a faint hope at best, was scourged as traitorous and equivalent to surrender. Revisionists, as we're named, me included I reckon, if they were aware of me, are called too untrustworthy even to negotiate with, and the string of outraged posts slid downhill from there.
On Easter Sunday, in contrast, I worshipped alongside the beloved of my home parish who've been displaced by Anglicans. There's no anger, bittnerness, no name calling. There's naught but a benevolent sweet God, to Whom prayers were lifted, for the good health and welfare of the congregation that forced them out by forcing an issue that need not have been forced. The outpouring of generosity that has sustained them in an otherwise abandoned building, fitted out so gaily in holiday dress, awakened a familial ancient grace, and beckoned to a reassuring Holy Spirit, Who I've always found amongst this gentle flock.
Are the ricocheting bullets of the cyber wars, just a click away on the web, known by the Anglican recipients of those generous prayers? They claim there's no place for conservatives in TEC. Do Anglicans ever access reviled 'revisionist' sites, as I view traditionalist ones, and perhaps stumble upon and discover that progressives and traditionalists are both welcome in TEC parishes, where local dna will naturally create expressions that are most evident to one, without excluding the other?
Have Anglicans ever read Jefferson, who wrote, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed." Can they accept that those who strive for reasonable discourse have learned to stand firm against those who would undermine the acceptance of a unifying plulrality from within, thereby destroying the parish in order to save it? One bon mot from the activist's playbook not lost from the Sixties, while much else was forgotten: "in order to rebel against something, you must stay a member."
Are American Anglcians aware that Roman Catholic bishops, at risk of their lives, are openly protesting the cruel dictatorship of Mugabe, while the Anglican Church of Zimbabwe remains silent, or even worse, is complicit? A reader posted an earlier comment stating that quiet work behind the scenes, as 'anonymous,' claimed on behalf of Archbishop Williams for scuttling proposed legislation in Nigeria to jail gays, is more effective than 'screaming,' which only leads to a sore throat. Upon further reflection, I can't accept that - whether Christian martyrs in the Roman arena, the burning of Cranmer, the execution of Bonhoeffer, the assasinations of Romero, Jean Donovan, Dr. King - are sacrificial acts that screamed bloody murder at the top of their lungs so all the world could hear, and thus, they changed the world.
Are Virginian's who've seceeded from TEC to join the Church of Uganda aware of Olivia Nabulwala who's seeking asylum in the U.S.? Her family held her down so a stranger could rape her and 'cure,' her of her lesibianism. Are church members worried their association, prestige and wealth might be used to lend validation to these kinds of human rights violations? Can they consider that the promulgation of American fundamentalist doctrine that gays can be cured, and statements by Archbishop Orombi that primates "can not sit together with Presiding Bishop Schori, the only woman amongst them, might contribute to a dehumanization of gays and females in that region? I hear much about a need for Africans to counter missionize America. There's much we can learn, indeed, for example, from works such as former Archbishop Tutu's South African Truth & Reconciliation Commission, which helped secure the peace after apartheid. Yet, there's also much that goes on in that part of the world that is anathema to the Western democratic values that are enshrined in the hearts of most Americans.
It would be totally out of character for dear friends in the new old Anglican parish to think in these terms and then ignore the possible universe of consequences. (When I told someone I worshipped at St. Margaret's for Easter, he asked, "did you go to the new old parish or the old new parish?) When I've puzzled about comments from Anglicans that nothing has changed, denoting that there are no wider consequences of their vote to leave TEC, a common response is that they must not research the issues deeply, or not at all, and are content to accept and vote upon matters as presented by clergy and vestry.
If that is so, I commend to them a man, a hero, from Iraq, name of Saad Eskander. He's the Director of the National Library, which along with the National Museum, was burned and looted after Saddam fell in 2003. He's repaired and reopened in the middle of a war zone. He and his staff perform public service at risk of their lives; five have been killed, others kidnapped and wounded. Patrons also dodge bullets and bombs; some days there are 90 brave souls, some days, none. Oh, what treasures we take for granted in America. Andrew Carnegie wrote, "There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the Earth as the Free Public Library - the republic of letters, where neither rank, office, or wealth, receives the slightest consideration."
Connie and I were resting in the study last week. I pointed to the bookshelves and said, "the mysteries of life revealed." I can read Scripture in ten translations, with a hundred commentaries, from dozens of perspectives, to unpack it for me. I can trace time; the myths of pagans, the sayings of the Desert Fathers, and I can watch civilizations rise and fall, and witness the birth of America. I can ponder whether the poor were better off before the Reformation when their parish gave alms, or worse afterwards, when they joined the welfare roles of a distant State bureaucracy. I can wonder alongside Plato. Aristotle, St.'s Augustine and Aquinas, Kant, Newman, and Lewis, as they grappled with what people can know, and not know, by reason or revelation, and from there, most vitally, upon what ethics arise so that we can live good, happy, just lives. All this, no farther than the reach from my easy chair to a shelf.
The writers of Future Shock, twenty-seven years ago, envisioned a world where experts no longer had all the power; where you and I could log on and practice medicine and law upon ourselves, and discover all the wisdom revealed since humanity began to record thought, and to think beyond, to centuries from now. All things, at work, in church, at home, are interconnected. What you choose to do, or not do, decisions great and small, has broad consequences. There has been no other time where so much knowledge has been available to so many, yet so many ignore it, supress it, or are unwilling to share it. We can achieve accord if we interdependently rely on each other to bring truth, reason, faith, tradition, and trust, to the negotiating table. As stubborn as I'm constantly told I am, I'm always willing to try again. Are you?
On Easter Sunday, in contrast, I worshipped alongside the beloved of my home parish who've been displaced by Anglicans. There's no anger, bittnerness, no name calling. There's naught but a benevolent sweet God, to Whom prayers were lifted, for the good health and welfare of the congregation that forced them out by forcing an issue that need not have been forced. The outpouring of generosity that has sustained them in an otherwise abandoned building, fitted out so gaily in holiday dress, awakened a familial ancient grace, and beckoned to a reassuring Holy Spirit, Who I've always found amongst this gentle flock.
Are the ricocheting bullets of the cyber wars, just a click away on the web, known by the Anglican recipients of those generous prayers? They claim there's no place for conservatives in TEC. Do Anglicans ever access reviled 'revisionist' sites, as I view traditionalist ones, and perhaps stumble upon and discover that progressives and traditionalists are both welcome in TEC parishes, where local dna will naturally create expressions that are most evident to one, without excluding the other?
Have Anglicans ever read Jefferson, who wrote, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed." Can they accept that those who strive for reasonable discourse have learned to stand firm against those who would undermine the acceptance of a unifying plulrality from within, thereby destroying the parish in order to save it? One bon mot from the activist's playbook not lost from the Sixties, while much else was forgotten: "in order to rebel against something, you must stay a member."
Are American Anglcians aware that Roman Catholic bishops, at risk of their lives, are openly protesting the cruel dictatorship of Mugabe, while the Anglican Church of Zimbabwe remains silent, or even worse, is complicit? A reader posted an earlier comment stating that quiet work behind the scenes, as 'anonymous,' claimed on behalf of Archbishop Williams for scuttling proposed legislation in Nigeria to jail gays, is more effective than 'screaming,' which only leads to a sore throat. Upon further reflection, I can't accept that - whether Christian martyrs in the Roman arena, the burning of Cranmer, the execution of Bonhoeffer, the assasinations of Romero, Jean Donovan, Dr. King - are sacrificial acts that screamed bloody murder at the top of their lungs so all the world could hear, and thus, they changed the world.
Are Virginian's who've seceeded from TEC to join the Church of Uganda aware of Olivia Nabulwala who's seeking asylum in the U.S.? Her family held her down so a stranger could rape her and 'cure,' her of her lesibianism. Are church members worried their association, prestige and wealth might be used to lend validation to these kinds of human rights violations? Can they consider that the promulgation of American fundamentalist doctrine that gays can be cured, and statements by Archbishop Orombi that primates "can not sit together with Presiding Bishop Schori, the only woman amongst them, might contribute to a dehumanization of gays and females in that region? I hear much about a need for Africans to counter missionize America. There's much we can learn, indeed, for example, from works such as former Archbishop Tutu's South African Truth & Reconciliation Commission, which helped secure the peace after apartheid. Yet, there's also much that goes on in that part of the world that is anathema to the Western democratic values that are enshrined in the hearts of most Americans.
It would be totally out of character for dear friends in the new old Anglican parish to think in these terms and then ignore the possible universe of consequences. (When I told someone I worshipped at St. Margaret's for Easter, he asked, "did you go to the new old parish or the old new parish?) When I've puzzled about comments from Anglicans that nothing has changed, denoting that there are no wider consequences of their vote to leave TEC, a common response is that they must not research the issues deeply, or not at all, and are content to accept and vote upon matters as presented by clergy and vestry.
If that is so, I commend to them a man, a hero, from Iraq, name of Saad Eskander. He's the Director of the National Library, which along with the National Museum, was burned and looted after Saddam fell in 2003. He's repaired and reopened in the middle of a war zone. He and his staff perform public service at risk of their lives; five have been killed, others kidnapped and wounded. Patrons also dodge bullets and bombs; some days there are 90 brave souls, some days, none. Oh, what treasures we take for granted in America. Andrew Carnegie wrote, "There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the Earth as the Free Public Library - the republic of letters, where neither rank, office, or wealth, receives the slightest consideration."
Connie and I were resting in the study last week. I pointed to the bookshelves and said, "the mysteries of life revealed." I can read Scripture in ten translations, with a hundred commentaries, from dozens of perspectives, to unpack it for me. I can trace time; the myths of pagans, the sayings of the Desert Fathers, and I can watch civilizations rise and fall, and witness the birth of America. I can ponder whether the poor were better off before the Reformation when their parish gave alms, or worse afterwards, when they joined the welfare roles of a distant State bureaucracy. I can wonder alongside Plato. Aristotle, St.'s Augustine and Aquinas, Kant, Newman, and Lewis, as they grappled with what people can know, and not know, by reason or revelation, and from there, most vitally, upon what ethics arise so that we can live good, happy, just lives. All this, no farther than the reach from my easy chair to a shelf.
The writers of Future Shock, twenty-seven years ago, envisioned a world where experts no longer had all the power; where you and I could log on and practice medicine and law upon ourselves, and discover all the wisdom revealed since humanity began to record thought, and to think beyond, to centuries from now. All things, at work, in church, at home, are interconnected. What you choose to do, or not do, decisions great and small, has broad consequences. There has been no other time where so much knowledge has been available to so many, yet so many ignore it, supress it, or are unwilling to share it. We can achieve accord if we interdependently rely on each other to bring truth, reason, faith, tradition, and trust, to the negotiating table. As stubborn as I'm constantly told I am, I'm always willing to try again. Are you?
Friday, April 6, 2007
The Heart in the Matter
I note this week on several far right Christian websites a common recently minted definition of 'social justice,' as a synonym for socialism. One site claimed that environmentalism and social justice are 'antithectical to Biblical teaching.' This apparently coordinated attack reflects a split in evangelical ranks. One party claims any dilution of focus on anti-choice and opposition to gay marriage positions is outside acceptable bounds. Others claim, while not abandoning those positions, space for broader concerns. Perhaps, as it is found in so many human endeavors, the underlying causes in play are power and money.
I note another controversy this week when a Church of England clergyman said in an interview for Easter that while he agreed Jesus died on the Cross for our sins, rather than adhere to a teaching that God sent His Son to die such a horrific death, he preferred to think that God, Himself, died on the Cross in solidarity with a sufferring humanity. This clergyman was vociferously attacked by evangelicals, some of whom, it turned out later, admitted they'd never heard the interview.
Regardless, the battle itself emphasizes a central personal struggle that serves to drive most of what I read and write. As I've written before, the central identity I've held for most of my life is, indeed, as a man of social justice. Yet, decades of ministry amongst the poor, cumulating in the three years I managed a shelter, made me less sure I knew what I was doing was 'meet, right and so to do.' At Easter, especially, I can liken it to the times when God as man among us, doubted His mission, asking that the bitter cup be taken away, or why He was forsaken. I just don't know anymore if the services we provided to the poor helped or hurt them.
This is why the Libertarian materials I'm reading are attractive and seem to offer a way out. This worldview rejects coercion as the key to liberty. The most radical amongst them reject taxes. Others define coercion as only those laws that are directed specifically against one person or group so that as long as taxes are aimed at everyone more or less equally than they are not strictly coercive. This movement rejects war and a draft, and therefore split with conservatives during the Cold War, where militant anti-communism requires a State to include much centralized planning and a limited non-competitive free market to accomplish its goals. Though the demarcation lines between Libertarians and conservatives shift, I'd venture to say that Libertarians reject as coercive a Big Religion underlying a Big Government in ways such as legislating a Constitutional amendment to define a coercive constitution of marriage and family.
As a man who lives on three acres in the middle of the woods off a dirt road with no trash service, and wish to a great degree to be left alone, a Libertarian worldview has much appeal. I tread warily, though, when I seek to apply it towards that old central core identity, that of the social justice advocate. For some of the guests, there appeared to be no mental or physical reason they could not live a more positive life of less self-harm to themselves and others though they had court established freedoms to remain as is including no more than a 72 hour non-voluntary confinement to any psych ward (even if they desparately need more time). If a shelter was not there, would they become responsible contributing citizens? There were some, though, already too far gone, in alcohol/drug addictions, or mental and physical states, to care for themselves, let alone work or manage the challanges of life as do most other people.
The problem is how to distinguish between those groups of people. It's an ancient problem. In the 16th century, in England, in the time of the Reformation, welfare for the poor shifted from parish to Government. The State immediately tackled the problem by drafting poor laws and identifying those who qualified for assistance and those who did not. Nothing's changed. When it was felt that the poor had become to dependent in 20th century America, 'welfare to work,' laws were passed to quantify poverty and establish qualification limitations. I do not know the most current statisical results, whether more people propelled by the law, left welfare for work and are now independent, or whether more people dropped off the rolls into even more adject poverty.
When I find any theology or philosophy appealing on first glance, I start to search for the heart of the matter, the extent of its compassion. For example, I found Buddhism, in its abandonment of desire as the key to happiness, less compassionate than Christianity (a desire for more justice should make one unhappy). I find Libertarian materials intellectually attractive, yet I'm concerned there may be no provision for the poor without prospects, who for in many ways, shelters serve as hospices, providing palliative care until they die. When I examine the alternative discernments of that English clergyman, and his detractors, I find instinctively that I'm in the camp that holds grace, mercy, and solidarity in suffering, closer to the heart of the matter, than judgment, sin and what's theolologically described as penal punishment, for the absolution of our sins. It's the image of a lamb on the Cross rather than a Mel Gibsonian decimated personage that I find grasps and holds my heart, and provides impetus to show compassion and love in sacrfice for others.
I note this week, an article confirming that lawyers no longer frequently consult law reviews for an extensive analysis of cases rather than relying on faster web-based search engines. I reckon they're pressed for time but they sure are taking the fun out of it. Old fashioned searches of the mind and the heart, like Jacob wrestling with angels, that are prompted by unanswerable questions is an end in itself. I don't anticipate finding answers to questions I pose for myself, but I sure do love to do the research, and experience the rush and joy of holding a book that promises further knowledge along the road. The road must be free and compassionate; those two companions, at least I know for sure, must come along for the journey.
I note another controversy this week when a Church of England clergyman said in an interview for Easter that while he agreed Jesus died on the Cross for our sins, rather than adhere to a teaching that God sent His Son to die such a horrific death, he preferred to think that God, Himself, died on the Cross in solidarity with a sufferring humanity. This clergyman was vociferously attacked by evangelicals, some of whom, it turned out later, admitted they'd never heard the interview.
Regardless, the battle itself emphasizes a central personal struggle that serves to drive most of what I read and write. As I've written before, the central identity I've held for most of my life is, indeed, as a man of social justice. Yet, decades of ministry amongst the poor, cumulating in the three years I managed a shelter, made me less sure I knew what I was doing was 'meet, right and so to do.' At Easter, especially, I can liken it to the times when God as man among us, doubted His mission, asking that the bitter cup be taken away, or why He was forsaken. I just don't know anymore if the services we provided to the poor helped or hurt them.
This is why the Libertarian materials I'm reading are attractive and seem to offer a way out. This worldview rejects coercion as the key to liberty. The most radical amongst them reject taxes. Others define coercion as only those laws that are directed specifically against one person or group so that as long as taxes are aimed at everyone more or less equally than they are not strictly coercive. This movement rejects war and a draft, and therefore split with conservatives during the Cold War, where militant anti-communism requires a State to include much centralized planning and a limited non-competitive free market to accomplish its goals. Though the demarcation lines between Libertarians and conservatives shift, I'd venture to say that Libertarians reject as coercive a Big Religion underlying a Big Government in ways such as legislating a Constitutional amendment to define a coercive constitution of marriage and family.
As a man who lives on three acres in the middle of the woods off a dirt road with no trash service, and wish to a great degree to be left alone, a Libertarian worldview has much appeal. I tread warily, though, when I seek to apply it towards that old central core identity, that of the social justice advocate. For some of the guests, there appeared to be no mental or physical reason they could not live a more positive life of less self-harm to themselves and others though they had court established freedoms to remain as is including no more than a 72 hour non-voluntary confinement to any psych ward (even if they desparately need more time). If a shelter was not there, would they become responsible contributing citizens? There were some, though, already too far gone, in alcohol/drug addictions, or mental and physical states, to care for themselves, let alone work or manage the challanges of life as do most other people.
The problem is how to distinguish between those groups of people. It's an ancient problem. In the 16th century, in England, in the time of the Reformation, welfare for the poor shifted from parish to Government. The State immediately tackled the problem by drafting poor laws and identifying those who qualified for assistance and those who did not. Nothing's changed. When it was felt that the poor had become to dependent in 20th century America, 'welfare to work,' laws were passed to quantify poverty and establish qualification limitations. I do not know the most current statisical results, whether more people propelled by the law, left welfare for work and are now independent, or whether more people dropped off the rolls into even more adject poverty.
When I find any theology or philosophy appealing on first glance, I start to search for the heart of the matter, the extent of its compassion. For example, I found Buddhism, in its abandonment of desire as the key to happiness, less compassionate than Christianity (a desire for more justice should make one unhappy). I find Libertarian materials intellectually attractive, yet I'm concerned there may be no provision for the poor without prospects, who for in many ways, shelters serve as hospices, providing palliative care until they die. When I examine the alternative discernments of that English clergyman, and his detractors, I find instinctively that I'm in the camp that holds grace, mercy, and solidarity in suffering, closer to the heart of the matter, than judgment, sin and what's theolologically described as penal punishment, for the absolution of our sins. It's the image of a lamb on the Cross rather than a Mel Gibsonian decimated personage that I find grasps and holds my heart, and provides impetus to show compassion and love in sacrfice for others.
I note this week, an article confirming that lawyers no longer frequently consult law reviews for an extensive analysis of cases rather than relying on faster web-based search engines. I reckon they're pressed for time but they sure are taking the fun out of it. Old fashioned searches of the mind and the heart, like Jacob wrestling with angels, that are prompted by unanswerable questions is an end in itself. I don't anticipate finding answers to questions I pose for myself, but I sure do love to do the research, and experience the rush and joy of holding a book that promises further knowledge along the road. The road must be free and compassionate; those two companions, at least I know for sure, must come along for the journey.
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