When Nerds Attack

The past week has seen two posts at Crooked Timber (AUGH! can't find the one from last weekend!) on science fiction. I contributed a couple comments on one (the one I can't find, of course . . .) concerning Robert Heinlein, whom I consider the archetypal science fiction author. My comments - that Heinlein, whose public statements and collected works swerve between the merely Randian nonsensical to the scary-quasi-fascism of Starship Troopers and even Stranger in a Strange Land - were met with a mixture of horror and sniffing condescension. I noted that I had read a bit of Heinlein (although certainly not all) and also a biography of the guy, and it was pretty clear that the pretty-face put on him by sci-fi fans was like the hopeful image a swooning teenager puts on his first crush. Calling Heinlein a libertarian is a bit like saying that Ted Bundy had issues with women. In short, Heinlein was a crypto-fascist (who, as at least one commenter pointed out, was a dirty old man before he became old).

Other sci-fi authors aren't or weren't much better. My older brother was a rabid fan, and I was surrounded in my youth with volumes by Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, Isaac Asimov, on and on and on . . . Even Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, the one epic sci-fi work I can sit and actually enjoy reading, has overtones that make me cringe (part of that, of course, is how dated it is, particularly the early sections, written when Asimov was a young man in the 1940's).

While I really don't want to get in to it with Alan or other fans of the genre - I know I am biased because of my own experience growing up; I find most of the work insipid, kids who got beat up on the playground a lot making up stories where they are the action heroes and kill the bullies and get the really hot women - there is one thing (admitted - I stole it from an episode of CSI) I should point out to any serious fan. I realize the convention of "hyperdrive" or "warp drive" that allows for faster-than-light travel is pretty much set in stone. Yet, this isn't science or even science fiction. Real science fiction would extrapolate from current science - which most certainly would include relativity. There are science fiction writers who refuse to even entertain the possibility of faster-than-light travel in their fiction, but for the most part even those who are actual scientists - Ben Bova, Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke - usually have it in their stories.

Now, I know that sci-fi is usually about more than the nuts and bolts of science. In fact, one of the benefits of the genre, allegedly, is that is uses the trappings of some alternate place and time to explore contemporary issues and themes. My problem with this particular way of discussing it, however, begs the question of "what literature doesn't explore contemporary issues and themes?" With the possible exception of the formulaic romance novel, most popular, literary, and genre fiction deal, to one extent or another, with some matter of concern. The benefit of science fiction, once you get passed this particular apologia turns out to be, for the vast majority of its fans, the fascination with all the gizmos and other worlds and weird beings they encounter (except for Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, which posits a galaxy where the only intelligent species is humanity; given the statistical improbability of natural selection actually producing a species that is self-aware as human beings and perhaps a few other species are, and also that are capable and willing to produce a technical culture and society, this seems far more realistic than, say, Sagan's galaxy "teeming" with life).

I don't begrudge people their fandoms. I do think that fans of science fiction, however, refuse to consider that much of the genre is anti-democratic, indeed anti-political, and even at times anti-humanistic. Whether the two-sides-of-the-same-coin dystopia/utopia, or simple positing of various scenarios in which, out in space at some future time, human beings do this or that or the other - the social, cultural, and political setting is usually considered irrelevant. When techne has replaced politics, we have entered the realm of the fascist. That is a future I want no part of.

What Theda Said

Read it all. To left-wing critics of the Administration who insist, as they did during the Clinton years, that we need a third party, or at the very least, a more robust left-leaning voice to force the Administration's hand, please remember that this kind of thinking gave us George W. Bush.

One can be critical of the Administration. One can be critical of the President. While it is certainly within the purview of the left to attempt to create a viable alternative to the Democratic Party, or at the very least sit out the election cycle, the results, as Skopcol indicate, will be disastrous for the country. Electing a conservative Congress, at this point, will result in the destruction of the last tatters of our social fabric, even as we attempt to knit it together without their help.

The Word

We are obliged, therefore, to say that whoever speaks that which is foreign to religion is using many words, while he who speaks the words of truth, even should he go over the whole field and omit nothing, is always speaking the one word.
Origen

What follows is hardly original, and it probably isn't interesting. Yet, it needs to be repeated. It needs to be memorized. The Word of God is not the Bible. The Bible is the written, and edited, testimony to the Word of God, who the Bible itself declares quite clearly is Jesus Christ.

At the end of the day, we Christians need to read the Bible, as we do all things, in Jesus Christ (to paraphrase T. F. Torrance). Even as we disagree over trifles like liturgical practice, or a detail in our thinking on the sacraments, we need to be held fast by the reality that the Spirit that gives life to the words on the page (which are, as St. Paul noted, quite dead) is the Spirit of the crucified and risen Christ.

Anything else isn't reading the Bible. Anything else is just crap. Anything that does not give life, that does not bear the fruits of the Spirit, that does not, in the end return our thoughts and our hearts and our lives to Jesus Christ isn't returning to that one word that defines all the other ones.

Turns Of The Law And Time

Among the many ironies of life, the recently concluded court case considering the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage, the lead counsel for the opposition - arguing the illegality of the law - was former solicitor general Ted Olson. This is the same Ted Olson who argued the Republican side in Bush v. Gore before the Supreme Court, and whose wife was on the hijacked plane that crashed the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

I have to say that latter moment made me mourn for Olson, whatever his politics. Now that he is on the side of the (constitutional) angels in the marriage debate, one has to wonder if he will say something about his role in putting George W. Bush in the White House. Suppose it doesn't matter. . .

Faithfulness

Men have never been good, they are not good and they never will be good.
Karl Barth

When St. Paul talked about Abraham in his epistle to the Romans, he wrote that his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness. Indeed, the long exposition on faith in which St. Paul engages in that letter is an indication that, for him, what God wants is a faithful people, a people willing to live such that righteousness - understood most clearly as "right relationship" with one God and one another, including but not limited to the concern for justice and the passion for community - is the result of the their living witness. When John Wesley spoke of going on to perfection in this life, he was saying much the same thing. Our lives, lived in the reality of grace, being held accountable by and to one another for the working out of our salvation in fear and trembling, is nothing more or less than righteousness.

God doesn't care if I'm "good" or "bad". Indeed, one of the first really deep and honest realizations that should come from the life of faith is, for all that God does indeed love me, seeking me out each moment of my life, the life to which I'm led isn't about me. It is about forgetting about myself. It is about putting others first. It is about living in such a way that I, in the late-modern sense of the sovereign subject beholden to none, ceases to exist. My life is about and for God, and for others.

One of the great gifts of the Protestant Reformation is the honest realization that sin is not an act, or a series of acts. Sin is a description of creation separated from God. Even with the new reality inaugurated in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ already breaking in to our world, making of those in Christ "a new Creation", the reality is the old, separate, sinful reality still exists as well. It is grace that cuts through the bond to sin, to be sure, but until all is made new and, as the Revelation to St. John says, God is all in all, that sinful reality exists side by side with the new thing done by God for us.

Our most cherished possession - our sense of ourselves as righteous and blameless before God - comes not from ourselves but through the grace of the crucified and risen Christ. All that flows from the hope given birth by that event still has, until the end of the age, the taint of sin upon it. Our most beautiful words, our most cherished ideas, even the very declarations of faith we make, are sinful.

What sin destroys, grace transforms. What we declare good, grace declares irrelevant. What we offer as a sacrifice, God call a stink in His nostrils (check out some of the Hebrew prophets if you don't believe me).

God asks us, not to be good, but to be faithful. In that faithfulness, we are not reckoned "good", but reckoned righteous - our relationship with God is restored, not through our efforts, but that graced state we call faith.

A Living Faith

Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.
Martin Luther

It would be simplistic to take this quote of Luther's at face value. After all, his collected writings amount to 80 fat volumes in English - lectures, sermons, treatises, occasional writings, even the famed "Table Talk" and hymns. Yet, Luther's opposition to "reason" (he actually called it a whore) was based on the over-reliance on technical reason in the Roman Catholic Church. Without belaboring the historical point, Roman Catholic theology at the time of the Reformation was a baroque castle in the air, bereft (as Luther saw it) of the simple message of salvation by grace through faith, as contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

Yet, there is also something correct in this formulation. At the end of the day, after all the theological reflection, Biblical exegesis, and consideration of the history of the Church, if our faith is not a living, breathing thing concerning our encounters with our brothers and sisters, living out love for all creation, it is really not faith at all. This is not to denigrate the life of the mind, or its place in the life of the faithful Christian. It is only to put it in its proper place. Being seized by grace means all of our life is now under that marvelous law of love and freedom. Our faith must seek understanding, but it must be a real, living faith to be understood.

It might just be, for example, that there are all sorts of sound reasons, neatly thought out and considered, as to why one should not become an ordained clergy person, say, or a missionary. A successful career, a happy family, comfort and a good reputation. Yet, if one is responding in faith to the call of God, all those reasons "why not" end up being trampled under foot. I have seen it far too often to deny the simple reality that faith takes all the ways we deny it, laughs at them, balls them up, and throws them away.

Part of the freedom of being a Christian includes the freedom from the dictatorship of all the ways we tell ourselves we need not believe, need not follow, need not live in love toward all creation. A living faith is a faith that is always moving, certainly always reflecting, but also never submitting itself to the dictates of any set of rules that do not begin, "First, love God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself. In this is all the Law and Prophets."

"God has never needed our defense"

I swing back and forth between understanding and even occasionally approving apologetic language and thinking that it is reflective of a defensive posture toward the rest of the world. I cannot rest easy with the idea that part of the Church's call is to make the claims of faith not just intelligible to contemporary discourse, but compatible with it. Yet, there is also a part of me that understands the pull, intellectually, ethically, even pastorally, of the desire to make of religious discourse something not just sympathetic but recognizable.

In this article (h/t ER), the Rev. J. Bennett Guess, director of publishing, identity and communication for the United Church of Christ, considers the life and language of the Church as it faces the bigotry of so many within its walls toward sexual minorities. Yet, even as he expresses understanding and sympathy toward those folks in the LGBT community who are both hostile toward and afraid of the Church, he also expresses a faithful recognition that the Christian life, the presence of Christ in loving community, is something that can be experienced together in those moments of life where living is most intense. Here, right here, is the breaking in of the Kingdom of peace and love, where the old dichotomy between immanence and transcendence, sacred and profane breakdown. In those moments where we share joy and laughter, passion and commitment, sorrow and even rage together with others, there is the Spirit of Christ, there is the Kingdom he proclaimed as fulfilled in him breaking through.

At the end of the day, it is this declaration of faith - that right here, in the messiness and ambiguity of our everyday existence, the presence of God is real, taking even our most mundane experiences, our most human foibles and limitations, and making of them something holy - that even transcends the apologetic/non-apologetic dichotomy. While I recognize the desire to explain this, I think declaring it, getting the rest of the world to see that, as St. Paul wrote, Christ came so that we might have life and that more abundantly, is the real meaning of what it is to be Church. If we can model this way of living - not worrying about tomorrow, but living for today, in the Spirit of love that unites us to the Son of the Father - as what "eternal life" is all about, the dross and chaff will fall away.

This neither precludes nor negates larger attempts to make the world a place where all human beings can live free, fully human lives. Rather, the faith that sees the beauty and power of interpersonal loving community is forced to share this with the world. Making the world understand that it is God's, and that God asks of us to be together in love and gentleness - this is the mission of the Church. This is who we are called to be, what we are baptized to do.

If more folks lived this out, and made the point that this is what it's all about, we might not need to worry so much about making God intelligible to the rest of the world. If more folks refused to silence those voices that demand better of us followers of Jesus, but listened to their anguished cries for real love and service, we might actually have fewer such voices. If more people just lived this out, instead of demanding that others submit to their all too human authority, we would no longer need worry about whether or not God's Church will live another year, because we would be the living presence of Christ that is the Church.

And Are We Yet Alive?

The meeting of the Northern Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church began yesterday. Prayers for its successful conclusion. Celebration because Moriah was in a mass youth choir last night at opening worship, video of which can be seen here. She's third from right in the front row, in the blue t-shirt and white skirt.

Like Oil And Water

It seems that the on-going flood of oil from the Gulf floor (again, this is not a spill; this is an on-going leak) has awakened some people to the thought that, hey, the federal government might actually have a role in doing stuff. Except, of course, in this case, what might that be?

Beyond its advisory role with with the states via the Army Corps of Engineers (Louisiana sand berms) and the Coast Guard (dealing both with BP and various states on setting up booms), what is it, exactly, these folks want the federal government to do? Nationalize BP, which is, you know, short for British Petroleum? Use capital it does not possess and expertise it does not have to take over capping the leak? While I still think BP's performance has been horrible, and their plans for mitigating any potential disaster amounts to nothing more than tinker-toys and duct tape, getting mad at the feds, especially the person and office of the President, makes no sense.

I heard a story on NPR this morning concerning what is happening on a barrier island off Pensecola, FL. Residents and even the county commissioner were mad as hell and weren't going to take it anymore. Except, of course, the anger, while certainly understandable, makes no sense. The county commissioner stated that the estimates he was given by the federal government were wrong. Last time I checked, those estimates were actually supplied to the feds by BP. So . . . how is this the President's fault? The oil isn't from a leak caused by the federal government; BP has been neither transparent nor honest from the get-go about the amount of oil leaking out of the sea floor, or its efforts to stop the leak, and there are indications that its successful efforts to put a cap on part of the leak have actually created a situation where more oil is spilling out rather than less.

Again, I have to ask all those people who are demanding the President, or the federal government, "DO SOMETHING!!!" to spell out, exactly, what that might be. Today he visited, for the fourth time, the Gulf Coast. Tomorrow night, he is giving an address to the nation. Those agencies that have relevant expertise as well as legal jurisdiction have been involved from the get-go. Beyond that, the issue isn't federal inaction. The issue is BP's lack of any serious fallback in case of just such a disaster as continues a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.

Pres. Obama is not someone given to symbolic gestures, photo-ops, or soundbites. While certainly deeply distressed over the situation - he is asked about it every single day, several times, and repeats over and over again that he and his Administration are, quite literally, doing everything they can within the limits of the law - my guess is he is even more frustrated by the fact that a whole lot of people (the press, some parts of the public) are turning to him and saying, in effect, "Make it better." He can't make it better, and it isn't his responsibility to make it better. Even if he were to have the justice department pursue legal action against BP, at this juncture that would be counter-productive.

So, if anyone out there thinks Obama should be "doing more", I am open to suggestions, in particular from those people who, up until a few weeks ago, thought the President was on the verge of marching them to concentration camps because he is a budding dictator, and who also believed that the secret pact between communists and environmentalists was poised to destroy our economy only now, they weep crocodile tears over the environmental disaster going on in the Gulf. Please, I am really curious.

As the crickets chirp, I won't hold my breath.

One Last Word . . .

My recent obsession with right-wingers is drawing to a close. Yet, I could not offer an opportunity, not taken, for Neil Simpson to give his views without also responding, in a meta- kind of way, to his rather heated verbiage.

And another critic is one of those wimpy, gutless, spineless, passive-aggressive, postmodern girlie men who think they are right but pretend to deny the correspondence view of truth. As despicable as Chuck Currie’s antics are he is still a notch above the philosophical food chain compared to this guy. There are more of course, but you get the idea. So of course I don’t worry about what Chuck and my other theologically liberal critics think.

In declining to comment on my website, he wrote the following.

I also don’t waste time with people who are incapable of or, more likely, unwilling to properly characterize my arguments. Just one example: Your silly ad hom / straw man about me “hating on gays.” Pathetic.(emphasis added)

I have left one final response which I will now reprint in full.

OK, Neil, let’s see. You banned a person from your other website because you said he was “stalking” you. Yet, here is an entire website dedicated almost wholly to a single individual! Oh, you throw in a mention of Jim Wallis and even now, it seems, Bishop Spong. The vast majority of your posts, however, deal with Chuck Currie. I have seen your comments at his website as well, and was both surprised at how similar they are in pattern to so many of our previous discussions, and nodded with a bit of recognition at the sheer welter of comments.

You say I have “made up lies” about you. OK, such as? In the course of our interaction over the years – if anyone looks carefully at the record, I think it’s easy enough to see that I instigated it in a naive but faithful desire to exchange views without rancor – I have been up front with you, I have never once, to my recollection said anything on Eternity Matters, What’s Left In The Church, Erudite Redneck, or anyplace else where we have interacted that is not easily supported by anyone investigating the facts of the matter. Indeed, precisely because the internet happens to be so transparent, lying would be ridiculous.

If you mean, however, as you have indicated, my saying that you “hate on gays” is untruthful, well let’s investigate that, shall we. You state, factually, that there is no Biblical support for same-sex marriage, or even for same-sex romantic love. OK. Yet, you have indicated, time and again, that this means they should be denied equal rights with straight couples in our secular law, that gays are a threat to children, the usual. Anyone, even those who “follow” you, would agree that this is so. Is this “hating” on gays? Perhaps that is a debatable point. Yet, it that adjective that is the heart of the matter. With you there is no debate. No discussion. No interaction. This is your schtick, and I’ll leave you to it. Like with Rev. Currie, however, your accusation is, quite simply put, not supported by any evidence. Remember, it is not up to me, or Rev. Currie, or anyone else to disprove what you claim. It is up to you to prove your claim.

I have a log with over 2700 posts. I offer that as evidence to any interested, or disinterested reader. I also offer comments made at Eternity Matters and any other website where we have interacted over the years. Rather than a summary made by either one of us, I think the whole thing should be presented for anyone to read.

The thing is, Neil, I have never – EVER – been afraid of dealing with you. I contacted you, and continued our previous on-again, off-again discussions because I thought (again, naively) that we could learn from one another. I discovered pretty quickly that you have no interest in learning anything. About anything. Again, that’s fine, too. That’s your internet schtick, and it seems to work for you.

If your accusation of cowardice is directed at my refusal, over the past couple years, to interact with you, well, that’s not so much cowardice as it is plain, old-fashioned common sense. Our interactions did nothing for either one of us, certainly not me. Rather than submit myself to the kind of rhetorical onslaught you seem to revel in, I withdrew. I have discovered a vast array of people that continue to enlighten me, feed my spirit, and with whom I can interact without feeling my blood-pressure skyrocket. Far better.

I wish you well with this website. You certainly have the formula and buzzwords down pat. Your rhetorical strategy is also intact, only your sights, it seems, are trained on far larger targets than little old me. Again, good luck with that. You should remember, however, that stuff on the internet lasts forever. Even stuff that’s been deleted can be recovered. I do what I do without fear, and when I’m wrong – really wrong – why, I’m the first to admit it, and correct my errors. Transparency is at the heart of online interaction. At some point, amidst all the accusations and ad hominem attacks, you might want to keep that in mind.

With that, I consider the matter, and our recent interactions, at a close. What with the move, and far more interesting things on the internet to keep me occupied, I will allow Neil his space to do his thing to whomever finds it worthwhile.

To Whom Do You Answer?

I read all of this short little book yesterday, by the late Dr. James Logan (my seminary academic advisor). Entitled How Great a Flame, it is a consideration of the Wesleyan revival in mid-18th century Britain and what relevant lessons we can learn from Wesley's practice.

The biggest thing that struck me, quite apart from being able to hear the voice of a now-passed mentor and friend as I read his little book, was the emphasis Wesley put upon follow-through. While the numbers of those to whom Wesley preached are certainly questionable - his rough calculations even left his brother Charles shaking his head - they were certainly large; in the midst of preaching, as people came forward expressing a new or renewed faith in the saving power of God in Jesus Christ, Wesley was not content to leave it alone. Based upon his own experience at Oxford, with the Holy Club his brother Charles had started, as well as the Moravian class meetings (which, Logan reminds readers, were actually a short-lived phenomenon in Moravian religious practice), Wesley sought in every place he preached to organize those who professed this faith, whether new or renewed, in what he first called bands, and later classes. Organized around lay leaders picked out by Wesley, these small groups, no more than 12 individuals strong, were to hold one another accountable. They were to gather for study of the Scripture. They were to lift one another up. Monies were to be collected and distributed, first for work in Bristol, then for various other works Wesley had organized. He was not seeking to create a new denomination; rather he was seeking within the fervent of social change in Britain at the time, particularly in the Anglican Church, to bring more and more people to a renewed faith.

Yet, Wesley was quite clear that this faith had to be nurtured. Even more important, it had to be tested. Anyone confessing faith in the risen Son of the Father through the Holy Spirit (lest anyone doubt it, Wesley was thoroughly Trinitarian in his faith) may be a new creation, yet Wesley understood that this was not a singular event, but part of a process. Logan points out that the lay leadership of these classes - who also spent time as itinerant preachers, guided very closely by Wesley himself to keep them from straying in to heresy - had a high turnover, for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons, certainly, was more than likely a falling off not just of enthusiasm for this new-found faith, but a calling out by others to whom they were accountable that their faith seemed not to be bearing fruit.

One point Logan stresses in the final little chapter of this work is that it is important to seek lessons from history without thinking it possible to staple those lessons on to our contemporary scene (something that he knows the Church, in its desperation and occasional ignorance, would be more than happy to do). Yet, this idea of accountability in our faith, of holding one another up and holding one another responsible is one we have lost.

I suppose this begs some questions. Most mainline denominations are wary of lay folks setting themselves up as theologians, for good reasons. This is one very good reason I do not consider myself one such. As a lay member of the United Methodist Church I am not nor have I been given any sanction to teach. I am offering some theological stuff (along with other thoughts) that are wholly my own, and do not reflect the views of the United Methodist Church, Poplar Grove United Methodist Church, or anyone else. Yet, I hold myself accountable to both, answerable to the doctrine of my denomination as set forth in the Discipline of the Church, as well as its ordained and consecrated leaders and baptized members.

Furthermore, I am answerable to any and all readers of good will. I offer my reflections and thoughts without considering them binding on anyone but myself, yet knowing that others have differing thoughts, and seek to be both encouraged and chastened through discussion. In this more direct fashion, my desire for comments is a necessary part of holding myself accountable.

Finally, my hope is that my views conform to the historic teachings of the universal Church, a treasure in earthen vessels to be sure, but one nevertheless necessary to keep me within the bounds of what we Christian preach and teach, and in whose name we minister to all the world. While always seeking to make the faith something vital for people today, one cannot ignore the two millennia of teachings, from the Biblical authors and compilers through the variety of voices that have sought to discern what it is we believe and what this means for our lives. Falling within this tradition, as vague as the word may be and as varied as it actually is, is important.

I am thankful that there are those who listen and respond to some of the things I write. I am thankful that I am not just putting this stuff out in the world thinking I rest upon either my own intellect or of my own accord as I do so. I serve, first and foremost, the God incarnate in the crucified and risen Jesus whose Spirit is life and whose whole being is love. In that name, I serve all those who read these words, doing my own little bit the best I can. I do not stand on my own, but beneath the authority of that great cloud of witnesses who have gone before me and who surround me now, both upholding me and calling me to account.

Before It Goes In The Packing Box . . .

I'm getting ready to put Quote, Unquote* in a box where it will sit for a few weeks until it reappears, I hope, in the new parsonage in Plato Center. I thought I would offer some gems (not always safe for work!) without comment.

We can be of little service to our fellows until we become disillusioned without being embittered. - F. Fraser Darling

Without the friendship of the Happy Dead, how should we bear our life? - wall plaque, Stillingfleet Church, North Yorkshire

It's nothing that a guy should take all of his emotions, his prayers and meditations into a night club, and torture the people with their torments by playing everything they feel. It would be better sometimes to play some things they imagine to be true, outside their own personal lives. - Charles Mingus

I'd cross an Alp to see a village idiot of quality. - Norman Douglas

When shit becomes valuable, the poor will be born without assholes. - Brazilian proverb

Few people have the imagination for reality - Goethe

Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure. - Willem deKoonig

What dull barbarians are not proud of their dullness and barbarism? - William Makepeace Thackeray

There are no wrong notes. - Thelonius Sphere Monk

Poetry is nobody's business except the poet's, and everybody else can fuck off. - Philip Larkin

Never kick a fresh turd on a hot day. - Harry S. Truman

*Seventy bucks for a book I was given? If it wasn't so important to me, I'd be willing to sell it for that price!

Post-Secularism?

(h/t Crooked Timber)

In Ireland to receive the Ulysses Prize from the University College Dublin, Jurgen Habermas sat for an interview on a variety of topics, printed in today's Irish Times. Among them is Habermas' growing interest in the social phenomenon of religion, in particular in secularized western nation-states.

I associate this sociological observation [i.e., that religion continues to be a vital force in those societies where it was formerly considered to be dying out] with a diagnosis of a more philosophical kind. Secularly minded people should recognise religion as a contemporary intellectual formation. Over the past two millennia, western philosophy has repeatedly borrowed images, meanings and concepts from the Judaeo-Christian tradition and has translated them into its own secular language. We cannot tell whether this process of appropriation has run its course or whether, on the contrary, other semantic potentials remain untapped. Of course, such a receptive and dialogical relation is only possible towards non-fundamentalist traditions that do not close themselves off from the modern world.

In the last sentence, Habermas betrays a certain ignorance of the history of Christian thought. In fact, "fundamentalism" is a modern reaction, the flip-side of the modernist tendencies of critical Scriptural studies and the challenge of doing Christian theology with integrity in the modern world. The history of fundamentalism is short, can be traced pretty clearly in both popular and more refined forms back to no earlier than the mid- to late-19th century, and is not so much closed to our contemporary world as part of a larger protest against elite demands for "progress" that span the ideological, cultural, and social spectrum.

Having said that, I am pleased that a leading liberal European intellectual of our time recognizes the reality that, as a human phenomenon, religion in some manner, fashion, or form, continues to live on even in those places where it had once thought to be atrophying. I continue to be wary of Habermas' insistence that "dialog" needs to be done on terms amenable to a certain contemporary sensibility, precluding "fundamentalism" from the get-go without, necessarily, defining what constitutes that. A professed belief, say, in the bodily resurrection of Jesus might just be thought to be "fundamentalist", therefore outside the bounds of consideration. Rather than submit a priori to the intellectual imperialism that would demand the sacrifice of faith for the promise of scraps from the contemporary intellectual table, it might just be possible to have a discussion that insists the modern, contemporary world and its intellectual and existential pretension are, at heart, questionable propositions.

Indeed, the idea of "post-secular" itself presents the same kind of problem as "post-modern". Does not the presence of a variety of religious communities, and their growing social and political influence, negate the whole secularization thesis?

I think it was Bruno Latour who wrote a book entitled We Have Never Been Modern, arguing against the appellation "post-modern" by insisting that "modernism" was, for the most part, not a term easily applied in a variety of senses. I think "secular" and "post-secular" kind of deserve the same fate. Rather than attempt to draw any final conclusions concerning the potential of religious life and ideas and their relative social and political import, it might just be necessary to consider them as part of the larger, ongoing human project, waxing and waning in importance over time.

Note: Edited to clear up a tendentious point made by a commenter, to clarify and sharpen my point, and to simplify my argument. I hope . . .

Hear The Good News

N.B. I got to thinking last night that, in over 2,000 posts, I have yet to make a positive statement concerning the Gospel. So, well, in light of me saying that one person got it wrong, I should proclaim it here. At least, then, should anyone care, I have something to point to.

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that everyone who has faith in him may not perish but have eternal life. It was not to judge the world that God sent his Son into the world, but that through hum the world might be saved.

John 3:16-17, REB

All this has been the work of God. He has reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has enlisted us in the this ministry of reconciliation: God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, no longer holding people's misdeed against them, and has entrusted us with the message of reconciliation.

2 Cor 5:18-19

This is the Gospel of God, the Good News of the reconciliation of the world with God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the boundless, free gift of God through the Spirit.

Separated from God through sin - not moral failing, but broken relationship - not just we who are bearers of this message of peace, of love, of hope, but all creation now stands under the judgment of God in Christ, that judgment being just this - that death no longer holds sway, that love for one another and all creation is the sum of the law. This work is not ours. This Word is not ours, but the free and gracious gift of the God who has sought us and bought us. Our ministry, our work, is to live for the world in such a way that all creation knows just this and this alone - in God we are free, free from sin, free from the bondage of death, free from the fear of condemnation.

Faith in this new reality - a new reality that is already alive in us at our baptism - gives us strength to take to all the world the message that God calls us to live together in light of this Divine forbearance and favor. Our work is nothing more or less than living out this reality yet to come, to bring forth the fruits of the Spirit for all creation to witness.

That's the Good News. God loves us. In Jesus, the incarnate Son of the Father, united in the love of the Spirit, creation no longer exists in defiance of the creator's will and favor, but is already moving toward that moment when the will and love and hope of God for that which God has made will be made new in us and the world.

Just . . . Wow (UPDATE)

Very long story very short - I discovered that Neil called me "a gutless windbag." Along with his usage of the term "passive-aggressive" in ways that clearly shows he has no idea what the term means, and (as Alan pointed out) the whole "straw man alert!" thing, I find his pretensions quite amusing.

Considering his practice of editing and even deleting comments, then banning people from commenting on his blog altogether, to call me a gutless windbag actually made me laugh. He even gets points for "straw man!" alerts. See, he claims that I raised a straw man because I called him out for dissing Chuck Currie and the UCC for "getting the Gospel wrong" by wondering if by that Neil means that the UCC doesn't hate on gays and endorse the murder of the preborn. Neil insists this is "a straw man!" when, if you peruse his "discussion" you don't read a word about the grace of Jesus Christ crucified and risen (the totality of the Gospel according to some guy who wrote all those letters in the Bible and got a city in Minnesota named after him for his troubles). In fact, I'll let you read and be the judge for yourselves. Ahem.

Yes, but the UCC gets the Gospel wrong. The Gospel is that Jesus died for our sins and rose again and that by trusting in him we get forgiveness and eternal life

OK, this one mention of the Gospel is actually wrong (and attempting to cite 1 Corinthians 15 in defense of this position is a serious misreading of that chapter, but I digress).

That’s odd, because Chuck and the UCC are pro-abortion. They deny the human personhood of the unborn. They won’t protect the unborn from being crushed and dismembered but shake their fists at God in support of perverting his ideal for marriage. But they care so much about "human personhood" that they must bless what God has called sinful?

The Bible is very clear:

* 100% of the verses addressing homosexual behavior denounce it as sin in the clearest and strongest possible terms.
* 100% of the verses referencing God’s ideal for marriage involve one man and one woman.
* 100% of the verses referencing parenting involve moms and dads with unique roles (or at least a set of male and female parents guiding the children).
* 0% of 31,173 Bible verses refer to homosexual behavior in a positive or even benign way or even hint at the acceptability of homosexual unions.

Um, Gospel anyone? No?

I raised a point that Neil was upset because the UCC didn't mention hating on gays and worshipping the preborn, and he called that a "straw man" argument. Yet, well, here are his words.

He also references, at a point not linked, this year-and-a-half old discussion we had, ripping a comment out of context to show me up as (a) a hypocrite; and (b) a false teacher. As for hypocrisy, well, we all are to a certain extent, and if that is the worst thing I ever get called, well, I can live with it. The whole "false teacher" thing, though, considering his mischaracterization of the Gospel, and the attempt to draw 1 Corinthians 15 in to a defense of this misinterpretation, I think Neil might just need to think before he types.

The biggest thing, for me, is the point where Chuck Currie, managing far more magnanimity and grace than Neil could ever understand, comments, and Neil goes on to call him a serial liar.

Having his ego, I'm quite sure he'll show up here and show how wrong I am, etc., etc. I'll let him, because unlike him, I don't edit, delete, or ban comments or commenters. I guess that's because I'm gutless.

UPDATE: Alerted by Alan, I finally found Neil's other place where he pretty much farms out his whole "false teacher" schtick. And, may I say, the holy and blessed fetus has pride of place.

And the guy says the UCC gets the gospel wrong. Nowhere is the old saw about lies travel around the world before truth gets out the door more in evidence. At least I now know another place to avoid.

Brainpalming

There are moments we all have, I think, that we do more than collapse our face in to the palm of one of our hands and think to ourselves, "Oh, good God!". We might encounter something so grossly stupid that, in our mind's eye, our brain now rests in the palms of our hands, and we whisper to ourselves, "There, there. It's OK, really."

Such just happened as I read Peter Singer's review of South African philosopher David Benatar's Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence. In all honesty, I'm not sure which is more stupid, the very existence of a book arguing that existence itself is a morally negative choice, or a review which takes the view seriously enough to draw up a counter-argument.

This is the kind of thing that gives philosophy a bad name. Really. I have nothing against this kind of thing in a graduate seminar; to publish it, to offer an argument that, precisely because existence involves suffering to some degree or another, non-existence is actually a better moral choice than existence is just, well, silly.

While it is true that there are those, many perhaps, whose existence involves extensive suffering - consider children born with extremely debilitating disorders, such as anencephalia, or even something like spina bifida. Or a child born HIV+. Or a child born in to a family, community, or whole nation defined by desperate poverty. Does "suffering" define the entirety of their existence? I cannot imagine that it does. There are, to be sure, those who choose to define their lives that way. Such may even be the case.

Yet, they do, indeed exist. Whether it's a child born with a rare condition in which their brain develops outside their skulls, or a young man who was once active and athletic who suffers a traumatic injury leaving him a quadriplegic, or a woman raised in a home filled with domestic violence who grows up and continues the cycle by marrying an abusive man, subjecting yet another generation to the cycle of violence - these cases (some, admittedly, more common than others) do not negate the simple fact, because these people exist they should be the center of our ethical concern. Rather than figuring out how to argue that it would have been preferable they never existed at all - the George Bailey Syndrome - we should be figuring out how to alleviate their suffering. That and that alone should be the focus of our ethical concern.

My Last Word On Biblical Sexual Ethics (UPDATE)

There are times when one reaches the end of one's tether. Last night, I reached mine.

Again, I know I shouldn't . . .

Bubba wrote: "Dan, I'm only now noticing that you're actually defending masturbation as biblically permissible.

It leads me to wonder what sexually deviant behavior you wouldn't defend. "

Masturbation is a sexually deviant behavior, Bubba? Really? A young person, usually quite by accident, discovers that certain actions are physically pleasurable, outside any moral or other context, and you without any warrant of which I'm aware, dare to declare that person deviant.

BTW - please spare me the treatise on how you're right and I'm wrong, because (a) I won't read it; and (b) since I have yet, in my forty-plus years of reading the Bible found anything close to a declaration that masturbation is sexually deviant, I think I'll just let it rest there; and (c) if any of you would actually read what you type - that masturbation is deviant; that gay folks don't love, just lust; that touching yourself violates the equipment manual, but having your spouse do it is fine; that two men marrying is a path to perdition - you might actually realize that anyone NOT of the same ideological bent as you (and some who are!) might just think you are quite out of your collective minds.

You are all far more concerned with sex in its various forms than I, we, and certainly God has ever been. Let us have our deviant sex in peace, and we can all go about our business here.

Please note, dear readers that what prompted this outburst of frustration and dismissal was the declaration that masturbation is sexually deviant. Even typing that little phrase here and now, I cannot, for the life of me, understand how an adult human being can think, let alone live, with that thought as an operating principle.

Please note also that I asked one person - Bubba - who has a habit of writing multi-comment responses to spare his fingers the necessity of typing because whatever he said would be unread. Well, not only does he think most adolescents are sexually deviant, he apparently refused to listen because he went on and, well, you guessed it:

Ahem.

--

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven...

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell." - Mt 5:17-20, 27-30

--

"You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor." - Ex 20:17

--

These aren't obscure passages, and if a person has studied the Bible for forty years and hasn't noticed these passages or discerned the implications for the lust that accompanies all but the must naive and mechanical forms of masturbation, then he's beyond help.

Geoffrey concludes by revealing both his ignorance of God and an arrogance that borders on self-idolatry.

"You are all far more concerned with sex in its various forms than I, we, and certainly God has ever been. Let us have our deviant sex in peace, and we can all go about our business here."

God has made clear that He made us male and female so that a man would become one flesh with his wife. He prohibited both from committing adultery and even from coveting a neighbor's wife; if that wasn't clear enough, when He came down and dwelt among us, God Incarnate taught that mere thoughts of lust are as evil as adulterous acts.

To suggest that his sexual behavior is his own business beyond even the judgment of God Almighty, and to imply that God is apathetic about his sexual behavior is to clearly step outside Christian ethics and the Bible's clear teachings.


Geoffrey, about your wanting to be left in peace, no one's stopping you from doing whatever you want, certainly not in this debauched age.

We're just proclaiming what is to be found in God's written word, in the Scripture that Christ Himself affirmed to the smallest penstroke, and we just expect that those who claim to worship God would show some small sign of submission to His revealed will.

If that bothers you so much, maybe you should find a more libertine faith tradition.

Let me state from the outset that, sure, the Bible isn't exactly in favor of folks humping in the streets. I will admit there isn't a verse that says that men having sexual relations is on the up and up. Adultery is surely a no-no.

Here's the thing. Figuring out "what the Bible says" - whether it's about sex, or economics, or suicide, or war and peace, or whatever one's pet peeve/issue may be - is more a game than serious intellectual or spiritual inquiry. It's a game played by those who want God on their side. Whether that side is in favor of stoning people to death for being belligerent with their parents, or setting aside a life of violence in favor of love and justice, there is ample Biblical, textual support for these positions. It's easy enough to find Scriptural support for just about anything, even opposing positions that cancel one another out! That's why it's a game.

Sexual ethics are no different.

There is a way to do Biblical interpretation that isn't a kind of hunt-and-peck searching for a bunch of verses that bolster one's own prejudices and predispositions. It involves, in the first instance, being clear what the Bible is about. It isn't a rule-book for living. It isn't a set of timeless laws that mean the same thing to all readers everywhere.

It is, rather, the testimony of witnesses to God's relationship with Creation. It is the declaration that God does, indeed, love that which God has created, even as that creation has sought to break free from the Creator. It is the remarkable declaration that this love is so prodigal, so boundless, that God is willing, in the Person of the Son, to enter fully in to the life of creation and even surrender that which is most defining about Divinity - Life - in order to bring Creation back in to a full relationship with God.

Now, every ordered community has rules. These rules exist for any number of reasons, usually boiling down to "these are the best way to keep a group of human beings from killing one another." Rules against adultery, for example, keep men from killing other men, or their wives, because of unfaithfulness. Rules regarding sexual conduct in general stem as much from community concern over its continuation as anything else. As a professor Hebrew Scripture pointed out, the injunction against homosexual conduct in Leviticus makes sense if you consider that it addresses the necessity of preserving reproductive viability in a community - the ancient Hebrews - living a marginal existence. While humorous, the song from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, "Every Sperm is Sacred", actually applies here. Men wasting their vigor with one another are not contributing to the on-going life of the future of the community, a community already under various environmental and political stresses. Insisting that sexual relations contribute to new generations of this community makes sense. Putting that insistence in the mouth of God gives it a force that common sense might not otherwise do.

Does this mean we are free to ignore the Levitical injunction against two men lying together? It sits there, in the pages of the Bible, and certainly needs to be wrestled with, along with many other passages whose ethical utility is even more marginal. In a general sense, however, raising this single verse - and the handful of verses that refer even circuitously to homosexual sex - to any place of prominence makes them far more important to any discussion of sexual ethics than they ever had either historically or to the original audience. More to the point, the question that needs to be asked - and always asked in new ways, by new voices - is how do we live with these verses in light of the faith that God's love for us, for all creation as it is is greater than our attempts to corral that love in to new rules? Do we restrain love just because it is love between two women? Do we insist that God does not bless the marriage between two men, even though the Biblical warrant for monogamous marriage is more an assumption than anything one can attest from any direct scriptural evidence (considering the prevalence in the Hebrew Scripture of both plural marriage and concubinage, one wonders how those folks who argue most vociferously about monogamy square those circles; on the other hand, not really).

If one begins with the premise that living a life of graced acceptance means living for others, then much of the discussion of sexual ethics becomes a question of living as sexual beings in such a way that all of us together are more fully human in that capacity as in others. It also means putting sexuality in its proper place in human life. To be sure, it is an important part of being human; it binds relations between spouses and partners. It is the source of new generations. It is an expression of love and the bonds between two people. Yet, it is hardly even the most important part of that bond; nor is it a defining part of being a part of a larger community. The right-wing obsession with sexual ethics creates a situation in which it becomes far more important (to them) than it is in human life.

So, this is the last time (I swear) I will address the question of human sexuality from a Biblical perspective. Beyond these general statements, addressing specific questions - whether of serious matters such as adultery or ridiculous matters such as the moral status of self-pleasuring - is something I just refuse to do. Except to say that these right-wingers seem far more interested in the way other people live their lives in private than most adult human beings of healthy disposition.

UPDATE: Of all people, Mark not only ends the discussion, but inadvertently makes it clear that he really doesn't think gay marriage is a threat to all things bright and beautiful.

For the record, I, personally, am neutral on same sex marriage. I really don't care if these perverts want to pretend they are married. I believe they are not married in the eyes of God. Just because some laws here in the U.S. say they are, doesn't make it true.

--snip--

They want to be homo, let them be homo. I don't care.

If you don't care whether or not they are gay, and don't care if gay marriage is legal, it seems to me that the entire discussion, including Mark's participation arguing against gay marriage, is void. If he doesn't care whether or not people want to "be homo", my most fervent wish is that he would practice this insouciance and shut the hell up.

Speechless (UPDATE)

I urgently wish that anyone wanting insight in to the "mind" of our modern conservative read this. From the title right through the comments, this is the biggest bunch of hokum, nonsense, BS, and downright silliness I have read since yesterday. It surpasses the whole "touch your own penis and spend eternity in hell!" business because it makes all sorts of sweeping generalizations and accusations because the guy writing the post was inconvenienced on a country road.

Yeah. This guy again.

Rather than address any "points" in his "argument", I just say that the level of his rage continues to rise. If you live in the Fredericksburg, VA area, you might want to stay indoors because when this guy flips his lid, I don't think you want to be in the line of fire.

UPDATE: OK, now I've had some thoughts . . .

When I was growing up, my parents taught me that those who bragged usually did so because, inside, they really felt inadequate in some way. Life experience has shown me the basic truth of this insight. Anyone who brags about his manliness, his achievements as a lover, what have you, usually is hiding a mass of insecurities behind a bunch of words.

A blog post calling the whole country a bunch of wimps probably means the person who wrote it fears, more than anything else, that he is a wimp.

A blog post insisting that exercise is unhealthy is usually written by those who need to incorporate exercise in to their lives.

A blog post saying that the ignorance of our ancestors is superior to the knowledge of our current age in regard to healthy diet usually means the person in question eats an unhealthy diet.

Hiding behind a Mittyesque pose of excessive intelligence and masculinity is, in all probability, an excessive fear of ignorance and effeminate qualities.

I hate armchair psychoanalyzing but in a case like this, I really don't know how else to square what is happening. This entire post reeks of psychological baggage.

Fun!

Via Media Matters For America:

Right-wing Mad Libs: [Insert event] is Obama's [insert catastrophe]

Let's try some. "High School Graduation is Obama's Jonestown!"; "Christmas is Obama's Pearl Harbor!"; "The birth of my first child is Obama's Titanic sinking!"; "My wife's ordination is Obama's serial killer rampage!"

Not as funny as the real thing, but what the heck.

Rushing In And All That Doesn't Make Me A Fool

I haven't said a peep about the whole tempest in a Beltway teapot over Helen Thomas' declaration that Isrealis living in the occupied territories need to "go home" to Germany and Poland because, frankly, I couldn't care less. After all, it isn't like anyone in a position of authority - which Ms. Thomas does not have - has ever declared that the Palestinians should be expelled from . . .

Oh, wait. That happens all the time. Sorry about that.

It isn't like we in America are so over our own racism that we would even think of having people who hold elected office make racist . . .

Gah. Sorry. My bad.

In all seriousness, Ms. Thomas' statement was idiotic, but no less so than hundreds of statements by people with far more authority, power, and influence - think Rush Limbaugh on the radio three hours a day five days a week - and you just gotta wonder. Here's this convicted drug addict, who traipses off to a sex-tourist spot with a bag full of Viagra that isn't even on his scrip, who has racist tourettes and I gotta ask why no one - not a single solitary soul - is demanding he stop his fulminating via the AM airwaves. Well, they do, but it isn't happening. Thomas, sad to say, is long past her prime, and in this instance was low-hanging fruit.

The sad fact is this: I don't think what she said matters all that much, or reveals some inner Himmler ready to gas all those Polish Jews in the occupied territories. Instead, it reveals, at worst, a tendency to allow whatever thoughtless words enter her brain to flow unimpeded out her mouth. Unlike, say, Beck or Mark Levin or Michael Wiener Savage, who spew out false and horribly racist things each and every day, Thomas is long past the point when she commanded either respect or (far more important) big bucks. So, I do not believe this has anything to do with the words Helen Thomas said. It had to do with filthy lucre, pure and simple.

What Does That Have To Do With This? or If I Touch Myself, Angels Cry

This is why I really, really, really can't stand really long comment threads. The post concerns repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", and ends up with a discussion of whether or not the Bible does or does not condemn masturbation.

I kid you not.

Along the way, the host of this particular blog says that sex isn't beautiful. Kind of feel sorry for him for that, even more for his partner.

But that's yet another digression.

In honor, who else would I post a video of but The Divinyls?

Questions That Disturbs Me

Is it possible, at all, for someone to be so lost - to life, to others, to him- or herself - that even the grace of God cannot reach that person? Is it possible that someone can be so bruised and battered by life, and his or her response to life that the possibility of life with others just cannot be realized?

Is it possible there are people who aren't psychotic or sociopathic who nevertheless are incapable of love?

In the film What Dreams May Come, there is an image of Hell in which people, surrounded by others damned are incapable of reaching out, of communicating, of seeing how they have isolated themselves in their suffering. For me, what is most haunting about that image is that these people are, in essence, continuing the lives they led. They have defined their existence by isolation, by that inward turn that makes them incapable of seeing the person to their left and right, before and behind, who, if simply approached and seen and heard - really seen and really heard - might rescue them from the prison they have created. They may not even know they have died, let alone that they are in hell. The suffering just goes on and on and on . . .

These questions disturb me, that image from that movie disturbs me. The reason should be obvious. We all have known a person or two in our lives, I believe, for whom life is not endless possibility, but mere existence in the midst of suffering. I am not speaking here of those silly bourgeois "victims" we meet; nor am I speaking of those who live in marginalized communities, defined as "outside" by the majority. Rather, I am speaking of those rare people who just seem unreachable. Whatever the source of their "lostness" to others, they are, indeed, lost.

Any thoughts?

Spilling It

I have tried to write two very different posts, one last night, the other early this morning. In point of fact, neither was any good and no longer exist. A further point in fact is something inside me needs to come out. I just need to get it off my chest. I have been reluctant for a variety of reasons - misunderstanding and hypocrisy being the chief ones - but, as occasionally happens with me, unless I lance this particular brain-boil, I will be incapable of moving on to far more important things.

I have mused recently that I am amazed that folks who hold views not at all tied to anything resembling facts can function. I have always had one individual in particular in mind as I have come to understand the phenomenon of agnotology, discussed quite frequently recently. It is this guy. Anyone even halfway familiar with this site knows him. In recent weeks, I have come to the conclusion that the extreme disconnect between what is, and what exists in this individual's head, has become so great that some kind of break is inevitable.

Seriously.

If you peruse comments or posts written by this person, those who have had experience with him over the years will notice a drastic change in tone, approach, and attitude. At one time, he seemed almost apologetic for being less educated - he carried on because I had a college degree and he did not, even as I had not mentioned this little factoid at all, and consider it irrelevant in any event. Now, he is all over calling me (and, admittedly, others) "idiots". He has bragged about his "genius IQ". He insists on his intellectual superiority.

All this boasting should lead those who have been around this person to know that something is going on. This exaggerated, Walter Mitty-like public persona just flies in the face of evidence and history.

Why am I writing this? Unlike Alan (whose position I admire), I actually do care for this guy. He is, after all, a fellow human being. He claims to be a Christian, even as evidence of that faith seems slim to none, seeing as he spends the vast amount of his time, in turns, insulting those he thinks are "liberals", or hating on sexual minorities, or immigrants. Yet, I shall do what he (and, again granted, others like him) cannot seem to do and give him the benefit of the doubt that, at the very least, he is trying to be a Christian.

With each comment he types, each post he puts up the rage, the hatred that seethes below the surface seems just below the surface. Like water about to roil.

So, yeah, I worry about him. Any individual with that much rage, who exaggerates his own persona to the point of foolishness, is obviously suffering. Since he refuses to move beyond the cozy company he keeps (I am tempted to call him cowardly; I think that is too negative, because I think what he really fears is the kind of exposure that might just cause everything to crash around him), and he refuses to interact in a serious, adult manner, I'm not sure what can be done. If anything.

So, I wonder. And worry. I have been and will continue to pray for him, his family, and any close to him should the break happen.

"[ Insert right-winger] lives in a cloistered world of paranoid delusion that is impervious to a priori evidence that contradicts his worldview."

So Jon Stewart showed his viewers last night that Glenn Beck is either a liar, or stupid, or perhaps both (why choose?). This is the same phenomenon, however, that anyone dealing with right-wingers has to deal with. Accusations and claims that are outrageously wrong, easily disproved, or are otherwise contrary to facts persist regardless of their having been disproved. This is agnotology in action.

At some point, one needs to simply call it out, then move on. I realize this isn't always comfortable, or fun, to realize one is conversing with someone who insists that what is not actually is (for myself, I have started to wonder how it is possible to function in day-to-day life when holding on to notions that are contrary to simple, easily verified fact). So, Beck's claim that his was the only news outlet to show some footage of the Israeli raid on the Turkish aid flotilla, easily shown to be outrageously wrong, will persist in the minds of far too many people. No amount of "debunking", fact-checking, what have you, will dislodge it.

Very sad.

Thoughts On Social Media III: On UM Clergy And Social Networking

Yesterday, my wife attended a meeting for pastors who are moving to new appointments. A point being driven home more and more within the United Methodist (UM) Church is that, once a pastor moves to a new appointment, contacts, both official and casual, need to be severed.

The official ones, I understand. At the meeting, however, one of the District Superintendents (DS) said, "Get off Facebook." That, I just can't get behind.

Human relationships are complex things. The relationships between a pastor and congregation is a mixture of professional and highly personal. While severing official, professional ties is certainly necessary - no weddings, funerals, etc. - cutting personal ties I find to be a bit harsh. To ask either the pastor or congregation members to end their more casual relating seems to disregard human feeling to an extent that goes against the Gospel.

Am I wrong here?

What Moral Decline?

One hears and reads often about the moral decline of our nation. Signs, it seems, abound for those with eyes to see.

I guess I need that set of eyes, because I don't see it.

In the midst of an economic slump, quite against historic trends, crime including violent crime is down. With the pending possible repeal of DADT, the US military will join the armed forces of much of the rest of the western world in allowing sexual minorities to serve their country openly. The biggest legitimate critics of many of the Obama Administration's actions are those from the left that insist he take an even more humanitarian stand on issues concerning the treatment of prisoners in our custody from conflicts in the Middle East and South Asia. Domestically, with the passage of health care reform our country now has embedded in its law the idea that health care should be available to any and all, regardless of ability to pay. Even as they kick and scream against it, the financial industry will return to a regime of stricter regulation and oversight because they have proved, once again, they cannot be trusted to act in their own, or society's, best interest in pursuit of quarterly profits.

I realize there are some on the right who insist the country is going to hell in a handbasket. I would like to think they are at least working from the same set of facts and within the same frame of reality the rest of us have access to. Unfortunately, I don't think that's the case. While I certainly think there is much in our society and culture that is crass and vulgar, this is usually the case, anyway. Far better to just ignore it all, which is easy enough to do, as long as you are intentional about it.

I am open to being convinced that, indeed, our entire country will look like Caligula, but I think those who make the argument for moral decline have a whole lot of heavy lifting to do.

Thoughts On Social Media II: Social Etiquette In Virtual Time

The incident reported here (warning - pretty odd, and scary, right-wing place) and commented upon by me here has left me wondering. Has the arrival of social media created new rules of social etiquette? How "social" are updates on Facebook (FB), and do the usual rules of social interaction apply?

While I was critical of this person's approach to the incident in question, the incident raises interesting questions that, given second and even third thoughts, should be addressed. Since FB is a public forum, how do we raise concerns regarding such things as the use of profanity? How do we voice our objections, if we do, to the presence of words, ideas, opinions, with which we disagree, or that we find offensive?

Part of my objection to the way the particular situation was handled was the aftermath; this gentleman's niece "unfriended" him, and quite possibly there has been damage to the relationship. It might be thought this is a bit of an overreaction to the incident, yet it also raises the question of what one's moral priorities are, and how we fit our various moral concerns in to our ethical calculus.

Yet, there is a certain legitimacy to the claim that the public use of profanity, if found objectionable, can rightly be addressed publicly, as well. Of course, tact and some sense of proportion are a necessary part of any social interaction; publicly saying a relative has the public manners of "a cheap whore" might not heal the hurt caused by a public scolding.

If FB is not just something "out there", but indeed real connections with real people, then considerations of others' feelings, including the public use of profanity, and how objections to their presence are questions that need to be thought through. I have no answer, although my own approach is one that makes certain compromises in an attempt to respect the thoughts and feelings of the many different people who might read my updates and the comments upon them.

Thoughts On Social Media I

I have been on Facebook (FB) now for a bit over a year and a half. While hardly possessing the Friends List of some people (who knew there was a 5,000 person limit?!?), I am rather comfortable with just over 200, with dribs and drabs dropping on to it each week. For the past year or so, I have been amused to think about the wonderful array of people on that list. The more I think about it, though, the more I think that FB really does provide a marvelous window in to the lives of people. It also redefines, or perhaps demonstrates in new and interesting ways, what we think of as "community".

On the first point, as a way of entering in to discussion of the second, taking even a casual look at those folks on my list might just give an insight in to who I am. The people on the list run the gamut. I have people who I knew growing up, but lost touch with over the years. I have people on the list I have never "met", but with whom I have become quite close. I have people who live across the street from me. I have people who live across the country. I have folks who share my political views. I have people who would disagree with me on pretty much everything. I have folks I work with now, a couple with whom I've worked in the past. I have past and present members of churches Lisa has served. Family, of course, is well-represented. I even have a famous name or two on my list!

What this tells me is that I have pretty catholic tastes in those with whom I choose to associate. Friendship, it would seem, transcends all the various barriers that we would erect to limit it.

In a larger sense, it seems to me that FB clarifies something about how we interact with others. Our friends, old and new, well-known and casual, dear and all-but-forgotten, are people with whom we choose to associate. These choices tell us about ourselves. These choices also tell us that, at its most basic level, community is not so much about accidents of birth or where we end up living because of work, or money, or the quality or depth of relationship (however one defines such slippery terms). Instead, at its most basic, communities are communities of choice. When someone request to be a "friend", it takes more than just a mouse-click to make it so; it takes a conscious decision, saying to oneself, "Yes, this is a person with whom I want to associate." What I am most proud of is that, of all those on my list whom I know well (having met them in the real world or not), they all have an incredible integrity about themselves. Whether liberal or conservative, fundamentalist or atheist, regardless of race or sexual orientation, I think what unites people on my Friends list more than that they know, or are at least acquainted with, me is their preference for living a life that is whole, complete. Whatever compromises they may make with the rest of the world are means to the larger goal of being wholly themselves.

I like that. I also think this tells me something about myself, quite apart from what I may or may not have known about who I am. I am always struggling with this very issue; how do I live as myself in such a vast array of contexts and situations such as work, family, church, and casual social settings? What are the limits of interaction? How much of who I am is it safe to reveal to others?

Of course, having lived a very public life on the internet for the past four or so years has helped in this regard. I believe that my life is far more transparent now than ever. There are facets of who I am that are pretty clearly on display daily. Far more important, I am surrounded, on FB, with daily reminders not just of the importance of living with integrity, but the way so living opens up life to all sorts of possibilities. I am a better person for the people on my Friends List, precisely because this community of my choosing teaches me how to live as myself without artifice.

One final note - I think a gathering of all those on my Friends List, like a barbecue or party or something, would be one of the most interesting events in my life.

Found . . . Again

A couple years back I wrote about this marvelous little book of quotes I happen to have. Well, the book has moved in and out of reality, as it has a tendency to do, and sits to my right as I type right now. If I could, I would make sure any- and everyone who reads this would get a copy. If for no other reason than the book seems alive. I mean that in all seriousness.

Yet, it is alive in the best way, too. It seems to offer something new, even in those quotes I have highlighted.

I am thinking of using them on FB and Twitter, if for no other reason than some, at least, would certainly be conversation starters.

- I thought men like that shot themselves. - King George V

- Few people have the imagination for reality. - Goethe

- I am only the shadow my words cast. - Octavio Paz

There are many others, some NSFW. I just love this book.

Isreal Kills Nine, Shoots Self In Face

Concerning the Israeli naval attack on ships carrying humanitarian supplies to Gaza the other day, all I can say is lucky there were no American warships sitting around. Of course, conservatives, who think we should nuke all Muslim countries because a mosque is being built in Manhattan, would probably come up with reasons why it was Obama's fault. . .

No Good War

Christopher Coker's review of Michael Burleigh's Moral Combat: A History of World War II is a reminder, on this day when we Americans honor the members of our armed forces for their sacrifices, and remember those who gave the last full measure of devotion, that even the most necessary conflict, precisely because of its inherently immoral nature, drags all of us, ally and foe alike, in to the muck and mire of our worst human attributes. The willingness to kill, the necessity to kill, the growing emotional distance necessitated by the ever-present reality of death, an insouciance to human life - these are the hallmarks of war.

It is called "The Good War" in the US because it united us as nothing has, before or since. It rescued the country from the Great Depression. We fought a two-front war, with ever-growing confidence and strength, against the two mightiest war-machines ever. While the defeat of Nazi Germany lies largely with the Russians and the Red Army, the defeat of the Japanese, closing the ring (to use Churchill's title of part of his WWII memoirs), lies almost solely with United States.

Yet, we did so morally compromised ourselves. Our armed forces were segregated. Even Japanese Americans, serving under the taint of questionable loyalties, had to have their own units. At home, Japanese-Americans whose sole crime was their national origin, or that of their parents, were locked up in concentration camps. African-American troops, having served bravely, were subjected to horrific treatment upon returning home. American leftists, being vindicated in their clarion call for defense against fascism, were also suspected for their alleged ties to that other totalitarian nightmare, our ally the Soviet Union. Refugees from Soviet satellite states were often not allowed to serve in the American armed forces.

The lesson the four and a half years of the First World War - that the end result of modern warfare is nothing more or less than mass slaughter, leaving all with blood on their hands - was forgotten. While it is easy enough for us to consider our own moral superiority, especially if one considers the political nightmare of a Europe dominated by the Nazis and a Pacific Rim dominated by a militarized Japan, we should never forget that, we, too, emerged from the war with burden of having killed tens of thousands of civilians from the air, using both conventional and atomic weapons. To justify these deaths by the argument that they saved other lives is already to succumb to the slipshod moral calculus of the bureaucratic mind.

On this Memorial Day, it is nice to read a reminder that, in fact, there is no "good war". No matter how necessary a war may be, it creates moral monsters of all involved.

Obama's Momma And My Momma Taught The Same Lesson - Mind Your Own Business

Reading this piece by Jackson Diehl on a report concerning US foreign policy goals in the upcoming years of the Obama Administration, I kept thinking to myself, "If Diehl thinks the Bush Administration approach to foreign policy was such a success, why did the rest of the world rejoice when he left office?"

The whole "Freedom Agenda" was nothing more than a recipe for interfering in far too many places in the world where we have neither the resources nor interests to do so. Furthermore, the argument that we can, in some way - alchemy? hypnosis? - change the "behavior" of states through engagement is just not supported by the facts. Consider Cuba. It's been 50 years since the revolution, the embargo, a failed CIA-sponsored invasion, all sorts of nonsense. Still communist. China? I have been thinking a lot lately about Deng Xiaoping's response to Pres. Carter's lecture to Deng on human rights: "How many millions do you want?" While we invaded Iraq supposedly to overthrow a horrible dictator, we did so even while engaging and giving aid to another dictator, in Uzbekistan. Central Africa has been embroiled in conflict for nearly two decades, from Uganda and Rwanda to the ongoing conflict in the Congo, with festering sores like Chad and the Moroccan domination of Western Sahara (the last a specific issue before the UN Security Council, just like Iraq). Who can forget Burma/Myanmar? Well, the US State Department did, at least under Bush, even though it is, perhaps, next to North Korea, the most nightmarish place on earth for human beings, in a political and social sense.

The "Freedom Agenda" of the Bush Administration, besides being far too broad and unrealistic, was a dismal failure because other countries understood it to be hypocritical, unworkable, yet nevertheless and excuse for the US to start mucking around where it doesn't belong. By refocusing on our core interests, both near- and long-term, a return to realpolitique is a marvelous thing, precisely because it allows us, as a nation, to set priorities and allocate resources where they can be used effectively. Whether or not the one's Obama has set can be a source of discussion. Whining about the end of the miserable Bush Administration record on foreign policy, however, should just make people laugh.

Crabwalking Repeal

The House of Representatives has approved an amendment to a larger bill that would repeal the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on gays serving openly. The problem, however, is that successful implementation of repeal is contingent on several things, the most notorious of which is the completion of a survey of active duty personnel on the question, not due for seven months.

While I am pleased that the House has taken a kinda-sorta stand on the issue, it would be nice if they had been a little less cowardly about it. Just repeal it. The American people are far more ready for it than they were, say, for racial integration when Harry Truman did it. Whether or not the military "accepts" gays in their ranks, the officer corps, professional and apolitical to its bones, will make it happen once the order comes down (something I think too many people forget; the military follow orders, even when those orders don't make sense, or seem wrong).

Getting Caught Up In History

I've been reflecting on something in my sister's comment regarding the long-term psychological damage wrought by the death of my great Uncle in the trenches in 1918 (like his namesake, my father's older brother, who would die ten years later after a drunk doctor rammed their car as my grandfather took the family out for a Sunday drive, he became unmentionable; remembered by those few who knew him more for having died than for ever having lived, it is this corpse-like presence in memory that damaged my grandmother and her children far too long). About sixteen years ago, I first read Robert K. Massie's massive history Dreadnought, and got caught up in his sweeping narrative that seemed to argue the Naval rivalry between the British and German Empires was as much personal (in particular, fed by the massive near-psychoses and general inferiority complex of German Emperor Wilhelm II, who was grandson of Queen Victoria and nephew of King Edward) as it was anything.

As I neared the end of the narrative that included the arguments in the British Cabinet in 1911 on the Naval Estimates (Churchill's apt description of the result, in which the Navy argued for a certain number of battle ships, he and other trimmers argued for half that number, and the compromise they ended up with was actually more than the Navy had originally asked for is funny, but also sad), I realized how odd it was, yet important, that this story (at least as related by Massie) caught up much of the western world in its throes. Including my family.

Obviously, there is more going on than the haughtiness of Britain at the apex of her Imperial grandeur, or the German desire to be the great Continental power, overshadowing old rival France. The Kaiser, however, in particular, focused on the necessity of a German navy as a mark of its greatness, almost to the point of obsession; having built this great navy, however, for the most part it sat, unused in Black Sea ports, only once attempting a massive exit in force. The result, the Battle of Jutland, was the greatest Naval engagement of the First World War. Technically a draw, the Germans lost it because they then returned to huddling in their ports, while the British Navy had free reign (except for submarines) on the world's oceans.

This story of an extended family, where relations became complicated by intersecting national loyalties (not to mention the psychological dimension; I cannot stress enough that Kaiser Wilhelm II was crazier than a shit-house rat), swept up not just the children of Queen Victoria and their children, but eventually not just the ruling classes of Europe, but their whole populations as well.

When the Kaiser, going against the advice of both his Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, declared open season on all shipping, including neutral shipping, he forced Wilson's hand. Having already insulted the Americans with the heavy-handed, and thin-brained Zimmerman dispatch, the threat to freedom of commerce with all sides by neutrals dragged Wilson around to seeing that war against the Central Powers might just be a necessity.

All these historical events, always seen from a distance, caught up millions of ordinary citizens in their nets. They always seem to do so. When Everett Shores arrived in France, moved up to the trenches, was promoted to Corporal, and died (most likely from friendly shell fire dropping on advancing American forces), his was one among 20 million deaths during those four and a half years of meaningless, mindless slaughter that achieved the noble goal of enraging the Germans in the person of Adolf Hitler, thus ensuring that within a generation, many more millions would die.

Yet, the intersection of personal and political, the family of Saxe-Coburg and the Shores (and eventually Saffords), when conflict erupted on the plains of Flanders and northeastern France, still astounds me. It would be nice if one of the lessons reading Massie rendered was giving to those practicing statecraft a vision of the way their actions are not just about the great and powerful nations. It is, in the end, the intersections of the lives of millions; the effects of bad decisions, of horrible choices, lost chances, and sheer blind stupidity reach far beyond the immediate moment. As long as my grandmother was alive (she died in 1984, having just turned 95), the long reach of history was still with our family.

Sarah Palin And Sisterhood

Part of me thinks that ignoring her completely is the far better choice. She just doesn't want to go away, however, and so, alas, we are inundated with her words. Stuck with the phony faux-northern accents of former-Gov. Palin in to the foreseeable future (thanks, John McCain!), it is probably a good thing Jessica Valenti of Feministing is taking a stab at Mrs. Palin's attempts to steal "feminist" from the real deal.

The complicated nature of the spectacle of anti-feminist women in positions of power, like anti-integrationist blacks a generation ago, anti-immigrant rights folks from many countries who are naturalized citizens, and so on, can be easily dismissed (and usually are) with the acronym IGMFY. Usually, that is the main thrust of what is happening. Yet, as Valenti makes clear, there is more happening than simple ladder-lifting in Mrs. Palin's attempt to rewrite the history of the feminist movement in the United States. By attempting to redefine feminism as anti-abortion at its heart, she is attempting to leap across a century of American history, and rob the word of any substantive content since the initiation of women's suffrage just after the First World War.

One wonders why Mrs. Palin doesn't argue that, since the original feminist movement - inaugurated at Seneca Falls, NY in 1848, focusing almost entirely on voting and property rights for women - was racist to the core, today's feminists shouldn't also be such? It is commonplace enough, I suppose, to hear or read of the racism of the original advocates of birth control and abortion rights, in particular Margaret Sanger (her pamphlets and speeches were filled with horrid images of brown and black hordes defiling our country if they weren't reigned in via conception control; and abstinence wasn't possible for these folks because, for her and many who thought like her, immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, African-Americans, and Asian-Americans were little better than animals incapable of controlling their desires).

Whether or not the original women's rights movement was pro-abortion or anti-abortion is neither here nor there for the contemporary feminist movement, or at the very least should be. Unless Mrs. Palin has access to a time machine, we live in the early 21st century, and the goal of the feminist movement, having achieved the first goals of the feminist movement - voting rights, first, then equal protection under the law and certain property rights - the struggle has moved to socio-economic issues. Equal pay for equal work. A greater awareness of domestic violence and violence against women in general as a particular type of crime. Expanding the feminist movement from the white middle-class to minority communities and abroad through a focus on anti-women policies and violence (for example, the long fight against "female circumcision", which is, really, the excision of the clitoris in young women, rendering them incapable of sexual arousal and pleasure). Mrs. Palin's talk of "real" feminism and "sisterhood" focusing almost exclusively on abortion rights may or may not be accurate - it seems the historical jury is still out - but at the very least, it distorts the entire focus of the pursuit of women's rights in our current age.

Valenti is also right that the tendency among some feminists who might otherwise oppose the policies and preferences of Mrs. Palin are going too far in giving her the benefit of the doubt by refusing to denounce her attempted theft of "feminist". Like Phyllis Schlafly a generation ago, or Justice Clarence Thomas denouncing affirmative action when it is clearly understood he was accepted to college and law school under its aegis, Mrs. Palin has generally denounced the aspirations of the women's movement while benefiting from its successes. "Solidarity" is not just a slogan, or even a Polish union from the Cold War. It is a concept necessary to keep historic movement alive. It involves education and understanding, inculcating an understanding of the debt we all owe those who have gone before us, and the need to make their dreams our reality. Particularly among those most effected by official discrimination, to actively pursue policies that are detrimental to the goals and aspirations of the movements that gave other members of their cohort a voice, empowering them as members of our civil society, is the deepest betrayal.

Mrs. Palin, indeed, is no feminist. She owes her election in Alaska to feminism, and should acknowledge that; she also, to be equally fair, should be working to ensure that her daughters earn as much as men who work with her, do not face violence in their homes and lives, and can unite with women across cultural and political and racial and religious barriers to make the world a more congenial place for women. Just as abortion distorts far too much religious belief among conservatives, it seems it is doing so among many right-wing women.