tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72316189676583967482024-03-05T23:42:03.895-08:00Anglican CentristUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger63125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-33759030238752432052011-03-31T17:41:00.001-07:002011-03-31T17:50:06.881-07:00Do You Cheat On Your Taxes?By Eric Von Salzen <br /><br />Income taxes are due on April 18th this year, so this is a timely question. <br /><br />According to a survey by <a href="http://custom.yahoo.com/taxes/article-112436-737a0ec9-60e5-3ed4-86ea-9585286cfe26-tax-cheats-single-young-male">DDB Worldwide Communications Group </a>, 15% of Americans admitted cheating on their returns. Moreover, the tax cheats were more likely than non-cheaters to cheat in other ways: to keep the wrong change given by a cashier, to solicit a phony job reference, to lie to obtain a government benefit, even to steal money from a child. <br /><br />And yet, these cheaters disproportionately believe that they are “overall better people”, who are “special and deserve to be treated that way”. So perhaps I asked the wrong question. <br /><br />Perhaps I should have asked: “Are you special?”The Godfatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575359417766667457noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-53064357518744857002011-03-21T16:01:00.000-07:002011-03-21T16:40:01.807-07:00Spontaneous Generation<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB1E3xxFhIZcee9OJ1FRttr-ucuJQSHTDxCbK7yPKSj3gNsrSwXtCGP-Oz-BEIjYMcnX5akkae-bn3AVYGqhHI7AYU8JMaY_PCUVEni4AZnWzdnzlMVFtj43TnfjGPwtRtQMHch9EMys4/s1600/BigBang.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 284px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 177px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5586672682627451474" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB1E3xxFhIZcee9OJ1FRttr-ucuJQSHTDxCbK7yPKSj3gNsrSwXtCGP-Oz-BEIjYMcnX5akkae-bn3AVYGqhHI7AYU8JMaY_PCUVEni4AZnWzdnzlMVFtj43TnfjGPwtRtQMHch9EMys4/s320/BigBang.jpg" /></a><br /><br />By Eric Von Salzen<br /><br />I’ve just read “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_16?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+grand+design&sprefix=the+grand+design">The Grand Design</a>”, the new book by the great mathematician Stephen Hawking (and the less-famous physicist Leonard Mlodinow). When the book was announced a few months ago, I wrote on this site:<br /><br /><em>I’m looking forward to reading Stephen Hawking’s new book, in which he argues that we do not need to believe in God to explain the existence of the universe. Instead, we are to believe in “M-theory”, which involves 11 space-time dimensions, “vibrating strings, ... point particles, two-dimensional membranes, three-dimensional blobs and other objects that are more difficult to picture and occupy even more dimensions of space.” Boy, that’s a relief! Just good old common sense, and none of that religious mumbo-jumbo!</em><br /><br />I repeat those words now, not because I’m proud of my rhetoric (although I am), but to alert you to my bias.<br /><br />To a substantial extent, the claim that Hawking's book proves that there’s no need to assume a role for God in creation is publisher’s hype. It's a good way to generate buzz, but that's not really what the book is primarily about. The book is primarily a summary, for the intelligent lay reader, of current scientific thinking about the origin and nature of the universe in light of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity, a sort of “Cosmology for Dummies.”<br /><br />“Dummies” is a relative term, of course. Although Hawking (I’m going to refer to the author as Hawking, and not Hawking and Mlodinow because Hawking’s the famous name; sorry Leonard) – although Hawking makes these subjects as accessible to the intelligent lay reader as possible, it's pretty deep stuff. At some point along the way, even if you are much smarter than I am (you probably are), you’re likely to find you just can't grasp what Hawking is saying. At best, you'll be able to figure out what the subject matter under discussion is, but not the substance of the discussion. It's like someone who just finished a second year college German class eavesdropping on a discussion between Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche: you can't understand what they're saying, but you might be able to figure out the topic. If you’re as interested in the science that Hawking discusses as I am, you should enjoy this book.<br /><br />But for purposes of this blog, what is of interest in this book is what Hawking claims regarding religion. These claims are found primarily in the second chapter, which discusses the origins of religious belief, and then later toward the end of the book, where Hawking discusses design in creation.<br /><br />In Chapter 2, Hawking portrays religion as the invention of primitive peoples who were ignorant of science, but wanted to understand how and why the physical world worked the way it did. In their ignorance they invented gods “to lord it over every aspect of human life.” Once science came along to explain the mysteries of the physical world, there was no further need for religion. As a wise man (not Hawking) said, “When I was a child, I spake as a child”, etc. Yet, religion stubbornly hangs on like some cultural vermiform appendix; most humans haven’t yet “put away childish things”.<br /><br />There are two things wrong with Hawking’s argument. First, there’s no evidence that religion was invented primarily to explain the physical world. Second, even if that were the original purpose of religion, that doesn’t mean that religion today has no broader and deeper purposes that science has not rendered obsolete.<br /><br />I’ll take Hawking’s word on matters of math or physics, because he’s clearly an expert, but on the origin of religion, Hawking can claim no special expertise. He's obviously a very smart man, but he offers no evidence that he’s studied comparative religion, cultural anthropology, paleontology, or any of the other disciplines that would be implicated in a serious investigation of the origin of religion. To support his proposition that religion arose to explain the physical world, Hawking cites creation myths from Viking and Amerindian cultures, the former around 1,000-years old, the latter about 6,600 years older than that. Yet, cave paintings, burial practices, devotional objects, etc., found by archeologists suggest that human beings have had some sense of the divine for several tens of thousands of years. The origins of religion are lost in the mists of time.<br /><br />It’s undoubtedly true that some primitive religions we know about used stories about gods to explain aspects of the physical world, but that doesn't mean that this was the primary purpose for which religion was “invented”. It could just as well be the case that ancient peoples, having become conscious of the divine, then attributed to divinity responsibility for aspects of the physical world. Let’s take a modern-day example. Today some Christians believe in the concept of "intelligent design", the notion that God is responsible for characteristics of plants and animals, such as the cilium of the eye, that (supposedly) cannot be adequately explained by contemporary science, i.e., by evolution. But the adherents to intelligent design did not invent God to explain the development of the eye. It works the other way around: their belief in God came first, and that belief led them to invent the idea of intelligent design. There is no reason to suppose that ancient or primitive peoples could not have developed their ideas about religion in the same way. Thus, the ancient Klamath Indians might not have invented gods to explain the existence of Crater Lake, as Hawking assumes; they might have regarded the lake as confirmation of the gods in whom they already believed for other reasons.<br /><br />The mythologies that I know a little about, ancient Greek, the Norse, the Irish, do include stories that use gods or other supernatural characters to explain aspects of the physical universe, but they do a great deal more. When Poseidon wrecks the ships on which Odysseus seeks to return home from Troy, the story is not just an explanation for storms at sea. That’s why we still read the Odyssey.<br /><br />This is certainly true of the Old Testament. The ancient Hebrew stories do explain various aspects of the physical world, but that isn’t their primary purpose. The principal lesson of Genesis 1 is not about the mechanics of creation (pace my creationist friends), but about the relationship between God and the creation. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah may have its origins in some ancient volcanic eruption, but that’s not why the story is read today.<br /><br />Moreover, whatever may have been the motivation for the “invention” of early religions, today modern religions have very little to do with explaining the mysteries of the physical world that science now promises to reveal. If Hawking thinks that many modern Christians would abandon their religion if they understood what a quark is, he lives in a different world than I do. Some Christians, it is true, have difficulty accepting the fact that science tells us that some Bible stories are not literally true: that the universe was not created in seven days, but in less than a microsecond, that the sun only seemed to stop in the sky while the Lord gave the Israelites victory over the Amorites, and so on. But this doesn’t prove that these Christians believe in God in order to explain the physical world. On the contrary, their belief in God takes precedence over explanations of the physical world that these believers feel are inconsistent with their faith. I’m not a Biblical literalist myself, and I personally hope that the day will come that creationists and other literalists, or their children, will finally come to accept that the teachings of science about evolution, the Big Bang, and other issues are fully reconcilable with Christian faith. When they do, that will not keep them away from church on Sundays.<br /><br />Hawking returns to religion toward the end of the book, where he addresses scientific findings that some people think support the existence of a creator God. The fundamental laws of physics seem to be “fine-tuned” to create a universe that supports the existence of human beings. For example, human and all other life that we know about depends on the element carbon. Carbon is created in the heart of dying stars and is dispersed into space when the star explodes, whence it can become a constituent of a life-supporting planet. If the laws of nuclear physics were only slightly different, little or no carbon (or oxygen, for that matter) would be created in stars, and life as we know it would be impossible. Every other fundamental force in nature within this universe falls in a narrow range that is suitable for creating an environment in which life is possible.<br /><br />At one time scientists thought that these fundamental laws of nature represented the only way that things could be. The science that Hawking describes however, shows that these fundamental laws came into existence in the earliest moments of the Big Bang that created our universe, and it was entirely possible that different physical laws, with different values, could have come into being in that process. Indeed, the odds seem to be overwhelmingly against the existence of a universe compatible with human life.<br /><br />Thus, science poses a question – why is our universe designed to be friendly to us? – for which religion may provide the answer: God. Indeed, some astronomers and cosmologists embrace a belief in God, at least a kind of Deism, for this reason.<br /><br />Hawking acknowledges this challenge to the pretensions of science to answer every question without reference to God. His response is that equations that underlie the theory of the universe called M-theory show that a huge number of universes are possible. Indeed, the theory implies that in some sense all these alternate universes exist. The number of universes predicted by M Theory is not, technically, infinite, but it is huge: 10 to the 500th power, or a one followed by 500 zeros. You'll excuse me, I hope, if I don't set it out here. Out of that huge number of universes, virtually any set of physical laws must exist in one of them, so our life-friendly universe could come about without any divine intervention. Human life, of course, could only have arisen in this one particular universe.<br /><br />The other creation problem, which exists for any universe that is supposed to have a beginning, is how the beginning began. If our universe (or all the 10 to the 500th power universes) began in a Big Bang, where did the stuff that went bang come from? Religions can answer that question, although perhaps not every religion’s answer is satisfactory to everyone. The oft-told story (including told by Hawking himself) is that in some religion the world was thought to rest on the back of a giant turtle; and what did the turtle stand on? Another turtle, and that one on yet another: It’s turtles all the way down. In Christian and Jewish scripture, the answer to the <em>ex nihilo</em> problem is that in the beginning God created the universe from nothing. Genesis explains how he did it: “God said let there be light, and there was light", etc. It is nonsense to ask what happened before the beginning.<br /><br />What is the Big Bang theory’s answer to this problem? If we run the movie of the expanding universe backward, eventually all the matter and all the energy is compressed into an infinitely small space. And then what? Hawking’s answer is that entire universe (and all 10 to the 500th power universes?) simply created itself from nothing. This is possible, he says, because, in a sense, a universe is nothing. The total energy of the universe it seems is zero, because gravity represents negative energy that exactly balances out the positive energy of all the matter in the universe; the net energy is zero. Thus:<br /><br /><em>Because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing . . . . Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.</em><br /><br />Hawking seems to be quite comfortable with his answers to the question how our universe, so apparently fine-tuned for life like ours, came into being. He may, for all I know, be right. I don't begin to understand the math, and he's one of the smartest (if not the smartest) mathematician in the world.<br /><br />As it happens, at the same time I was reading “The Grand Design” I was reading another book, “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_16?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+grand+design&sprefix=the+grand+design#/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=letters+to+malcolm&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Aletters+to+malcolm">Letters to Malcolm</a>, Chiefly on Prayer” by C. S. Lewis. We have a discussion group at our church that is reading “Letters to Malcolm” together. I found this passage in Lewis’s book:<br /><br /><em>[T]he sciences are always pushing further back the realm of mere “brute fact.” But no scientist, I suppose, believes that the process could ever reach completion. At the very least, there must always remain the utterly “brute” fact, the completely opaque datum, that a universe – or, rather, this universe, with its determinate character – exists . . . </em>.<br /><br />What would Lewis make of Hawking? Lewis thought no scientist could imagine claiming that he had reached a complete understanding of how it is that this universe exists. Jack, meet Steve. Steve, meet Jack.<br /><br />So, as I say, Hawking’s math may all check out, but still, I’m troubled. Is it really more sensible to assume that a gazillion universes, all but one of which is unknown (and presumably unknowable) to us, created themselves from nothing, rather than to believe that God created this one universe in a way that made life possible? I think Occam's razor favors the second hypothesis, but maybe that's just me.<br /><br />Let me make one thing clear. My own religious faith does not depend on the inability of science to explain where the universe came from or why its physical laws are the way they are. I’m perfectly happy to assume that someday science will answer all these questions (although I remain skeptical about Hawking’s claim that science has already done so). My faith is based on the resurrection of a Jewish carpenter almost 2,000 years ago and the promises he made to mankind.<br /><br />So, read “The Grand Design” if you’re interested in the science. It’s short, only 181 pages, and easy reading. Or, if you’d like a greater challenge, read “Letters to Malcolm”. It’s even shorter (124 pages), but you’ll work harder at it, and get more from it, I believe.The Godfatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575359417766667457noreply@blogger.com77tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-37642117335665349182011-02-16T13:27:00.001-08:002011-02-16T20:00:08.942-08:00Big Rock Candy Mountain<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguEhqf5kwDsV4H27QjYUjtAePOrQK1L9qDRXn_sn-3O6O6Zs9E1nahUH372TN5v-xzw2Pl6FIARQdBsEgdM6kPmeRd2UbuBkhlIDaA1lV8xeAzB5Sl3rKURamxWaEgi2lIOCdmZqrGlWw/s1600/Apophis.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguEhqf5kwDsV4H27QjYUjtAePOrQK1L9qDRXn_sn-3O6O6Zs9E1nahUH372TN5v-xzw2Pl6FIARQdBsEgdM6kPmeRd2UbuBkhlIDaA1lV8xeAzB5Sl3rKURamxWaEgi2lIOCdmZqrGlWw/s200/Apophis.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5574402345677630722" /></a><br /><br /><br />By Eric Von Salzen<br /><br />I was interested to read the other day that <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/02/10/doomsday-determined-asteroid-apophis-strike-earth/">doomsday for the human race may arrive in 2036</a>. In that year, according to some Russian scientists, an asteroid called Apophis may strike the Earth, with the force of 100,000 atom bombs; dust and debris from the impact would darken skies world-wide and bring on a global winter. It could be the end for us all.<br /><br />Other scientists claim that when Apophis gives us a near miss in 2029 we’ll know for sure whether the asteroid is on a collision course with Earth on its next pass seven years later, which will give us an opportunity to send rockets to nudge it into a safer orbit.<br /><br />But if Apophis doesn’t get us, perhaps another asteroid will, like the one that (some say) killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. (“Apophis” is the Greek rendering of the name of the Egyptian god Apep the Uncreator, the god of darkness and chaos; any doomsday asteroid would be “Apophis”.) An asteroid we hadn’t spotted might pop up unexpectedly with no chance to divert it.<br /><br />Or, if not an asteroid, then perhaps a supernova, a gigantic stellar explosion, will destroy us. If a star relatively close by (say less than 20 light years away) blows up, it could unleash a flood of gamma rays that would strip the Earth of its ozone layer, leaving us naked to deadly solar and cosmic radiation. Such an explosion is thought (by some) to be responsible for the Ordovician extinction 450 million years ago, in which 60 percent of marine invertebrates died (all living creatures in those days lived in the sea).<br /><br />Or how about this. There’s a federal facility in the western United States that contains something capable of doing the same damage that Apophis could do. It’s not in Roswell, NM, and it’s not an alien space craft. The facility is Yellowstone National Park and what it contains is a super volcano. Yellowstone in fact is the caldera of <a href="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/08/yellowstone/achenbach-text"> a huge active volcano</a>. Its last eruption, 640,000 years ago, was a thousand times the size of the eruption of Mount St. Helens, according to <em>National Geographic</em>. A pillar of ash from the Yellowstone eruption rose 100,000 feet into the air, “leaving a layer of debris across the West all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Pyroclastic flows -- dense, lethal fogs of ash, rocks, and gas, superheated to 1,470 degrees Fahrenheit -- rolled across the landscape in towering gray clouds. The clouds filled entire valleys with hundreds of feet of material so hot and heavy that it welded itself like asphalt across the once verdant landscape.” This eruption may have plunged the entire planet into years of volcanic winter. And yet it was a mere volcanic belch compared to its predecessor 2.1 million years ago. As recently as 74,000 years ago, the human race was almost exterminated by the global winter caused by the eruption of a super volcano in Indonesia. <br /><br />Even if Earth avoids all these routine disasters, some day our sun will run out of the hydrogen that provides the source of its energy (it’s already half way through its life span). When that happens, the sun will balloon into a “red giant”, which will swallow up the Earth. And if by then the human race has moved on to other planets, that will only delay the inevitable. The universe is expanding from the Big Bang that started it, and one of two things will happen. It may reverse itself and contract into a Big Crunch, or it may expand forever until its temperature reaches absolute zero and all energy and matter evaporates. In either event, we're toast (hot toast or cold toast, but defintely toast). It’s only a matter of time.<br /><br />I could go on, but the point is that neither the human race, nor the planet on which we live, will last forever.<br /><br />Does this matter? After all, each one of us is going to die someday, and that would be true even if the world and the human race lasted forever. Yet I think it does matter, because it tells us something about the nature of the world we live in, and our place in it. Not only are we, each of us, dust and destined to return to dust, but the same is true of our entire world.<br /><br />Most Christians, I think, believe that this world will someday come to an end and be replaced by a better one. Some Christians focus a lot on the notion of the End Times. Some even try to put a date on doomsday using biblical prophecies. In reading up on Apophis, I discovered a YouTube <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr6A6l8bWac&feature=related">video</a> that associated this asteroid with various passages in the Old and New Testaments; the video asserted that any effort to change the orbit of Apophis was bound to fail, because it was prophesied that the asteroid would, indeed, strike the earth.<br /><br />That isn't my understanding of what biblical prophecy is all about. The notion that what has been prophesied must come to pass seems inconsistent with the sovereignty of God over the universe. The prophet Jonah prophesied the destruction of Nineveh, but when the Ninevites changed their sinful ways, God spared the city, the people, and the animals, too.<br /><br />And isn’t it just a bit arrogant to claim that human beings can figure out the date of doomsday from reading scripture? Jesus said, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”. And he went on to say, “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” The whole point seems to be that we should know that this world will pass away, but we aren't supposed to know when.<br /><br />I think it’s a mistake to focus excessively on the coming of the End Times. But it’s also a mistake to ignore the fact that the world will end some day, and could end at any moment. My impression is that most mainline Christians don’t really keep the transitory nature of the world in mind. Although they may recite in church that “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end”, they forget about it as soon as the service is over.<br /><br />This isn’t surprising. When you’re traveling first class, you’re not as anxious for the voyage to end as are those folks down in steerage. Christianity began among people whose lives were pretty rotten. When you told them that the world they knew would pass away, they took it as a promise, not as a threat. We comfortable, middle-class, American Christians (most of us, anyway) aren't in that big of a hurry for our world to pass away. I know that if it were up to me a couple of decades from now, I’d do everything possible to prevent Apophis from wiping us all out. <br /><br />But there are several reasons why we should remember that our world could end at any time, and will end sometime, and ultimately there’s nothing we can do about it. First, it's true, and it's always a good idea to remember the truth. Second, remembering that this world won't last forever may help us to keep a sense of perspective about the importance of our own little affairs. Third, we are promised that what comes after this world will be far better, and we have that to look forward to.<br /><br />Here’s how I think about this. I went to YMCA summer camp when I was a kid, and from time to time we’d get to take trips away from camp to hike or canoe somewhere. We traveled in the back of a big open truck, twenty or so boys sitting on wooden benches (of course, they’d never allow anyone to travel this way today, but this was the 1950's). As we drove along we sang camp songs as loud as we could -- Green Grow The Rushes, Ho! Home, Home On The Range. Big Rock Candy Mountain. We called out to the pretty girls as we drove through the towns. We had a grand old time. For awhile I would enjoy the trip so much I thought I didn't want it to end. But that feeling didn’t last, because I knew that when the trip ended we’d be canoeing on Lake George or the Connecticut River, or hiking on Mount Monadnock, or whatever. And that was going to be even better than the trip.The Godfatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575359417766667457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-8939647784114041482011-02-05T08:21:00.000-08:002011-02-05T08:35:46.689-08:00Father Cutié’s DilemmaBy Eric Von Salzen<br /><br />Shortly before we moved out of south Florida a year and a half ago, a big ecclesiastical scandal broke in the local press. A popular Roman Catholic priest, Father Albert Cutié, was caught by paparazzi necking on the beach with a young woman. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg82D-XycDZZ7I_J-y78Jz7a5BUO9aGyKLWfO1ExZLfnC2IZvUTg3gE0z5BnO0MF7_MO6KW3lENng-1BEE6Hup6Yi8aTxFEpl1R4Vp-PXarNZY0icbqmqmfYkN_ANvpfC-y50NyQmditZA/s1600/beach.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 191px; height: 264px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg82D-XycDZZ7I_J-y78Jz7a5BUO9aGyKLWfO1ExZLfnC2IZvUTg3gE0z5BnO0MF7_MO6KW3lENng-1BEE6Hup6Yi8aTxFEpl1R4Vp-PXarNZY0icbqmqmfYkN_ANvpfC-y50NyQmditZA/s320/beach.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5570243668306190418" /></a><br /><br /><br />The son of exiles from Castro’s Cuba, Father Cutié was a well-known figure in the Spanish-speaking community, not only in south Florida, but throughout Latin America, as the host of religious-themed radio and TV programs; he was popular enough to have earned the nickname “Father Oprah”. His celebrity made his transgression a public event (his name didn’t help; although pronounced KOO-tea-eh, it was hard to resist calling him “Father Cutie”).<br /><br />In short order, the Bishop of Miami suspended Cutié from his priestly and other duties and stopped his salary and benefits. The Episcopal Bishop of Southeast Florida, Leo Frade (himself a native of Cuba), extended an invitation to Cutié to continue his priestly vocation in the Episcopal Church, and Cutié accepted. He was received as an Episcopal priest and has been put in charge of a small parish in Miami. Father Cutié married the woman in the beach photos, and they have recently had a child. I have seen reports that he is soon to have his own TV show again, this time on Fox.<br /><br />Father Cutié has now written a book about his experiences: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dilemma-Priests-Struggle-Faith-Love/dp/0451232011/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1296918822&sr=1-1">Dilemma: A Priest’s Struggle With Faith and Love</a>. It is well worth reading for its depiction of one individual priest’s experiences in the modern Roman Catholic Church.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTG0BJ791o9wW8T-X4-J7wDvd96dLdKSxH6jqhQgT748xkL0vi85uJW8nBbUm0_Fs6Aq69GIH-Om3a4qjTU5umZOiETkuqJMdQLVSJd10gMBqGOO2x4ck2nc-3mcTXjQbNU0NJInzx7IM/s1600/Dilemma.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 131px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTG0BJ791o9wW8T-X4-J7wDvd96dLdKSxH6jqhQgT748xkL0vi85uJW8nBbUm0_Fs6Aq69GIH-Om3a4qjTU5umZOiETkuqJMdQLVSJd10gMBqGOO2x4ck2nc-3mcTXjQbNU0NJInzx7IM/s200/Dilemma.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5570241644944249698" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />When I first read the news accounts about Father Cutié being caught with a woman, and then about the speculation that he might join the Episcopal Church, my reaction was that it would have been better if Father Cutié had changed churches on his own initiative, instead of being forced to do so after he was caught in a compromising position. His book helped me see this part of Father Cutié’s dilemma from his own perspective. By the time he was caught by the paparazzi, Father Cutié was already deeply concerned about flaws in what he calls the “ideology” of the Roman Catholic Church, and he had been exploring the Episcopal Church as an institution that might be better suited to his views on religious matters as they had evolved since his ordination. But he found it very hard to make the decision to leave the Roman Catholic Church, in which he had grown up, and to which he had devoted his entire adult life. I found this part of his story quite convincing.<br /><br />For me, the best parts of this book are Father’s Cutié’s stories about his experiences of the Roman Catholic Church from the inside, and his growing discomfort with certain aspects of the Church. Never having been a Roman Catholic myself – and certainly never having been a Roman Catholic priest – I can’t attest to whether what happened to Father Cutié was typical or aberrational, but as one man’s story it is compelling reading. He describes living in a world in which priests are isolated from their supposed spiritual leaders, and from each other; a world in which violations of the vow of celibacy are commonplace, but are tolerated so long as outsiders remain ignorant of them; in which those who run the organization care about their own power more than anything spiritual. This part of his story would make a good novel (I’m thinking more of a Marquand or Maugham novel than of Sinclair Lewis).<br /><br />The last third of the book goes over these same issues, but no longer as part of a biography. Rather, we are given Father Cutié’s critique of the Roman Catholic Church today. The chapter names are enough to give you the flavor of his thoughts: “The Myth of Celibacy”, “Disposable Priests”, “The Church that Time Forgot”. To me, this part of the book was not as interesting as the biographical part, I guess because I don’t really care much about what’s wrong with a church to which I do not belong. The people that ought to read these things are the Roman Catholic hierarchy, but somehow I doubt that many of them will find Father Cutié a credible critic.<br /><br />However, any Anglican that yearns for more centralized control in our Communion, who wants the Archbishop of Canterbury to become an “Anglican Pope”, who proposes to give enforcement powers to the “Instruments of Unity”, ought to read this book.The Godfatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575359417766667457noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-51836824145858873582011-01-27T09:24:00.000-08:002011-01-27T09:42:30.233-08:00. . . dreamt of in your philosophy<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqEkwIgTjzktAlJokqpugdItus-vO3kf8Jggx0TsHidqjreH4sAxFyML6RcOP3fQVBjhg6Y7Hiwxaioz0knsF40ZaF4csZPtMvEX3fYJJMhHn3YUWMMQRHUpU6rTWW9SUD3xAigTjKpmI/s1600/plato.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 136px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqEkwIgTjzktAlJokqpugdItus-vO3kf8Jggx0TsHidqjreH4sAxFyML6RcOP3fQVBjhg6Y7Hiwxaioz0knsF40ZaF4csZPtMvEX3fYJJMhHn3YUWMMQRHUpU6rTWW9SUD3xAigTjKpmI/s200/plato.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5566918172797304626" /></a><br /><br /><br />By Eric Von Salzen<br /><br />I recently saw a <a href="http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/3853/a_philosopher_of_religion_calls_it_quits">story</a> about Keith Parsons, a college professor who announced that he will no longer teach his course on the philosophy of religion, because he “cannot take . . . arguments [in favor of theism] seriously any more.”<br /><br />Boy, was this a shock!<br /><br />I had no idea that there was such a thing as “philosophy of religion”, or that you could actually get paid to teach it. <br /><br />OK, OK, I’m being facetious. I have great respect for philosophy (and for religion, too, or at least for some religions). I took a whole course in philosophy my freshman year of college: <em>Phil I, Plato, Aristotle, and Lucretius</em>. What I most remember is how Plato wrote his Socratic dialogues so that Socrates always won the argument. I don’t mean just that we the reader ended up being persuaded. Even the guy Socrates was arguing with ended up agreeing with him. As you read along you came to a point where Socrates would say: Alcibiades (or whoever was Socrates’s victim in that particular dialogue), don’t you agree that . . . ? And as the reader I wanted to call out to poor Alcibiades, No, No, it’s a trick question, don’t agree with him! But feckless Alcibiades would agree, and then, sure enough, a few pages later, Socrates would show that if you accepted that assertion, you logically had to agree with Socrates’s conclusion. So old Alcibiades would sigh and agree that Socrates was right. Yes, Socrates, of course you’re right, how could it be otherwise? <br /><br />This became a standing joke for a while in my crowd. Whenever some classmate would go overboard pontificating about something or other (and believe me, Harvard freshmen pontificated a lot – probably still do), someone would say, Yes, Socrates, of course you’re right, how could it be otherwise? It didn’t shut the pontificator up for long, but even a few minutes were a gift. So, I found that philosophy could be useful.<br /><br />Later (much later), when I began to discover what my religion was all about, I started to read, or read about, philosophers who dealt with religious issues (or theologians who dealt with philosophical issues): Barth, Buber, William James, Kierkegaard, Leibniz, Tillich, etc. So, when I discovered from the article I just mentioned that there was an academic discipline called philosophy of religion, I thought it would involve in-depth consideration of the kinds of issues that these philosophers raised. “Fear and Loathing Revisited”? “I and Thou in the 21st Century”? Terrific!<br /><br />But I found it was not so. According to the article about Professor Parson’s resignation, “much of philosophy of religion consists in working out the logical implications of arguments”, such as “the argument from evil”. And what is that “argument”? It’s the old chestnut about whether the existence of evil in the world proves that there cannot be a loving and omnipotent god.<br /><br />Please don’t get me wrong: I don’t for a moment mean to minimize the agony of the person who cries from the heart, How can a loving God permit this terrible thing to happen, my child to die, my home to be destroyed by a hurricane, or whatever tragedy it is. There is evil in the world and it does challenge our faith.<br /><br />But the “argument from evil” is not a <em>cri de coeur</em> by someone whose faith is being challenged, it’s an intellectual exercise by philosophers who like to play games with ideas. The article tells us:<br /><br /><em>In the 1970’s, several leading philosophers of religion broke the argument [from evil] down into a “logical” version (that any amount of evil is logically incompatible with such a god) which most philosophers consider defeated, and an “evidential” version (that certain amounts or types of evil we observe in our world are evidence against such a god) which remains a thorny problem</em>.<br /><br />This seems like a waste of intellect. Do these philosophers ask themselves whether perhaps God could have a different definition of, or perspective on, evil than they do? Have they considered Genesis 1-3 and tried to understand how a religious tradition reconciles the reality of evil in the world with the existence of a loving God? Have they even read and attempted to understand “Fear and Loathing”?<br /><br />These are rhetorical questions. Perhaps the philosophers of religion have considered all these things and satisfied themselves that their own approach is right. But I doubt it. We are told in this article that 73% of philosophers are atheists, and I suspect that even those who are believers in their hearts know whose game they have to play. <br /><br />I find this all depressing. It’s like learning that your professor of music is tone deaf. There may be certain things that you can learn from such a teacher, but it can only go so far,<br /><br />I was thinking about this stuff the other day when I saw that Turner Classic Movies was showing <em>Glory</em> on Martin Luther King Day. I’ve seen this great movie two or three times before, and it is painful each time, but worth the pain. It tells the story of a regiment of Black soldiers, recruited by the Union in the Civil War. Near the end of the movie, the night before the great battle in which most of them will die, the soldiers gather around the camp fires and sing hymns, pray, and testify. Their faith in God gives them the ability to face the coming day.<br /><br />I don’t have words that can evoke what I felt when I saw that scene. You can see most of the scene <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBBk0q6AK-0">here</a>. <br /><br />This scene says more about the Christian religion than any philosophical exercise can do. Our faith is a peculiar mixture of heart and head, emotion and intellect. On the one hand, it has a mystical power that seems to plumb depths far more profound than mere intellect can reach. On the other hand, it is not a blind and foolish tooth-fairy faith; it depends on a confident knowledge of the fact that God so loved this real material world, and us its real material inhabitants, that he sent his only begotten son so that we could have eternal life. Isn’t that more important that any philosopher’s word games?The Godfatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575359417766667457noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-3494051332941005762011-01-05T07:42:00.000-08:002011-01-05T08:04:38.896-08:00For We Have Seen His Star In The East . . .<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhJOrTkO4miGFcMIF6ukFQCqB7FegjdIxyI_CKsv330nXajBRlewRD5xQ0TByi3btGdzuUJTdN9nT_tQmSGvoCKpWZbBDYfrnWgzGSbZrBBCmy6VRo048vOMCSJ9Cm9JxgseuT7PcF6WE/s1600/three-wise-men-star.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 282px; height: 179px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhJOrTkO4miGFcMIF6ukFQCqB7FegjdIxyI_CKsv330nXajBRlewRD5xQ0TByi3btGdzuUJTdN9nT_tQmSGvoCKpWZbBDYfrnWgzGSbZrBBCmy6VRo048vOMCSJ9Cm9JxgseuT7PcF6WE/s320/three-wise-men-star.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5558728516575361042" /></a><br />By Eric Von Salzen<br /><br />Some call it Little Christmas, or Twelfth Night, or Epiphany: The end of the Christmas season. Traditionally, it’s the time when the Three Kings visited the Christ child<br /><br />Everyone who reads this blog probably knows that scripture doesn’t call them kings, doesn’t even say there were three of them. Matthew’s Gospel, the only one that mentions them, says that “wise men [magi] from the east” came looking for the new-born King of the Jews. The notes in the New Oxford Annotated Bible say that the Magi were “a learned class in ancient Persia”, and that they might be called “astrologers”. <br /><br />The wise men told King Herod that they had seen a “star” that signified the birth of a new king of the Jews. It’s uncertain what the “star” might have been; some have suggested that it might have been a comet, or a nova or supernova. I recently <a href="http://news.discovery.com/space/the-star-of-bethlehem-was-it-jupiter.html">read</a> that the “star” may have been the planet Jupiter, which passed close to the bright star Regulus three times between September of 3 BCE and May of 2 BCE, and for about three months during that period moved in a westerly (“retrograde”) direction – i.e., toward Judea from the perspective of observers in Persia. In June of 2 BCE Jupiter and Venus, the two brightest planets, overlapped, to appear as a single object. Astrologers might well have interpreted this unusual conjunction of stars as a sign of a portentous event.<br /><br />If that’s the correct explanation, it solves one puzzle in Matthew’s gospel: Why nobody other than the wise men seems to have seen the “star”. When the Magi come to King Herod’s court with their story about the star, this was apparently the first time that anyone there had heard about the phenomenon. In fact, Herod asks the wise men when the star first appeared. If the “star” was a comet, everyone would have noticed it; even a nova or supernova would have been widely remarked, certainly by Herod’s chief priests and scribes (by the way, a 10-year old Canadian girl recently became the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12110747">youngest person to discover a supernova </a>). But an unusual conjunction of Jupiter, Regulus, and Venus might have been noticed only by astrologers.<br /><br />In most of the Christmas pageants I’ve seen (or been in, as I wrote <a href="http://anglicancentrist5.blogspot.com/2008/12/third-king.html">here</a> a couple of years ago), you have Mary and Joseph and the Babe; the three kings and the star; and shepherds, their sheep, and the angels who brought the tidings of great joy. But there’s no gospel that has both kings and shepherds. Matthew has the wise men, Luke has the shepherds. I assume that the new-born savior was visited by both wise men and shepherds (perhaps not at the same time – that could have made the stable awfully crowded), so why did Matthew choose to feature the wise men in his story of the savior’s birth, while Luke chose to go with the shepherds?<br /><br />On the face of it, it would seem to make more sense for Matthew to tell about the shepherds, and for Luke to tell about the Persian astrologers. Matthew’s is regarded as the most “Jewish” of the gospels, whereas Luke, who had been the companion of Paul in bringing the message of Christ to non-Jewish foreigners, seems to be writing for Greek Christians. So you might expect Matthew to emphasize Christianity’s Jewish background in telling the story of the birth of Christ, and Luke to emphasize its universality.<br /><br />But what does Luke give us? Shepherds. It would be hard to imagine a more obvious Jewish symbol. The ancestors of the Jewish people, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the twelve sons of Jacob for whom the twelve tribes of Israel were named, were all shepherds (so was Abel, the second son of Adam and Eve, who was murdered by his brother Cain, the farmer). After the Israelites were freed from Egyptian slavery, they became farmers in the land that God had promised them, but they seem to have regarded that as a demotion from their ancestral occupation: Their great king, David, was a shepherd, and shepherds and sheep appear throughout the Hebrew Scriptures (“The Lord is my shepherd”, “Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel”, “He shall feed his flock like a shepherd”, “And I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them”, etc.). Thus, if you wanted your gospel to emphasize Christianity’s Jewish background, it would be entirely appropriate to have the birth of the Messiah of the Jews announced to shepherds abiding in the fields, and to show them – representatives of the Israelite ideal – as the first people called to worship him.<br /><br />So if shepherds are an obvious Jewish symbol, why didn’t Matthew, the gospeler to the Jews, have shepherds in his story? Why, instead, did he give us foreign astronomers? <br /><br />The answer, I think, is that the wise men were just as much a symbol of an idealized Israel as Luke’s shepherds were, just a symbol of a different aspect of the ideal. Wise men coming from afar to adore the new-born King of the Jews is something that the Jewish scriptures had been expecting for centuries before the birth of Jesus.<br /><br />The Psalmist said of the King of Israel:<br /><br /><em>May the kings of Tarshish and of the isles<br />Render him tribute,<br />May the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts.<br />May all kings fall down before him,<br />And all nations give him service.</em><br />[Psalm 72:10-11]<br /><br />The wise men weren’t kings, but it would have been appropriate if they were.<br /><br />But it wasn’t just the King of Israel that foreigners were to honor, but the Lord who the king represented:<br /><br /><em>All the ends of the earth shall remember<br />And turn to the Lord;<br />And all the families of the nations<br />Shall worship before him</em>.<br />[Psalm 22:27]<br /><br /><em>All the nations you have made shall come<br />And bow down before you, O Lord,<br />And shall glorify thy name</em>.<br />[Psalm 86:9]<br /><br />Isaiah (and Micah, too) prophesied:<br /><br /><em>Many peoples shall come and say,<br />“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,<br />To the house of the God of Jacob;<br />That he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.”<br />For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, <br />And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem</em>.<br />[Isaiah 2:3; Micah 4:2]<br /><br />Over and over again in the Old Testament we see the same prophecy, that the gentiles will in time come to understand that the God of Israel is the God of all the world. Thus, Israel, by being God’s special people, would become the means of bringing the rest of the world to God.<br /><br />Matthew’s story about eastern sages coming across the trackless wastes to do homage to the new born king is therefore just as “Jewish” a story as Luke’s story about shepherds. Luke’s shepherds remind us of the ancient, unspoiled, ideal Israel; Matthew’s story reminds us of the Hebrew tradition that the nations will come to Zion for instruction, that Israel will be a beacon to the entire world, “a light to enlighten the gentiles”. <br /><br />For us today, or for me at least, the story of the wise men has more resonance than the story of the shepherds. Shepherds aren’t part of the world that I live in, but wise men are – that is, men and women who think that their learning enables them to understand how the world works. There are times when I find myself thinking that I’m one of them. So it’s good to be reminded that the wise men in Matthew’s story got it wrong. Their wisdom, their science, told them that what they were seeking was an earthly king, a king of the Jews like Herod; certainly that’s what Herod feared that the star foretold. When they got to Bethlehem, the child that they found would not grow up to be an earthly king. He would never issue an edict, or call forth an army, or impose a tax, or execute a rival, or do any of the things that kings did, and do. But when he died, three decades later, under a sign that mockingly called him “King of the Jews”, the Roman centurion in charge of his execution said, “Truly this man was God’s son.” That’s who the wise men had found, not the king they were looking for.<br /><br />That’s quite an epiphany.The Godfatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575359417766667457noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-54834589449971686512010-12-22T08:04:00.000-08:002010-12-23T10:12:42.287-08:00Fear Not: For, Behold, . . .<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUT5tC6Felg6fTui-D0dC4aPvC0XxEYkCggcGlFMmOojhI7iojQpnmtsBnFwKV0RN8ktBbpZrQA1n_jbD5tZ-znTZeAH4faxNWPZ-zNv6ffnNezq_DywJ3E6UN9-A5LL5F58nWATCbiDE/s1600/heraldangel.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 287px; height: 129px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUT5tC6Felg6fTui-D0dC4aPvC0XxEYkCggcGlFMmOojhI7iojQpnmtsBnFwKV0RN8ktBbpZrQA1n_jbD5tZ-znTZeAH4faxNWPZ-zNv6ffnNezq_DywJ3E6UN9-A5LL5F58nWATCbiDE/s320/heraldangel.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5553538566491310754" /></a>
<br />
<br />I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
<br />
<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTocd2au8P0x3bOqK0PMpYGBRiyejXCH0V3S3mh8jnizQi_CRQhlHSWbfKYnPLUP_vIsjLz7Q2m7FkT8tD_qBBq5LRNYtGBWvZxFHyBIiN8iCXI8YtP33KKLPQ3C_6tsURFTzf6FfRy-E/s1600/nativityscene.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 220px; height: 229px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTocd2au8P0x3bOqK0PMpYGBRiyejXCH0V3S3mh8jnizQi_CRQhlHSWbfKYnPLUP_vIsjLz7Q2m7FkT8tD_qBBq5LRNYtGBWvZxFHyBIiN8iCXI8YtP33KKLPQ3C_6tsURFTzf6FfRy-E/s320/nativityscene.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5553538987321686274" /></a>
<br />
<br />And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will toward men.
<br />
<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibA3P-W5ehREQkmg_HLzc5MS2LWNiNxzAuigFomM6molooeUMmC1y2EH-QnybBl2WLFX4_AjhAfq6-mYFQgmRzZ-DmN4unzJ1gASAzNU-VYanSaEukbwwYH3LYzOrM78IlyOeOjTDAVzM/s1600/heavenlyhost.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 142px; height: 196px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibA3P-W5ehREQkmg_HLzc5MS2LWNiNxzAuigFomM6molooeUMmC1y2EH-QnybBl2WLFX4_AjhAfq6-mYFQgmRzZ-DmN4unzJ1gASAzNU-VYanSaEukbwwYH3LYzOrM78IlyOeOjTDAVzM/s320/heavenlyhost.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5553539830150368722" /></a>
<br />
<br />Merry Christmas from the Godfather!The Godfatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575359417766667457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-6679068489765838992010-12-05T11:38:00.000-08:002010-12-05T12:09:28.293-08:00A Mug’s Game<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgShFnRFGVdG3yZKHD2TcOjm01WrIMeT0wom4Jof2WoBKWtJuefbtAlj3gv_PnYPJ9VXG4qbblxLfms6Z1vJ-jMPMhXO1PkbM15pJoT-bbVBBXbGMezzSso9jWTq6ZXRcrkdrr0S0hJGnI/s1600/Blair-HitchensDebateImage.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 155px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgShFnRFGVdG3yZKHD2TcOjm01WrIMeT0wom4Jof2WoBKWtJuefbtAlj3gv_PnYPJ9VXG4qbblxLfms6Z1vJ-jMPMhXO1PkbM15pJoT-bbVBBXbGMezzSso9jWTq6ZXRcrkdrr0S0hJGnI/s320/Blair-HitchensDebateImage.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5547285229462133298" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />By Eric Von Salzen<br /><br />Have you heard? A debate was held the other day between religion and atheism.<br /><br />Religion lost.<br /><br />Although this debate is hardly in the same class as the infamous Oxford Union debate in 1933 (the one where the winning side affirmed that “this house will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country”), it is nevertheless instructive. <br /><br />The debate was held on November 26, 2010 in Toronto, Canada (no, really, please don’t stop reading this just because it happened in Canada). The proposition under consideration was:<br /><br /><em>Be it resolved, religion is a force for good in the world.</em><br /><br />For the affirmative was Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister. Blair is a recent convert to Roman Catholicism. For the negative was Christopher Hitchens, a prominent polemicist for atheism, the author of <em>God Is Not Great</em>, among other writings. (Hitchens is dying of cancer, which has not softened his position on God, and which, to his credit, he did not exploit in the course of the debate.)<br /><br />The transcript of the debate, and a link to the video, can he found <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/11/christopher-hitchens-tony-blair">here</a>.<br /><br />The religion side, as I said, lost. The vote was 68% against to 32% for the proposition. To be fair to Tony, the deck was stacked against him: Before the debate, the audience was 57% against and 22% for.<br /><br />There are two lessons I suggest we can draw from this debate. The first is that a good polemicist will beat a good politician in debate any time. That shouldn’t be surprising. A polemicist’s role is to argue and score points, to make the other side look foolish, stupid, evil, uninformed, or whatever it takes to win. But a politician’s role is to solve problems, and (at least in a democracy) that means working with opponents, compromising, and downplaying differences of principle. Blair, who was able to lead his country through an unpopular but necssary war, never really had a chance in this debate.<br /><br />Time and again, Hitchens slammed religion in general and every specific religion that came to mind, not fairly, of course, but effectively:<br /><br /><em>In the religious view, human beings are “objects, in a cruel experiment, whereby we are created sick, and commanded to be well”.</em><br /><br /><em>God is “swift to punish [us for] the original sins with which [he] so tenderly gifted us in the very first place.”</em><br /><br /><em>“Is it good for the world to worship a deity that takes sides in wars and human affairs? To appeal to our fear and to our guilt, is it good for the world? To our terror, our terror of death, is it good to appeal?"</em><br /><br /><em>Circumcision is genital mutilation.</em><br /><br /><em>The Old Testament is responsible for the inability to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.</em><br /><br /><em>The Roman Catholic church has “preached that AIDS was not as bad as condoms”.</em><br /><br />To none of these slanders did Mr. Blair offer a rebuttal. He eschewed (as a politician should) theological issues, and talked instead about all the good things that religious people do for the poor and down trodden of the world.<br /><br /><em>“[I]t is undoubtedly true that people commit horrific acts of evil in the name of religion. It is also undoubtedly true that people do acts of extraordinary common good inspired by religion.”</em><br /><br /><em>“My claim is just very simple, there are nonetheless people who are inspired by their faith to do good.”</em><br /><br />But, as a politician who wants to build and maintain relationships with any group that can be helpful in solving problems, he has to say that good works are not exclusively the province of religion, that non-religious people can do the same wonderful things that religious people do. He describes work done by religious people in Africa with children infected by AIDS, and says:<br /><br /><em>Is it possible for them to have done that without their religious faith? Of course it's possible for them to have done it.</em><br /><br />Later he concedes that:<br /><br /><em>Yes, of course, it is absolutely true, they might decide to do this, irrespective of the fact that they have religious faith.</em><br /><br />And again:<br /><br /><em>So when we say, well, that could be done by humanism, yes, it could.</em><br /><br />Well, if there are bad things that could be ascribed, at least in part, to religion – the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Catholic-Protestant conflict in Ireland – and if the good things done by religious people can also be done by humanists, how do you conclude that, net, religion is good for the world?<br /><br />The second lesson from this debate is more important, and it is this: It is folly to try to defend or promote “religion” as a generic concept. “Religion” is not a faith, it’s a category. Talking about “religion” in general is like talking about “husbands” or “wives” in general: The differences within the category render generalizations meaningless – unless you want to do stand-up, like Henny Youngman or Phyllis Diller.<br /><br />If you try to defend or promote “religion”, you drain all the life out of the particular faiths that people embrace and end up with mush like this:<br /><br /><em>There is a basic belief common to all faiths, in serving and loving God, through serving and loving your fellow human beings.</em><br /><br />It’s not that this Esperanto of “religion” is wrong, it’s just that it’s so weak, compared to, say:<br /><br /><em>He has told you, O mortal, what is good:<br />And what does the Lord require of you<br />But to do justice, and to love kindness,<br />And to walk humbly with your God?</em><br /><br />Or to:<br /><br /><em>Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.<br />And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.<br />And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.</em><br /><br />Besides, beyond the “basic belief” that Mr. Blair says is “common to all faiths”, there are specific beliefs of specific religions, and, truth be told, some of them are hard enough for members of the religion to defend; so how much harder you make it for yourself if you set about to defend all “religion”. Mr. Blair was challenged not only regarding his own church’s positions on birth control and original sin, but also on the Jewish rite of circumcision and the supposed Old Testament warrant for Israeli expansionism, on the Biblical literalism of some fundamentalist Christians, on faith healing, and so forth. There was little he was able or willing to say in response.<br /><br />The fact is, if you are a faithful believer in a particular religion, there are all sorts of beliefs of other religions that you think are unreasonable, repellant, ridiculous, or just plain crazy. Why should you set yourself up to be beaten over the head about them by becoming an advocate for “religion”?<br /><br />The defender of “religion” also has to deal with the inconvenient fact that a great deal of the conflict in the world arises out of disputes between members of different religions: Israeli Jews v. Arab Muslims, Roman Catholic Irish v. Protestant Irish, Hindu Indians v. Muslim Pakistanis, and so on. Tom Lehrer put it so well, years ago:<br /><br /><em>Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics, <br />And the Catholics hate the Protestants,<br />And the Hindus hate the Muslims, <br />And everybody hates the Jews. </em><br /><br />Mr. Blair argued that some religious leaders struggle hard to bring peace to places rent by sectarian conflict, like Northern Ireland and the Middle East. Undoubtedly he is right. But if the question is whether “religion” is a force for good in the world, you don’t prove it that it is by showing that some religious people try to repair damage caused by religious differences. If you do, John Lennon answers you: <br /><br /><em>Imagine. . . no religion, too<br />Imagine all the people <br />Living life in peace</em><br /><br />If you are out to defend “religion”, every religious conflict rebuts your argument. It’s different if you defend a particular religion. Your particular religion may be blameless with respect to, say, the conflict in Northern Ireland, and indeed may be playing a role in bringing about peace and tolerance. Even if your religion is involved in a particular conflict, the option is open to you, as a member of that faith, to defend your religion’s position (“we got here first”, or “they keep attacking us”, or whatever), or even to confess that your religion is in the wrong and you join with some of your co-religionists who are trying to right the wrong. You can’t do that if you are trying to defend “religion” in general.<br /><br />You may devote yourself to Buddhism, or Judaism, or Hinduism, your life may have been changed by Islam, or Christianity, or Zoroastrianism, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who has devoted his life to “religion”.<br /><br />None of this means that members of different faiths can’t or don’t cooperate to accomplish common goals and to make this world a better place. They do so all the time, as Mr. Blair testified. But they do so as Jews, or Christians, or Muslims, as Roman Catholics, or Presbyterians, or Anglicans. There’s no need to submerge these powerful religious impulses in some amorphous thing called “religion”.The Godfatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575359417766667457noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-22875615630071392432010-10-30T14:02:00.000-07:002010-10-30T14:12:18.027-07:00The Rich Man and Lazarus -- Updated<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzPTXJjpgzHcIZ4Qg-WtJoWJXjbSmCrh9eAZcUWAq0LzG7iedMToYKq7jKdK4oIFOysOiG2otPTJiLDl6SW99M7IJL9ROqnj-Eq0XMqSaGEdrAm47BLWqrwh32XWOgS7XJhAQTcxWL2YI/s1600/rich_man_in_hell.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 151px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzPTXJjpgzHcIZ4Qg-WtJoWJXjbSmCrh9eAZcUWAq0LzG7iedMToYKq7jKdK4oIFOysOiG2otPTJiLDl6SW99M7IJL9ROqnj-Eq0XMqSaGEdrAm47BLWqrwh32XWOgS7XJhAQTcxWL2YI/s200/rich_man_in_hell.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5533947801932125986" /></a><br /><br /><br />There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in fine Italian suits and custom-made shirts, and fared sumptuously every day at the finest restaurants in the city and also at home for verily he employed a cordon bleu chef.<br /><br />And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at the door of the rich man’s Fifth Avenue coop, full of sores, although not for long because the door man drove him off,<br /><br />And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table, or with the garbage from the finest restaurants in the city, or even from the worst ones; moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.<br /><br />And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom; the rich man also died, and was buried.<br /><br />And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.<br /><br />And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, it doesn’t have to be Evian, even tap water will do, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. <br /><br />But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted, and thou are tormented.<br /><br />And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, very much like the door man of your Fifth Avenue coop; so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.<br /><br />Then he said, but Father Abraham, although I didn’t feed Lazarus the crumbs from my table, all my life I paid very high taxes, you wouldn’t believe how high my taxes were, which supported homeless shelters and soup kitchens and other good things for people like Lazarus. You ought to give me some credit for that.<br /><br />But Abraham said, Son, you were required to pay your taxes. If you had not done so, the soldiers would have come and thrown you in prison. This shows no love, no charity, for Lazarus.<br /><br />Then the rich man said, but Father Abraham, that’s not all I did. I voted, and I always voted for the Party of Compassion, and gave the candidates of that Party many silver talents of political contributions through several different PACs, and the candidates of the Party of Compassion promised to raise the taxes on all the rich men in the land, to pay for more homeless shelters and soup kitchens, and many other good things; so if you give me no credit for paying my own taxes, you should give me credit for making other rich men pay more taxes.<br /><br />But Abraham said, Son, I have said that paying taxes that you are required to pay shows no love or charity for Lazarus. How then can you imagine that making other men pay taxes shows love or charity for Lazarus?<br /><br />Then the rich man said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldnst send Lazarus to my father’s house;<br /><br />For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, and tell them they can stop supporting the Party of Compassion, because it won’t keep them from coming into this place of torment; let them support the Party of Frugality, which will lower their taxes and they can eat and drink even more sumptuously before they die.<br /><br />And Abraham saith unto him, Thou still getteth not the point.<br /><br />By Eric Von SalzenThe Godfatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575359417766667457noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-69789039646840982632010-10-06T11:34:00.000-07:002010-10-06T11:58:05.010-07:00Ignorance In The Pew[s]<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZrActWlrDoep4ePSMF7oSPMoX62vzJNb7WgaisaHv73eDYApOtZpqf5PVzNZNyhyphenhyphenEjicfvGyplXQ3Hn8DJr3PzTeJV-ZuGWvPpcpw_7qYDSbnIdcKrulJrL32WGjhW1EEubgrm3jwDuU/s1600/Pew+Image.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 172px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZrActWlrDoep4ePSMF7oSPMoX62vzJNb7WgaisaHv73eDYApOtZpqf5PVzNZNyhyphenhyphenEjicfvGyplXQ3Hn8DJr3PzTeJV-ZuGWvPpcpw_7qYDSbnIdcKrulJrL32WGjhW1EEubgrm3jwDuU/s200/Pew+Image.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5525003586391374882" /></a><br /><br />By Eric Von Salzen<br /><br /><br />Are religious people more ignorant and less educated than non-religious people? Non-religious people often think so, and may find aid and comfort for that opinion in a survey of “<a href="http://pewforum.org/Other-Beliefs-and-Practices/U-S-Religious-Knowledge-Survey.aspx">U.S. Religious Knowledge</a>” recently released by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Pew concludes that, although “America is one of the most religious of the world’s developed nations”, <br /><br /><em>[L]arge numbers of Americans are uninformed about the tenets, practices, history and leading figures of major faith traditions – including their own</em>.<br /><br />Indeed, Pew says:<br /><br /><em>Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions</em>.<br /><br />On average, Americans answered only half of the 32 “religious knowledge” questions correctly, but atheists, agnostics, Jews, and Mormons got 20-21 right. Protestants got an average score of 16, and Roman Catholics just under 15.<br /><br />The specific examples of religious ignorance that Pew highlights are:<br /><br /><em>More than four-in-ten Catholics in the United States (45%) do not know that their church teaches that the bread and wine used in Communion do not merely symbolize but actually become the body and blood of Christ. About half of Protestants (53%) cannot correctly identify Martin Luther as the person whose writings and actions inspired the Protestant Reformation, which made their religion a separate branch of Christianity. Roughly four-in-ten Jews (43%) do not recognize that Maimonides, one of the most venerated rabbis in history, was Jewish</em>.<br /><br />I was surprised by these results, because I haven’t found that the religious people I know are ignorant about religion. Besides, I'm a religious person, and I'm not dumb (at least I don't think so). Also, I hate to see more ammunition being provided to the anti-religious zealots.<br /><br />So I wanted to take a look at the actual questions and answers that led Pew to these conclusions. It wasn’t easy to find them; they aren’t highlighted on the Pew website. But after combing through the text, I found them in Appendix B. On closer examination, they undermine Pew’s facile conclusions that I quoted above. <br /><br />Let's start with the question about transubstantiation, which 45% of Catholics got wrong. The question reads: “Which of the following best describes Catholic teaching about the bread and wine used for Communion?” The two choices are: They “actually <em>become</em> the body and blood of Jesus Christ” or they “are <em>symbols</em> of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.” The first is the “correct” answer to Pew, but it’s incomplete. The Roman Catholic Church, as I understand it, teaches that the bread and wine do become in truth the body and blood of Christ, but also that there is no change in the empirical appearances of the bread and wine; that is, the “substance” of the bread and wine are changed, but their “accidents” are not. Now, I would assume that most Catholics are well-enough indoctrinated to pick the first answer, whether they understand all the details or not – and 55% did get it right – but I can’t get all worked up that a minority picked the other answer. Transubstantiation is a complex theological issue that doesn’t lend itself to a multiple-choice test. <br /><br />Then there’s Martin Luther, who, Pew says, most (53%) Protestants “cannot correctly identify . . . as the person whose writings and actions inspired the Protestant Reformation, which made their religion [sic] a separate branch of Christianity”. The question Pew asked was, “What was the name of the person whose writings and actions inspired the Protestant Reformation?”, and the choices were Martin Luther, Thomas Aquinas, and John Wesley. Again, this is a badly worded question. I suspect that a number of respondents who gave the “wrong” answer knew who Martin Luther was, but they didn’t know what the phrase “the Protestant Reformation” meant. Of course this phrase is part of the vocabulary of theologians, historians, and history junkies like me, but if you aren’t familiar with the term, its meaning isn’t self-evident. Just from the words, it could refer to a reform of Protestantism, not a revolt against the Roman Catholic Church (perhaps that’s what the 12% of respondents were thinking when they named John Wesley as “the inspiration of the Protestant Reformation”). The dead giveaway that this was a bad question is that Pew, in describing the results, and wanting to emphasize for readers the degree of ignorance the answers to this question represented, felt it necessary to explain what the Protestant Reformation was (“the Protestant Reformation . . . made their [Protestants’] religion [sic, again] a separate branch of Christianity”). If the respondents had been given the benefit of that hint, I think it likely that more than 47% would have gotten the answer right.<br /><br />And then there’s Maimonides. The question was, “Maimonides was ___”, and the possible answers were, Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, Mormon, or Hindu. Only 8% of all respondents knew that he was Jewish, but 57% of Jewish respondents did. Again, it’s a bad question. A non-Jew is very unlikely to have heard of Maimonides, unless he/she has studied comparative religion (I don’t even think he’s mentioned in EFM). It seems to me peculiar to ask about Maimonides, but not an equivalent Christian figure, like Thomas Aquinas for example. Of course, the reason Pew picked Maimonides was undoubtedly because his name doesn’t <em>sound</em> Jewish. If the question had been, “What religion was Hillel ben Samuel?” you’d probably have 90% correct answers, even though hardly any respondent would know who he was.<br /><br />Thus, the three questions that Pew chose to highlight do not, in my view, prove as much about Americans’ "ignorance" about religion as Pew seems to think they do. In fact, the survey as a whole shows that Americans know a lot about religions, their own and others’. Almost three-quarters of respondents knew that Jesus was born in Bethlehem (not Nazareth or Jerusalem, two of the other choices), and a similar number knew that Moses led the exodus from Egypt; more than half knew that the Golden Rule isn’t one of the Ten Commandments, and a like number knew that Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son for God. Fully 82% knew that Mother Teresa was Catholic.<br /><br />Other answers, though, do show surprising ignorance. I was shocked that fewer than half of respondents were able to name the four Gospels correctly. (A few years ago some might have mistakenly named the Gospel of Judas, which for a time received a disproportionate amount of attention in the media, but that’s old news now, I think.) In a survey in which more than three-quarters of respondents identify themselves as Christians, it’s hard to understand this result.<br /><br />About 2/3 of respondents knew that Zeus was the king of the gods in Greek mythology, but only about a third knew that Vishnu and Shiva are Hindu deities (actually, the question refers to them as “central figures” in a religion). Given the relative number of adherents to these religious traditions, one might infer a shortcoming in our educational systems. <br /><br />Certainly, those whose job it is to teach religion to children, youth, and adults should see the results of the Pew survey as a challenge, but there’s no reason to despair.The Godfatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575359417766667457noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-27725334287739784032010-10-05T11:56:00.000-07:002010-10-05T12:01:13.315-07:00CALLING ALL BIBLE SCHOLARS<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz7UPiFct7WYW_C-_R83n6r2yhdz5WlT40fQdHY-5aiteSUO7-P-pVy66baTZmvjqtI1RhXspRv-SGmW7oTSuvnlWj0J62ohSD7OPzflRcc5NGZjy3V81RASN7OHjw5ID1royVTyV2eOA/s1600/ingridbetancourt.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 192px; height: 262px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz7UPiFct7WYW_C-_R83n6r2yhdz5WlT40fQdHY-5aiteSUO7-P-pVy66baTZmvjqtI1RhXspRv-SGmW7oTSuvnlWj0J62ohSD7OPzflRcc5NGZjy3V81RASN7OHjw5ID1royVTyV2eOA/s320/ingridbetancourt.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524638242369521394" /></a><br />Ingrid Betancourt, a Columbian politician, was kidnapped by FARC guerillas and held captive for six years. She and other hostages were finally freed by Columbian army forces.<br /><br />Ms. Betancourt has written a book about her experiences, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Even-Silence-Has-End-Captivity/dp/1594202656/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1286304811&sr=1-1">Even Silence Has An End </a>, which I haven’t read and won’t discuss. What I want to call to your attention is a statement from an <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130108179">interview</a> in which Ms. Betancourt talks about her captivity. She said that one of the few books she had access to was the Bible, and she read it over and over again. She described a passage that stuck out:<br /><br /><em>“It says that when you cross the valley of tears, and you arrive to the oasis, the reward of God is not success, it’s not money, it’s not admiration or fame, it’s not power. His reward is rest. So that’s what I want for me now.”</em><br /><br />I think that’s very powerful, particularly given the circumstances in which she read it. But I can’t figure out <strong>what Bible passage she’s referring to</strong>.<br /><br />Can you? Please comment.The Godfatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575359417766667457noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-48021653099630386192010-09-07T08:37:00.000-07:002010-09-07T08:38:10.967-07:00Love and HateNine years ago this week, the men captured the planes, destroyed the buildings, and committed vast evil against our country.<br /><br />Since then, w/ 8,000 dead at home and in Asia, w/ trillions of dollars in damages and rebuilding and fighting: we’ve been at war.<br /><br />Nine years of war, and an economic meltdown, numerous mega-disasters, and extreme weather patterns, and it sure seems like times are tough.<br /><br />It’s no wonder the current president and his predecessor aren’t too popular.<br /><br />But, this is -- nothing new. Is it?<br /><br />The troubles we face in this country didn’t begin on 9/11. Or the 2000 election. Or with Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter or Nixon. Or the deaths of King and Kennedy.<br /><br />Or Viet Nam, Korea, Two World Wars, or the War Between the States.<br /><br />No, the troubles we know all to well, are old. They are original troubles. They go all the way back, to just a few moments after the beginning.<br /><br />In the Garden of Eden.<br /><br />The issues that plague us -- greed, ego, sloth, profligacy, corpulence, materialism -- and that’s just at Wal-Mart -- are not new issues. They are just old fashioned sin. And that’s what’s wrong.<br /><br />Disaster, tragedy, scarcity, and war -- the bane of peace, harmony, plenty and all is well -- they are the teeth of sin.<br /><br />But, welcome to real life.<br /><br />Real life. It’s a mixed bag. There’s much to love and there’s much to endure. There’s much to fight, and much to flee. <br /><br />Real life as we know it, began the day humanity learned to disobey God. <br /><br />The poetic vision of Genesis says we learned to disobey God the day we ate that darn apple, from that darn tree, and our eyes to truly see and hearts to truly love were distorted. Bent. Blurred.<br /><br />God gave us eyes to see the glorious infinity of all things, and hearts to love with the pure, unconditional love of God.<br /><br />But, then, in Eden, with that apple, and the infection of sin, our eyes started to see in a new way. Not to glorious infinity, but partial sight. Dim sight. Sight that catches only reflections of the truth, and those bent in such a way that all things look like what we want, or fear, or desire, or hate.<br /><br />In Eden, when infected by sin, our hearts started to love in a new kind of way. Not with joy, and hope, and unconditional concern for others, but rather with self-interest. Infected by sin, our hearts learned to love not God and neighbor as self; but self, and neighbor when it benefits self.<br /><br />And from the infection of sin, the distortion of our eyes to color the world as we desire or fear, and the distortion of our hearts to put our selves first, and those allied with our selves, enmity, strife and sorrow have grown and grown.<br /><br />That’s what Jesus is getting at in his very HARD words this morning.<br /><br />So, what could Jesus possibly mean when he says, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple...”???<br /><br />Such surprising words from the King of Love, no?<br /><br />Well. To be sure, we must know that Jesus is setting up a very serious teaching here -- and thus uses extreme language to set the tone and stage.<br /><br />As well, as a first century rabbi, Jesus speaks out of a context in which Masters required total obedience from Disciples. Rabbis were given undivided loyalty by their pupils. That was the culture of Judaism. <br /><br />So, partly, when Jesus says, “hate ... family, etc.”, he’s saying “Discipleship requires total obedience, and all other priorities are second.”<br /><br />Jesus as Master, as Lord, as Teacher of Disciples is thus talking about putting that relationship with him first and foremost.<br /><br />Also, going deeper, Jesus is talking about the deep corruption of the world by sin, though, and how we must learn to hate its fallenness.<br /><br />We must learn from God to do away, to shed, to crucify, all those distortions of sin’s infection.<br /><br />We must shed our selfish sight and selfish loves -- not to become hateful, of course -- but to learn how to truly see and love.<br /><br />---<br /><br />The challenge of today’s Gospel is a real as ever. Do you, do we, really truly see the truth and know how to love?<br /><br />Examine your loves -- do we love our family -- for their sake? Or for ours.<br /><br />Do we love our partners and children and siblings for their sake -- or for ours? <br /><br />Are we truly loving?<br /><br />Jesus says, the only way to truly love, to truly see, is to begin by opening our hearts to the Lordship of God. By giving our hearts, our eyes, our lives to the Lordship, the Mastery, the Ownership of God.<br /><br />The promise is that by doing so, our eyes and hearts will be restored to the way they were when God made them. We will begin to see what God sees in all people, and we will begin to truly love God, neighbor and self.<br /><br />The Gospel says this is the only cure for what ails the world.<br /><br />AmenUnknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-77790554663171542572010-09-03T12:07:00.001-07:002010-09-03T12:11:51.757-07:00"The Grand Design"<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUu8GuJvq3mpt1jANaz8q809-tUndYFxb2TtJTEos4JQCGmMLwidyDAXYe1643ZLfwPz8RCuxQO_nXoahtuevQ5V0k7wsotB9OnTksQAZwEe345eYd9E1-xoBwki7uthzNhgmdSyJ-YdQ/s1600/Creation.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 120px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUu8GuJvq3mpt1jANaz8q809-tUndYFxb2TtJTEos4JQCGmMLwidyDAXYe1643ZLfwPz8RCuxQO_nXoahtuevQ5V0k7wsotB9OnTksQAZwEe345eYd9E1-xoBwki7uthzNhgmdSyJ-YdQ/s200/Creation.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5512766067485077746" /></a><br /><br />By Eric Von Salzen<br /><br />I’m looking forward to reading Stephen Hawking’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Grand-Design-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553805371/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1283540749&sr=1-1">new book </a>, in which he argues that we do not need to believe in God to explain the existence of the universe. Instead, we are to <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/09/02/hawking.god.universe/index.html?iref=NS1">believe in </a> “M-theory”, which involves 11 space-time dimensions, “vibrating strings, ... point particles, two-dimensional membranes, three-dimensional blobs and other objects that are more difficult to picture and occupy even more dimensions of space.” Boy, that’s a relief! Just good old common sense, and none of that religious mumbo-jumbo!The Godfatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575359417766667457noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-78258573321830212642010-08-16T13:57:00.000-07:002010-08-16T14:14:04.087-07:00A Cloud of Witnesses<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJf86ukhpPuMXvn_en0JdKbwmiC0qlZmE-nCbjB8s3kwqcDVn6HMrsUQdppo6FbYwVzj9Gt67PC75ATYIqezVhyQ51ce5s67AwzhYjl8a9Zthkqk6CsK4EdrcfTRraYDenJFp38OGOCXU/s1600/CordobaMosque.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 275px; height: 183px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJf86ukhpPuMXvn_en0JdKbwmiC0qlZmE-nCbjB8s3kwqcDVn6HMrsUQdppo6FbYwVzj9Gt67PC75ATYIqezVhyQ51ce5s67AwzhYjl8a9Zthkqk6CsK4EdrcfTRraYDenJFp38OGOCXU/s320/CordobaMosque.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5506115277976218962" /></a><br /><br />By Eric Von Salzen<br /><br />A day or two after 9/11, an interfaith meeting was held at my church (St. Alban’s, Washington, DC). It was part of a series of meetings among Christians, Jews, and Muslims that had been going on for quite awhile, but they changed whatever the planned agenda had been for this meeting and focused on the terrorist attacks.<br /><br />I went and listened to clergy, lay leaders, and regular folks from all three Abrahamic faiths express their shock, their sorrow, and their anger at these vicious attacks on our country. No Christian and no Jew blamed the attacks on Islam, and no Muslim offered any defense of the killers.<br /><br />I think about the Muslims I heard speak at that meeting when I hear and read about the controversy over the “Ground Zero Mosque”, the proposed Islamic center that the Cordoba Initiative wants to build a couple of blocks from the World Trade Center site. If the Muslims who spoke at St. Alban’s nine years ago want to worship God in that location, how could I object? They were not complicit in the attacks; they are as much enemies of the terrorists as I am.<br /><br />If the Catholic Church were to propose building a facility two blocks from the site of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, would anyone object on the ground that Timothy McVeigh was raised a Catholic?<br /><br />But some people do object, including some of the families of people killed at the World Trade Center. We owe it to the memory of those who died to think about the objections seriously. We owe it to ourselves, too, because all Americans were (and are) targets of the terrorists. Platitudes about America’s commitment to religious tolerance – true as they are – are insufficient to answer the objections.<br /><br />The problem, as I see it, is that the 9/11 killers and those who sent them didn’t just “happen to be” Muslims. Their Muslim faith was the central motive for what they did. They acted out of a deep conviction that Islam sanctioned these actions; more than that, they believed that Islam demanded this action.<br /><br />The Muslims I heard speak at St. Alban’s that evening rejected that claim. They denied that Islam permits, much less requires, such murderous actions. They condemned as false and un-Islamic the religious claims of the terrorists. I believed them.<br /><br />The problem that many people have, who oppose the “Ground Zero Mosque”, is that they didn’t hear the Muslims that I heard at St. Alban’s. Most Americans, I believe, don’t know many, or any, Muslims very well. We hear and read that al-Qaida and other Islamic terrorist groups claim to be the “true” Islam, and we don’t have Muslim friends and neighbors and co-workers to tell us, No, that’s not true. <br /><br />We have the news media, of course, and that’s what most of us rely on to learn about things in the world beyond our own individual experience. Perhaps I read the wrong newspapers, watch the wrong TV shows, read the wrong websites, but I have the sense that the voices of the Muslims I heard at St. Alban’s aren’t being heard very much. I have the sense that most Americans don’t hear, on a regular basis, prominent Muslims and spokespersons for Muslim organizations condemning Islamic religious extremism. The news has been full of Islamic extremism, whether it’s terrorism in the US or the UK or Bali, whether it’s violence or threats of violence against cartoonists who dare to depict the Prophet or movie-makers who criticize Muslim treatment of women, or whether it’s a fatwa against a novelist who criticizes Islam.<br /><br />What the news has not been full of, so far as I can tell, is Muslim voices condemning Islamic extremism.<br /><br />So when people hear that Muslims want to build a facility near the “sacred ground” where the World Trade Center once stood, they ask themselves: Are they on our side or on the other side? And they are not confident that the answer is, They’re on our side.<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.cordobainitiative.org ">Cordoba Initiative </a> says that it seeks to improve “Muslim-West relations”. That is a noble goal and something we desperately need. I think they need to ask themselves whether building in this particular location serves that purpose.<br /><br />(By the way, the photo at the top of this post is not the "Ground Zero Mosque", but what was once the Great Mosque of Cordoba, Spain. It is now a Roman Catholic Church. We live in a complicated world.)The Godfatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575359417766667457noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-71837785836422947722010-08-02T18:21:00.000-07:002010-08-02T18:39:58.618-07:00Revenge of the Vampires<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFySNwdjNv9MJNC18hLYGTpbyx9t_DwWPJvZG5MHxOPTVeu0FUtKZCp1wfkWMRKHw_y6QG9PRZwxOhUDp4aIIPZFranUBdI2c4yhoRVuVD9L3P9MOIa7vgs1kfNE1Tbh-ulMoakTup7Qk/s1600/dracula.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 145px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFySNwdjNv9MJNC18hLYGTpbyx9t_DwWPJvZG5MHxOPTVeu0FUtKZCp1wfkWMRKHw_y6QG9PRZwxOhUDp4aIIPZFranUBdI2c4yhoRVuVD9L3P9MOIa7vgs1kfNE1Tbh-ulMoakTup7Qk/s200/dracula.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5500987869252762402" /></a><br /><br /><br />By Eric Von Salzen<br /><br />I’m not a big vampire fan (well, in my youth I did envy Bela Lugosi for his suave neck munching), so I’ve never read any of Anne Rice’s innumerable vampire novels. I had heard of her of course, and so I was interested several years ago to hear that she had returned to the Christian religion, specifically to the Roman Catholic Church in which she grew up. She did a <a href="http://www.gracecathedral.org/forum/for_20060514.shtml">radio discussion </a> about this with N. T. Wright in 2006, which is worth listening to. She was in the process of writing a series of novels about the life of Jesus under the overall title <em>Christ The Lord</em>, and she has now published two volumes, subtitled <em>Out of Egypt</em> and <em>The Road to Cana</em>. I recommend both of them.<br /><br />Now Ms. Rice has <a href="http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2010/07/anne-rice-catholic-/1">announced</a> (on her Facebook page!) that she has left Christianity. She explains:<br /><br /><em>For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.</em><br /><br />If that’s not clear enough, she lists several characteristics of Christianity to which she objects, It’s anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-artificial birth control, anti-Democrat, anti-secular humanism, anti-science, and anti-life.<br /><br />If I took her argument seriously, I guess I’d have to leave Christianity, too, because I also oppose anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-artificial birth control, anti-science, and anti-life positions (and some of my best friends are Democrats and secular humanists). But I’m not leaving. <br /><br />In part I infer that what Ms. Rice really objects to are positions of the Roman Catholic Church, and she has confused “Christianity” with Roman Catholicism. This is not surprising. When I was growing up (Ms. Rice and I are of an age) a lot of my Roman Catholic friends thought that the only valid form of Christianity was Roman Catholicism (and a lot of my Protestant friends thought the Roman Catholics were mackerel snappers). If she’d said that she’s leaving the Catholic Church for the reasons she cites I wouldn’t question her decision.<br /><br />But by saying that she’s leaving “Christianity”, and by identifying all these negative characteristics with Christianity, she’s made a fundamental mistake. Although there certainly are Christians who hold the views to which she objects, not all Christians do so. And more important: These positions are not an essential part of Christian belief or Christian theology. Yes, yes, I know that Paul said some beastly things about gays and women, but that doesn’t mean that you have to believe that all gays are idolaters, or that women must be silent in church, in order to be a Christian. Christianity is about faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Savior of Humanity. If Anne Rice remains “committed to Christ as always” (as she says), she’s a Christian whether she likes the name or not.<br /><br />The other thing that’s wrong with Ms. Rice’s announcement is that it reflects the notion that you shouldn’t be part of an institution that has objectionable people in it. Groucho Marx said he wouldn’t join a club that would accept him as a member, and Ms. Rice won’t belong to a church that has any sinners in it. She’s going to be mighty lonely. She would do well to read Paul’s letters to the Corinthians to help her understand that our church is made up of flawed people, who are nevertheless called to a common faith.<br /><br />The attitude that Ms. Rice displays is by no means unique to her or to the Roman Catholic Church. It is an attitude that lies behind much of the friction and fragmentation in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, the idea that we won’t sit in the same pews, or kneel at the same rail, with “THEM” (whoever “THEM” are). Ms. Rice describes Christians as “quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous”. The description fits not only Christians but all human beings. Yet we are called to break bread together.<br /><br />When the Holy Spirit touches the heart of Anne Rice and brings her back to the Christian community, she should be welcomed.The Godfatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575359417766667457noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-44483888409983331842010-07-12T17:28:00.000-07:002010-07-12T17:57:47.263-07:00Impasse on Women<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGyYhNN8hGJ11w5kKtCCILkbXz5BVVDyPRUdJkTJX6SBlPAiEkoHHVKxrAMzkzWchoha620nni7woBSO0BWGgKeRBbEzUGXuR_h29JE9DDGRTFuW3ep9St75gYKcwKNSbJqMPTN39HfHQ/s1600/VicarOfDibley.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 160px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGyYhNN8hGJ11w5kKtCCILkbXz5BVVDyPRUdJkTJX6SBlPAiEkoHHVKxrAMzkzWchoha620nni7woBSO0BWGgKeRBbEzUGXuR_h29JE9DDGRTFuW3ep9St75gYKcwKNSbJqMPTN39HfHQ/s200/VicarOfDibley.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5493188462666445730" /></a><br /><br />The Church of England still seems to be having trouble finding its way into the 20th Century. The C of E had previously decided to allow women to become bishops (I look forward to the forthcoming BBC series, The Bishop Of Dibley), but to avoid offending the "traditionalists", the Archbishop of Canterbury proposed that each female bishop be paired with a "complementary" male bishop -- apparently not for the purpose of keeping the flighty little thing from getting her knickers in a twist, but "to minister to traditionalists unwilling to accept a woman as the head of their diocese." So the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/world/europe/11anglican.html?_r=1">New York Times reports</a>.<br /><br />The General Synod, however, has rejected that proposal, leaving the traditionalists with no choice, I suppose, but Rome or a stiff upper lip.<br /><br />Perhaps, though, the Episcopal Church could regain the favor of the ABC by agreeing to pair each of our gay or lesbian bishops with a "complementary" straight bishop. What do you think?<br /><br />By Eric Von SalzenThe Godfatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575359417766667457noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-20475090573322674732010-06-28T16:33:00.001-07:002010-06-28T16:33:49.947-07:00Hilarious Video - Must Watch This<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/QR6_O7GjYmY&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/QR6_O7GjYmY&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-53641358477664777412010-06-20T10:49:00.000-07:002010-06-20T11:04:22.992-07:00OUR FATHER’S DAY<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhdU8iKlbdudRTo_1jtrcc0WUpnxXf-ByLQZIf6fw-nQPuuJYtS69eR8U6DTgmeflDbihPGYxoJhA4iC4nzxpRk2efk4QE25SYXvyewIlaXr086pdBs1CKtUEyY-y5I4DO__t7b9X0V00/s1600/st_joseph_the_carpente.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 258px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhdU8iKlbdudRTo_1jtrcc0WUpnxXf-ByLQZIf6fw-nQPuuJYtS69eR8U6DTgmeflDbihPGYxoJhA4iC4nzxpRk2efk4QE25SYXvyewIlaXr086pdBs1CKtUEyY-y5I4DO__t7b9X0V00/s320/st_joseph_the_carpente.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5484916003729619426" /></a><br /><br />By Eric Von Salzen<br /><br />As Christians we believe in a peculiar kind of God. The God we believe in not only created the heavens and the earth, but this God also loves us, each one of us, as a father loves a child. We have this on the authority of the Son of God himself.<br /><br />It must have seemed quite remarkable to the followers of Jesus that he addressed God as his father, and even used the word Abba, which implied an intimate family relationship with God. But then, perhaps his followers said to each other, Jesus could say this because he was something special. Even before they began to realize who Jesus truly was, they thought he was at least a prophet, and perhaps even the Messiah, the Anointed One, someone with a really special relationship to God. The son of the Emperor in Rome might call Caesar “Daddy”.<br /><br />But no, that wasn’t it. Jesus told them that God was <strong>their</strong> father, too, and they should address him the same way he did. That had to be shocking. The God who created the entire universe, the God who spoke from Mount Sinai in the thunder and lightning and smoke, the God who feeds the young lions and made leviathan for sport, the God that only Moses could talk to face to face, and even he not always – this God they were to call Daddy?<br /><br />And what kind of father this God was! In what must be his most famous parable, Jesus described a father running to greet his returning prodigal son and throwing his arms around him. This is a father who casts aside his dignity for the love of his child. In our mind’s eye we see the old man running up the dusty road toward the distant figure of his son, his white hair streaming behind him, his robes flapping around his pumping legs, perhaps a lost sandal left behind in the dirt. Is this how we are to imagine the God who answered Job out of the whirlwind and told him how he made Behemoth and Leviathan? Is he that kind of father?<br /><br />Yes, just that kind of father.<br /><br />I know that there are some among us to whom the word father does not arouse warm and fuzzy feelings. Fathers are sometimes abusive, irresponsible, cruel, deadbeats, aloof, or absent. Jesus clearly didn’t have fathers like that in mind when he called God Daddy and said that we should, too. It was the earthly Jesus who said these things, before he died and rose again, and I can’t help but think that he was influenced by the example of his earthly father, Joseph. I have a warm spot in my heart for Joseph, because, like me, he was a stepfather. The scriptures don’t tell us much about the kind of father Joseph was, but we can infer that he was the kind of father Jesus wanted his followers to think of when he described God as their father. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=075cR3YIbE8">This</a> kind of father. <br /><br />I’m fortunate. I had that kind of father. I wish I’d had him longer – I was 33 when he died – but I knew what a father is supposed to be, thanks to him. Now, a generation later, I see my stepson being a father to his three wonderful little girls, and I learn again what a father is supposed to be.<br /><br />Happy Father’s Day.The Godfatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575359417766667457noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-19464986906977900042010-06-09T15:47:00.000-07:002010-06-09T15:56:02.366-07:00Through A Glasspool Darkly, Part Two<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100608/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_anglicans">Anglicans cut Episcopalians from ecumenical bodies</a><br /> Isn't this unnecessarily violent?The Godfatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575359417766667457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-42041712917858486812010-05-03T19:09:00.000-07:002010-05-03T19:20:23.833-07:00Is The Archbishop of Canterbury Next?The <em>Telegraph</em> reports from London:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7668448/Christian-preacher-arrested-for-saying-homosexuality-is-a-sin.html"><strong>Christian preacher arrested for saying homosexuality is a sin</strong>.</a> <br /><br />It couldn't happen here, of course. We have our First Amendment. But I guess it can happen in the UK. Where could it lead, do you suppose?<br /><br />By Eric Von SalzenThe Godfatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575359417766667457noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-34065594436305110592010-04-07T13:00:00.000-07:002010-04-07T13:06:08.973-07:00Theology of Marriage - Robert Wright Article<i>From the Diocese of North Carolina's Bishop's Task Force on the Theology of Marriage, which I chaired this past year. This piece is from Robert Wright (a GTS board member, Duke University development officer, and active member of Chapel of the Cross, in Chapel Hill.) -- Greg</i><div><br /></div><div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">HUMPTY DUMPTY, AUGUSTINE AND MARRIAGE</span></b></div><div>Robert E. Wright</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div> “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”</div><div>“The question is,” said Alice, “Whether you can make words mean so many different things?”</div><div>"The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master? – That’s all.” </div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>This conversation between Humpty Dumpty and Alice in Lewis Carroll's classic <i>Through the Looking Glass</i> sounds in many ways like the arguments now being waged in Anglicanism over matters of human sexuality and ecclesiology. On one side are those who cite church canons regarding property held in trust within a hierarchical church, as well as the Nicene tradition of respecting diocesan and provincial boundaries. On the other side are those who cite Scripture and Tradition regarding who may be considered eligible for marriage and ordination. Each side, in a sense, is playing Humpty Dumpty, regarding how the church's authoritative texts are to be interpreted with regard to sexual ethics as well as the ecclesiology of the church. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>An Augustinian Hermeneutic</b></div><div>To be sure, now we all look through the glass darkly, but with Tradition and Reason as sources of illumination, we may more clearly look through the window of Scripture to see God's face. In particular, from our Tradition, St. Augustine sheds much light on our discernment. Perhaps the late 4th-early 5th century African bishop offers us a way out of the game Humpty Dumpty seeks to play, about who gets to be 'master' of what authoritative texts must mean to us. In particular, the Augustinian hermeneutic offers help as the church wrestles with marriage and our desire to faithfully interpret the Bible, as we also seek to include partnered Christians who are gay and lesbian into the sacramental life of the church.</div><div><br /></div><div>In his treatise <i>On Christian Doctrine</i>, begun c. 396, Augustine wrote:</div><div><br /></div><div><blockquote>Whoever, therefore, thinks that he understands the divine Scriptures or any part of them so that it does not build the double love of God and of our neighbor does not understand it at all. Whoever finds a lesson there useful to the building of charity, even though he has not said what the author may be shown to have intended in that place, has not been deceived, nor is he lying in any way. (I.36.40)</blockquote></div><div><br /></div><div>Later he elaborates, situating the interpretation of Scripture in the context of the entire canon and not proof-texting:</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>For he who examines the divine eloquence, desiring to discover the intention of the author through whom the Holy Spirit created the Scripture, whether he attains this end or finds another meaning in the words not contrary to right faith, is free from blame if he has evidence from some other place in the divine books. For the author himself may have seen the same meaning in the words we seek to understand. And certainly the Spirit of God, who worked through that author, undoubtedly foresaw that this meaning would occur to the reader or the listener. Rather, He provided that it might occur to him, since that meaning is dependent upon truth. For what could God have more generously and abundantly provided in the divine writings than that the same words might be understood in various ways which other no less divine witnesses approve? (III.27.38)</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>The premise of Augustine’s interpretive principle lies in the distinction between charity (caritas) and cupidity (cupiditas). As he defines these terms:</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>I call “charity” the motion of the soul toward the enjoyment of God for His own sake, and the enjoyment of one’s self and of one’s neighbor for the sake of God; but “cupidity” is a motion of the soul toward the enjoyment of one’s self, one’s neighbor, or any corporal thing for the sake of something other than God. (III.10.16)</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>In other words, the “master” of the text (to use Humpty’s term) is not the human author or those who would have interpreted his words in the historical, social, or cultural context within which they were written, but rather God himself who as Logos is the true author and whose words are always to be interpreted in terms of the law of charity. Of this principle he writes:</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>. . . every student of the Divine Scriptures must exercise himself, having found nothing else in them except, first, that God is to be loved for Himself, and his neighbor for the sake of God; second, that he is to love God with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his mind; and third, that he should love his neighbor as himself, that is, so that all love for our neighbor should, like all love for ourselves, be referred to God. (II.7.10)</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>Later in the work, he explains that this interpretive principle may be applied as well to secular, even pagan, texts.</div><div><br /></div><div>Augustine applies this principal in determining whether certain texts are to be interpreted literally or figuratively. He quotes the Apostle, “For the letter killeth, but the spirit quickeneth,” commenting, “That is, when that which is said figuratively is taken as though it were literal, it is understood carnally . . . He who follows the letter takes figurative expressions as though they were literal and does not refer the things signified to anything else.” As an example, Augustine notes that “if he hears of the Sabbath, he thinks only of one day out of the seven that are repeated in a continuous cycle . . .” and cites the scribes and Pharisees’ accusations against Jesus for performing healings on the Sabbath. (III.5.9-10)</div><div><br /></div><div><b>An Expanded Interpretation of Marriage?</b></div><div>Two remarkable resolutions passed by successive General Conventions of The Episcopal Church in 2000 and 2003, together with the legalization of same-gender marriage first in Massachusetts in 2004 and subsequently in several other states, have effectively changed the terms and the context of the church's debate over the blessing of same-gender unions. Whereas the conversation once tended to be about same-gender partnerships, envisioning them as alternative types of human relationship wholly other than 'marriage,' now people began to be asking whether or not marriage was what we were talking about for everybody - whether straight or gay.</div><div><br /></div><div>The first, passed by the 73rd General Convention meeting in Denver, stated in part:</div><div><br /></div><div> </div><blockquote><div>Resolved, That we acknowledge that while the issues of human sexuality are not yet resolved, there are currently couples in the Body of Christ and in this Church who are living in marriage and couples in the Body of Christ and in this Church who are living in other life-long committed relationships; and be it further</div><div> Resolved, That we expect such relationships will be characterized by fidelity, monogamy, mutual affection and respect, careful, honest communication, and the holy love which enables those in such relationships to see in each other the image of God; and be it further</div><div> Resolved, That we denounce promiscuity, exploitation, and abusiveness in the relationships of any of our members; and be it further</div><div> Resolved, That this Church intends to hold all its members accountable to these values, and will provide for them the prayerful support, encouragement, and pastoral care necessary to live faithfully by them . . .</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>The second, passed by the 74th General Convention meeting in Minneapolis, reaffirmed the resolve that defined the positive qualities of such relationships and added:</div><div><br /></div><div> <blockquote>Resolved, That we recognize that local faith communities are operating within the bounds of our common life as they explore and experience liturgies celebrating and blessing same-sex unions.</blockquote></div><div><br /></div><div>I believe, these two resolutions point not to the formation of a new category of domestic partnership - which might be available to persons of any sexual orientation - nor do they represent an altogether new vision of marriage itself. Rather, they point to an evolved interpretation of traditional marriage, whereby it may begin to be understood as appropriate for same-gender couples as well as mixed-gender couples. </div><div><br /></div><div>When one asks how this might be in light of Scripture and Tradition, it is here that I believe Augustine's hermeneutic of charity - when applied to biblical and traditional texts - is the key to this new understanding of how that may faithfully be.</div><div><br /></div><div>For example, in Genesis' first creation account, we encounter the words: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Gen 1.27) In the second creation account, we encounter the words: “God said, 'it is not good that man should be alone, I will make him a helper as his partner." And, "then the man said, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. " (Gen 2:18&23) </div><div><br /></div><div>As a Christian who is gay, I interepret these passages to have little to do with purely physically determined gender complementarity, as much as with the personal complementarity that I know to be possible between two persons of the same gender who love each other intimately. Moreover, I see in these passages a calling to mutuality and partnership - as checks against solitude or selfishness, and the sacred vocation partnered persons have to accompany and serve each other faithfully. According to the Augustinian hermeneutic, I interpret these passages in light of how they reveal to me a godly form of life rooted in the love of God and of neighbor as self.</div><div> </div><div>By the same hermeneutic, a reading of Matthew 22 demonstrates God's will for a principled inclusion to all sorts of persons to the wedding feast of God's Kingdom. Such an principled approach would apply not only to the guests, who are all invited but also expected to abide by a set of agreed groundrules ('the wearing of the wedding garment'), but also the couple sealing their covenant with one another, with God, and with the community of faith.</div><div><br /></div><div>In <i>On Christian Doctrine</i>, Augustine writes, “. . . every good and true Christian should understand that wherever he may find truth, it is his Lord’s” (II.18.28) Many now believe that The Episcopal Church is called to expand its understanding of marriage - not to make the word mean many things or just any thing - as Humpty Dumpty would do. No, many believe that under an Augustinian hermeneutic of charity, in which we believe the "love of God and of neighbor as self" is the master of our authoritative texts, we may understand marriage to be an honorable estate which includes persons of same-gender affection.</div><div> </div><div> </div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-71687612654653360322010-03-29T20:39:00.000-07:002010-03-29T20:53:44.045-07:00The Tough Guy<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVxAQKM5_bXZnvxrVM-wkaSgnO2Btthi8dKn3fEFYEfk3UX7FlxnVFaPnojB3QbD2mBoYt3wcCz1bfsEjcmZhE9o8V_VUeP6od56m-Y79KBd5HP11SztyLUZkKEkeAsJdxPRASwTspoLY/s1600/ThreeCrosses.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 116px; height: 101px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVxAQKM5_bXZnvxrVM-wkaSgnO2Btthi8dKn3fEFYEfk3UX7FlxnVFaPnojB3QbD2mBoYt3wcCz1bfsEjcmZhE9o8V_VUeP6od56m-Y79KBd5HP11SztyLUZkKEkeAsJdxPRASwTspoLY/s320/ThreeCrosses.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5454266829346503794" /></a><br /><br />By Eric Von Salzen<br /><br />I’m not a big fan of Lent. Lent makes me think about things I’d just as soon not think about. In Lent — and particularly in this week, this Holy Week — we’re supposed to think about some very unpleasant things, like betrayal, cowardice, oppression, injustice, violence, torture, pain, and death.<br /><br />Of course, the discomfort of hearing about these things is eased for us by the fact that we know where it is leading: To Easter and the Resurrection. We’ve already read the last chapter of the book, seen the final reel of the movie; we know how it’s going to come out.<br /><br />But the people who lived through those events didn’t know that everything was going to turn out all right in the end. Even though Jesus had told them what was going to happen, they didn’t understand it, they didn’t believe it. They didn’t believe it when he told them he was going to be killed, and when he was killed they didn’t believe that he would rise, although he’d told them that, too.<br /><br />When Jesus was arrested, condemned, and taken to the place of execution, the Disciples thought that it would be all over if Jesus died. And he did die. How terrible that must have been for the Disciples, and for Jesus’ family and friends. Unlike us, they didn’t know that Easter was coming.<br /><br />And yet, even in those dark days, before anyone knew there would be an Easter, there was the shining light of redemption. And it came at the worst hour of those ghastly days: the crucifixion itself.<br /><br />The Gospels tell us that Jesus was crucified with two criminals — or robbers, or bandits, or thieves, depending on the translation. And Matthew and Mark tell us that these thieves joined in with the Roman soldiers, and the chief priests and scribes, and the others who gathered below the crosses, in mocking and reviling Jesus.<br /><br />But Luke tells a fuller story. He says that <em>one</em> of the thieves did indeed mock Jesus, saying, “If you are the Messiah, save yourself and save us!”<br /><br />Think about that. Here is this criminal, who has been condemned to death, to a painful and dishonorable death. And while that terrible sentence is being carried out on him, he takes the time to mock another human being who is under the same sentence and is suffering the same agonies that he is suffering. <br /><br />Why did he do that?<br /><br />Luke tells us that the thief spoke after the Roman soldiers said much the same thing to Jesus, and I think the thief was seeking the soldiers’ approval by joining in with them. The thief was proud of himself for being a tough guy, and he wanted the Roman soldiers – and everyone knew that they were toughest guys around – to know that he was a tough guy, too, he was really one of them, even though they were torturing and killing him at the time. He wanted their respect. So he mocked the man dying on the next cross.<br /><br />To the first thief, it was important that he be respected by the tough guys, by the people that he respected, and he hoped that they would remember him as a tough guy even after his death. Perhaps they did. For awhile.<br /><br />But the <em>second</em> thief didn’t join in the mockery. On the contrary, he rebuked his fellow thief. (I’m drawing an inference when I call him a “fellow thief”. Luke doesn’t tell us whether the two thieves knew each other. But the second thief says to the first:<br /><br />“We have been condemned justly; we are getting what we deserve for our deeds.” <br /><br />So it sounds to me as though the two thieves knew each other pretty well.)<br /><br />And then the second thief goes on to say that Jesus “has done nothing wrong.”<br /><br />Now, if that were the whole story, it would be powerful enough. It would be the story of a condemned criminal, suffering and dying for his crimes, able to see that the man suffering beside him was innocent, and using his last breath to testify to that man’s innocence.<br /><br />But there is more than that to the story. For then the second thief speaks to Jesus and says: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”<br /><br />The second thief understands that Jesus is just who we (who have read the last chapter of the book) know that He is: The Messiah, the Christ. The second thief knows that after the crucifixion Jesus will come into His kingdom. <br /><br />Think about that: It will not be until the third day that the Disciples realize what a dying thief knows on day one.<br /><br />The two thieves offer us two very different visions of what is important in life. Like the first thief, we can seek the approval of those people that we think are important in our world, by doing and saying what they do and say, or what we think that they want us to do and say, and we can hope that they will respect us as their kind of person and even remember us, for awhile, after we’re gone.<br /><br />Or, we can follow the second thief, and ask Jesus to remember us.<br /><br />And if we do ask, the promise is there. Because what Jesus said to the second thief was: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”<br /><br />“You will be with me in Paradise.”<br /><br />Today.<br /><br />Two days before Easter.The Godfatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575359417766667457noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-49758757769489733172010-03-24T09:25:00.000-07:002010-03-24T09:26:56.416-07:00Upon this rock....<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMpJUbi1vutJepIizxolQaBA_8lxuIa-lu1b70hNHHIWW0492gu0aHeYWtHbVaZlONMCwC5PPeGJJQmfpNuWC2-a1UjuKE7REzH8SGB37RCjsDb2_kVn46sZWHpuBOLYBH7aUY_gIf6X0/s1600/Umstead+Tree+Rock.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMpJUbi1vutJepIizxolQaBA_8lxuIa-lu1b70hNHHIWW0492gu0aHeYWtHbVaZlONMCwC5PPeGJJQmfpNuWC2-a1UjuKE7REzH8SGB37RCjsDb2_kVn46sZWHpuBOLYBH7aUY_gIf6X0/s400/Umstead+Tree+Rock.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5452237553254586610" border="0" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-22819118839117126242010-03-23T09:58:00.000-07:002010-03-23T10:15:47.380-07:00A Prayer CardBy Eric Von Salzen<br /><br />The other day, a Roman Catholic friend enclosed a prayer card with my birthday card. It was a “Prayer For Judges”. I’m a lawyer, and I supposed my friend couldn’t find any prayers for lawyers (we’re hopeless, I guess), and sent the next best thing.<br /><br />It wasn’t, though, a prayer to support judges in their difficult but important work, or a prayer that God grant them wisdom and discernment. It was a prayer about abortion.<br /><br />The Prayer For Judges said that judges had legalized abortion by putting their own opinions ahead of God’s Law, and it called on judges to start applying God’s Law and end abortion. I can’t quote it exactly, because I didn’t keep it.<br /><br />Now the fact is, I oppose abortion, and I think that <em>Rowe v. Wade </em>was wrongly decided. There’s nothing in the U.S. Constitution that prohibits states from regulating or prohibiting abortion. The Supreme Court majority did read its own social and moral values into the Constitution in reaching its decision. I don’t think judges should do that. To that extent, I agree with whoever wrote the Prayer For Judges.<br /><br />But my mother taught me as a little boy that two wrongs don’t make a right. If it was wrong for the Supreme Court majority to impose their social and moral values on the country by legalizing abortion, it would be just as wrong for different judges to impose their notion of God’s Law to end abortion. The Constitution doesn’t embody the personal opinions of Harry Blackmun, nor does it embody the religious convictions of the Conference of Bishops or the College of Cardinals. Or even of The Godfather.<br /><br />But judges are a special case. The rest of us, as citizens in a democratic republic, as voters, as writers of letters to the editor, as participants in political parties or tea parties, certainly have the right to use God’s Law, as we understand it, in deciding what policies are right and wrong, and therefore what candidates do and don’t merit our support at the polls. And as Christians that’s what we think we ought to do, isn’t it?<br /><br />Of course, translating our religious convictions into political choices isn’t easy, and in this post I’m not going to discuss how we decide, based on God’s Law, who we should vote for, or what policies we should support. That’s too big an issue. I’m going to focus on a narrower issue: How our religious faith figures in the way we talk about political issues, and how we try to persuade our fellow citizens to support the positions and candidates we favor.<br /><br />And the first thing you notice, when you think about that issue is that we don’t often use religious arguments when we try to persuade people to support whatever position it is that we advocate. Our religious convictions may lead us to support or oppose particular policies or candidates; but when we try to persuade others to join us, we don’t usually do so by telling them that it’s God’s will. <br /><br />One of the reasons we don’t do so is because we know that it generally won’t work. If someone doesn’t share your religious convictions, or isn’t sure what he or she believes in that regard, the religious argument is unlikely to persuade them to support the policy or candidate that you support. Before the religious argument could be effective you’d have to first persuade them that your religious view are right; you’d have give them a full-fledged indoctrination in your religious tradition, and persuade them to embrace it. If you succeed in doing that, you’ll have accomplished a conversion and may have saved a soul, but by the time you do so, the election will be long since over. So when we try to persuade those who don’t already agree with us on a political issue, we usually don’t base our arguments on religious principles, even if those are why we support of oppose the policies we do. We try to construct arguments based whatever values they already have. <br /><br />Another reason that we usually don’t use religious arguments when we are trying to persuade others to support our positions is that we sense that such arguments can be divisive in a society like ours, with a wide variety of religious and secular faiths. Divisive arguments are sometimes necessary, but we try to avoid them if we can. Suppose I want to persuade someone to support teaching Creationism in the public schools. If I argue that the Bible says that God created the world in seven days so it must be true, no matter what atheist scientists say to the contrary, not only will my argument fail to convince someone who isn’t already a Biblical literalist, I will offend non-fundamentalists and drive them away from my position. A more effective approach might be to argue that the schools should present both sides of controversial issues, because that’s being open minded and tolerant of the views of those we disagree with. We all like to think we’re tolerant, don’t we?<br /><br />A third, and critical, reason not to use religious beliefs in political discussions is that religious beliefs tend to be about ends, and political issues tend to be about means. Christian religious beliefs, for example, may lead you to believe that you have a moral duty to help the poor, but they won’t tell you whether raising the minimum wage will help the poor or hurt them; for that you need economics. Your religious principles may lead you to want to free the oppressed, to protect the helpless, to stop the evil doer, but whether it’s possible to do this by military action, or diplomacy, or covert action – or whether under the circumstances the best thing to do is admit our helplessness in the face of evil – requires knowledge, experience, and expertise that must be found elsewhere than in scripture.<br /><br />It’s not impossible to find political issues that can be resolved (for some) solely on religious grounds, but it’s not common either. In writing this post, I’ve used abortion and Creationism as examples of political issues that, for a lot of people (not all, by any means), can be resolved on purely religious grounds. I’m hard-pressed to think of a lot of other examples.<br /><br />So we generally don’t rely on religious arguments to persuade others to agree with us on political issues or candidates. Yet religious beliefs – or our understanding of God’s Law, to go back to the Prayer For Judges – are important to political decision-making. To many of us, religious principles underlie our political principles, even though we don’t use religious values to explain our politics to others who don’t share them. Our religious beliefs may give us the courage, the energy, and the endurance to pursue political goals. Religious principles may also help us to energize others, who share our beliefs, to join in trying to implement them. The civil rights movement is an obvious example. So is the Prayer For Judges; it probably won’t persuade Protestant or secularist pro-choicers to become pro-lifers, but it may rally Roman Catholic pro-lifers to try harder to support a cause they already believe in. <br /><br />The other day, I saw another example of how religion can be used to support political advocacy. The Raleigh paper ran a front-page story about people, hit by hard economic times, increasing their use of food assistance programs. The paper illustrated the story with a photo of an out-of-work father and his two daughters holding hands as they say grace over a meal made possible by government food assistance. Leave aside the question whether such advocacy belongs in a news story, and just focus on how effective it is. It’s effective because we think that religious people, those who pray before meals, are good, hard-working folks, who are more likely to give a hand-out than take one. If they need this kind of help, aren’t we glad they can get it? It’s a picture worth a thousand words.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidQnHngjSSj3gp-jNVsXzWLttEFavZrjX0HmAcu2faUk4HVGYbbTSHgAUmafeTff6j4v-Zq8roCKSqmilsfojeg-oH9a8K-NkdYR-FfKNbusAvjPak6J9cKma3OIcnjh7oP0yqrxlvVv0/s1600-h/FOODSTAMPS-022810_GA017AA9L.1+FOODSTAMPS04-030710-CLL.embedded.prod_affiliate.156.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 140px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidQnHngjSSj3gp-jNVsXzWLttEFavZrjX0HmAcu2faUk4HVGYbbTSHgAUmafeTff6j4v-Zq8roCKSqmilsfojeg-oH9a8K-NkdYR-FfKNbusAvjPak6J9cKma3OIcnjh7oP0yqrxlvVv0/s200/FOODSTAMPS-022810_GA017AA9L.1+FOODSTAMPS04-030710-CLL.embedded.prod_affiliate.156.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451875530286883330" /></a>The Godfatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575359417766667457noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231618967658396748.post-52355365081528882742010-03-10T13:22:00.000-08:002010-03-10T13:23:01.739-08:00Comment Moderation Turned OFFSorry for the delay in publishing comments --- I have turned moderation off. So -- moderate yourselves! Thanks so much. My apologies.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0