If you have not read Ryan T. Anderson's "Huckabee And Social Conservatives" first published at First Things (and then reprinted in the Wall Street Journal's online Federation), then you should.
Of course, I know "should" is a strong word these days. Perhaps I should -- there I go again -- say that "If you feel inclined, then you might want to perhaps possibly consider the possibility of reading it for yourself."
Seriously, it is a very provocative piece.
Blessings.
BG
Showing posts with label Ethics and Morality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ethics and Morality. Show all posts
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Friday, January 26, 2007
Friday's ¶ Of The Day
Today's ¶ (paragraph) Of The Day comes from the inimitable and duly controversial Princeton philosopher Peter Singer in his New York Times OP-ED, "A Convenient Truth," wherein is discussed the medical prevention of a mentally-impaired child's normal physical development:
"Here’s where things get philosophically interesting. We are always ready to find dignity in human beings, including those whose mental age will never exceed that of an infant, but we don’t attribute dignity to dogs or cats, though they clearly operate at a more advanced mental level than human infants. Just making that comparison provokes outrage in some quarters. But why should dignity always go together with species membership, no matter what the characteristics of the individual may be?"
My only response is that Mr. Singer must not love cats or dogs.
I will stipulate that I am the only person on the planet who loves cats and dogs, fishers and fish, raccoons and rascally rabbits. I will freely confess that I have often stopped and removed roadkill from busy highways; I recently dragged a dead fisher (wrongly called a "fisher cat") out of the road. And I usually do so with some sort of prayer: I even used to perform a hasty ceremony, and, in a poem on the matter, I referred to myself as a "sort of priest for the tired."
What Mr. Singer fails to see is that I dignify life all around me every day: I manage and prune trees in my yard; I sow and manage flowers in my field (I am reintroducing wild lupine destroyed by a neighbor); I feed birds and squirrels. In short, I dignify those creatures that seem to care nothing at all about dignity. In fact, I grant a dying dog or bleeding bird more dignity than it gives itself, or it receives from its own pack or flock. The dead coyote I found frozen in last year's melting snow, its eyes plucked out by turkey vultures, received a blessing from me in silence deep in the uncomprehending forest. Its pack might have even returned and scavenged on its frozen limbs.
I also do something else: I assume that nature loves being so dignified.
But most importantly, what Mr. Singer fails to see is that the impulse for dignity comes from humans alone. Though a few species do seem to care about their dead (elephants come to mind), or their living (meerkats are crazily attentive to their young), or their dying (Emperor penquins seem to care), it is humans who ceremonialize birth, life, and death. We are a ceremonious, ritualistic bunch; we desire and even expect dignity all around us. From births and birthdays, from christenings to baptisms to bar mitzvahs, to wakes and funerals and anniverseries to holidays, we honor and celebrate milestones with alacrity, and like no other species. Thus, as a mere species in Mr. Singer's philosophical reflections, we humans merit dignity because we ask for it and we give it; and we do not give it to those species who do not seem to care for it all (like great white sharks and Komodo dragons). In short, NOT dignifying other species is in fact to dignify them, for we are giving them exactly what they give themselves.
I grant that I may be personally out of whack for softly praying over dead animals, but I believe in the Christian idea that my sins (though not mine alone) have caused widespread suffering throughout the biosphere: All of creation groans for the redemption of God's children.
This is why we deserve dignity, and this is why some of us, unlike Mr. Singer, attempt to dignify every living and dying thing around us: today, no doubt, I may even rescue a spider from the tub. The spider will not know I have been kind, nor do I know whether my kindness will result in my wife being bitten by that cool spider's mandibles later in the day. What I do know is that there is something different about me, and about every human on the planet, if I but take one minute to study any other creature walking the earth.
God bless the family in question whose daughter is so desperately sick. May mercy and gladness of heart fill their days, and may God's will be done.
Peace.
BG
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
"Here’s where things get philosophically interesting. We are always ready to find dignity in human beings, including those whose mental age will never exceed that of an infant, but we don’t attribute dignity to dogs or cats, though they clearly operate at a more advanced mental level than human infants. Just making that comparison provokes outrage in some quarters. But why should dignity always go together with species membership, no matter what the characteristics of the individual may be?"
My only response is that Mr. Singer must not love cats or dogs.
I will stipulate that I am the only person on the planet who loves cats and dogs, fishers and fish, raccoons and rascally rabbits. I will freely confess that I have often stopped and removed roadkill from busy highways; I recently dragged a dead fisher (wrongly called a "fisher cat") out of the road. And I usually do so with some sort of prayer: I even used to perform a hasty ceremony, and, in a poem on the matter, I referred to myself as a "sort of priest for the tired."
What Mr. Singer fails to see is that I dignify life all around me every day: I manage and prune trees in my yard; I sow and manage flowers in my field (I am reintroducing wild lupine destroyed by a neighbor); I feed birds and squirrels. In short, I dignify those creatures that seem to care nothing at all about dignity. In fact, I grant a dying dog or bleeding bird more dignity than it gives itself, or it receives from its own pack or flock. The dead coyote I found frozen in last year's melting snow, its eyes plucked out by turkey vultures, received a blessing from me in silence deep in the uncomprehending forest. Its pack might have even returned and scavenged on its frozen limbs.
I also do something else: I assume that nature loves being so dignified.
But most importantly, what Mr. Singer fails to see is that the impulse for dignity comes from humans alone. Though a few species do seem to care about their dead (elephants come to mind), or their living (meerkats are crazily attentive to their young), or their dying (Emperor penquins seem to care), it is humans who ceremonialize birth, life, and death. We are a ceremonious, ritualistic bunch; we desire and even expect dignity all around us. From births and birthdays, from christenings to baptisms to bar mitzvahs, to wakes and funerals and anniverseries to holidays, we honor and celebrate milestones with alacrity, and like no other species. Thus, as a mere species in Mr. Singer's philosophical reflections, we humans merit dignity because we ask for it and we give it; and we do not give it to those species who do not seem to care for it all (like great white sharks and Komodo dragons). In short, NOT dignifying other species is in fact to dignify them, for we are giving them exactly what they give themselves.
I grant that I may be personally out of whack for softly praying over dead animals, but I believe in the Christian idea that my sins (though not mine alone) have caused widespread suffering throughout the biosphere: All of creation groans for the redemption of God's children.
This is why we deserve dignity, and this is why some of us, unlike Mr. Singer, attempt to dignify every living and dying thing around us: today, no doubt, I may even rescue a spider from the tub. The spider will not know I have been kind, nor do I know whether my kindness will result in my wife being bitten by that cool spider's mandibles later in the day. What I do know is that there is something different about me, and about every human on the planet, if I but take one minute to study any other creature walking the earth.
God bless the family in question whose daughter is so desperately sick. May mercy and gladness of heart fill their days, and may God's will be done.
Peace.
BG
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Where Hypocrisy Lies?
There has not been a word here about the Mark Foley scandal. It's not that I have no thoughts about the matter. It's that I have no idea exactly what the scandal is: is it that a congressman wrote dirty emails to congressional pages? is it that he's gay? is it that he is gay in the Socratic sense, you know, adoring the bodies of young men (who are, I believe, at or above the age of consent)? is it that other Republicans knew of Mr. Foley's fetishes and swept his dark secret under the House rugs? is it that Republicans are the party of "family values", or so we hear (though more often from Democrats who scoff at the GOP's moral stances), and yet the hypocrite Republicans have enabled a man who is clearly not a value to any family? Where, pray tell, is the scandal?
The other night, while punching out a few phrases as a warm up to writing, I (somewhat) randomly banged out these throwaways:
"When a gay man is caught by Republicans, they throw the Bible at him. When a gay man is caught by Democrats, they embrace him, giving him rights to happiness. Unless that gay man is a Republican. Then Democrats throw the book at him. And a shrink.
"Democrats gather at the lectern beneath falling balloons filled with so much heavy gas. They rally around a mission statement hammered out by knocking heads together: 'We are the party of the big tent, the inclusive camp; we exist solely as a bulwark against bigotry and injustice. That explains why we have broken camp in such haste; there is a gay man outside with confused sexual identities: He’s a Republican. We have hauled our asses across the river; it is unjust that anyone might think we are here to help. It is that sort of bigotry we abhor, the kind which expects us to be as big as the falling fabric over our heads.'"
Let us just for fun assume that Mr. Foley is a Democrat. Let us assume that he was caught by Republican snoops, their noses to the ground, sniffing out the pheromones of filth. What would Democrats say to defend Mr. Foley? Perhaps they would say something like this:
'Please. Let us not be too hasty to judge the privacy of a man whose public service has been so stellar. He has not, as far as anyone can tell, broken any law; and if a law has been broken, we must ask ourselves whether this is not the sort of law that should be broken. We like to be compassionate here; we accept that people are in various stages of moral clarity and sexual identity. Not everyone fully knows who he or she is; we are all products of psychological and emotional struggles that lead us through a lot of confused searching. Mr. Foley is no different than many men and women, and he has sought psycho-sexual affirmation with older teenage boys; perhaps his issues are a lot less about sex than they are about emotional support and, perhaps, even anxieties about dying. Moreover, it is clear we need to be careful in pronouncing judgment, for no one of us is fit to throw stones. We did not confront Mr. Foley largely because we expected this sort of judgmentalism to come from the Republicans: had we disciplined Mr. Foley, we would have been accused of gay-bashing. We would have been called "hypocrites" had we censured him. Yes, we admit that we have known about Mr. Foley for a long time now; but there are far more dangerous things in this world than a good congressman who lovingly adores younger men. If our culture were more tolerant of homosexuals in general, if gay men could be more open with their feelings and desires, perhaps Mr. Foley would not have felt that he needed to identify with the younger men in his milieu: his sexuality remains repressed by a pervasive heterosexism that expects a man to grow up, marry a good wife, raise a family, and sit as patriarch over his progeny. Sadly, not all men can meet such prefabricated, oppressive expectations.'
If there is a political point to all the current alarmist language about Republican hypocrisy, and the feigned Democratic shock associated with an avowedly gay Republican fascinated by dirty talk and teenage males, it is this: Democrats want you to know that if there are gays in the party of family values, they are messed up gays. No liberal Democrat can really countenance the fact that 23-25% of homosexuals who voted in 2000 and 2004 voted for George Bush; no Democrat can countenance that any "normal" gay man would vote against gay marriage. But such gays do indeed exist; and the Republican party, contrary to modern mythology, does indeed welcome them.
Regarding the Foley matter, perhaps Mr. Foley himself is a "hypocrite"; but perhaps his alleged hypocrisy resides here: he loathes his homosexuality and yet cannot help himself. Perhaps he believes his sexuality is indeed a choice, one that he can suppress; perhaps he believes he recognizes that his own behaviors do indeed jeopardize the security of the family. I have no problem with, for example, a Sen. Edward Kennedy voting for more restrictive drunk-driving laws, precisely because that esteemed senator, who has been shown great mercy, nonetheless knows that such mercy comes as a result of his killing a woman while he was drunk. His vote matters more, in some ways, than those who have never killed a woman: he knows the costs of drunk-driving. Of course, he has not really suffered much politically, at least in Massachusetts; though Mr. Foley has indeed suffered great loss, precisely, I am afraid to say, because he is not a gay Democrat. But hypocrisy is not a man saying one thing and then doing another. Hypocrisy is a man exempting himself from the rules he expects of others. Hypocrisy is not Smith railing against petty theft and then stealing his neighbor's bamboo rake. We all violate our principles at one time or another; we have all known contrition. But hypocrisy is Smith railing against theft and then denying that his action had anything to do with stealing; hypocrisy is Smith arguing that he is specially privileged to acquire his neighbor's desirable rake. I have no idea of whether Mr. Foley or Mr. Kennedy believe their moral precepts apply to everyone but themselves: for all I know, they are perfectly consistent, like many of us, in theory. They just fall short in practice.
If I was in the Washington press corps, there are two things I would be doggedly pursuing. If the Foley case, shaped as it is by countless appalled Democrats, is about pedophilia, I want to know who, in the Democratic leadership of the House, knew about Mr. Foley's page fetish and how long they knew. I want to know why they delayed one second to report this reprehensible behavior to the proper authorities.
And the second thing I want to know is when members of the press discovered Foley's sinful behavior. How long did the media know? Why were they so slow to act to protect children from a "predator."
Look, I have no problem accepting that Mr. Foley was a threat to young males. I have no problem accepting that his emails are vulgar. What I don't accept is the apparently glaring fact that those who are taking umbrage now with his peccadilloes have been silent for even the briefest amount of time. If there is hypocrisy in this, it is slithering somewhere around this fact.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
The other night, while punching out a few phrases as a warm up to writing, I (somewhat) randomly banged out these throwaways:
"When a gay man is caught by Republicans, they throw the Bible at him. When a gay man is caught by Democrats, they embrace him, giving him rights to happiness. Unless that gay man is a Republican. Then Democrats throw the book at him. And a shrink.
"Democrats gather at the lectern beneath falling balloons filled with so much heavy gas. They rally around a mission statement hammered out by knocking heads together: 'We are the party of the big tent, the inclusive camp; we exist solely as a bulwark against bigotry and injustice. That explains why we have broken camp in such haste; there is a gay man outside with confused sexual identities: He’s a Republican. We have hauled our asses across the river; it is unjust that anyone might think we are here to help. It is that sort of bigotry we abhor, the kind which expects us to be as big as the falling fabric over our heads.'"
Let us just for fun assume that Mr. Foley is a Democrat. Let us assume that he was caught by Republican snoops, their noses to the ground, sniffing out the pheromones of filth. What would Democrats say to defend Mr. Foley? Perhaps they would say something like this:
'Please. Let us not be too hasty to judge the privacy of a man whose public service has been so stellar. He has not, as far as anyone can tell, broken any law; and if a law has been broken, we must ask ourselves whether this is not the sort of law that should be broken. We like to be compassionate here; we accept that people are in various stages of moral clarity and sexual identity. Not everyone fully knows who he or she is; we are all products of psychological and emotional struggles that lead us through a lot of confused searching. Mr. Foley is no different than many men and women, and he has sought psycho-sexual affirmation with older teenage boys; perhaps his issues are a lot less about sex than they are about emotional support and, perhaps, even anxieties about dying. Moreover, it is clear we need to be careful in pronouncing judgment, for no one of us is fit to throw stones. We did not confront Mr. Foley largely because we expected this sort of judgmentalism to come from the Republicans: had we disciplined Mr. Foley, we would have been accused of gay-bashing. We would have been called "hypocrites" had we censured him. Yes, we admit that we have known about Mr. Foley for a long time now; but there are far more dangerous things in this world than a good congressman who lovingly adores younger men. If our culture were more tolerant of homosexuals in general, if gay men could be more open with their feelings and desires, perhaps Mr. Foley would not have felt that he needed to identify with the younger men in his milieu: his sexuality remains repressed by a pervasive heterosexism that expects a man to grow up, marry a good wife, raise a family, and sit as patriarch over his progeny. Sadly, not all men can meet such prefabricated, oppressive expectations.'
If there is a political point to all the current alarmist language about Republican hypocrisy, and the feigned Democratic shock associated with an avowedly gay Republican fascinated by dirty talk and teenage males, it is this: Democrats want you to know that if there are gays in the party of family values, they are messed up gays. No liberal Democrat can really countenance the fact that 23-25% of homosexuals who voted in 2000 and 2004 voted for George Bush; no Democrat can countenance that any "normal" gay man would vote against gay marriage. But such gays do indeed exist; and the Republican party, contrary to modern mythology, does indeed welcome them.
Regarding the Foley matter, perhaps Mr. Foley himself is a "hypocrite"; but perhaps his alleged hypocrisy resides here: he loathes his homosexuality and yet cannot help himself. Perhaps he believes his sexuality is indeed a choice, one that he can suppress; perhaps he believes he recognizes that his own behaviors do indeed jeopardize the security of the family. I have no problem with, for example, a Sen. Edward Kennedy voting for more restrictive drunk-driving laws, precisely because that esteemed senator, who has been shown great mercy, nonetheless knows that such mercy comes as a result of his killing a woman while he was drunk. His vote matters more, in some ways, than those who have never killed a woman: he knows the costs of drunk-driving. Of course, he has not really suffered much politically, at least in Massachusetts; though Mr. Foley has indeed suffered great loss, precisely, I am afraid to say, because he is not a gay Democrat. But hypocrisy is not a man saying one thing and then doing another. Hypocrisy is a man exempting himself from the rules he expects of others. Hypocrisy is not Smith railing against petty theft and then stealing his neighbor's bamboo rake. We all violate our principles at one time or another; we have all known contrition. But hypocrisy is Smith railing against theft and then denying that his action had anything to do with stealing; hypocrisy is Smith arguing that he is specially privileged to acquire his neighbor's desirable rake. I have no idea of whether Mr. Foley or Mr. Kennedy believe their moral precepts apply to everyone but themselves: for all I know, they are perfectly consistent, like many of us, in theory. They just fall short in practice.
If I was in the Washington press corps, there are two things I would be doggedly pursuing. If the Foley case, shaped as it is by countless appalled Democrats, is about pedophilia, I want to know who, in the Democratic leadership of the House, knew about Mr. Foley's page fetish and how long they knew. I want to know why they delayed one second to report this reprehensible behavior to the proper authorities.
And the second thing I want to know is when members of the press discovered Foley's sinful behavior. How long did the media know? Why were they so slow to act to protect children from a "predator."
Look, I have no problem accepting that Mr. Foley was a threat to young males. I have no problem accepting that his emails are vulgar. What I don't accept is the apparently glaring fact that those who are taking umbrage now with his peccadilloes have been silent for even the briefest amount of time. If there is hypocrisy in this, it is slithering somewhere around this fact.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
The Problem Of Knowing Good And Evil, Part IV
[Part I of this series begins here.]
I've never known a person not touched by evil, pain, suffering. But I have known many people who have never known joy.
The other day, while I was sitting in a park photographing cedar waxwings (not my photo), an old salt-of-the-earth New Englander asked me a question. He had recently seen a bird, a black bird with red patches on its wings. "I have never seen one before. Do you know what it was?" I cheerfully told him that it was one of my favorites, the red-winged blackbird (not my photo either). I told him all I knew of the bird, and the old man continued on his way. But it was clear that the man, who surely seemed to have his wits about him, had never seen what is utterly a common bird in New England. Since the beginning of this essay (this morning) I have had several visit my feeders just outside the window, and they are always busy flitting about wetlands everywhere. They are remarkably obvious birds, extremely chatty, very active. It is hard to imagine that there are people around who have not seen one of them.
But then again, there are all kinds of things that surprise us, not least of which is that there are people who have never even been loved. This may be too hard for us to entertain even in the most detached, academic way. We do not know how such a fact could ever be possible. But reality is often too much for us, especially when that reality so thoroughly contradicts our experience: There are people who have not been loved for one second of their lives. How could this happen?
Perhaps there is some solace, and a small answer, in the pronouncement that God loves those who are unloved, or even unlovable. But it is not a very convincing sort of solace; we are not convinced that this is enough to restore someone who has never been loved to any sense of self worth. After an encounter with a very sad man on a city street (I was working as a photojournalist at the time), and after a very brief argument with an editor at the newspaper where I worked, I wrote the following poem:
In human interest
I submit the photoshopped images to the news queue
a disfigured head, gigantesque in its distortion
twisted grin his normal straight
brow like the elephant man’s
I pull them up to show you and you
give a face that has sales written all over it
I remember meeting this news feature
before you either saw him as news or
even as a feature:
You say, you’re too philosophical to be a
journalist.
I say, thank you. Really.
You walk away muttering about your circulation.
***
I've never known a person not touched by evil, pain, suffering. But I have known many people who have never known joy.
The other day, while I was sitting in a park photographing cedar waxwings (not my photo), an old salt-of-the-earth New Englander asked me a question. He had recently seen a bird, a black bird with red patches on its wings. "I have never seen one before. Do you know what it was?" I cheerfully told him that it was one of my favorites, the red-winged blackbird (not my photo either). I told him all I knew of the bird, and the old man continued on his way. But it was clear that the man, who surely seemed to have his wits about him, had never seen what is utterly a common bird in New England. Since the beginning of this essay (this morning) I have had several visit my feeders just outside the window, and they are always busy flitting about wetlands everywhere. They are remarkably obvious birds, extremely chatty, very active. It is hard to imagine that there are people around who have not seen one of them.
But then again, there are all kinds of things that surprise us, not least of which is that there are people who have never even been loved. This may be too hard for us to entertain even in the most detached, academic way. We do not know how such a fact could ever be possible. But reality is often too much for us, especially when that reality so thoroughly contradicts our experience: There are people who have not been loved for one second of their lives. How could this happen?
Perhaps there is some solace, and a small answer, in the pronouncement that God loves those who are unloved, or even unlovable. But it is not a very convincing sort of solace; we are not convinced that this is enough to restore someone who has never been loved to any sense of self worth. After an encounter with a very sad man on a city street (I was working as a photojournalist at the time), and after a very brief argument with an editor at the newspaper where I worked, I wrote the following poem:
In human interest
I submit the photoshopped images to the news queue
a disfigured head, gigantesque in its distortion
twisted grin his normal straight
brow like the elephant man’s
I pull them up to show you and you
give a face that has sales written all over it
I remember meeting this news feature
before you either saw him as news or
even as a feature:
He was sitting on a bench, where else?I say, I wonder if anyone ever loved him.
on Main Street near Railroad Ave.
his head twice the size of most
fairground balloons
I wondered whether he had ever been touched
What’s your name? I asked.
Johhhhhnnnyyyy! he replied, Ya gaht aaany mmmonnney?
I emptied my pockets, a few bucks and I handed it to him.
At that instant a cab pulled up to the curb, and Johnny
jumped in. I laughed, but knew I’d be back for more.
You say, you’re too philosophical to be a
journalist.
I say, thank you. Really.
You walk away muttering about your circulation.
***
It seems like a loveless world. Darwin tells us, when we really think about it, that it is all about competition: there is no equality in Darwin's mean streets, there is no rest or peace or promise of uninterrupted comfort anywhere on the face of the earth. We balk at this, or we kick at the portents of atheism in so much Darwin-inspired, dread-saturated, post-modern emptiness. We wonder how a people who demand so much meaning out of life, who expect justice and love and joy, could have evolved from a primordial ooze that is utterly without meaning. How does the desire for purpose evolve from purposelessness; how does the want for love evolve from lovelessness?
Life does not seem fair: the child born with no face (as shown recently on TV); the newborn boy discarded in a garbage pail, now pushed from orphanage to orphanage; those families crammed into railroad cars heading toward gas chambers. I ask how it is that, if we've evolved from nothing, we then don't blame nothing for evil, or how we even see anything as evil at all. Why, if the radical evolutionists are right, why do we even care about suffering, or why would we blame God, if, indeed, there is no God at all? How did we get here, when our starting point was the void? It's as if we fundamentally defy as creatures the very physics of the universe, where it is a law that you can't get more energy out of a thing than what's in it. How is it that humans can demand, inspire or expect more meaning and love than the meaningless, loveless universe from whence they came can ever offer?
Life does not seem fair: the child born with no face (as shown recently on TV); the newborn boy discarded in a garbage pail, now pushed from orphanage to orphanage; those families crammed into railroad cars heading toward gas chambers. I ask how it is that, if we've evolved from nothing, we then don't blame nothing for evil, or how we even see anything as evil at all. Why, if the radical evolutionists are right, why do we even care about suffering, or why would we blame God, if, indeed, there is no God at all? How did we get here, when our starting point was the void? It's as if we fundamentally defy as creatures the very physics of the universe, where it is a law that you can't get more energy out of a thing than what's in it. How is it that humans can demand, inspire or expect more meaning and love than the meaningless, loveless universe from whence they came can ever offer?
***
Did God create death camps? Did God create cigarettes, guns, nuclear bombs, chainsaws, alcohol, crystal meth? Is God responsible for polluted rivers, polluted air? Did He make us fly jets across the Atlantic, scarring the atmosphere; did He make us fly planes into skycrapers, skyscrapers that He built on fill in Lower Manhattan?
If there is a proof for the existence of God I might think it resides here, that humans blame Him for the things they created. One might also find an argument for the existence of God in His apparent absence: if I were God I might hide from humanity too. But there really is nothing hidden about God, as He is evident in every wingbeat of the red-winged blackbird. Heidegger's haunting question might even help us see God even where Heidegger could not: How is that there is anything here at all? What keeps everything from slipping into the abyss of non-being?
For some of us, the question might get us to begging, begging for a miracle. We want intervention (and we want it NOW!) not realizing that the very squirrels and birds and grasses and winds are divine signs. God is at work. Jesus may have impressed His disciples by walking on water. But the miracle is not in the walking, it is in the water; that there is any water at all. Raising the dead is miraculous, no doubt, but not anymore miraculous than that there was any person who lived in the first place. Sadly, we are too dulled, or too fearful, to live in the miraculous. We comfort ourselves in the presence of natural laws, oblivious, mostly, that the predictability of nature is often illusory and, more importantly, that the very laws themselves are miraculous. Breathing is really more of a miracle than Christ's resurrection. In fact, I believe He rose from the dead to prove that very thing, granting us life eternal so that we might breathe forevermore. But we hardly notice the miraculous in the commonplace until the wind is knocked out of us, or when we sense our last inhale will indeed be our very last.
If there is a proof for the existence of God I might think it resides here, that humans blame Him for the things they created. One might also find an argument for the existence of God in His apparent absence: if I were God I might hide from humanity too. But there really is nothing hidden about God, as He is evident in every wingbeat of the red-winged blackbird. Heidegger's haunting question might even help us see God even where Heidegger could not: How is that there is anything here at all? What keeps everything from slipping into the abyss of non-being?
For some of us, the question might get us to begging, begging for a miracle. We want intervention (and we want it NOW!) not realizing that the very squirrels and birds and grasses and winds are divine signs. God is at work. Jesus may have impressed His disciples by walking on water. But the miracle is not in the walking, it is in the water; that there is any water at all. Raising the dead is miraculous, no doubt, but not anymore miraculous than that there was any person who lived in the first place. Sadly, we are too dulled, or too fearful, to live in the miraculous. We comfort ourselves in the presence of natural laws, oblivious, mostly, that the predictability of nature is often illusory and, more importantly, that the very laws themselves are miraculous. Breathing is really more of a miracle than Christ's resurrection. In fact, I believe He rose from the dead to prove that very thing, granting us life eternal so that we might breathe forevermore. But we hardly notice the miraculous in the commonplace until the wind is knocked out of us, or when we sense our last inhale will indeed be our very last.
***
We can ask where God is in the midst of suffering, as long as we are asking where we are in the midst of it, too. As we have seen, God has taken the blame for creation, for suffering, for evil; and He has taken the blame for things He did not even create. There should be joy in this news; we should receive this news with dancing and laughter and merriment. But we have even grown used to joy, I am afraid, even when it comes so rarely; good news is old news, and even joy seems tired, boring, predictable. We are too worldly to laugh, to dance in the freedom of forgiveness, to drink deep draughts of holy, redeemed merriment. Holiness, joy, redemption, forgiveness -- these are greeted with a big yawn by the all-knowing sophisticates we think we are. We snicker at the idea of a banquet with a Holy Family, because we know families, and they are all broken and disappointing. Laugh for a while, we say, but before long you'll be at each others' throats, just like so many holidays with our own too-often unholy families. Heaven? bliss? No thanks. That's for those who need such assurances.
***
The Christian message is simple regarding suffering, and it is painful. God loves both the murderer and the murdered, and He knows what it is to be both. He cannot stop being all-knowing, all-present, and thus is always both victim and victimizer. To intervene in world affairs in terms familiar to us, action figures that we think we are, would be for God to have to choose sides. But God is, until time has run out, on all sides: He is a Yankees and Red Sox fan; He roots for Manchester United as fervently as He roots for Arsenal. In short, He cheers on people, not ideologies, except the Gospel itself. He did not root for Hitlerism, but surely He adored Hitler. He did not root for Arafat's hatred, but surely He loved Arafat. He did not love the blood on King David's hands, but surely He loved the hands that were David's. The red-winged blackbird killed by a goshawk in my yard recently, killed right before my eyes, was no less loved by God than the goshawk that carried the dead bird away. After all, had God stopped the hawk from smashing that helpless blackbird into the side of my house, right next to me, would He not have had to bring the whole cosmos to a halt?
The Gospel of Christ declares this: That God loves you more than He loves His own life, and even His own joy. Better to be with you in hell than in heaven without you. Better to crucify the Creator than to stop Creation. Better to bring God to a screeching halt than the hawk in its deadly flight. Better to bring God to the grave than Hitler to annihilation.
Strange, though, how few people point out that Hitler was indeed stopped. No one seems to thank God for that, do they? Perhaps God did intervene -- perfectly, the only way Omniscience can. He KNOWS what He is doing, right? Otherwise, He can't be God. And if He is not God, we are indeed pitiable, and lost.
"Come unto me, all you who labor, and I will give you rest." It is always a good thing to remember that the very first miracle that Jesus performed was to make more wine. Sounds exactly like the sort of message one would expect of a God who cares, who pays attention.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: Pope Benedict XVI, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Hitler, Theodicy, Problem of Evil, The New Yorker
The Gospel of Christ declares this: That God loves you more than He loves His own life, and even His own joy. Better to be with you in hell than in heaven without you. Better to crucify the Creator than to stop Creation. Better to bring God to a screeching halt than the hawk in its deadly flight. Better to bring God to the grave than Hitler to annihilation.
Strange, though, how few people point out that Hitler was indeed stopped. No one seems to thank God for that, do they? Perhaps God did intervene -- perfectly, the only way Omniscience can. He KNOWS what He is doing, right? Otherwise, He can't be God. And if He is not God, we are indeed pitiable, and lost.
"Come unto me, all you who labor, and I will give you rest." It is always a good thing to remember that the very first miracle that Jesus performed was to make more wine. Sounds exactly like the sort of message one would expect of a God who cares, who pays attention.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: Pope Benedict XVI, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Hitler, Theodicy, Problem of Evil, The New Yorker
Sunday, June 04, 2006
The Problem Of Knowing Good And Evil, Part III: To Hell With Jesus
[I post this essay with trepidation. It is a long entry in this series on good and evil. But it is a necessary one. That is not where my fear lies. I am afraid that I have gone too far. (Part I of this series begins here.)]
This series began with Pope Benedict XVI praying at Auschwitz. It won't end there, not because I am interested in following the Holy Father to another scene, but because the issue of good and evil has no earthly terminus. We will be asking questions until answers are finally given.
In the February 6, 2006 issue of The New Yorker, in an article called "Forgiveness", author Timothy W. Ryback discusses the Pope's difficult past –– of growing up in Nazi Germany and serving in the Hitler Youth and the Nazi military. But in Ryback's piece one reads the following about then-professor Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) teaching at the University of Tübingen as a young man:
This series began with Pope Benedict XVI praying at Auschwitz. It won't end there, not because I am interested in following the Holy Father to another scene, but because the issue of good and evil has no earthly terminus. We will be asking questions until answers are finally given.
In the February 6, 2006 issue of The New Yorker, in an article called "Forgiveness", author Timothy W. Ryback discusses the Pope's difficult past –– of growing up in Nazi Germany and serving in the Hitler Youth and the Nazi military. But in Ryback's piece one reads the following about then-professor Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) teaching at the University of Tübingen as a young man:
In 1966, when Ratzinger arrived in Tübingen, the university was a center of theological dispute. Students disrupted lectures with cries of "Verflucht sei Jesus!" ("To hell with Jesus!"). Protestant faculty members endorsed flyers denouncing the crucifix as "an expression of sadomasochistic glorification of suffering."We have already spoken of both human indifference and human culpability regarding suffering and evil. I have argued that humanity is remarkably silent about horrors, except when it comes to horrors and God, and then humanity is quite boisterous about God's alleged weakness, moral turpitude, indifference, or even His non-existence. If there is a God, God is to blame; He's the one who must give account, He is the one who must be judged. God is the source of horrors.
***
I cannot think of a more complex religious image: the Vicar of Christ, the Pope of the Holy Catholic Church, a former Hitler youth and soldier in the Nazi cult, standing at Auschwitz. It is a stillpoint; it is the crux of the matter. Can a sinner be a saint? Are redemption and sanctification possible? Does God love the indifferent and brutal as much as He loves the compassionate and merciful? Does God love the abuser as much as he loves the abused? Are Hitler and Elie Wiesel (a famous Holocaust survivor) loved equally by God?
There is something essentially Christian about Benedict XVI standing within the gates of death. There is something essentially Christian about the very idea of redemption: St. Paul, the outstanding Jew who was a murderer, is the quintessence of the Christian message: all are saved who would be saved. God, as St. Paul says, takes the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; He is a God of gracious irony, proving that grace, love and mercy always trump the rules. My own earthly father taught me this: he taught me that he loved me more than he loved his rules, his reputation, his honor. I was more important than a statute, a commandment. The sheep is more important than the sheepfold; a hole in the fence did not mean that the fence was broken but that a sheep was lost, and in jeopardy. God cares for the lost, He pursues them; and He finds them in order to make them whole. This is what my father taught me, and it is essentially Christ's message to the world.
And yet there is a whole world of people who believe that rules are God; that a lost sheep deserves his or her plight; that the fence should just be fixed to keep only the good sheep in, and the bad sheep out.
Perhaps I am rambling, but I ramble over brambles and thorns to get to one important point, a point that might indeed save one sheep from a disasterous decision, and that point is this: To hell with Jesus indeed!
There is something essentially Christian about Benedict XVI standing within the gates of death. There is something essentially Christian about the very idea of redemption: St. Paul, the outstanding Jew who was a murderer, is the quintessence of the Christian message: all are saved who would be saved. God, as St. Paul says, takes the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; He is a God of gracious irony, proving that grace, love and mercy always trump the rules. My own earthly father taught me this: he taught me that he loved me more than he loved his rules, his reputation, his honor. I was more important than a statute, a commandment. The sheep is more important than the sheepfold; a hole in the fence did not mean that the fence was broken but that a sheep was lost, and in jeopardy. God cares for the lost, He pursues them; and He finds them in order to make them whole. This is what my father taught me, and it is essentially Christ's message to the world.
And yet there is a whole world of people who believe that rules are God; that a lost sheep deserves his or her plight; that the fence should just be fixed to keep only the good sheep in, and the bad sheep out.
Perhaps I am rambling, but I ramble over brambles and thorns to get to one important point, a point that might indeed save one sheep from a disasterous decision, and that point is this: To hell with Jesus indeed!
***
I have said it before and I will say it again: The Christian gospel has it all exactly right. Christianity is separated from all other religions by having, not the valley climb to the summit, but the summit tumble down to the valley. There is no Moses climbing to receive a Word from God in the Gospel story; there is no Muhammad receiving the very words of a radically transcendent God whose message is all about making men better men. The message of Christianity is about a God tumbling to Hell in order to make God a better God. I border on blasphemy, I know, but hear me out.
***
Years ago I was painting a school gymnasium with a college friend when a horse fly, a large nasty bloodthirsty fly with stinging jaws, landed on my friend's leg. My friend was quick to snatch it, and, in the course of looking at it, my friend asked me if the pest was "one of the nasty biting flies". I told him that it was indeed, and that it was cousin to the smaller though no less nasty deer fly. To my horror, my friend pulled the wings off the fly and tossed it to the ground. "Suffer!" he shouted. I quickly walked over and crushed the wingless fly beneath my foot.
Odd that such a moment should have become a defining moment in my life. Earlier that year I had a young man in my dorm (I was an RA for three years) whose father, an atheist, threw out a stiff challenge to the idea of original sin or original culpability. "Why should God be upset with me if I cannot help but be a sinner? I did not ask to be born. How then am I accountable?" It is a great challenge, and I was stumped for months. But when I crushed the fly beneath my foot, I knew I had an answer. And that answer begins with the character of God. Was my friend, the wing-ripping, sardonic and merciless man before me, anything like the God of the universe? Did God delight in abusing that which itself was abusive; did God aim to punish a fly that was just being itself? Would a just God punish a being that had no choice but to be unpleasant?
The clarity with which I divined my way through the problem took the following course. I imagined that I, an outsider to the fly's world yet a being full of love for all flies, descended to the mere existence of a fly. I was, to a perfect match, a horsefly. And to the other flies I spoke:
I know that you do not know exactly what it is you do. But if I were to tell you that you were an awful, nasty creature, what would you say? If I told you that the things you bite, the things from which you draw your life, are injured viciously by you, and that they loathe you, would you care? Trust me when I say this: I am not blaming you. In fact, let me state that you were even made this way. I made you this way. But now I ask you this. What if I were to tell you that you could become something new, wonderful, lovely? What if I told you I could transform you, I could liberate you from this plight? Would you follow? Would you choose to be new, different, lovely, though still in essence who you were created to be? Would you choose to be more lovely than the butterflies if I promised you such wonder? Or would you reject me?
My question to you, dear reader, is this: If I really could transform the flies, if I really could deliver them from their plight and I showed them incontrovertibly that I could, who would be responsible if they refused? If the flies could be completely transformed and yet essentially remained their fully undifferentiated selves, and they refused so great a blessing, who is to blame if they chose to remain nasty biting bugs? Surely not their creator, even if He, indeed, had created them to bite. For now He was offering them a singular gift, a chance to participate in their creation; they were to be co-creators in their new lives. But, and here is a critical point, if they refused their new lives, they would be endorsing their viciousness as wonderful and desirable. In short, if they chose to be nasty and untransformed, they would become the sole creators of who and what they were.
For those who have an understanding of the problem of predestination and free will, we come to another crux, another crossroad. For here we see something amazing. Even if the creator of the flies made them to be vicious, should they refuse his offer, they have become their own creators, setting the creator free. The flies can no longer complain that they were made to be mean by someone else: they have freely made their decision, and they have continued in their evil ways. The flies have chosen, and their NO to the creator is the one thing that is truly their own: It is a wondrous act of free will.
However, should any fly choose to be transformed, should any fly choose to be a co-creator in his (or her) re-creation, that fly would make a startling pronouncement: I had nothing to do with it at all! For the fly, now more glorious than a butterfly, would announce that his choice was not of his making, as the wondrous world in which he lived was not his doing: "You see, I am indeed new, but I had nothing to do with either the option or the choosing. I did not present the choice to myself, it came to me; I did not create the idea of a butterfly, it came from above. My assent is hardly a choice. It is more that I have been chosen, for my creator came to me at a point in time with a wonderful bit of news; I did not come to HIM with the news, but He came to me." In other words, the transformed fly would say that his YES to the creator was not really his; he was predestined to be transformed. For he did not come up with the whole idea in the first place. And, as a result, both the creator and created were set free.
So in short, free will means saying NO; but it has nothing to do with saying YES.
Where does this fit in with the problem of evil? It fits right here: that Christ became a fly, was confronted by the vicious who could not be, on their own, otherwise; they submitted Him to capital punishment for making the cosmos in the first place; He died and descended to Hell, and returned as a transcendent butterfly with POWER. And then He said, "You've killed me. I've suffered. I've taken the blame for starting it all; I have taken your sins upon me and called them my own. And now the whole of sin is buried, hidden away, tossed into the abyss. I am the murderer, and the murdered; I am the rapist and the raped; I am the Nazi and the Jew. I have been all things in all ways in all times; you have punished me and I have succumbed. And now that you are no longer to blame, now what? Will you come to me now? For there is no one left to blame."
Odd that such a moment should have become a defining moment in my life. Earlier that year I had a young man in my dorm (I was an RA for three years) whose father, an atheist, threw out a stiff challenge to the idea of original sin or original culpability. "Why should God be upset with me if I cannot help but be a sinner? I did not ask to be born. How then am I accountable?" It is a great challenge, and I was stumped for months. But when I crushed the fly beneath my foot, I knew I had an answer. And that answer begins with the character of God. Was my friend, the wing-ripping, sardonic and merciless man before me, anything like the God of the universe? Did God delight in abusing that which itself was abusive; did God aim to punish a fly that was just being itself? Would a just God punish a being that had no choice but to be unpleasant?
The clarity with which I divined my way through the problem took the following course. I imagined that I, an outsider to the fly's world yet a being full of love for all flies, descended to the mere existence of a fly. I was, to a perfect match, a horsefly. And to the other flies I spoke:
I know that you do not know exactly what it is you do. But if I were to tell you that you were an awful, nasty creature, what would you say? If I told you that the things you bite, the things from which you draw your life, are injured viciously by you, and that they loathe you, would you care? Trust me when I say this: I am not blaming you. In fact, let me state that you were even made this way. I made you this way. But now I ask you this. What if I were to tell you that you could become something new, wonderful, lovely? What if I told you I could transform you, I could liberate you from this plight? Would you follow? Would you choose to be new, different, lovely, though still in essence who you were created to be? Would you choose to be more lovely than the butterflies if I promised you such wonder? Or would you reject me?
My question to you, dear reader, is this: If I really could transform the flies, if I really could deliver them from their plight and I showed them incontrovertibly that I could, who would be responsible if they refused? If the flies could be completely transformed and yet essentially remained their fully undifferentiated selves, and they refused so great a blessing, who is to blame if they chose to remain nasty biting bugs? Surely not their creator, even if He, indeed, had created them to bite. For now He was offering them a singular gift, a chance to participate in their creation; they were to be co-creators in their new lives. But, and here is a critical point, if they refused their new lives, they would be endorsing their viciousness as wonderful and desirable. In short, if they chose to be nasty and untransformed, they would become the sole creators of who and what they were.
For those who have an understanding of the problem of predestination and free will, we come to another crux, another crossroad. For here we see something amazing. Even if the creator of the flies made them to be vicious, should they refuse his offer, they have become their own creators, setting the creator free. The flies can no longer complain that they were made to be mean by someone else: they have freely made their decision, and they have continued in their evil ways. The flies have chosen, and their NO to the creator is the one thing that is truly their own: It is a wondrous act of free will.
However, should any fly choose to be transformed, should any fly choose to be a co-creator in his (or her) re-creation, that fly would make a startling pronouncement: I had nothing to do with it at all! For the fly, now more glorious than a butterfly, would announce that his choice was not of his making, as the wondrous world in which he lived was not his doing: "You see, I am indeed new, but I had nothing to do with either the option or the choosing. I did not present the choice to myself, it came to me; I did not create the idea of a butterfly, it came from above. My assent is hardly a choice. It is more that I have been chosen, for my creator came to me at a point in time with a wonderful bit of news; I did not come to HIM with the news, but He came to me." In other words, the transformed fly would say that his YES to the creator was not really his; he was predestined to be transformed. For he did not come up with the whole idea in the first place. And, as a result, both the creator and created were set free.
So in short, free will means saying NO; but it has nothing to do with saying YES.
Where does this fit in with the problem of evil? It fits right here: that Christ became a fly, was confronted by the vicious who could not be, on their own, otherwise; they submitted Him to capital punishment for making the cosmos in the first place; He died and descended to Hell, and returned as a transcendent butterfly with POWER. And then He said, "You've killed me. I've suffered. I've taken the blame for starting it all; I have taken your sins upon me and called them my own. And now the whole of sin is buried, hidden away, tossed into the abyss. I am the murderer, and the murdered; I am the rapist and the raped; I am the Nazi and the Jew. I have been all things in all ways in all times; you have punished me and I have succumbed. And now that you are no longer to blame, now what? Will you come to me now? For there is no one left to blame."
***
"Verflucht sei Jesus! To Hell with Jesus!" To Hell indeed. For it is the God that was believed to be vindictive and petty, mean and cold, that we discover in Christ is a different God: He is the God who SUFFERS, who succumbs to the death inherent in even the smallest sin. He would rather be in hell with us than in heaven without us. He has come, He has shown us that He is a different God. "Come unto me, and I will give you rest," He offers to Jew, Gentile, and Nazi alike. And yet, and yet …
There are those who refuse, who resist transformation, healing. And in so doing their NO to God becomes a YES to sorrow, sin, death, and suffering. They freely choose to be sole creators in their sorrow; and they resist the gentle Hand that reaches forward. God does not pull off wings; He does not say "Suffer!" We say it in every moment of resistance to transformation; and in keeping our pitiable sorrows we refuse to have our sins transformed to gems. We, those who protest against such grace, true protestants as we are, are the sadomasochists: it's not the God on the Cross who is sadist, masochist. It's the obdurate who view Him that way who are mired in sadomasochism.
Pope Benedict XVI, formerly a little boy in Nazi Germany who helped the Hitler cult perform even one heinous deed, is that perfect emblem of Christianity: The wise are confounded by the grace of a God who saves -- and transforms -- not only that which is lost, but that which is revolting. Grace abounds in Christianity, from sea to sea, star to sun, earth to hearth, Heart to heart. There is no peace without forgiveness, the forgiveness of God toward man, and man toward God; and, most importantly, man to man, woman to woman, brother to sister and Palestinian to Jew. There will be no end to woe without forgiveness. Mark my words.
Forgiveness always requires that something dies, is buried. And then comes the freedom. It is the gospel, the glad tidings. Glad indeed!
Peace to you.
(Concluding thoughts tomorrow, which begin here.)
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved. (Dedicated to James Saunders.)
Technorati tags: Pope Benedict XVI, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Hitler, Theodicy, Problem of Evil,
The New Yorker
There are those who refuse, who resist transformation, healing. And in so doing their NO to God becomes a YES to sorrow, sin, death, and suffering. They freely choose to be sole creators in their sorrow; and they resist the gentle Hand that reaches forward. God does not pull off wings; He does not say "Suffer!" We say it in every moment of resistance to transformation; and in keeping our pitiable sorrows we refuse to have our sins transformed to gems. We, those who protest against such grace, true protestants as we are, are the sadomasochists: it's not the God on the Cross who is sadist, masochist. It's the obdurate who view Him that way who are mired in sadomasochism.
Pope Benedict XVI, formerly a little boy in Nazi Germany who helped the Hitler cult perform even one heinous deed, is that perfect emblem of Christianity: The wise are confounded by the grace of a God who saves -- and transforms -- not only that which is lost, but that which is revolting. Grace abounds in Christianity, from sea to sea, star to sun, earth to hearth, Heart to heart. There is no peace without forgiveness, the forgiveness of God toward man, and man toward God; and, most importantly, man to man, woman to woman, brother to sister and Palestinian to Jew. There will be no end to woe without forgiveness. Mark my words.
Forgiveness always requires that something dies, is buried. And then comes the freedom. It is the gospel, the glad tidings. Glad indeed!
Peace to you.
(Concluding thoughts tomorrow, which begin here.)
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved. (Dedicated to James Saunders.)
Technorati tags: Pope Benedict XVI, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Hitler, Theodicy, Problem of Evil,
The New Yorker
Thursday, June 01, 2006
The Problem Of Knowing Good And Evil, Part II
In Part I of this series, I spoke of suffering, of evil and death; of the Holocaust. I discussed the problem of evil, that the existence of evil proves that God is weak, mean, or both; and that for many people the best conclusion drawn from the harsh realities of suffering is that there is no God at all.
I added my own thoughts on the problem of evil as classically defined, arguing that the problem ignores the obvious assumption in our definition of God, that God is omniscient. As an omniscient Being, God might know that the only way to eradicate evil and suffering from the cosmos is exactly the way we see events unfolding in our lives: omniscience IS at work in every tragedy and in every joy. In other words, God IS doing something, the very thing an all-wise God can only do; and it looks like Life. And it might very well be the case that God was not silent at all during the Holocaust. His voice may indeed have been quite strong. In fact, I have even heard it suggested that had Hitler not been distracted by the Jews in Germany, Poland, France; had Hitler instead ignored them and turned the German machinery of death, destruction and warfare on his enemies, he would have won World War II and far more than 6,000,000 Jews would have been killed. The suggestion posits a heroic idea, that the Jews were something of a glorious sacrifice that saved us all from Nazi tyranny: the Jews were freedom fighters even in their alleged weakness. It was the Jews who destroyed Hitler. Churchill and Roosevelt had nothing to do with it.
This is not an attempt on my part to palliate the evils of the Holocaust, nor am I trying to cheer up the surviving victims of Germany's death camps. I am making a point that God may have indeed been very much at work in profoundly effective and yet strange ways, which is what one would expect of an omniscient God. Omniscience, in fact, may behave in utterly bizarre and contradictory ways; and it may act in obscurity.
A couple of years ago, I had a bit of a spat with a local shop owner about suffering, God, justice. He followed me out to the sidewalk and, in the heat of debate said, "I've done more for the suffering of starving Africans than God ever has." I must say that I understand the sentiment behind this conceit, but I do not understand the conceit. God appears not to be doing anything most of the time; He does not seem to even care. But one of the real problems associated with evil is not that God doesn't care, it's that there is sweepingly broad empirical evidence that most humans don't care either.
About 15 years ago I received a phone call from an old friend grieving about the sad death of a young mother we both knew. My friend was angry at God, for God had let not only Penny (the dead woman) down, He let lots of others down, too. My friend wondered how God could choose not to heed the prayers of Penny and her son, or the prayers of countless people surrounding that tragedy. Even Penny believed that she would be healed! How could God not honor that? How could He be content with yet another motherless child?
After awhile I shared with my friend something that hit my conscience hard. I said that in all of the time that Penny was living, all 26 years of her life, not once had anyone called me to proclaim how glad they were that Penny existed. No one called to praise Penny's smile, her laughter, her sweet goodness. No one called me to praise God for His wonderful creation which was Penny in all her simple glory. No one called to complain that there was not MORE of Penny everywhere; and no one ever said that God was too kind to us all to have created such a wonderful woman in the first place. And yet, in spite of all this silence, people were now mad that God had taken Penny away. Before, there was no gladness around Penny, but after her death there was nothing but madness. No one praised God yesterday, and yet now people were poised to curse Him today.
My friend agreed, and I believe we were both changed during that phone call.
I am reminded of all this because we often expect an explanation for something taken from us without ever asking ourselves how we were given the thing to begin with. A man may be mad at God when his son is killed in a car wreck; but was he ever grateful to God that he even had a son who would, eventually, die?
What has come to surprise me about many reactions to death and suffering is that people respond with such surprise. When a child dies of a brain tumor or a woman is raped and murdered, one would think that such a thing had never before happened, judging by many survivors' reactions, particularly their reactions toward God. God is to blame, it seems, even though few people take the responsibility for suffering themselves. Like the shopkeeper who thinks he does more to alleviate sorrow than even God, many forget that they are perhaps the reason there is suffering at all. For surely each of us who has had a child knew about rape, murder, disease, fire, pestilence, earthquake, pedophilia, and car crashes BEFORE we had children; surely there is NO ONE on this planet choosing to have children who did not know about these things. And yet, AND YET, knowing this, knowing that death occurs every day; knowing that there are murderers and rapists and wars and droughts and suicides and divorce and cannibals and cancers, and that we nonetheless still choose to have children; all of this should lead us to one question, and one question only: When it comes to suffering and evil, who among us is NOT to blame?
Please note: I am responsible for every bit of suffering my child experiences in life, every bit. Why? Because I knew beforehand that dreadful things MAY happen; I might even have known that they WILL happen, and yet I (not anyone else) CHOSE to bring a child into this world. I am the source of suffering. If there was at least ONE thing I knew before reproducing a child, it was the simple fact that that child will someday DIE.
Interestingly, as I may be responsible for my child's sorrow, I cannot say that I am responsible for my child's joys. And this for the simple reason that before having a child I had no certainty that joy would come his or her way; but I was indeed certain that death MUST come. Life does not guarantee joy, and there is no proof that it ever did, or ever could, or ever will. But every graveyard is proof that even if there is joy, joy, eventually, falls into the ground. With family planning the only guarantee one has is death.
But since sorrow is one of life's guarantees, we can be glad that joy, should it come, is one of life's infinitely wonderful privileges. After all, there is no joy if one is entitled to it; there is no bliss if bliss is one's guaranteed right. Joy can only come in the form of a surprise or it is not joy. Hence, we take a gamble with every breath and in every birth. We hope, we pray; we throw our chance into the hand of omniscience. Surely we cannot blame God when things go wrong, particularly when we don't "blame" Him when things go remarkably right. But when things do go right, surely we are out there thanking God for the privilege of simple existence.
Well, one can only hope.
More tomorrow. [Part III begins here.]
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: Pope Benedict XVI, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Hitler, Theodicy, Problem of Evil
I added my own thoughts on the problem of evil as classically defined, arguing that the problem ignores the obvious assumption in our definition of God, that God is omniscient. As an omniscient Being, God might know that the only way to eradicate evil and suffering from the cosmos is exactly the way we see events unfolding in our lives: omniscience IS at work in every tragedy and in every joy. In other words, God IS doing something, the very thing an all-wise God can only do; and it looks like Life. And it might very well be the case that God was not silent at all during the Holocaust. His voice may indeed have been quite strong. In fact, I have even heard it suggested that had Hitler not been distracted by the Jews in Germany, Poland, France; had Hitler instead ignored them and turned the German machinery of death, destruction and warfare on his enemies, he would have won World War II and far more than 6,000,000 Jews would have been killed. The suggestion posits a heroic idea, that the Jews were something of a glorious sacrifice that saved us all from Nazi tyranny: the Jews were freedom fighters even in their alleged weakness. It was the Jews who destroyed Hitler. Churchill and Roosevelt had nothing to do with it.
This is not an attempt on my part to palliate the evils of the Holocaust, nor am I trying to cheer up the surviving victims of Germany's death camps. I am making a point that God may have indeed been very much at work in profoundly effective and yet strange ways, which is what one would expect of an omniscient God. Omniscience, in fact, may behave in utterly bizarre and contradictory ways; and it may act in obscurity.
A couple of years ago, I had a bit of a spat with a local shop owner about suffering, God, justice. He followed me out to the sidewalk and, in the heat of debate said, "I've done more for the suffering of starving Africans than God ever has." I must say that I understand the sentiment behind this conceit, but I do not understand the conceit. God appears not to be doing anything most of the time; He does not seem to even care. But one of the real problems associated with evil is not that God doesn't care, it's that there is sweepingly broad empirical evidence that most humans don't care either.
About 15 years ago I received a phone call from an old friend grieving about the sad death of a young mother we both knew. My friend was angry at God, for God had let not only Penny (the dead woman) down, He let lots of others down, too. My friend wondered how God could choose not to heed the prayers of Penny and her son, or the prayers of countless people surrounding that tragedy. Even Penny believed that she would be healed! How could God not honor that? How could He be content with yet another motherless child?
After awhile I shared with my friend something that hit my conscience hard. I said that in all of the time that Penny was living, all 26 years of her life, not once had anyone called me to proclaim how glad they were that Penny existed. No one called to praise Penny's smile, her laughter, her sweet goodness. No one called me to praise God for His wonderful creation which was Penny in all her simple glory. No one called to complain that there was not MORE of Penny everywhere; and no one ever said that God was too kind to us all to have created such a wonderful woman in the first place. And yet, in spite of all this silence, people were now mad that God had taken Penny away. Before, there was no gladness around Penny, but after her death there was nothing but madness. No one praised God yesterday, and yet now people were poised to curse Him today.
My friend agreed, and I believe we were both changed during that phone call.
***
I am reminded of something G. K. Chesterton once said. He imagined a rather randy man complaining to God about women and matrimony. "Explain to me God why I can't be with all women?" the man might have asked. To which God replied, "If it comes to that, explain to me why you can be with even one woman?" Chesterton went further, suggesting that Adam and Eve, given the entire cosmos and yet prevented from having just one thing -- an apple -- might have asked God something similar: "Explain to us why we can keep everything we have if we don't have just one thing? Explain why we can't have the apple, too?" God's reply? "Well, if it comes to that, explain the apple."I am reminded of all this because we often expect an explanation for something taken from us without ever asking ourselves how we were given the thing to begin with. A man may be mad at God when his son is killed in a car wreck; but was he ever grateful to God that he even had a son who would, eventually, die?
What has come to surprise me about many reactions to death and suffering is that people respond with such surprise. When a child dies of a brain tumor or a woman is raped and murdered, one would think that such a thing had never before happened, judging by many survivors' reactions, particularly their reactions toward God. God is to blame, it seems, even though few people take the responsibility for suffering themselves. Like the shopkeeper who thinks he does more to alleviate sorrow than even God, many forget that they are perhaps the reason there is suffering at all. For surely each of us who has had a child knew about rape, murder, disease, fire, pestilence, earthquake, pedophilia, and car crashes BEFORE we had children; surely there is NO ONE on this planet choosing to have children who did not know about these things. And yet, AND YET, knowing this, knowing that death occurs every day; knowing that there are murderers and rapists and wars and droughts and suicides and divorce and cannibals and cancers, and that we nonetheless still choose to have children; all of this should lead us to one question, and one question only: When it comes to suffering and evil, who among us is NOT to blame?
Please note: I am responsible for every bit of suffering my child experiences in life, every bit. Why? Because I knew beforehand that dreadful things MAY happen; I might even have known that they WILL happen, and yet I (not anyone else) CHOSE to bring a child into this world. I am the source of suffering. If there was at least ONE thing I knew before reproducing a child, it was the simple fact that that child will someday DIE.
Interestingly, as I may be responsible for my child's sorrow, I cannot say that I am responsible for my child's joys. And this for the simple reason that before having a child I had no certainty that joy would come his or her way; but I was indeed certain that death MUST come. Life does not guarantee joy, and there is no proof that it ever did, or ever could, or ever will. But every graveyard is proof that even if there is joy, joy, eventually, falls into the ground. With family planning the only guarantee one has is death.
But since sorrow is one of life's guarantees, we can be glad that joy, should it come, is one of life's infinitely wonderful privileges. After all, there is no joy if one is entitled to it; there is no bliss if bliss is one's guaranteed right. Joy can only come in the form of a surprise or it is not joy. Hence, we take a gamble with every breath and in every birth. We hope, we pray; we throw our chance into the hand of omniscience. Surely we cannot blame God when things go wrong, particularly when we don't "blame" Him when things go remarkably right. But when things do go right, surely we are out there thanking God for the privilege of simple existence.
Well, one can only hope.
More tomorrow. [Part III begins here.]
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: Pope Benedict XVI, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Hitler, Theodicy, Problem of Evil
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
The Problem Of Knowing Good And Evil, Part I
Perhaps this will not help at all.
Pope Benedict XVI stood at Auschwitz this past weekend. He entered death chambers. He knelt before the gates of death, and he prayed. And then there was a rainbow.
It is not that the several elements, the prayers and presence of a Pope and a rainbow, are causally connected. It is that we hope they are.
Auschwitz is that geographic point that exists like an oracular black hole. Oracles, as you know, were where pilgrims traveled to hear news from the divine, hopefully good news, though usually not. Auschwitz is like an oracle in reverse: there is nothing proclaimed there, only asked. But no answer comes in that crushing dark, the oppressive silence. Auschwitz is the place of questions, the abyss with no answers. We plead for God, and God hides behind veils of smoke, the smoke of burning bodies. Atop gas chambers, birds sing. God says nothing.
The problem of evil, at least in theology, is framed something like this: If God is all-powerful and all-good, He could or would stop evil. Since there is evil, God is either not all-powerful or all-good. Many philosophers have chosen to dismiss God as not all-powerful, needing God to be at least all-benevolent. Many have rejected the idea of God altogether in light of the facts of evil and suffering. And a few malcontents have chosen to see God as so much badness, a real sadist in the sky.
Those theologians and philosophers who believe that God must be both omnipotent and benevolent often defend Him by noting God's free choice to give humanity free will; as such, He permitted us to make a mess of things. And so we have. Of course, really shrewd thinkers note that if God did in fact design humanity and the cosmos this way He is still responsible for starting the whole thing in the first place. Free will arguments don't really absolve God of apparent culpability.
Pope Benedict XVI, like countless other people before him, stood at Auschwitz and asked, “Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil?" Of course, I recognize that the Holy Father is asking the question rhetorically; that he is revealing his humanity, his compassion, and his ability to identify with doubt, sorrow, pain. He is like the Psalmist, or like the prophets before him: How long, O, Lord, will you let our enemies prevail? Even the Christian Savior asked in His darkest hours, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" Women huddled in a gas chamber asked the question with perfect lucidity.
If readers will permit, I would like to confront the problem of evil (theodicy) in a few posts here at Contratimes. And the first place I would like to start is with the problem itself. For it strikes me as self-evident that the classic problem, that God can't be either omnipotent or benevolent before the facts of evil, is thoroughly wrong-headed.
Not long ago I called a radio talk program to join in on a conversation about this very problem. The guest was a former professor of mine, Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft, and I asked if anyone had considered whether perhaps an omniscient God, one knowing everything in a state of all-wisdom, would KNOW that the only way to overcome evil in the world is to overcome evil exactly the way we see things working out every day. For all any one of us knows, an all-wise God would say to us, "You know, I am destroying evil, I am alleviating suffering; and this is the ONLY way for me to do so. This is omniscience intervening." In other words, omniscience would know exactly how to destroy the evil and suffering that besets all creatures, and that destruction might be what we are witnessing in every breath and in every sunset. There can be no other way. Should God just step in and stop, for instance, Hitler from killing Jews, then a far greater evil may follow. Oddly, the talk show host would have none of this: She wanted to blame God for being weak or malevolent. She could not buy the idea of omniscience. And I believe that she could not buy it because she had never thought of it before.
Peter Kreeft, as would be expected of a philosopher, ran with the question. He added that some have speculated that if Hitler had not committed suicide, for example, and that he was instead arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to death, we might find ourselves living under the dreaded Nazi flag today. For a person cannot tell how one thing ultimately influences another; one cannot tell what is materially the less evil path in the long run. One can only hope; one can only stand on principles when confronting injustice and evil. But one cannot know, unless one is God, whether one's actions will have an ill or healthy effect on the world. Kreeft's words were engaging, and correct.
Hopefully Dr. Kreeft won't mind if I put his words differently. If it were up to us, our battle with evil might be a bit like administering antibiotics: they appear to work as a victorious solution to infections, but in the long run, antibiotics may in fact have weakened humanity's innate abilities to self-immunize. The infections we beat short-term may have been overcome long-term by themselves had we just waited long enough for the human immune system to evolve. One simply does not know. Nor does doltish humanity know what God's sudden "dramatic" intervention might look like, or what effect it might have.
But the assumption in all theological discussions is that God does indeed know. God is either omniscient or He is not. If He is not, it is awfully hard to call Him God. And if He is omniscient, then one can only conclude that the very reality we are in is the best reality for overcoming sin, evil and suffering. To return to the antibiotic image for a second, it would be wrong for a sceptic to conclude that because there is a battle between cells in a person's body the antibiotics are not working, for the battle is proof that they are. If anyone concludes that an antibiotic that does not work "fast enough" (for whom?) or "well enough" is neither potent nor good, that person should be reminded that there are plenty of measures one can take to instantly and completely eradicate an infection. Killing the patient is one such measure. But good doctors are a bit like God. They are wise to the idea that killing the bad often takes time so as not to kill the good. God could perhaps instantly wipe the earth clean of all evil, but what would be left, and where is the wisdom in that?
And yet there is one more thing that complicates matters, and it is a hard pill to swallow: God is that antibody that loves everyone. In other words, God, who is love as well as justice, and who exists as the only all-wise being, loves the very persons many of us consider evil. This is alarming for many of us, but it is Christianity's truest, boldest and most controversial assertion: God loved the Jews in the gas chambers as much as he loved Hitler outside them; God loves the victimizer as much as any victim. It is almost too difficult to even write, let alone admit into one's reflections on these matters. But it must be true. God cannot HATE what we might hate; His wisdom must not be void of love or justice, nor can His love and justice be void of wisdom. God loved Hitler, and all other disgusting tyrants, as much as He loves any of us. And we know Christ the Shepherd leaves the beloved flock to find the one beloved stray, even if that stray is a rebel. That is the most difficult problem in the eradication of evil: How does God eradicate it without destroying everybody, and everything? How does God purge humanity of evil without destroying the entire body?
Only an omniscient Being has the knowledge, and power, to do that. Or there is no such Being at all.
More tomorrow, I hope. (Part II begins here.)
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
[Related post at WI Catholic can be read here.]
Technorati tags: Pope Benedict XVI, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Hitler, Theodicy, Problem of Evil
Pope Benedict XVI stood at Auschwitz this past weekend. He entered death chambers. He knelt before the gates of death, and he prayed. And then there was a rainbow.
It is not that the several elements, the prayers and presence of a Pope and a rainbow, are causally connected. It is that we hope they are.
Auschwitz is that geographic point that exists like an oracular black hole. Oracles, as you know, were where pilgrims traveled to hear news from the divine, hopefully good news, though usually not. Auschwitz is like an oracle in reverse: there is nothing proclaimed there, only asked. But no answer comes in that crushing dark, the oppressive silence. Auschwitz is the place of questions, the abyss with no answers. We plead for God, and God hides behind veils of smoke, the smoke of burning bodies. Atop gas chambers, birds sing. God says nothing.
The problem of evil, at least in theology, is framed something like this: If God is all-powerful and all-good, He could or would stop evil. Since there is evil, God is either not all-powerful or all-good. Many philosophers have chosen to dismiss God as not all-powerful, needing God to be at least all-benevolent. Many have rejected the idea of God altogether in light of the facts of evil and suffering. And a few malcontents have chosen to see God as so much badness, a real sadist in the sky.
Those theologians and philosophers who believe that God must be both omnipotent and benevolent often defend Him by noting God's free choice to give humanity free will; as such, He permitted us to make a mess of things. And so we have. Of course, really shrewd thinkers note that if God did in fact design humanity and the cosmos this way He is still responsible for starting the whole thing in the first place. Free will arguments don't really absolve God of apparent culpability.
Pope Benedict XVI, like countless other people before him, stood at Auschwitz and asked, “Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil?" Of course, I recognize that the Holy Father is asking the question rhetorically; that he is revealing his humanity, his compassion, and his ability to identify with doubt, sorrow, pain. He is like the Psalmist, or like the prophets before him: How long, O, Lord, will you let our enemies prevail? Even the Christian Savior asked in His darkest hours, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" Women huddled in a gas chamber asked the question with perfect lucidity.
If readers will permit, I would like to confront the problem of evil (theodicy) in a few posts here at Contratimes. And the first place I would like to start is with the problem itself. For it strikes me as self-evident that the classic problem, that God can't be either omnipotent or benevolent before the facts of evil, is thoroughly wrong-headed.
Not long ago I called a radio talk program to join in on a conversation about this very problem. The guest was a former professor of mine, Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft, and I asked if anyone had considered whether perhaps an omniscient God, one knowing everything in a state of all-wisdom, would KNOW that the only way to overcome evil in the world is to overcome evil exactly the way we see things working out every day. For all any one of us knows, an all-wise God would say to us, "You know, I am destroying evil, I am alleviating suffering; and this is the ONLY way for me to do so. This is omniscience intervening." In other words, omniscience would know exactly how to destroy the evil and suffering that besets all creatures, and that destruction might be what we are witnessing in every breath and in every sunset. There can be no other way. Should God just step in and stop, for instance, Hitler from killing Jews, then a far greater evil may follow. Oddly, the talk show host would have none of this: She wanted to blame God for being weak or malevolent. She could not buy the idea of omniscience. And I believe that she could not buy it because she had never thought of it before.
Peter Kreeft, as would be expected of a philosopher, ran with the question. He added that some have speculated that if Hitler had not committed suicide, for example, and that he was instead arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to death, we might find ourselves living under the dreaded Nazi flag today. For a person cannot tell how one thing ultimately influences another; one cannot tell what is materially the less evil path in the long run. One can only hope; one can only stand on principles when confronting injustice and evil. But one cannot know, unless one is God, whether one's actions will have an ill or healthy effect on the world. Kreeft's words were engaging, and correct.
Hopefully Dr. Kreeft won't mind if I put his words differently. If it were up to us, our battle with evil might be a bit like administering antibiotics: they appear to work as a victorious solution to infections, but in the long run, antibiotics may in fact have weakened humanity's innate abilities to self-immunize. The infections we beat short-term may have been overcome long-term by themselves had we just waited long enough for the human immune system to evolve. One simply does not know. Nor does doltish humanity know what God's sudden "dramatic" intervention might look like, or what effect it might have.
But the assumption in all theological discussions is that God does indeed know. God is either omniscient or He is not. If He is not, it is awfully hard to call Him God. And if He is omniscient, then one can only conclude that the very reality we are in is the best reality for overcoming sin, evil and suffering. To return to the antibiotic image for a second, it would be wrong for a sceptic to conclude that because there is a battle between cells in a person's body the antibiotics are not working, for the battle is proof that they are. If anyone concludes that an antibiotic that does not work "fast enough" (for whom?) or "well enough" is neither potent nor good, that person should be reminded that there are plenty of measures one can take to instantly and completely eradicate an infection. Killing the patient is one such measure. But good doctors are a bit like God. They are wise to the idea that killing the bad often takes time so as not to kill the good. God could perhaps instantly wipe the earth clean of all evil, but what would be left, and where is the wisdom in that?
And yet there is one more thing that complicates matters, and it is a hard pill to swallow: God is that antibody that loves everyone. In other words, God, who is love as well as justice, and who exists as the only all-wise being, loves the very persons many of us consider evil. This is alarming for many of us, but it is Christianity's truest, boldest and most controversial assertion: God loved the Jews in the gas chambers as much as he loved Hitler outside them; God loves the victimizer as much as any victim. It is almost too difficult to even write, let alone admit into one's reflections on these matters. But it must be true. God cannot HATE what we might hate; His wisdom must not be void of love or justice, nor can His love and justice be void of wisdom. God loved Hitler, and all other disgusting tyrants, as much as He loves any of us. And we know Christ the Shepherd leaves the beloved flock to find the one beloved stray, even if that stray is a rebel. That is the most difficult problem in the eradication of evil: How does God eradicate it without destroying everybody, and everything? How does God purge humanity of evil without destroying the entire body?
Only an omniscient Being has the knowledge, and power, to do that. Or there is no such Being at all.
More tomorrow, I hope. (Part II begins here.)
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
[Related post at WI Catholic can be read here.]
Technorati tags: Pope Benedict XVI, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Hitler, Theodicy, Problem of Evil
Friday, September 30, 2005
Words, You, And A Pink Elephant
If I tell you not to think about a pink elephant, have I determined your thoughts? It seems undeniable that I have. In fact, it appears self-evident that words not only influence thought; they determine it. If I step onto a commercial airline, seize control of the cockpit mid-flight and say over the PA-system, "We have some bombs!", do you think I mean to affect behavior? What if I walk up to a bank teller and hand him a note which says, "Give me all the cash in your cash drawer or I will shoot you in the head"– am I not predetermining an outcome? What if I walk up to a policeman, blood on my hands, and tell him that I've just killed my step-father? Will my confession influence the officer a certain way, and predetermine my fate and his responsibility according to the law? What if I walked up and said that the blood was from my attempts to stop a gang from murdering the mayor down the street? Again, will my words determine a set of responses that must follow my directions?Why the barrage of questions? Because I am still struggling with the remarks of The Language Guy, whose essay, Language and the Abortion Controversy, is fully stuck in my craw.
Let me quote Mr. Language:
Implicit in the linguistic effort to force upon doctors the language "living human being" or even a less outrageous term like "baby" is a belief in the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, according to which language determines thought. There is no question that what something is called can influence thought (how could it not?) but it is a huge, easily falsifiable step to move to the strong form of this hypothesis that what something is called will determine thought about this thing.
I know this all seems senselessly academic. But it is important that we examine this kind of argument carefully. Mr. Language Guy, after all, is trying to determine thought–our thoughts– when he tells us that the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis in its strong form is "easily falsifiable." (And note that Mr. Language Guy, a self-appointed thought-policeman, offers no documentation that anyone is trying to "force upon doctors" anything, or how "easily falsifiable" the strong form is.)
If our schools were to refer to "gays" as "perverts", will certain behaviors be determined? If I walk up to a group of African-American inner-city gangmembers knotted together in a lonely place and tell them "You're all a bunch of lazy n-words," might my fate be sealed? And if I were to stand in Mecca and declare "Muhammad is NOT a prophet!" or in the Vatican and remonstrate against the Pope and his alleged Christ–well, you get the point.
But one last thing: Do LIES determine thought? For if lying does not determine thought in those to whom we lie, then we would all pretty much stop lying instantly, don't you agree?
And if a lie determines thought; if a lie surely influences behavior in those who believe it, then how about just one word, two words, three? "Gay" is meant to determine a certain outcome; "Homophobe" is spoken in order to strike a different outcome. Surely the language of Hitler's Nazi Germany led to certain behaviors affecting Jews, no? In fact, was not Hitler trying to pre-determine behaviors in his co-patriots with the repeated use of certain words?
A Dizzying Read
I am currently reading the wonderful book, Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell cites numerous clinical studies that pretty much destroy The Language Guy's cavalier dismissal of the "strong form" of the aforementioned hypothesis. A few examples will suffice.
- One study shows that if you take a group of people and have them consider what it means to be a professor, and then give them a test, they will do ridiculously better on the test than a group which first considered what it means to be a soccer hooligan.
- One study shows that when African-Americans were asked BEFORE taking a standardized test to what race they belonged, they fared worse than African-Americans who were not asked that question. Apparently, reflecting on their own race–with all the unjust associations with it–adversely affected performance.
- Another study shows that if, during an experiment, you are exposed to images of aging and mortality, you will leave the experiment at a slower walking pace than when you walked in.
- One study shows that if you are treated rudely before entering a clinical study (being treated rudely is part of the overall experiment, but the test subject does not know that), the subject is much more likely to be rude AFTER the experiment (again, part of the test) than those who were treated politely beforehand.
They [the clinical studies] suggest that what we call free will is largely an illusion: much of the time we are operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act–and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment–are a lot more susceptible to outside influence than we realize. [Blink, Malcolm Gladwell: New York; Little, Brown and Co., 2005. Page 58]
In other words, if you are what you eat, you are also what you read, hear, and think.
Propaganda, politically-correct speech, The Power of Positive Thinking–each of these attempts to determine behavior, even if those behaviors are vaguely understood or inaccurately predicted. Stern warnings to a child determine behavior; as stories of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny determine that a child will be excited on Christmas Eve or Easter morning. And abusive speech surely determines behavior: abused children are more likely to perform poorly in school, commit crimes, and abuse their own children.
So then, it is not without either clinical or psychological support–not to mention social and philosophical–that pro-life supporters refer to the fetus as a human being rather than so much tissue.
The Language Guy and the mass of blind propagandists to which he unwittingly belongs are wrong.
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes – All Rights Reserved.
Tomorrow: Bill Bennett in hot water for using words a certain way.
Photo: Grasshopper on milkweed. Camera: Canon A2. Lens: Sigma APO 300/4 Macro with EX 1.4 extender. Film: Kodak E100VS Exposure: unrecorded. Tripod and cable release. Click on image for larger view.
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Of Birds And Bees, And The Free Oppression Of Women, Part I
Before our foray into the topic at hand, permit me one small divergence, though this aside bears a tangential relationship to what I will be discussing today. Various plaintiffs, most notably the New York Times, have lamented President G.W. Bush's "recess appointment" of John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations. It is no small appointment. And for those of you who do not know what a "recess appointment" is, it is nothing more than a presidential appointment that occurs when the Senate is in recess. Ideally, the Senate would confirm a nominee. But if the Senate stalls or threatens to stall its procedural obligations, the president is constitutionally permitted to appoint someone, in this case Bolton, to a post while the Senate is out jet-skiing off Nantucket. It is not an act of demagoguery.Do you know how many times Bill Clinton exercised this executive privilege? Once? Twice? Three times? No. He exercised this power 140 times.
***
Contratimes' readers know without me telling them that the nomination of judge John Roberts to the United States Supreme Court is almost entirely controversial because of Roe v. Wade. If confirmed, will Roberts vote to overturn women's right to abortion, or will he protect that right? It is a good question. But what I want to focus on here is why the right to abortion is so important to pro-choice Americans, particularly why it is so important politically.
I can sum the whole thing up in one word: equality.
The political aspects of 'equality' are important, and thoroughly essential to the pro-abortion lobby. I will discuss this further in a moment. But first, my thesis: Abortion rights, or "reproductive freedoms", do not liberate women. Abortion oppresses women.
DEFENDING MY THESIS
The political attractiveness of the right to abortion is in abortion's alleged power to liberate women from the tyranny not only of nature, but men in general. Women gain equality in having the power not to be enslaved to nature's majestic rhythms, and in having the power to determine their reproductive fate on their own terms. Abortion provides a "level playing field" for women, ensuring that they can pursue education and career and all that life has to offer in a planned and deliberate way. Abortion makes men and women equal in the workplace and in the workforce, as women can "choose" to be freed from the burdens nature places on them through pregnancy, and thus follow their career without detour.
Here's a question: Does abortion make men equal to women, or does it make women equal to men? Think about it for a moment.
Now, this question. What can women do better than men, by definition? The answer is simple. Women can produce babies better than men, infinitely better than men. Hence, let us answer the question I asked a moment ago: Abortion makes women equal to men, but it does not make men equal to women. I apologize if I am stating the obvious, but there is power in the obvious, particularly when we have forgotten the rather plain facts.
Let's put this all another way. Abortion rights advocates are not trying to protect a law, or certain abortifacients, in order to make men like women. They are not insisting that Roe v. Wade commands men to have babies in order to guarantee equality between the sexes. No, abortion rights activists want to ensure that women can be like men: Women can have sex and not have to deliver a child. Ever.
What do we know about sex that is as plain as the genitalia that comprises sexuality? We know this: Men transcend the consequence of sexual intercourse. Men cannot ever get pregnant after ejaculating in the wondrous womb that is the incubator of all human life. Men can hit and run, so to speak. And they don't have to worry if their period is late.
Women, on the other hand, are completely different in the reproductive dance. They can be literally transformed by the relatively simple act of intercourse. They are not transcendent; they are not "outside" the post-coital experience. They, by their very natures, must be part of what happens next.
Can you see where I am going with this? I hope so.
Abortion masculinizes women. It gives them a medical, man-made option to be something other than a woman: It gives them the power to be like a man. In short, they can have sex, all the sex they want, and not HAVE to bear forth the consequences of the pursuit of so much endless pleasure. They can have sex and not fret about career, or education, or the annoying things associated with pregnancy. Women can be like men.
And you know what? Men love abortion for THIS very reason: It means that women can be reduced to sex objects all the more. It means that men can also have all the sex they want, as long as they find pro-choice women who will be complicit with them in their wanton lust for pleasure. It means that men are more likely to find sex easier and more available (it is) because women, now freed economically and reproductively (like men), and accessible in the workplace (again, like men, where the men once dominated), can participate in sex that does not "mean anything" (or as much), as it once did (or was supposed to).
No wonder (and here's a fact) more men than women support abortion rights! It gets men off the hook sexually. It sets them free to seduce and conquer. It sets them free to reduce women to well, men with vaginas and breasts. Amazingly, the post-modern woman even embraces this reality (as depicted in shows like "Sex and the City"), where women, long unable to do so because of the constraints of biology, now celebrate casual sex as empowerment. (I recall a moment in Animal Dreams, a novel by Barbara Kingsolver, when the heroine, doing spoons with a man she's been having sex with for weeks, responds with surprise when he suggests more depth to their relationship. "I never led you on," she replies. Feminists everywhere shout a triumphant cheer: Women can be shallow too! Such power!)
The fact is this: "Reproductive freedom" for women means that women can choose to define themselves in a male way in a male world. There is nothing feminist about this idea. The idea is entirely masculinist.
A true feminist, in trying to rescue women from hordes of caddish men, would call women to do what they do best, and create a nursery out of the world. Women, instead of participating in the post-modern, male-dominated sexual morés, should do what their very bodies do better than anything on the planet: they should make the world a place where every child is IN FACT wanted, by women, and bring forth all the children they can. And that, I declare, would bring men to their knees. That's the revolt we need, led by fecund females everywhere.
Hear me, sisters! Your bodies are sacred temples. Stop letting men, and imitative feminists, treat your bodies like a toy or sports arena. Make a man EARN the right to enter your sacred halls. Stop letting the men–and the society they've created with your help–dictate the conditions when your hallowed sanctuary is open for pleasure. You do not open your womb because a man is cute, or has a nice car, a big wallet, a great job, or has made you feel good about yourself with flowers and gentle whispers. You do not open your cathedral because it might feel good, or end your loneliness. Nay, you open yourself when you find someone who can appreciate the cathedral, and is ready to help care for it when it fills up with life and responsibility.
It's time to transform the world. It begins with a choice, and that choice is to see a woman as a sacred being, as a sacrament. She is not to submit to the very male idea of equality and abortion, even when that idea is couched in terms of liberation and choice.
Emptying the womb does not set women free. Protecting it does. Legalized abortion is a chain around the neck of women everywhere, keeping them right where men want them. It's time for a change. A truly feminine one.
Contratimes
To continue this series, read here.
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
[Photo: Bee-like Tachinid Fly on dandelion, Sharon, NH. Camera: Canon A2. Lens: Sigma 300/4 APO macro, with Sigma 1.4 EX APO extender. Film: Kodak Ektachrome 100VS Exposure: not recorded. Tripod. Click on image for larger view.]
I can sum the whole thing up in one word: equality.
The political aspects of 'equality' are important, and thoroughly essential to the pro-abortion lobby. I will discuss this further in a moment. But first, my thesis: Abortion rights, or "reproductive freedoms", do not liberate women. Abortion oppresses women.
DEFENDING MY THESIS
The political attractiveness of the right to abortion is in abortion's alleged power to liberate women from the tyranny not only of nature, but men in general. Women gain equality in having the power not to be enslaved to nature's majestic rhythms, and in having the power to determine their reproductive fate on their own terms. Abortion provides a "level playing field" for women, ensuring that they can pursue education and career and all that life has to offer in a planned and deliberate way. Abortion makes men and women equal in the workplace and in the workforce, as women can "choose" to be freed from the burdens nature places on them through pregnancy, and thus follow their career without detour.
Here's a question: Does abortion make men equal to women, or does it make women equal to men? Think about it for a moment.
Now, this question. What can women do better than men, by definition? The answer is simple. Women can produce babies better than men, infinitely better than men. Hence, let us answer the question I asked a moment ago: Abortion makes women equal to men, but it does not make men equal to women. I apologize if I am stating the obvious, but there is power in the obvious, particularly when we have forgotten the rather plain facts.
Let's put this all another way. Abortion rights advocates are not trying to protect a law, or certain abortifacients, in order to make men like women. They are not insisting that Roe v. Wade commands men to have babies in order to guarantee equality between the sexes. No, abortion rights activists want to ensure that women can be like men: Women can have sex and not have to deliver a child. Ever.
What do we know about sex that is as plain as the genitalia that comprises sexuality? We know this: Men transcend the consequence of sexual intercourse. Men cannot ever get pregnant after ejaculating in the wondrous womb that is the incubator of all human life. Men can hit and run, so to speak. And they don't have to worry if their period is late.
Women, on the other hand, are completely different in the reproductive dance. They can be literally transformed by the relatively simple act of intercourse. They are not transcendent; they are not "outside" the post-coital experience. They, by their very natures, must be part of what happens next.
Can you see where I am going with this? I hope so.
Abortion masculinizes women. It gives them a medical, man-made option to be something other than a woman: It gives them the power to be like a man. In short, they can have sex, all the sex they want, and not HAVE to bear forth the consequences of the pursuit of so much endless pleasure. They can have sex and not fret about career, or education, or the annoying things associated with pregnancy. Women can be like men.
And you know what? Men love abortion for THIS very reason: It means that women can be reduced to sex objects all the more. It means that men can also have all the sex they want, as long as they find pro-choice women who will be complicit with them in their wanton lust for pleasure. It means that men are more likely to find sex easier and more available (it is) because women, now freed economically and reproductively (like men), and accessible in the workplace (again, like men, where the men once dominated), can participate in sex that does not "mean anything" (or as much), as it once did (or was supposed to).
No wonder (and here's a fact) more men than women support abortion rights! It gets men off the hook sexually. It sets them free to seduce and conquer. It sets them free to reduce women to well, men with vaginas and breasts. Amazingly, the post-modern woman even embraces this reality (as depicted in shows like "Sex and the City"), where women, long unable to do so because of the constraints of biology, now celebrate casual sex as empowerment. (I recall a moment in Animal Dreams, a novel by Barbara Kingsolver, when the heroine, doing spoons with a man she's been having sex with for weeks, responds with surprise when he suggests more depth to their relationship. "I never led you on," she replies. Feminists everywhere shout a triumphant cheer: Women can be shallow too! Such power!)
The fact is this: "Reproductive freedom" for women means that women can choose to define themselves in a male way in a male world. There is nothing feminist about this idea. The idea is entirely masculinist.
A true feminist, in trying to rescue women from hordes of caddish men, would call women to do what they do best, and create a nursery out of the world. Women, instead of participating in the post-modern, male-dominated sexual morés, should do what their very bodies do better than anything on the planet: they should make the world a place where every child is IN FACT wanted, by women, and bring forth all the children they can. And that, I declare, would bring men to their knees. That's the revolt we need, led by fecund females everywhere.
Hear me, sisters! Your bodies are sacred temples. Stop letting men, and imitative feminists, treat your bodies like a toy or sports arena. Make a man EARN the right to enter your sacred halls. Stop letting the men–and the society they've created with your help–dictate the conditions when your hallowed sanctuary is open for pleasure. You do not open your womb because a man is cute, or has a nice car, a big wallet, a great job, or has made you feel good about yourself with flowers and gentle whispers. You do not open your cathedral because it might feel good, or end your loneliness. Nay, you open yourself when you find someone who can appreciate the cathedral, and is ready to help care for it when it fills up with life and responsibility.
It's time to transform the world. It begins with a choice, and that choice is to see a woman as a sacred being, as a sacrament. She is not to submit to the very male idea of equality and abortion, even when that idea is couched in terms of liberation and choice.
Emptying the womb does not set women free. Protecting it does. Legalized abortion is a chain around the neck of women everywhere, keeping them right where men want them. It's time for a change. A truly feminine one.
Contratimes
To continue this series, read here.
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
[Photo: Bee-like Tachinid Fly on dandelion, Sharon, NH. Camera: Canon A2. Lens: Sigma 300/4 APO macro, with Sigma 1.4 EX APO extender. Film: Kodak Ektachrome 100VS Exposure: not recorded. Tripod. Click on image for larger view.]
Monday, August 01, 2005
Kicking At The Darkness
Canadian singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn sings in his angst-touched love song, Lovers in a Dangerous Time, that "Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight/Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight." It is a powerful image, full of spectral glory. And kicking at darkness is, in a sense, my very ambition. I'll spare the reader the metaphysical details, but the idea of kicking at darkness until it bleeds daylight carries with it all the spiritual force of Jacob wrestling with the angel; or Neo conquering the Matrix as Agent Smith fractures in supernova splendor.A close look at my blogger profile reveals that I list among life's blessings the nearly ineffable beauty of babies. There is in each baby's perfect fingernails (always clipped to perfection at birth), or in its fresh-from-the-bakery skin, all the mystery of life in perpetuity, inexplicable in its power – a seed planted in the dark earth yielding the entire universe. For each child is indeed all the force of the cosmos (there is no life without the infinitely broad cosmic womb); each baby the incarnation of swirling suns and tidal moons. What does it take to make a baby? All the power and eons of the universe. There are no shortcuts, no sleight-of-hand, to master such impenetrable magic.
But images of light and tiny, gripping hands are not enough to save me today. For I am sickened this afternoon, here in the full light of August's sun. I find myself haunted by an image I saw not long ago while working at a New England prep school. During a photo shoot, I entered the school's computer lab unannounced. There were shrieks of disgust and shock emitted by a dozen or so students gathered around glowing computer screens, each student apparently unaware of my "adult" presence. And quivering in digital vibrancy on every computer screen was the source of all the tumult: It was a color photograph of a man seated in a restaurant booth – a napkin tucked into his shirt collar and a knife and fork in each hand – looking hungrily at the meal before him. What was on the platter? A roasted human fetus.
Kick at the darkness ....
I am sorry to pass along this violence against all that is meant to be pure, lovely, peaceful. But I share this for one reason: Do not be quick to conceive incorrectly that which is conceived in the fertile womb. Do not for a moment think that the unborn are so much superfluous tissue, or accidental bits of bio-mass. We must be provoked, we must kick our way toward the light of honest, simple truth.
Have you ever wondered why, if human fetuses are not human, do we not eat them? Why cringe at the thought of a fetus served to a wealthy connoisseur; or in soup kitchens to the hungry poor? After all, if the human fetus (all 40 million of them since Roe v. Wade) is not a human, have we missed a golden opportunity to feed countless mouths eager for food? In fact, could we not harvest such fetuses as crops, perhaps using petri dishes and sperm- and ova-banks for the production of a new nutrient-rich food source, a sort of veal for the open-minded?
Enough. I've said too much. The unborn are human. Prep-schoolers shrieking at a mere image prove it.
My point is not really about abortion. It is about our slow descent into carelessness. Trust me when I say this: there are and will be pro-abortion activists who will respond to my observations not with revulsion, but with a quasi-academic air of acceptance. They will wonder aloud whether it might be a tenable idea to eat fetuses, all in the posture of open-minded consideration. They will ask about biases against the Fetuses-for-Food program; and they will speculate as to how certain social structures condition people to react squeamishly; and they shall offer arguments against taboo. But their motives will not be one whit academic: Their motives are solely energized to keep abortion legal.
Was it not George Orwell who said that “We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men"? Let me then state the obvious.
Each of us once kicked at the darkness. We pressed at it with our hands, even after we sucked our thumbs, the thumbs we didn't know we had. And we kicked at the darkness until it did in fact bleed daylight: The daylight of the world, bolting toward us like lightning, as we kicked our helpless, trusting way through the birth canal, toward the light which bleeds all around us, right now, with the full force of the cosmos pulsing in our veins.
The world felt us kicking, it felt us fighting to overcome. Shame that the very cosmos, which should be considered one giant nursery, with "Welcome" banners unfurled from star to star, has, at least for some, become a hostile place, with the brutal light of the abortionist's hand forced into the warm and safe dark; giant hands ripping out little ones.
Which hands are the more wonderful; whose hands the more welcoming?
Contratimes
To continue reading the series, go here.
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes
[Photo: Stained glass at All Saints' Church, Peterborough, NH. From the book, "The Stained Glass of All Saints'". Camera: Canon EOS3 Lens: Canon EF 28-105/3.5-4.5 IS. Film: Kodak Ektachrome 100 VS. Exposure: 1/60 @ f5.6. Click on photo for larger view. All rights reserved.]
Friday, April 22, 2005
The religious left is no less threatening (A letter to the editor)
[This essay is a letter sent to the editor of the Peterborough Transcript, a small NH weekly. It is in response to comments made retired Franklin Pierce College professor, author and political activist Taylor Morris, who lives nearby. It is related to my "God Bless You Please, Mr. Robinson."]
Criticisms of the religious right, expressed in sundry letters to local papers and the audacious remarks of Bishop Gene Robinson of the NH diocese of the Episcopal Church, strike me as wildly hypocritical at worst and misinformed at best.
Taylor Morris, for instance, in his letter, How to define freedom? (Transcript, 4/14), fails to even consider that there might be a religious left equally bent on establishing a theocracy in America. Imposing religious ideals and principles in the public square is hardly a right-wing activity. The religious left has been doing it for decades.
One need only glance at Unitarian Universalism to rightly conclude that there is hardly a more strident and politically active religious institution in America. Its involvement in shaping society and politics in its own religious image is not only part of its foundation; it is its pride. If the religious right is against gay marriage, for example, the Unitarians are all for it. In other words, the legalization of gay marriage by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts was a decision that promoted and affirmed the religious ideals of Unitarians everywhere. In fact, the two ministers who performed the first 'marriages' in New Paltz, NY, marriages now deemed illegal, were Unitarian ministers. Does anyone think that those two ministers performed those ceremonies because their church opposes gay marriage?
Moreover, the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) is nearly monochromatic in its political views. Find a Unitarian Universalist who is a conservative Republican, and I say you've found a miracle. (In contrast, the Roman Catholic Church, at least politically, is infinitely more diverse than nearly any Unitarian society on the planet.) The UUA in America endorses almost every political position held by the Democratic Party; and it rarely, if ever, supports one ideal that could be found to the right of that party.
Remember that the "religious right" is not a church. Unitarian Universalism, however, is very much a church.
Mr. Robinson's recent remarks at Franklin Pierce College, germane to this discussion in their hypocrisy, no doubt received applause by his liberal peers. But is there a more troubling irony than a man using his religious office politically in order to censure religion in politics?
And is it not hypocritical that Mr. Robinson would sow fears of theocracy by claiming that 'God is horrified' (Robinson's words) by the things being done in God's name by the religious right? For Robinson claims to know God's mind, a claim that should sound alarms in liberals the world over: Robinson assumes he not only knows what horrifies God politically; he knows what doesn’t horrify God. And what doesn't horrify God? Apparently the political views of Mr. Robinson, whose views are unsurprisingly identical to the Democratic Party platform.
Lastly, one wonders how Mr. Robinson can use his religion in politics to beat back religion in politics when the Book of Common Prayer, without flinching, expects fervent prayers in which weekly, if not daily, Episcopalians petition their Lord Jesus Christ to guide the 'President, Congress and Judiciary' so that they will perform, not some secular act, but God's very will. Perhaps Mr. Robinson would have me skip over that part of my Prayer Book.
The theocratic ambition of the left is also a real threat to the separation of church and state. Messrs. Robinson and Morris apparently hope to protect that separation. I pray they will.
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved
Technorati tags: Religious Left, Religious Right, Gene Robinson, Episcopal Church, Episcopalianism,ECUSA, Unitarianism, Unitarian-Universalism
Criticisms of the religious right, expressed in sundry letters to local papers and the audacious remarks of Bishop Gene Robinson of the NH diocese of the Episcopal Church, strike me as wildly hypocritical at worst and misinformed at best.
Taylor Morris, for instance, in his letter, How to define freedom? (Transcript, 4/14), fails to even consider that there might be a religious left equally bent on establishing a theocracy in America. Imposing religious ideals and principles in the public square is hardly a right-wing activity. The religious left has been doing it for decades.
One need only glance at Unitarian Universalism to rightly conclude that there is hardly a more strident and politically active religious institution in America. Its involvement in shaping society and politics in its own religious image is not only part of its foundation; it is its pride. If the religious right is against gay marriage, for example, the Unitarians are all for it. In other words, the legalization of gay marriage by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts was a decision that promoted and affirmed the religious ideals of Unitarians everywhere. In fact, the two ministers who performed the first 'marriages' in New Paltz, NY, marriages now deemed illegal, were Unitarian ministers. Does anyone think that those two ministers performed those ceremonies because their church opposes gay marriage?
Moreover, the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) is nearly monochromatic in its political views. Find a Unitarian Universalist who is a conservative Republican, and I say you've found a miracle. (In contrast, the Roman Catholic Church, at least politically, is infinitely more diverse than nearly any Unitarian society on the planet.) The UUA in America endorses almost every political position held by the Democratic Party; and it rarely, if ever, supports one ideal that could be found to the right of that party.
Remember that the "religious right" is not a church. Unitarian Universalism, however, is very much a church.
Mr. Robinson's recent remarks at Franklin Pierce College, germane to this discussion in their hypocrisy, no doubt received applause by his liberal peers. But is there a more troubling irony than a man using his religious office politically in order to censure religion in politics?
And is it not hypocritical that Mr. Robinson would sow fears of theocracy by claiming that 'God is horrified' (Robinson's words) by the things being done in God's name by the religious right? For Robinson claims to know God's mind, a claim that should sound alarms in liberals the world over: Robinson assumes he not only knows what horrifies God politically; he knows what doesn’t horrify God. And what doesn't horrify God? Apparently the political views of Mr. Robinson, whose views are unsurprisingly identical to the Democratic Party platform.
Lastly, one wonders how Mr. Robinson can use his religion in politics to beat back religion in politics when the Book of Common Prayer, without flinching, expects fervent prayers in which weekly, if not daily, Episcopalians petition their Lord Jesus Christ to guide the 'President, Congress and Judiciary' so that they will perform, not some secular act, but God's very will. Perhaps Mr. Robinson would have me skip over that part of my Prayer Book.
The theocratic ambition of the left is also a real threat to the separation of church and state. Messrs. Robinson and Morris apparently hope to protect that separation. I pray they will.
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved
Technorati tags: Religious Left, Religious Right, Gene Robinson, Episcopal Church, Episcopalianism,ECUSA, Unitarianism, Unitarian-Universalism
Friday, April 08, 2005
God bless you please, Mr. Robinson
Rindge, NH (3/28/05) - In a speech at Franklin Pierce College entitled 'What in God's name is going on in America?', Gene Robinson, the feted bishop of the Episcopal diocese of New Hampshire, takes umbrage with that bogeyman of American politics, the 'religious right.' (www.mledger.com/2005/archives/1-news-033105.shtml)
Perhaps Mr. Robinson is referring to the audacious declaration found at this well-known religion's website:
'BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED that the UUA urges its member congregations and individual Unitarian Universalists to proclaim and promote our principles by becoming active participants in public institutions such as schools, libraries, political parties, and governmental bodies.' [General Assembly, 1996]
Of course, Mr. Robinson could not be referring to that kind of activism.
That the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) baldly calls its members to express their religiosity by directly and unabashedly promoting UUA principles in all aspects of American political life hardly raises Robinson's eyebrows. Why is he so indifferent? Because the UUA is a supporter of Mr. Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in Christendom; and he shares with the religious left the hope of creating a liberal, tolerant theocracy, where an 'all-loving God (read 'permissive') is going to be victorious.'
The UUA as a self-described beacon of the religious left is gratuitously political in its agenda, and is, in all ways, a promoter of ideals unsurprisingly similar to the Democratic Party (particularly the left wing of that party). Find a Unitarian-Universalist who is a conservative Republican, and I say you’ve found a miracle.
Is it not a grotesque picture, or a macabre irony, that a religious official would use his religion in politics to censure religion in politics? Mr. Robinson himself is clearly fixated on reproaching the Bush Administration’s policies on everything, and this in the name of his church and his God. Is everyone OK with that?
Moreover, Mr. Robinson claims that God is 'horrified' by the things being done in God's name, ostensibly by the Republicans, and that he, Robinson, not only knows what God is thinking, he knows what God would not be horrified by: namely the political ideas of Mr. Robinson, which, again unsurprisingly, are identical with the Democratic Party platform. What a prophetic voice! (Just think that Mr. Robinson believes conservatives are arrogant.)
Sadly, lost on Mr. Robinson, is that he is guilty of promoting a theocracy that pleases the religious left.
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
-'It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of not looking sufficiently progressive.' Charles Peguy
Perhaps Mr. Robinson is referring to the audacious declaration found at this well-known religion's website:
'BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED that the UUA urges its member congregations and individual Unitarian Universalists to proclaim and promote our principles by becoming active participants in public institutions such as schools, libraries, political parties, and governmental bodies.' [General Assembly, 1996]
Of course, Mr. Robinson could not be referring to that kind of activism.
That the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) baldly calls its members to express their religiosity by directly and unabashedly promoting UUA principles in all aspects of American political life hardly raises Robinson's eyebrows. Why is he so indifferent? Because the UUA is a supporter of Mr. Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in Christendom; and he shares with the religious left the hope of creating a liberal, tolerant theocracy, where an 'all-loving God (read 'permissive') is going to be victorious.'
The UUA as a self-described beacon of the religious left is gratuitously political in its agenda, and is, in all ways, a promoter of ideals unsurprisingly similar to the Democratic Party (particularly the left wing of that party). Find a Unitarian-Universalist who is a conservative Republican, and I say you’ve found a miracle.
Is it not a grotesque picture, or a macabre irony, that a religious official would use his religion in politics to censure religion in politics? Mr. Robinson himself is clearly fixated on reproaching the Bush Administration’s policies on everything, and this in the name of his church and his God. Is everyone OK with that?
Moreover, Mr. Robinson claims that God is 'horrified' by the things being done in God's name, ostensibly by the Republicans, and that he, Robinson, not only knows what God is thinking, he knows what God would not be horrified by: namely the political ideas of Mr. Robinson, which, again unsurprisingly, are identical with the Democratic Party platform. What a prophetic voice! (Just think that Mr. Robinson believes conservatives are arrogant.)
Sadly, lost on Mr. Robinson, is that he is guilty of promoting a theocracy that pleases the religious left.
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
-'It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of not looking sufficiently progressive.' Charles Peguy
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