I am becoming more and more convinced that one of the greatest things we (Americans) have to worry about is that there is a very great likelihood that Bush, et al will NOT leave office when their term is up in January 2009. That they will declare it a matter of national security or national emergency and therefore not leave office.
It’s in the wind when I read articles such as this about forming a Security and Prosperity Partnership (ht Mike Todd) with Canada and Mexico to be “enforced” (a partnership needs to be enforced?) by the US Army. We are in a time of dire consequences for our lack of political will in the last eight years.  The time is coming and now is, when we will need to stand strong to protect the fact that we are indeed a democracy. We will not fear. We will not be cowed into our homes.
Freedom requires strength and responsibility. It requires a sense that we will look out for one another and not allow the government to do our work for us. If we fear, we cannot be free. So we must be free and let the fear go. Let them make their dirty money in some other fashion. But they will not make it at our expense.
… and what am I learning lately.
This is a new synchroblog co-ordinated by Glenn Hager at Re-dreaming the Dream. I learned about it from Erin. The theme resonates with a lot of the thinking I’ve been doing lately, so I thought I’d participate.
So here’s my list … in no particular order other than the order in which I thought of them.
– I learned that women are second class citizens in God’s economy.
– I learned that the Bible can be used like statistics … to prove anything that the user wants it to prove. It’s not a beacon of love; it’s a weapon to bludgeon people with.
– I learned that faith and religion are interchangeable.
– I learned that Jesus is a Republican and I’d better be too or my salvation would be null and void. I also learned that Jesus is a free-market capitalist who looked down on welfare cheats because they leached off the system.
– I learned that America is now God’s promised land and we are God’s new people.
– I learned that church is just like any other social group … only it’s rules are more strict and they’ll exclude you in a flash if you break them.
What I’m learning lately … is there is no second-class … or first-class … in God’s economy. We are all on equal footing, equal creations in the eyes of the Creator. There is no separate but equal to Her. There is just, is. We just are. We are just created. Different, yes. But that does not mean that some get to do some things and others not … that does not mean that all can sin equally but that all cannot serve equally. We are indeed equal … equally loved, equally serving, equally gifted. Anything else is a lie.
I cannot discern how to use the Bible as anything other than a love letter to me. I rarely use it in conversation anymore. There are bits and pieces that are meaningful to me and I might quote those, as people quote poetry or other pieces of literature that are meaningful. But using proof texts and finding pieces that “prove” my point in a legal argument seems to miss the mark of God’s intent with his Word to us.
I’m losing my religion and keeping my faith … in large part because it seems that people in charge of the church lied. They are way more interested in keeping their own patch of turf than in understanding God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit and passing the understanding on.
Well … Jesus and politics or economics just stands on it’s own. He pretty much spoke out against the powers of his age and I’m certain he’d speak out against Republicans AND Democrats now.
God only has one promised land and promised people. Israel. Now. Here’s the kicker. He sent the Israelites out of the Promised Land around 2,000 years ago and He hasn’t brought them back. So a lot of the current troubles that are happening in the Middle East. Yeah. Those are man made. I could write a book … no, several books … on why the current Middle East troubles have nothing whatsoever to do with God bringing the Jews back to Israel and everything to do with men doing it. No, I’m not a conspiracy theorist or anything. It’s just that God was not in that. People were. So there will not be any peace or redemption or reconciliation. There will be war. And as for the US … we are not God’s promised land or promised people despite any songs we might sing or secret ambitions we might have. We’re just lucky. There but for the grace of God go us; we really ought to be a little more grateful, and a little less arrogant.
I learned in the Bible that church is supposed to be Christ’s Bride, His Body here on earth. I learned in church that it’s just another social group with strict social rules that need to be followed in order to be included. It’s part of the faith vs. religion thing. But all churches are social groups. All of them. In order to be part of one, you must follow the rules. The first rule is that they are not really Jesus followers. That’s only part of the show. If you really want to be a Jesus follower, you’d do best to leave the church and do that on your own time. The church is too busy with their own parties … err ministries … to bother with the things that Jesus talks about. Above all … don’t ever ask anyone to talk to God about what they’re doing. Don’t ever suggest that anyone in leadership pray to God about their participation in an issue. Don’t ever suggest that following Jesus might mean stopping and listening sometimes. Don’t think outside the box. Don’t ask questions. Don’t quibble with leaders. Don’t be free. I’m learning that on my own it’s just possible that I might be able to hear God again. Maybe. I hope so. I’ve been missing him.
UPDATE (Aug 5):
Here’s a list of all the folks who participated in this synchroblog … they’ve got a lot of great things to say, but make sure you read Glen’s Summary here … it’s really, really good:
Glenn @ Re-dreaming the Dream: Synchroblog (Introduction)
Erin @ Decompressing Faith: Think Of It As “Agapeology.â€
Alan @ The Assembling of the Church: Here I Am To Worship.
Heather @ A Deconstructed Christian: 15 Things I Learned From and Another 15 I Am Learning Lately
Jim @ Lord, I Believe; Help My Unbelief : Some Ecclesiastical Paradoxes
Lew @ The Pursuit: It’s A Grace vs. Works Thing
Lyn @ Beyond the 4 Walls: Learning To be “Properâ€
Paul @ One For The Road : A Gracious Voice
Benjamin @ Justice and Compassion: Pithy and Provocative
Julie @ Onehandclapping: Faith, Certainty, and Tom Cruise
Aaron @ Regenerate: Hope
Monte @ Monte Asbury’s Blog: Jesus Doesn’t Matter Much
Rachael @ Justice and Compassion Rachael Stanton
Glenn @ Re-dreaming the Dream: Unsaid Communication
Glenn @ Re-dreaming the Dream: Reflections About Refugees (Summary Reflection)
HT to Mike Bursell and Sally Coleman (across “the pond” as it were) …
You are a Working Class Warrior, also known as a blue-collar Democrat. You believe that the little guy is getting screwed by conservative greed-mongers and corporate criminals, and you’re not going to take it anymore.
Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com
I’ll take that … it seems to fit me. The book looks interesting too …
National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, as quoted on “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos:
“We’re at a point now where we’ve got a plan,” Hadley said. “Execution of that plan is now everything.”
Oh. really. I was under the apparently misguided assumption that “they” had a plan all along. Mind you, I was under no illusions. I knew I probably would not agree with anything that the current administration came up with as a plan (not that they need to consult me 😉 ). But surely they had a plan. Have we truly been at war in Afghanistan and Iraq for the past 5 years without a plan? Can this lunacy be true?
I was in first and second grade during the height of the US involvement in Vietnam. I went to school in a two room school house. First and second grades were in one room with Mrs. Metakos. Third grade was in the other room with Mrs. Keith. There was a coal bin in the basement because the school house had been converted to oil in the past 5 years or so. There was still coal in it and we used to sneak in when we could. We had to be careful to not get coal dust on us though. It was very tempting for some odd reason. There was a swing set and teeter-totters and a whirlygig for playground equipment all set amongst the maple trees. There were plenty of trees for playing hide n’ seek or tag. The driveway was accomodatingly gravel so we played marbles there in the spring. We also played many, many games of Red Rover.
The game I remember best, though, was grabbing a stick, hopping the back fence and playing War in Cedric’s cow pasture. We had to be careful to avoid the cow pies (land mines). Girls had to be especially careful because we all had dresses on. The “big boys” in third grade were the leaders of these expeditions. This often happened on nice days when we ate our lunches quickly and had lots of playtime for lunch period. We all learned how to make agreeably fashionable machine gun noises with our mouths and kill the enemy with our sticks. Sometimes the enemy was the cows. That was sort of unfulfilling because the cows didn’t know they were the enemy and refused to play dead. Sometimes they did not even acknowledge our presence. So we often formed teams and shot each other so that people could play dead in ever more dramatic fashion. This lead to some rather feisty arguments on the way back to the school when the bell clanged about which team “won.” The “big boys” did the arguing, us little kids were just glad to be allowed to play. But either way, we all came back heros for having fought a good fight.
It is child’s play to think one might grab a weapon, hop a fence, and vanquish one’s enemy in an afternoon … or even a few short months. Veni, vidi, vici is a myth that not even the Romans fully believed. It is never true. Since the time of Adam people have proven over and over again that they do not want outside rulers coming in. We do not know what is best for them. How long, how long must we sing this song? How long until we have real adults in charge of this country? People who will stand for doing what is actually right rather than what looks good or what polls say. Someone who will look at life in and on this planet as not a game, but a wonderful and horrible responsibility.
Just in case you hadn’t heard yet …
The Vermont State Senate voted to impeach George Bush last week. It is important. In the grand scheme of things.
There are no words to express the horror upon hearing of the deaths at Virginia Tech yesterday. It was and is terrible. LightGirl can talk of nothing else. She is horrified. She wants to know how something like this could happen. No one knows.
What I am at a loss to explain is Australian prime minister John Howard’s lack of empathy as he used this moment of our grief to his own political gain:
You can never guarantee these things won’t happen again in our country,” Howard told reporters. “We had a terrible incident at Port Arthur, but it is the case that 11 years ago we took action to limit the availability of guns and we showed a national resolve that the gun culture that is such a negative in the United States would never become a negative in our country,” he said.
It was not a gun culture, or gun laws, or even a gun which killed 33 people yesterday. It was one sad, broken, deranged human being who killed those students and professors.
The much larger and more difficult question we need to be asking and answering is how and what as a culture and community are we doing to contribute to that brokenness? These shootings are happening with ever greater frequency. Simply taking away the guns will just change the method that people use to discharge their anger and sadness. Taking away the guns may reduce the number of victims, but it will do nothing for the underlying cause.
We need to get at the underlying cause if we are truly concerned about healing the problem. The problem is not that people are dying. The problem is that sad, broken, deranged people are killing them. How do we go about making sure that the brokenness doesn’t happen in the first place? That’s the question to ask and answer.
According to Wikipedia, persecution is defined thusly:
… persecution seems to be the expression of a more general trend in human social behaviour, (perhaps related to tribalism ), which seeks to impose or enforce conformity. Persecution is not recognised as such by persecutors, only by their victims or outside observers. Persecutors either see no wrong in their actions, or rationalize it as a small or short-term wrong to counter what they see as a larger, more serious wrong, as in The ends justify the means. Most commonly, this is expressed as seeking to protect themselves or their families or society from what they see as the harmful influence of the persecuted group. Persecuted groups are often labelled using pejorative terms which reinforce their social alienation. For example different races are called inferior or sub-human; different religions are called infidels or heathen; political groups are called subversive; homosexuals and drug users are called immoral. Use of such terms with strongly negative connotations allows individuals to avoid examining the true nature of their relationship with the persecuted group. Since people are, in general, incapable of recognising their own prejudices, compiling a full list of all forms of persecution is inevitably controversial. For almost anything which could be cited as an example of persecution, there will be those who claim it is legitimate personal or social self-defense.
… persecution seems to be the expression of a more general trend in human social behaviour, (perhaps related to tribalism ), which seeks to impose or enforce conformity.
Persecution is not recognised as such by persecutors, only by their victims or outside observers. Persecutors either see no wrong in their actions, or rationalize it as a small or short-term wrong to counter what they see as a larger, more serious wrong, as in The ends justify the means. Most commonly, this is expressed as seeking to protect themselves or their families or society from what they see as the harmful influence of the persecuted group.
Persecuted groups are often labelled using pejorative terms which reinforce their social alienation. For example different races are called inferior or sub-human; different religions are called infidels or heathen; political groups are called subversive; homosexuals and drug users are called immoral. Use of such terms with strongly negative connotations allows individuals to avoid examining the true nature of their relationship with the persecuted group.
Since people are, in general, incapable of recognising their own prejudices, compiling a full list of all forms of persecution is inevitably controversial. For almost anything which could be cited as an example of persecution, there will be those who claim it is legitimate personal or social self-defense.
Hmmmm …. having recently been involved in some personal conflict, this description gave me pause. During the conflict I often felt persecuted. So did some of the others involved. Since we were at odds with one another, the question arises who were the persecuted and who were the persecutors. But, then again, perhaps that is not the important question. The far more important question might be, does the end justify the means?
We are very familiar with this concept. It was first published by Niccolo Machiavelli in his political masterpiece, The Prince in 1515 … In a brutal world, where every man is out for himself, being something other than what one actually is, for fun and profit, as long the ends are worthy, is a valuable tool:
For this reason a prince ought to take care that he never lets anything slip from his lips that is not replete with the above-named five qualities, that he may appear to him who sees and hears him altogether merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious. There is nothing more necessary to appear to have than this last quality, inasmuch as men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result.
The above quote comes from chapter 18 entitled “Concerning the Way In Which Princes Should Keep Faith.” I read that chapter at least three times. I could not find a tiny piece of it which glorified God, or spoke of learning to walk with Him. So I wondered who the prince was keeping faith with? Was it God, the people, his betters, himself?
The more startling issue is that I had to read several chapters before finding this. I was amazed at how ingrained in our culture Machiavellian thinking has become. We have all become little princes, looking after our fiefdoms. Far from being the polemic on evil that I thought it was, it merely outlined poltics and living as we have come to know it in the late 20th and early 21st century. Are we running late for an appointment? Then sure, cut someone off and potentially cause an accident (or at least cause their heart rate to go up). Our good and/or necessary ends justify the means. We’ll do penance through helping someone else out later in the week. Or slip a little extra in the collection plate at church.
Pulling back the lens a little we look at our farming practices which are causing havoc in creation and the animal kingdom. But the good and/or necessary ends are that we can feed so many more people so far away now. Do those means really add up? Do those means truly justify the ends? Are we merely gaining something in the short term which will cause greater long term damage?
Then I look at the example set by God. I see that He never, no never, not one time followed this line of thinking. Granted He is God and as I believe Him to be, He has more and greater knowledge of the way things are than I do. But He does not take the route of ends justifying the means. If that were the case, we would not celebrate Easter each year. He would have found an easier route to our salvation than condemning a part of Himself to death. He is endlessly patient, never willing that an event should happen before its proper time. Knowing when each seed needs to grow to fruition and when it needs to lie waiting.
The longer I walk down this road with my Saviour, the more I am coming to think that every time we act in line with “the ends justify the means,” we are working against the will of God and become the persecutor. But if we lay that down and earnestly seek His will for ourselves and our neighbors (whoever they may be) we continue to walk in His will. Will this open us up to becoming the persecuted? Probably. But that is a story for another day, my beloved.
Here are the rest of the Synchrobloggers and their masterpieces … which are actually more worthy than mine:
You heard it here first …
Apple’s latest and greatest has been unveiled. You can see the video here. I’ll be saving my pennies for one. They’re sure to sell like hotcakes 😉 (ht 8th Day)
Last week there was a groundswell amongst bloggers and in e-mail about a certain glove that got thrown down between Jim Wallis (leader of Sojourners, a left leaning religio-political organization) and Jim Dobson (leader of Focus on the Family, a right leaning religio-political organization). It seems that Dobson had written a letter calling the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Richard Cizik, to task for widening the list of “great moral issues of our time” to include such issues as global warming. Mr. Dobson (and 24 other evangelical leaders) want to keep that list small and quite manageable. They see that there are three great moral issues of our day and drawing attention to other issues on a national level would be “…. divisive and dangerous.”
More importantly, we have observed that Cizik and others are using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time, notably the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children. In their place has come a preoccupation with climate concerns that extend beyond the NAE’s mandate and its own statement of purpose. We acknowledge that within the NAE’s membership of thirty million, there are many opinions and perspectives about the warming of the earth. We are not suggesting that our beliefs about it necessarily reflect the majority of our fellow evangelicals. However, we do oppose the efforts of Mr. Cizik and others to speak in a way that is divisive and dangerous.
More importantly, we have observed that Cizik and others are using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time, notably the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children. In their place has come a preoccupation with climate concerns that extend beyond the NAE’s mandate and its own statement of purpose.
We acknowledge that within the NAE’s membership of thirty million, there are many opinions and perspectives about the warming of the earth. We are not suggesting that our beliefs about it necessarily reflect the majority of our fellow evangelicals. However, we do oppose the efforts of Mr. Cizik and others to speak in a way that is divisive and dangerous.
You can read the text of the entire letter here. As well as Mr. Wallis’ challenge here to a duel … er … debate. At the time that the whole episode broke it made me tired. Mr. Dobson is beginning to sound like a shrewish fishwife. He lists as his primary concern the sanctity of human life. But that only seems to be a facade to get the babies born. If they must live and die young in poverty, disease, and filth … well … so be it. Now the challenge has been made for a debate and both sides will sound shrewish and in the end, what good will have been done?
I’m coming more and more to believe that walking with Jesus means not trying to force my perspective on the masses. I hold my responsibility and right to vote with care and joy. But I am gathering a growing distaste for moralizing and judging in public. To my eye, the issues are too finely nuanced for bumper stickers and soundbites.
Once in a while though, a well-placed challenge is enough. The debate may never happen, and I hope it doesn’t. But in the meantime, the National Association of Evangelicals has chosen to stand with their president in full support of his priorities. Read the CNN article. I think it might be safe to say that Mr. Dobson and his compatriots might be losing some ground. Maybe.
However, the association board not only stood behind Cizik, but also further broadened the group’s agenda with a statement condemning torture, which charged that in pursuing the war on terror, the United States had crossed “boundaries of what is legally and morally permissible.” But one of the board members, the Rev. Paul de Vries, said, “It ought to be God’s agenda, not the Republican Party’s agenda, that drives us. “We’re actually tired of being represented by people with a very narrow focus,” he said. “We want to have a focus as big as God’s focus.”
However, the association board not only stood behind Cizik, but also further broadened the group’s agenda with a statement condemning torture, which charged that in pursuing the war on terror, the United States had crossed “boundaries of what is legally and morally permissible.”
But one of the board members, the Rev. Paul de Vries, said, “It ought to be God’s agenda, not the Republican Party’s agenda, that drives us.
“We’re actually tired of being represented by people with a very narrow focus,” he said. “We want to have a focus as big as God’s focus.”
“… A focus as big as God’s focus.” Yeah. That seems as good a reason as any to face today with a smile.
As he is wont to do, LightHusband sent me the link to a mildly interesting article from a local website this morning. I read through it and we commented back and forth. I noticed tho, that there were some links in the sidebar to other articles. One looked promising, so I clicked on it … and began reading … and my blood pressure began to skyrocket.
It’s an article in which former Congressman, latterday presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich is being interviewed by that paragon of Christian virtue, James Dobson. Apparently, Gingrich appeared on Dobson’s radio broadcast for two days. I tried to find a written transcript of the interviews, but Focus on the Family only makes audio available. So I was left with the article alone. I’ve done a search and can’t find anything more on this.
The upshot is that at the very same time that Mr. Gingrich was leading a criminal investigation of Bill Clinton’s extramarital affair in the White House, he was also having an affair.
Here is his attempt to explain that twisted fairytale:
“The president of the United States got in trouble for committing a felony in front of a sitting federal judge,” the former Georgia congressman said of Clinton’s 1998 House impeachment on perjury and obstruction of justice charges. “I drew a line in my mind that said, ‘Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed, and even though at a purely personal level I am not rendering judgment on another human being, as a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept … perjury in your highest officials.”
Huh?
Now please do not write to me in comments and remind me that the charges that Clinton faced were perjury. I’m not that thick. What I am struggling to reconcile in my mind is that in the media (which Mr. Gingrich very clearly used to great advantage and delight) the battle was over moral issues. Perjury was a sleight of hand to get the whole thing into the court system and thus before Congress for impeachment.
I would really love to read Mr. Dobson’s response to this, but I have neither the time nor the stomach to listen to an hour’s worth of religious treacle to get there. I remember what his response to Mr. Clinton’s “moral failure” was. I remember that even when Mr. Clinton finally acknowledged it and discussed it in light of his faith, the howls about moral terpitude and failure from the likes of Dobson and his followers drowned out any possibility that grace or mercy would be extended to him.
I read the article and the cynical me had to wonder. Rudy Guiliani is making a clean breast of his infidelity. Now Newt. It seems to me that they are controlling the conversation and coming clean in such a way as to make sure that the religious right will swallow it. So that it will be palatable to them.
But there’s a larger picture here.  A picture that is somewhat revolting. In part of the picture we see people who are willing to tolerate gross hypocrisy and dishonesty in leadership … as long as they display fealty to the proper channels and organizations for it. In another part of the picture (and this has never been part of the conversation) we see men who use women to further their sense of self worth.
I wonder how the conversation would change if we began to look at these “moral failures” in terms of abuse rather than infidelity. It may be a gross overstatement, but hang in there with me for a moment if you will please. In our culture, as in many cultures, we have made women into objects of desire. In the eyes of many men, they are no longer persons, but things to be used to scratch an itch. Objects or things may be used and discarded … things such as sewing machines, automobiles, boats, and the like. You’ll notice my list included large pricey items that people might form a close emotional attachment to, but when it becomes old and no longer useful, they will throw it away and get a newer, more sexy model. They may feel a twinge of regret, the occasional bite of nostalgia for the old days, but the new car or boat or sewing machine is just sooo cool, the old one can hardly compare and besides, she’s such a bee-yotch. A nag. Always needing some repair and more money. Hmmm … have I slipped a rail?
Women are not things. They are not objects to be used at one’s will. Whether that will be for a series of nights, or for a few years. When men do that they are abusing their fellow created beings. They are (if you will allow the use of some Scripture here):
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Romans 1:24-45
Despite the fact that women are created by God, when men use and abuse them, they have become something else. Something created by man. Men have re-created women into their own image, rather than the image of God. Is it any wonder that they then feel no compunction about using her, abusing her and then throwing her away?
When men such as Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Dobson are able to brush away infidelity that was occurring at the same time as another infidelity that caused a national crisis by splitting hairs, they have “… exchanged the truth of God for a lie, …” and continued the lie that objectifies and abuses women.
Know the Truth and it will set you free.
