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Tell The Story Like It Is…
Hillary Clinton’s ignominious defeat in Iowa (and for that matter Mike Huckabee’s win) are signs that we still have a competitive political system.Both parties have attempted "coronations" in this, the most open election year since World War II. But neither has worked. Clinton’s is especially galling since she, more than any other Democrat candidate, represents the 1960’s radicalism that has dominated her party since that tumultuous decade. Forty years ago, demonstrators in the streets of Chicago could rightfully claim that "the whole world’s watching." They and their colleagues rolled their opposition, if not politically certainly in the social fabric of the country.
But it’s been a rough road since then. First we had Ronald Reagan, who showed the country an alternative to the "command and control" mentality that had dominated much of our government’s thinking on how to do things. Then the Soviet Union, that poster child of command and control, collapsed. Finally we have a new generation (really more than one) which has been raised on a myriad of choices, technological and otherwise.
Hillary, lacking the innate agility of her husband (a product of a culture driven by relationships, not ideology,) has been forced to put on a persona whose purpose was to completely conceal what is inside. In a "retail politics" setting like Iowa (and New Hampshire) that doesn’t sit well. The result is a phony, and unfortunately she’s stuck with that for the immediate future.
Perhaps Hillary Rodham Clinton, a 60’s classic, needs to "tell the story like it is," as another 60’s classic, Newbury Park, sang about in their song Zig Zag People (there’s a message in the title, but I’ll leave it to you) in their first album, which is available at The Ancient Star Song.
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Territory? What Territory?
It seems that the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, Bishop Suheil Dawani, is upset that his Global South counterparts are having a conference (GAFCON) in his town without having consulted with him.
From a purely tactical standpoint, I can’t blame the Africans for doing it this way. They’re in an interesting position; their "primus inter pares" (Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams) is personally unsympathetic to their stand, something the Africans’ American flock needs to figure out. They need to be seen as preserving unity while distancing themselves from TEC and ACC. They need to be seen as tough on homosexuals for the sake of their Islamic rivals and, to a lesser extent, the other Christian churches in their countries. They need to preserve the integrity of Christian doctrine and life, and that includes sexual morality on all levels, to please God, which is most important. And they need to do all of this in the fishbowl world that the Internet has created.
Given the disparate nature of the Anglican Communion on all of these issues and more, their penchant for secrecy and sudden announcements–and perhaps leaving out a party or two to start with–is entirely understandable.
One thing that would simplify the whole discussion is a re-examination of the whole issue of territory. As a "catholic" church, Anglicans traditionally are big on the idea of "one territory, one bishop." But since the Anglican communion is the result of a secession itself, that’s already blown. Just take a look at all of the Catholic and Orthodox bishops resident in the areas where there are Anglican/Episcopal bishops. The Orthodox make things even more fun by having one or more "national" churches in a single territory such as the U.S., where most Orthodox believers (excluding the refugees from Anglicanism and other places) are descended from believers from a wide variety of places (Greece, Russia, Serbia, the Middle East, etc.)
Rowan Williams unnecessarily complicated the issue by excluding the American bishops consecrated by the African and Southern Cone churches, which led to this "alternative" (I use this term reluctantly, since it’s one of the GLBT community’s favourites) conference to Lambeth. If the Anglican Communion wants to stay together in any form, perhaps the first discussion that needs to take place is the issue of territory. If the Orthodox can figure it out, why not the Anglicans?
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The Secular Background of the Anglican Conflict in San Joaquin
George Hood’s outline of the secular parallel to the conflict in the Episcopal Church–and specifically the secession of the Diocese of San Joaquin–is a theme that bears more coverage than it gets in the Anglican/Episcopal world. The whole row is a microcosm of the culture wars that now have a global dimension. That is due in large measure to the decision of the Episcopal Church to conform itself to the culture around it, a decision that is nearly four decades old now.
But, to be truthful, marriage has been under attack for a long time. Gay marriage is just one more step in a long term campaign to weaken civil marriage. Up until now we have the following attacks:
- Allowing conjugal relations outside of marriage. According to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, conjugal relations are one reason for marrying. By allowing these relations outside of marriage, two things are accomplished. The first is that it enables people to skip marriage if they want to have sex. The second is that we have to backtrack and define some sexual relations as unlawful and some as not, which is why we have the mess with relations between young people and adults that we do. Once you breach the boundary of marriage, any boundary you set–and that includes sodomy–is strictly artificial and a function of the taste of the moment. We discussed this earlier in the context of the Mark Foley fiasco.
- "No-fault" divorce. This was hailed as a great legal step forward when it was legalised, but easy exit marriage debased the institution in an enormous way. It was supposed to be liberating for everyone, but women have taken the hardest blow from it; it’s just too easy for a guy to skip out on his obligations. At this point the only meaningful impediments to divorce are the financial obligations imposed at dissolution such as alimony (which doesn’t exist everywhere,) child custody/support and the division of property.
- Requiring equal status for illegitimate children. This is one of those things that looks great on paper but has some unintended consequences. It may not be fair to those who came into this world under a cloud not of their own making, but doing this simply opens the door for people to have children without a spouse (and more often than not without the means to raise them properly.) We have added injury to insult in this matter by wasting precious courtroom time on parental rights for those who didn’t bother to get married but suddenly want all of the rights of fatherhood or motherhood of a child they had little interest in before.
It’s not a very happy reflection on the reasserters that a) they waited so many years to act on problems that have been going on for a such a long time in the Episcopal Church and b) they allowed the consecration of Vickie Gene Robinson to detonate the movement we have now. But there’s a lesson for the rest of us: "God and country" Evangelicals are vulnerable too, as they are too eager to be pleasing to the culture and too confident that the culture will turn their way. But, as anyone watching this election will attest to, that’s not a given.
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Dear Muslims…
The beginning of the new year is an opportunity to deal with a point of business from the old one: the letter by 138 Muslim scholars back in October for unity between Muslims and Christians. Since I was appointed by my church’s General Assembly to a position in the denomination, I think I can make some kind of response to this, as it was addressed to "Leaders of Christians everywhere," although I should emphasise that the opinions I express anywhere on this site are my own and do not constitute an official position of the Church of God.
Let me begin by saying that the vast majority of my contact with Muslims has been though my work and education as an engineer, not in the ministry. This has been the case through the pursuit of my two degrees, my career in the deep foundations equipment business, and most recently through my technical site, vulcanhammer.net. This last includes the many thanks and favourable comments on the site from engineers in Muslim countries. Such comments and expressions of gratitude make the endeavour worthwhile, and for these I am grateful. I am also grateful for the Muslims who have debated the subject of Islam and Christianity with me, frequently with great vigour. Our convergence may not be what we’re hoping for, but I always learn something from the encounter, and that’s more than I can say from my encounters with many people in this life.
Getting to the letter, there are a two things about it which strike me as especially odd.
The first concerns the letter’s opening emphasis on the unity of God. This is something that certainly Christians and Muslims share in a world where we see on the one hand many who worship many gods and on the other those who worship none and believe in none. However, to include the Hadith "He hath no associate" is for us who have some familiarity with Islam a decidedly retrograde step. "Associationism" is something that Muslims accuse Christians of relating to the deity of Christ, which of course is a major difference between Islam and Christianity (the Qur’an’s rather interesting witness notwithstanding.) The formal term for this is the shirk, and the penalty for this is severe in countries where shar’ia is operative.
The second is the letter’s long emphasis on the love of God. In Christianity loving God is in reality the highest act of the Christian, and the letter’s citations of the Torah and Injil underscore that. God’s love for man is universal. In Islam, however, as I understand it the first duty of man relative to Allah is to submit to Allah’s absolute will. Allah’s love for man is a reciprocation of those who love him. As is the case with the unity of God, in their attempt to show a point of unity, they reveal a point of asymmetry between the two faiths.
Let me now turn to one issue that has arisen since the letter was written: the issue of the Crusades. Now I said at the start that my contact with Muslims has largely been with engineers. These people are good at math, and they know that I was not around during the Crusades. They understand that I had nothing to do with them, which may explain in part why I have never gotten into this issue in my discussions. My church wasn’t around for them either, and for many of those who came out and apologised for them, that is also the case.
I deal with this issue elsewhere, where I make the following comment:
In the early years of Islam, conquest of vast civilisations was the rule rather than the exception. The early Muslim generals were right not to pursue conquest in Europe too hard; Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia and Persia were far more valuable places. All of these had been great nations at one time and even at the rise of Islam were still advanced from remote, crude places such as Britain and France.
Early Islamic civilisation was a wonder in many ways…Muslims were not only able to (eventually) run the Christian forces out of the Holy Land, they were also able to demonstrate to same forces that they were living like pigs (and, as Moses Maimonides reminded us, with them) back home.
So I’m not sure whether an apology is really in order at this stage.
Or perhaps I am not consistent with my own past practice. When I was an undergraduate, I took a Mechanical Engineering Laboratory course. One of my fellow students from Pakistan asked to borrow one of my lab reports, and unfortunately took a little too much inspiration from it. When our professor realised it, he told me to find the Pakistani and for the three of us to meet. We did, he looked at the Pakistani and asked him, "Did you copy this?" The Pakistani admitted it, the professor looked at me and dismissed me, and the Pakistani went home for a semester. When he returned, I felt compelled to tell him that I was sorry for the trouble that came out of the lab course, even though he acknowledged that I had no fault in the matter.
And that brings me to my last point: if we really want peace between Muslims and Christians, the best way to start is through personal relationships, not only between our religious leaders but also amongst lay Christians and plain Muslims. It’s not always easy, and it requires patience. But it’s worth it. It requires first that we understand what our own beliefs are and then to learn those of another, and both of these processes require effort. If nothing else, it would clear out much of the rubbish that floats about the Christian world about Islam and vice versa; I have found that, if you want to find out something about Islam, ask a Muslim. Or better still, more than one.
So perhaps we should start meeting at coffee shops, where we can partake of what the Sufis used to call the "wine of Islam," and discuss these things at length until it closes and we are ejected. If we cannot do this physically, then do it virtually. But God has brought us into a New Year; let us honour him by making good use of it.
For those who believe and do righteous deeds, will be Gardens; beneath which rivers flow: That is the great Salvation, (the fulfilment of all desires), Truly strong is the Grip (and Power) of thy Lord. (Sura 85:11-12)
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Did God Intend Us To Be Vegetarians?
Recently the concept that God’s original intent for man was vegetarianism has surfaced and gained currency amongst Christians (to say nothing of the followers of synthetic Judaism that passes for Christianity in the US.) This has been promoted for commercial gain by such movements as the Hallelujah Diet.
But is this correct? A succinct case for this comes from, of all places, “Spengler” at Asia Times Online:
Genesis further tells us that humankind was only permitted to eat plants (1:29, 2:9) until the Flood, when God permitted the eating of animals under certain conditions (9:2-3). Wyschogrod sees this as a divine concession to our “innately evil drive”, and concludes, “It is difficult to escape the conclusion that God would prefer a vegetarian humanity.” Although only humans were created in God’s image, he adds, “It does not mean that the gulf between humans and animals is as absolute as that between humans and God.”
(Note to readers: I chose Spengler’s presentation just because it’s succinct, as opposed to the profuse verbiosity that is fashionable in Christian circles these days.)
Since Spengler gives us the Scripture references, let’s look at them:
“And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.” Genesis 1:29, 30, KJV.
“And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” Genesis 2:9, KJV.
There’s no question that fruits and vegetables were given to us and to the animal kingdom as food. The reference to “meat” in v. 29 is a KJV translation for the Hebrew term that signifies “stuff that you devour;” it does not mean that the fruits and vegetables act as substitutes for meat.
Let’s turn now to the last verse he cites:
“And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.” Genesis 9:2, 3, KJV.
This proclamation, given following the Flood, looks to complement the last one; now man is allowed to eat meat, and not only that but to hunt the meat down and kill it. This verse should be engraved over the entry way of every hunting license issuing location in the Old Confederacy.
These verses seem to indicate that meat was prohibited to man before the Flood. But perhaps we should consider this:
“And she (Eve) again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering: But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.” Genesis 4:2-5, KJV.
Abel kept sheep. Not only did he keep the sheep, but he offered some of them in sacrifice to the Lord. It’s hard to believe that, in the subsistence economy after the Fall, that Adam and his family did not eat the sheep after giving so much effort to tend to them.
Beyond that, God showed a preference for Abel’s sacrifice of meat as opposed to Cain’s sacrifice of vegetables (and perhaps fruits.) Theologically, this points to the future sacrificial system of the Mosaic Law, and ultimately to Jesus Christ’s own sacrifice on the Cross. In same Mosaic system, the priests frequently ate of the meat sacrifice. The signal that preference sent to Cain and Abel about the nature of what they were offering–both of which were edible–was unmistakable.
Moreover even the fruit of the ground went sour after the Fall:
“And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” Genesis 3:17-19, KJV.
Before the Fall, it makes sense to say that Adam and Eve did not eat meat. But the evidence subsequent to that disaster–and it didn’t take long for that to occur–indicates that meat was eaten thereafter.
Now some will suggest that, if we want to get back to Eden, we should quit eating meat. But the Biblical way of getting back to Eden is for us to have a relationship with Jesus Christ, who undid the work of sin that started with Adam’s fall. Same solution explicitly rejects a salvation through dietary restrictions:
“And when he had called all the people unto him, he said unto them, Hearken unto me every one of you, and understand: There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man. If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.” Mark 7:14-16, KJV.
“But meat commendeth us not to God: for neither, if we eat, are we the better; neither, if we eat not, are we the worse.” 1 Corinthians 8:8, KJV.
“For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God, and approved of men. Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another.” Romans 14:17-19, KJV.
From a health standpoint, there’s no question that we have too much meat in our diets in the West. It is the product of prosperity, and if I speak of that I will grind down some other people’s theology. When living in Texas, I heard people who started out with little–including people with earned doctorates–referred to the upcoming meal as “bean time.” Beans were an important source of protein, and still need to be.
Moreover the meat we have today has a higher fat content than that our ancestors ate. Consider this: when God called Abraham to leave Ur of the Chaldees for the Promised Land, did he load up his livestock on a truck to take them there? Of course not, they answered God’s call on all fours. That resulted in some lean meat, just as the cattle drives of the nineteenth century did. One consequence of reducing meat consumption is reduction of fat intake, and that’s beneficial in weight and cholesterol reduction.
To spiritualise the whole thing, however, by an artificial reconstruction of what was eaten before the Fall just doesn’t make sense. It’s another way of making Christianity difficult. And that goes against another one of Our Lord’s sayings:
“Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:29, 30, KJV.
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Merry Christmas from Positive Infinity
But the wreath on the bridge isn’t bad either…For this boat, Christmas had been especially exciting since it almost went to the bottom the previous summer.
Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
Positive Infinity 