atlantic city

This Monday just past marked my first visit ever to the Atlantic City casinos. To borrow a phrase from Alan Quartermain, I'm waiting to be impressed.


I wasn't there to gamble. In fact, about ten minutes after we entered the casino where my mother-in-law was staying, I realized that I had a pocketful of change that I had left back at the house when I knew we were going to a casino with hordes of hungry slot machines. It had never occurred to me to bring the coins.

But walking into the casino, I was struck, well, by everything. The place was one vast assault on the senses. There was loud music playing overhead, bright lights coming from the gambling areas, a man walking around on stilts and greeting people as they came into the hotel, garishly colored carpet and walls, and of course the auditory onslaught of the slot machines themselves.

Later I saw a woman dressed as a statue and a man carrying a fishing rod and wearing fuzzy slippers, with a plastic shark affixed to his rear end. As I said to Evangeline, the whole thing is designed to ravish your senses and keep you off balance so you don't keep enough of your wits about you to do the math and save your money.

On the other side of the casinos was the beach, which I must confess was much more to my liking than the twenty-story monstrosities that loomed over it in a never-ending row.

I don't get the appeal to gambling. I understand the allure of easy money, and I understand why a number of cities see legalized gambling as a cure for high property taxes. Amid all the lights and the glow and the simulated ringing of slot machines, it seems glamorous and it holds money just out of reach like grapes before Tantalos. But I don't get the appeal personally.

Evangeline wanted to know what was going on, and why she wasn't allowed into the gambling areas, so I explained how casinos essentially offer a chance at easy money but always rake in far more than they give out, that gambling is an essentially predatory industry that taps the elderly, the needy and the desparate for its wealth, and that it's a fairly common (though not standard, by any means) for people to lose their houses to cover their gambling debts, and that for all the purported good the casinos have done for Atlantic City, they've also fed the underside of the city, with increased drug and alcohol abuse, increases in poverty, and so on.

And because I wanted to paint a more balanced picture than just the one side, I tried to point out that legalized gambling has helped Atlantic City relieve the tax burden on its populace, although that only works because it's a destination gambling resort.

As more places try to tap into the perceived lucrative market of legalized gambling, all they'll end up doing is redistributing the burden within their own areas. (After all, who's going to drive somewhere to lose their money if they can do it at home?)

And I told Evangeline that casinos have a list of people who they must escort off the premises if they are found gambling, because of a registered gambling problem.

Still, as she considered all this, Evangeline said gravely that she would put an end to gambling, if she could. (Great. I've created a moralist.) Alas, child, it is not that easy. Once something becomes legal, it is virtually impossible to make it illegal without considerable opposition, and even making it illegal usually just means driving it underground.

This struggle between finding the world as it is and working toward what we believe it should be is something that should occupy us for the whole of our lives.

Copyright © 2007 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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knees

I took Evangeline for a bike ride this evening after dinner. With my bike still out of commission, this meant my usual trick of walking and sometimes running after her.

 

Two years ago, when Evangeline was in kindergarten, I gave myself bursitis by giving her a piggyback ride up a steep hill while visiting a Revolutionary encampment in Jockey Hollow. Since then, my right knee has been more inclined than before toward objecting some efforts to walk. In the past few weeks, it's twice nearly thrown me to the ground, once walking down the street when I stepped wrong on the sidewalk, and the second time when I tried to do the chicken dance.

 

Today, I was chasing her across the street, not one but both knees acted as though someone had just kicked me in the kneecaps. It was all I could do to stop from falling down in the crosswalk, and I walked funny for several minutes afterward. Even now, five hours later, they still hurt a little.

 

What's up with that?

no longer young, still stupid

On Monday this week, I was reminded once again that my youth is beating a hasty retreat before the advancing forces of middle age.

 

When I was growing up in Saunders Station, Pa., one of the highlights of the year was the annual pilgrimage to Kennywood Park, the self-professed roller coaster capital of the world. With perennial favorites like the Jackrabbit, the Thunderbolt, and the Racer, it was the place to go. Even all-out losers like Melvin Fenwick, the boy who got his underpants caught in the Velcro of his shoes in sixth grade and whom it took three teachers seven minutes to set him loose -- yes, even he went to Kennywood.

 

I haven't been to Kennywood since perhaps the first year I was married to Natasha, but I still have fond memories of the many summer hours I spent there, including on rides like the Enterprise, which turned me upside-down and relied on centrifugal force to keep me there. Just reminiscing about these rides has me looking forward to this August, when we hope to make the journey from Iowa to Pittsburgh and I expect to initiate Evangeline and possibly Rachel into these sacred mysteries.

 

Alas, the events of Monday suggest that I may not handle them as well as I once did.

 

On Monday, Natasha's Aunt Beatrice took the four of us on a visit to the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, N.J. There she treated the girls to a ride on a helicopter, and bought $100 worth of tickets for the rides, which included a carousel, a roller coaster or two, and the other sort of Tilt-and-Whirl amusements you would expect to find at a tourist trap marring an otherwise pleasant beach. (Though to be honest, the casinos were far worse.)

 

The four of us -- Aunt B sat this one out, having fared poorly with the kiddie roller coaster she went on with Rachel -- went on a ride that goes along a circular track, spinning the cars wildly in one direction and then another. I've been on many such rides in my youth, and always enjoyed it.

 

The first time the car changed its spin, I felt my stomach heave viciously. The soft pretzel I had eaten a piece of an hour earlier began to clamor for fresh air. I closed my eyes, shutting out all sight of the wildly careening landscape, and tried to imagine myself astride a giant snail, sitting on a lawnchair reading the newspaper, stuck at a traffic light -- anything that didn't involve motion. I imagined that this exercise would help, and I suppose it did, marginally.

 

When the ride finished, I climbed out of the car, and took hold of the railing to steady myself. The world was still, and so was I, and all was well. The pretzel repeated its request for fresh air and a view of the outside world, but my resolve held. I walked with my family to a three-dimensional maze of tunnels, steps and slides, a giant Habitrail for children who think they are hamsters, and watched my children disappear into its labyrinthine corridors. All was steady.

 

And then, five minutes later, Aunt B clapped her hands and walked toward the maze. The pretzel made its request, the motion carried, and the unprecedented happened: I threw up after an amusement park ride.

 

I haven't given up hope for a Kennywood visit this August, but I will say this: When the girls finished off the evening with a ride on the carousel, I stood on the ground and watched.

uniter in chief

I recently was told that President Bush has been trying to unite the different factions in the country, and not just in hating him. He also has worked with Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) on the recently failed immigration reform initiative.

Doubtless I'll be stomped to death for this if I'm incorrect, but I believe this is the first major initiative of the president's where he has reached across the aisle and worked with members of the other party. Six-and-a-half years into your presidency is a little late to start uniting.

Given the tone of his primary campaign in 2000, given the scorched-earth tone of the presidential election of 2004, and given his go-it-alone attitude on everything from backing out of the Kyoto Accords to deposing a foreign government against the express wishes of the international community and the United Nations (and given his oft-demonstrated willingness to shut out advisers who disagree with him or who offer advice he doesn't want to hear) ... you can count me among those who say he's not a uniter. I'll go a step further and say he's a lousy president too, all things considered.

I'll give the president credit, and say that (by and large) he is trying to do what he thinks is right. The problem is that too often, he's come at things with a with-me-or-against-me attitude, has not put forth a convincing case for his beliefs or attitudes, and still has expected people to see the perceived innate rightness of his actions. You can't govern like that, at least not in a democratically elected government like ours, where you need to build consensus, and persuade both allies and opponents, and yet that is how he consistently has tried to govern.

His presidency did get off to a good start, I suppose, with solid support for initiatives like No Child Left Behind and some of the other changes he made. Whatever capital he started out with, and it apparently included enough that some Democrats crossed the aisle to work with on those aforementioned efforts early in his first term, he's had one series of one high-profile mistep after another, not just with the war but domestically as well: the Miers appointment, the Gonzales appointment, and the recent immigration fiasco.

Of course, this is nothing new. If you look at Bush's record prior to the presidency, you'll see a man who consistently just squeaked by. Take someone like that and give him the most powerful office in the world, and he'll still just barely squeak by. The difference is that it's a much more spectacular squeak.

Bush had more clout on Capitol Hill early in his presidency and could get more accomplished because the GOP controlled both houses of Congress, and things were running in a more or less parliamentarian manner; i.e., the Legislative Branch backed many of the initiatives of the Executive Branch rather than Checks-and-Balance'ing them.

With the unpopularity of this war growing out of control and the lack of strategy beyond the "Depose Saddam" stage becoming clearer day by day, his rank-and-file support has been disappearing like rats from a sinking ship.

I'm hoping our next president is someone who really is going to unite us, someone who's going to be able to wave a banner and get the nation to rally together -- someone who won't fabricate a common bogeyman, someone who won't play to the lowest common denominator, and someone who takes a stand for something positive instead of standing against other things.

the man they called jayne

Behind the Name, a good go-to web site for the meanings and histories of names, has a ratings feature that allows visitors to the site to rate names on all sorts of factors, including whether the name is for boys or for girls.

 

If you've ever seen "Firefly," I'm sure you can appreciate it when I say that Jayne is a man's name. I am asking all "Firefly" fans who come across this blog entry to visit the entry for Jayne and a cast a vote in favor of using it for men.

 

area 51

Surrounded by miles of barren sand, hidden deep within the borders of New Mexico, lies a state-of-the-art military facility. Everybody knows that the facility is an Air Force base, and everyone knows that its electronic eyes are turned forever toward the heavens, searching for life extraterrestrial. Located near Roswell, New Mexico, it is Area 51, the best-known top secret military base in the world. The U.S. government, in the surest sign of the base’s existence, denies knowing anything about it.

Captain Jack Rackham, stationed at Area 51 for nine months, pounded the floor as he raced toward the landing pad of the Air Force base. The hallways echoed with red light as the intruder alarm blared. In a moment, Rackham and a detail of shore police burst through the door, surrounded a two-person plane that had just landed, and pointed their guns at the pilot as he opened the cockpit and emerged.

“Hey, I’m almost out of fuel. I nearly crashed out there,” said Emil Earthart, the pilot. “Do you take MasterCard or Visa? I left my American Express card at home. Hey. what’s with all the guns? Is this Area 51 or something?”

“No,” said Rackham. “This is a secret government facility. It is not Area 51.”

“Actually, captain, it is,” one of the SP’s said.

“There is no such place!” Rackham shouted. Everyone self-consciously tried to avoid staring at his ID badge, which clearly stated “Captain Jack Rackham, U.S. Air Force, Area 51.”

“But ―”

“That’s an order!” A vein in Rackham’s forehead throbbed dangerously close to bursting. “It ― does ― not ― exist!”

“If I don’t really work for Area 51, can I still get paid?” asked the SP.

Earhart promptly was whisked inside the base to the interrogation room, past another room occupied by a strange creature with an elongated head and two mouths, one set inside the other. As Earhart passed, the creature rushed to the observation window and held up a sign that said: “Help! I’ve been held here without legal representation since 1957!” In the next room, a horde of little green people with three eyes and an antenna each jumped up and down and squealed in unison in an attempt to get his attention.

“Ha ha,” Rackham laughed as they walked past. “That Red Squad. They’re such jokers.”

The interrogation room itself was a small, crowded place. Just inside the door was something that looked like a large blue Police Call Box that used to be found on street corners in London. Leaning against the far wall was a display case, filled with a wide variety of items Earhart couldn’t see any pattern to. There was a metal cap made from a fine a silver mesh, shaped it seemed to match the contours of a human skull. Next to it was a headpiece that looked like a giant set of prosthetic ears and a bald headcap. On the middle shelf, lying atop a large tiger hide, were a green ring and an equally green Coleman lantern, next to a silver surfboard. Hanging on the outside of the case was a large blue pair of pajamas with a red cape and the letter S emblazoned on the chest. Next to it stood an imposing robot with a steely visage that looked like it could make the earth stand still.

“Oh, I see you’ve spotted our trophies,” Rackham said awkwardly. “We got those for beating the Army in the annual bowling tournaments. I believe we keep the stuffed elephant with fingers on its trunk, and the giant three-legged all-terrain transport in one of the other rooms because of their size.”

In the end, Earhart was able to convince them that he was just what he said he was: a private pilot who got lost after a weekend gambling in Las Vegas and who had considered himself lucky to find any place to refuel. Air crews gassed up his airplane; Rackham gave him a terrifying “Even if this base did exist, which it certainly doesn’t, you didn’t see it” debriefing, coupled with threats of late-night abductions and medical probing; base personnel gave him the heading for Sante Fe; posed for a group picture in which Lieutentant Iverson had to be told three times to stop making bunny ears behind the heads of the enlisted men; and he was sent him on his way.

The next day, to the total disbelief of Rackham and the other personnel stationed at the base, Earhart’s Piper returned. Once again, the SPs surrounded the plane, only this time there was a woman in the plane with Earhart. Earhart jumped out and said, “Do anything you want to me, but my wife is in the plane now and you have to tell her where I was last night!”



Most people have heard of the Air Force's ultra-high-security, super-secret base in Nevada, known simply as “Area 51.” Late one afternoon, the Air Force folks out at Area 51 were very surprised to see a Piper landing at their “secret” base. They immediately impounded the aircraft and hauled the pilot into an interrogation room.

The pilot's story was that he took off from Las Vegas, got lost, and spotted the Base just as he was about to run out of fuel. The Air Force requested a full FBI background check on the pilot and held him overnight during the investigation

By the next day, they were finally convinced that the pilot really was lost and wasn't a spy. They gassed up his airplane, gave him a terrifying “you-did-not-see-a-base” briefing, complete with threats of spending the rest of his life in prison, told him Las Vegas was that-a-way on such-and-such a heading, and sent him on his way.

The next day, to the total disbelief of the Air Force, the same Piper showed up again. Once again, the SPs surrounded the plane... only this time there were two people inside. The same pilot jumped out and said, “Do anything you want to me, but my wife is in the plane now and you have to tell her where I was last night!”

who’s laughing now?

Luke Jennings was an attorney in New Orleans trying to get a loan from the Federal Housing Administration for a client. He was told the loan would be granted if he could prove satisfactory title to a parcel of property his client was offering as collateral. It took him three months to do it, but Jennings eventually was able to trace the title to the property back to 1803.

He sent the information to the FHA, and a month later, he received the following reply:

Upon review of your letter adjoining your client's loan application, we note that the request is supported by an Abstract of Title. While we are impressed with the able manner in which you have prepared and presented the application, we must point out that you have only cleared title to the proposed collateral back to 1803. Before final approval can be accorded, it will be necessary to clear the title back to its origin.

Jennings wasn’t just frustrated, he was annoyed. It was like the time the IRS had disbelieved his claim to be the father of thirteen children and had required him to provide birth certificates for each one. (The worst part, he reflected, was that Anastasia and Sebastian had decided to pretend they didn’t know who he was, and he’d spent three weeks in jail until his wife had been able to straighten the whole thing out.) He took pen to paper and wrote the following response:

Your letter regarding title in Case No. 847965 has been received. I note that you wish to have title extended further than the 204 years covered by the present application.

I was unaware that any educated person in this country, particularly those working in the property area, would not know that Louisiana was purchased by the United States from France in 1803, the year of origin identified in our application.

For the edification of uninformed FHA bureaucrats, the United States took title to the property from France, which had acquired it by Right of Conquest from Spain. The land came into possession of Spain by Right of Discovery in the year 1492 by a sea captain named Christopher Columbus, who had been granted the privilege of seeking a new route to India by the then-reigning monarch, Queen Isabelle.

The good queen, being a pious woman and careful about titles, almost as much as the
FHA, took the precaution of securing the blessing of the pope before she sold her jewels to fund Columbus' expedition. Now the pope, as I'm sure you know, is the emissary of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And God, it is commonly accepted, created this world. Therefore, I believe it is safe to presume that he also made that part of the world called Louisiana; therefore the property can be assumed to have originated with him. I trust you will find his claim to be satisfactory.

Now, can we have the lousy loan?

Jennings smiled as he placed the letter in an envelope, and as he dropped the letter in the mailbox as he went out for lunch. He was still smiling a month later, when he got the response from the FHA, which said:

Application denied. Who’s laughing now, smartass?

cam and nancy

Solving mysteries is a popular interest in my family.

 

This is due in no small part to the debut of the new "Nancy Drew" movie starring Emma Roberts, which Evangeline saw on Saturday with one of her friends from school. She came back from the movies, excited by the story, which apparently has updated Nancy into a slightly more modern girl who ziplines out of harm's way, performs emergency tracheotomies on the spot, and solves a 25-year-old murder mystery in Los Angeles, of all places.

 

Rachel, a bit younger than Evangeline, has been busy enjoying the kiddie detective adventures of Cam Jansen, an elementary school student who uses her photographic memory to solve mysteries with the click of her mental camera.

 

I started thinking about Cam Jansen and Nancy Drew, in high school together and hating one another passionately. I picture them trying to solve the same mysteries, tampering with the evidence and creating false clues for one another to follow. It seems to me that this would be a film of extreme interest to the movie-going public.

 

If any studio heads are interested in producing this movie, I'd be more than happy to write the screenplay.

crying over the chapel

I’m not getting much out of church lately. I find myself dreading the thought of going there from one week to the next.

It’s odd, and it’s puzzling to feel this way, especially given how much there is to like about this church and how I’ve felt at home here in the past, but the last month or more, I’ve felt virtually no interest in it and had virtually no desire to attend.

Partly it’s the worship, I suppose. The worship team is more than passionate for leading worship ― they also are skilled musicians ― but the worship does absolutely nothing for me.

Around me I see people who feel as though they have been transported into the presence of God; for myself, I feel like an idiot, standing around with my hands in my pockets. There was a time when all I could do was to go through the motions of worship, and since that was all I had to offer, that was what I gave. Nowadays I don’t have even that much to offer.

The worship is loud, and I don’t mean it’s because everyone in the church is singing enthusiastically. I feel much like I expect I would if I were watching The Who: The music pounds its electric rhythms from the speakers, assaulting my body in one relentless wave after another, darkening my mood, bruising my head, and driving me out and away from the church, instead of closer to God.

Some people find that exciting, and equate that excitement with an up-close encounter with God. I don’t. Having realized that even secular music with that same pounding beat produces the same effect, I can’t convince myself that God is in the music. Perhaps he uses the music to draw some people to him, but he does not draw me in that way. I can’t even stand to be in the auditorium most times the worship team is playing; it’s that loud.

“I thought once that God was in the music, but when I looked, I found the same void that I had known all my life, and the notes that came from it were sweet but empty, and so I walked on.”

The preaching is good. Each of the pastors usually brings some good insight about the culture the Bible was written in, one that makes the Bible make more sense, and one that brings relevance from the text to our lives.

Part of it may be the growth. Beloved Wife and I have been at this church for about two years, and have seen some tremendous growth take place. As the church has grown, we’ve seen the relationships we have with other members of the church change in some substantial ways.

I don’t mean that we’ve become closer to other couples and other families. Quite the opposite. I used to talk with Caoimhín and with Tom on a regular basis, almost weekly. I used to be involved in planning the Sunday services, and knew many of the people in the church at least on a first-name basis.

That’s no longer the case. The church divided last fall, spinning off a Norde Bastille congregation, and merging the Nova Bastille congregation with the college congregation. In that time, the Nova Bastille membership has shriveled to myself and possibly one or two other people, leaving me at the Nova Bastille church with a dozen or more people I barely know and have virtually nothing in common with.

The Norde Bastille congregation meantime has swelled from a handful of people to about a hundred, through a few well-timed and well-considered promotional efforts. In the process, with all the sudden new arrivals, the relationships I’d had with other people suddenly are diluted and pulled apart as my friends and associates, who are better at striking up relationships with people, suddenly are spending their time with the new arrivals, making them feel welcome and so on.

There’s also the issue of who has been drawn. At first I thought it was nice to see the people we used to worship with at Community Gospel Church, and maybe for a time it was. Not so much now. Now I have to admit that I find myself resenting things that happened at the end of CGC and the way people failed us so dramatically.

It’s not easy for me to trust people completely. I maintain a healthy sheath of skepticism and cynicism to keep people from cutting me too deeply when they fail to deliver what they promised they would. I learned early on that people like to think the best of themselves, rationalize their failings, and dance their way out of promises and commitments. I thought CGC was different, I really did. I thought, “This is a church of people who know what it is like to be burned by the world and by other believers,” and as we were involved in CGC under Mark McGrath and then later, as Crosspointe Community Church under Abner Bosheth, I felt comfortable with the other people there. We went on double dates with them, invited them to our wedding, to our housewarming, and other special events in our family.

The collapse of the church under Abner put the lie to that illusion. People who had been a major part of our lives stopped being a part. They didn’t return our phone calls, they didn’t come by any more, and as time went on, we realized we were left alone.

The worst part of this was what happened around Isaac. When we opened up our home to him, we were given assurances that we were not doing this on our own. The entire church, we were told, was with us in the entire experience, and would pitch in to help us when we needed it.

In the end, we were alone.

Alone. Can you understand how that felt? We had a child who had moved into our homes with extreme special needs because of the abuse he had endured. The state did almost nothing to give us the support we could have used; we had to find out about that through other sources and pursue it on our own, and some of it we never even heard about until after he had gone.

Our church had promised to be with us, but when push came to shove, no one was there. We tried to get babysitters from time to time, so Natasha and I could get out of the house and spend some time together, but no one would babysit for us.

There were times we wanted just to get together with other families in the church, because the group setting relieved the pressure on us, and in the case of the family with Isaac's biological sister, it encouraged a relationship between the two, and the answer almost all the time was no. Toward the end, because she was pregnant with Rachel, Natasha called family after family, one person after another, and begged people to babysit the kids ― just to babysit Evangeline, while Isaac was with his parents ― so she could get a gynecological exam, and family after family, person after person, they all said no.

Everyone praised us for our willingness to give a home to a child who needed us, but in the end, they were more interested in praising us than in helping us out or making it easier for us to save our marriage.

And now some of these are the same people who are coming to church with us and worshiping at our side. They act toward me as though nothing has changed, and all the while I see an unbridgeable gulf separating us. I wonder if they realize the distance their distance has created, and I wonder if they care.

Maybe I’m feeling sorry for myself, and that’s the problem. It wouldn’t be the first time, and I doubt it would be the last. I think it’s a common failing of humanity that we are all pulled toward narcissism by a personal gravity that we have no wish to fight.

Maybe I’m just unwilling to forgive; maybe my heart is hard and I’m harboring resentment over the indifferent wrongs people have committed against my family without ever knowing it. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve dealt with unforgiveness either.

But I know I’m weary. I want something different, and I want something better from this. I’m tired of going to church, and I’d much rather sleep in.

the secret message of jesus

If you have never read "The Secret Message of Jesus" by Brian McLaren, I highly recommend that you make your way to a decent brick-and-mortar bookstore and get yourself a copy of it.

The book has taken some hits in evangelical circles because it pushes a deeper and more compelling understanding of the gospel than the sort popularized by groups like Campus Crusade for Christ with its four spiritual laws, and the much-touted sinner's prayer, which reduces the gospel to a prayer for forgiveness and automatic entry into heaven.

McLaren's one of the leaders in the "emerging church" movement, and the book was definitely groundbreaking in its interpretation and application of the Bible. Back when I was an evangelical, I heard a lot of stuff that boiled the gospel down to "Believe in Jesus, and God will take away all your sins so that when you die, you can go to heaven and be with him forever; now go and tell everyone else about it too."

McLaren proceeds from the Christus Victor understanding of the gospel, and argues that the Kingdom of God as seen by the prophets is not some distant, post-Armageddon experience, but a reality that arrived in the person of Jesus, and spreads from person to person as we choose to live in the reality of the Incarnation.

A quick example that set the first H-bomb off in my head: I've always been taught that Isaiah and Micah, when they saw a time when the nations would gather by the river, beat their swords into plowshares and study war no longer, were seeing a period after Christ had returned, established his kingdom on earth, and was ruling unopposed.

McLaren notes that when Jesus arrived, his message was not that the Kingdom of God was coming, but that it had arrived, in his person. If Isaiah and Micah, and the other prophets saw a glorious kingdom off in the distance, Jesus was announcing that it could be found now, through faith, in him.

For me, this was a revolutionary thought. Back in college, I had called myself a pacifist mostly because I hated the idea of being called up to fight and risk getting killed if the government felt a need to draft Selective Service registrants. I eventually acknowledge that cowardice, rather than conviction, was driving my stand, and was willing to argue about whether a war was just or not. But if the Kingdom of God has arrived in the person of Christ, then the question of "just war" is no longer a valid one. War itself must be seen as a gross abrogation of the fundamental purposes that God created humanity for, and in direct conflict of the gospel, which seeks reconciliation between God and humanity, and between the different peoples of the earth.

Of course, it's always easier to make war than it is to zealously pursue peace, because war allows the stronger to impose their will upon the weaker, while peace requires becoming weaker and surrendering your will for the good of someone you might not even love. (This is not to say that a Christian cannot join the military and fight in the service of king and country; this is a matter of individual conscience.)

As I was discussing with a friend, it's something you can see in how we view the different leaders we've had. FDR and Churchill are well regarded as wartime leaders, but the respect we have for them generally pales in comparison to the awe and reverence we have for Mahatma Gandhi and men like him who stood their ground with unbowed heads and unraised hands when much stronger forces came against them.

"The Secret Message of Jesus" is an excellent book. Bump it up to the top of your list.

remembering jennifer

A friend of mine, in Texas once for some sort of news conference or seminar, had the misfortune of being pegged as a liberal Northeaster in need of being rescued from her evil ways. Or perhaps those so pegging her were misfortunate; when they regaled her with the horrors of abortion and then asked her how she could support such a thing, Jennifer replied that she doesn't support abortion. Instead, she said, she prefers to impale the heads of little babies on spikes.

They left her alone after that.

james madison and states rights

But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm... But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity?

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 46, 29 January 1788)

Of course, Madison wrote (said?) this in a country that no longer exists, except in the sense of continuity of entity. The Southern states, having ratified the Constitution to enter the union, reasonably enough claimed that they had the right to de-ratify it and thereby secede. Lincoln disagreed and by means of the Civil War fundamentally changed the terms of states rights forever.

And many federal mandates today use the carrot-and-stick approach, so that states voluntarily cede their rights to set standards et al, in order to receive federal funding and grants, albeit not always in the areas covered by the mandate. (School officials just *love* unfunded federal mandates.)

How far we've come! Was it in the right direction? A friend of mine who is a major proponent of states rights and who favors a weak federal government acknowledges that, in a sense, the question is moot. But he also argues that it's a question we should be asking ourselves. (With the implication, I presume, that the answer is no, it was not.)

I'm not particularly wed to either a Republican or a Federalist view of government. You might as well ask if it's a good thing that today was overcast and threatened rain but none came until late in the evening. It's a thing that is neither good nor bad; it just is. Because it was overcast, the day was considerably cooler than it might otherwise have been ... but it also was darker, and therefore people didn't get the full ameliorative effects of a sunny day.

Same thing with the way our government and society have changed over the last two hundred years. Madison's view of big government was affected by his experiences under the British Crown, and that in turn was affected by King George's own bad ideas and the ill advice he received, and by the popular agitation toward rebellion by a number of the patriots in Boston and elsewhere.

I don't think Madison ever would have dreamed of things like tyranny by big business, nor could he see that a strong federal government would have the potential to protect its citizenry from that sort of tyranny. (Or make it worse, admittedly, but that gets into what I'm saying about the pros and cons.)

And a weak federal government didn't exactly do us great things under the Articles of Confederation, nor under a number of presidential administrations prior to Lincoln's that allowed the barbaric practice of slavery to continue. Buchanan's weak presidency and inability to exert any sort of federal authority did far more to make the nation ripe for civil war than Lincoln did.

I can't see any inherent advantage in a weak federal government, or in a strong one. Each depends on the decency of people to make it work, and relying overmuch on either one to mend society's ills (or blaming either one overmuch for society's ills) is a grave mistake and a gross abnegation of personal responsibility.

firefly

Well, I have to admit: It looks like I misjudged this series. Despite a slow and relatively unimpressive beginning, "Firefly" has really turned out to be something worth watching.

Created by Joss Whedon, best known for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Firefly" has been billed as a hybrid of the science fiction and western genres. It's set aboard a small smuggling vessel with an eight-member crew that spends most of its time on the frontier of interstellar civilization, at some indeterminate point in the distant future. Like most good sci-fi, the series focuses on the people on board the ship rather than its technology, so there's no talk of how the ship moves from one planet to another between episodes. The captain of the ship was on the losing side of a civil war and has decided to make his career as far from the winning side as he can.

Natasha and I are about three-quarters of our way through the series, which was smothered less than halfway through its first season. Monday night we watched the episode where Simon, the ship's doctor, hired the crew to sneak him and his sister River into the hospital on the planet Ariel so he could learn exactly what had been done to River to make her so unpredictable in her behavior. The ongoing development of the characters themselves, and the relationships among them, have made the show compelling despite some of the oddities in the way the concept was executed. (I think I mentioned before that the show seemed too spaghetti western, given that it's supposed to be at the very least several hundred years in the future.)

Aside from the characters, one of the things I've found interesting about the show is the way it centers on a group of outlaws -- noble outlaws, perhaps, in the spirit of Robin Hood, but outlaws nonetheless -- who do some pretty shocking things, like stealing medicine from a hospital, easily gunning down other people, and even at times betraying or trying to kill one another. Star Trek, this ain't.

As my oldest brother predicted when I told him of my initial dissatisfaction with the series, the preacher Book is turning out to be an interesting and mysterious character. But I have to admit that I find Jayne a thoroughly intriguing character if for no other reason than he's the least honorable of the outlaws on board Serenity, very clearly in it for the money, and yet even he has a conscience that bothers him when he knows he's wronged a companion and that tears him up when he discovers that he's become a folk hero on Canton because the mud farmers misjudged his motives in dropping a fortune in their midst four years back. (And what a kicking folk song they have about him, too. Any idea where I can get a copy of it, without the dialogue mixed in?)

I'd have to say my favorite epsiodes so far have been "Out of Gas," where life support on board fails; and the one where they rob the hospital, though I liked parts of "Shindig," where Mal unintentionally challenges someone to a duel; and "Our Mrs. Reynolds," where he finds out he's married. (I was really disappointed with the way they got themselves out of that mess; I thought the initial premise for the episode was much more interesting.)

So it's been a good show, so far. I expect Natasha and I will buy a copy of "Serenity" when we get around to it, and we will consign Fox execs to a special hell -- one normally reserved for child molesters and people who talk at the theater -- for not giving the series a chance. There at least they can join the execs from ABC who killed Star Trek and the execs from Paramount who killed the Trek franchise.

Deucalion and Pyrrha, and Noah: Different takes on Judgment

The ancient Greeks once told the story of a great flood that destroyed the earth.

The story goes that the gods saw the abundant wickedness of humanity and destroyed everyone but Deucalion and his wife, Pyrrha, with a great flood. It's the same basic myth as Noah, though Deucalion and Pyrrha did not save any animals and brought no children with them. There is no new beginning, no redemption of the human race, no new start seen through the lives of their children and grandchildren.

Deucalion and Pyrrha see their world annihilated and watch a new race usurp their place in the world. Noah and his wife took their sons and daughters-in-law on the Ark; Deucalion and Pyrrha saw the gods create an entirely new race of humanity from the rocks the two of them threw over their shoulders.

Imagine the grief they must have felt. They witnessed the genocide of their entire human species, and then watch as their land was taken over by a new people whom they had no relationship with. To make it more insulting, they were the instruments chosen to create their replacements.

Like the Greeks, the Hebrew writer of Genesis also imbued the tale with a moral meaning. Unlike the Epic of Gilgamesh, where the Deluge came because a god was being kept awake by humanity's noise, the Genesis account links the Deluge to humanity's wickedness. But the author of Genesis gives the Supreme Being a level of compassion and commitment notably lacking in Zeus.

Yes, the mythological Noah witnesses the destruction of his whole world, but he also sees a God who is committed to his creation, and who gives it a second chance. The pledge that there will be no other Flood comes with a repetition of the Eden commands to fill the earth and subdue it, to be fruitful and to multiply, with the implication that the earth has been renewed.

(The Apostle Peter refers to this in one of his epistles, where he links the Flood to baptism, which in Christian circles is seen as a symbol of cleansing and resurrection.)

And unlike Zeus, who wipes his original human race off the slate, God keeps Adam's race in the running.

deep space 9

Now that I've seen the entire run of "Deep Space 9" from start to finish, I have to say that it is far and away the best of the Star Trek franchise.

Part of it's the characters. They were much more fully developed and better nuanced than in Classic Trek or TNG, with dark sides, aspirations, and a wider range of motivations than ever had been shown on Trek before. There were little things, like Sisko's love of baseball; to Odo's uncertain motivation first as someone who didn't know his origins and then as someone who rejected all that his people had done; the moral ambiguity of Quark, who in some episodes seemed decidedly corrupt and amoral and yet who consistently came out on the right side; and there were some really intriguing interactions among the characters, between Garak and Bashir, the repressed attraction between Dax and Sisko, the elaborate dance between Odo and Quark as constable and perpetual criminal suspect, and so on. (And the sheer range of characters! I lost track of how many supporting characters there were, from the station itself, to Bajor, to Cardassia, and the other Ferengi...)

But mostly it was the storytelling. There were some false starts, with the issues surrounding Bajor's assimilation into the Federation, but once the writers got going and started to figure out what the Dominion was and how it worked, the show just kept getting better. Seeing the Klingons as nasties again was a treat, and seeing humanity portrayed honestly on Star Trek for a change -- like in the episode where Garak blows up a Romulan vessel to support Sisko's lie that the Dominion plans to attack the Romulan Empire, and Sisko realizes he's OK with that -- was unforgettable. (And of course there was the episode that suggests the entire Star Trek franchise could be the product of the imagination of a black 1950s science fiction writer...)

I don't think I can say enough good about DS9. It was, all things considered, the high point of Trek. The franchise jumped the shark when they launched Voyager, and it never recovered. Maybe if they really do hire JMS to do a new series, but that's about the only way I can see.

What it means to have the faith of a child

I imagine the disciples walking along the road somewhere between towns. The dust rises from the ground as they walk and covers their feet. It coats their robes, and it gets into their faces and hair. Somewhere along the way, someone -- probably Peter, James or John -- mentions how much he's missed out on for this life he's chosen.

It's a mostly innocuous remark. Peter probably was thinking of the time he wasn't getting to spend with his wife; or John or James was thinking of the role he had had in the family business and what he stood to lose in terms of financial security. But the thought, once voiced, prompted a snort from someone else who had given up even more.

Soon an idle complaint induced by the heat of the day and the weariness of the road has swollen into a top-this sort of argument over who had given up more. It's only a matter of time until someone says, "Well, whatever I've given up, it was worth it to me. Following Jesus means that much to me, and I'd give up everything I have to follow him."

From there it just goes downhill. Everyone's got to prove that he loves Jesus more than the others do, and what it boils down to, though probably no one will say it, is simply this: Who's the greatest in the Kingdom of God?

It's a favorite theme for the disciples, if the gospels are to be taken seriously, and we can only imagine how exasperating it must be to hear your 12 students once again picking up the refrain of "I love God more than you do" when a major part of your message is to forget yourself. Jesus is tired of the discussion. 

So Jesus, when he hears what they're quarreling about (again), and no doubt feeling a little exhausted from the road himself, sits down, puts a child on his lap and says, "Whoever wants to be first in my kingdom must be like this child."

I was taught for years that what he meant was he expects us to believe like children do: accepting what they're told at face value and not questioning it. That's actually a great idea if you're trying to pass on an ideology or to maintain an institution, but it sure sucks for making intelligent people who can think for themselves. (Although it does encourage intelligent people to parrot what they've heard or to find incredibly well thought-out justifications and proofs for what they've been told to believe.)

A couple things bother me about this understanding of Jesus' teaching.

For one, it's terribly condescending to children in its assumption that they just believe whatever they're told. Children are smarter than we usually give them credit for, and they do get the difference between metaphor or fiction and reality if we let them. It doesn't take a particularly sharp kid to do the math and see the problems Noah would have getting two of every animal onto an ark, nor does it take a genius to see how far some people have gone in trying to make the Noah story sound rational and scientifically viable.

The other thing is that this interpretation focuses on the substance of faith and not its nature. It emphasizes the importance of believing a set of doctrines over the importance of actually putting faith into action. It suggests that having a set of intellectual attitudes and beliefs is more important than bringing those beliefs to bear in the real world. And that's just plain wrong.

Christianity isn't a European or Western religion at all. It's an Eastern religion, and the culture it came from is a culture that was holistic before being holistic became trendy.

Here in the West we have creeps saying things like "I love my wife and kids deep down, where it counts" while they betray them in adulterous relationships; or we have politicians flattering religious conservatives with talk about "family values" while they make it harder on working families to catch a break.

In the West, we don't so readily see a disconnect there. In the East, where Christianity was born, they properly call that bullshit. You cannot love your family while you cheat on your wife; you cannot care about family values while you add burden after burden to families; and you cannot value truth if you lie.

This sort of outward display of righteousness comes fairly naturally to adults, but it's not that natural for kids, who bring a lot of enthusiasm to their faith. My kids love Jesus with an intensity that awes me. I've watched Evangeline struggle hard to incorporate his teachings into her life, seeking to do right by her classmates, even when they hassle her at school; and trying to intercede when her best friend retaliates on someone who's been picking on them. (Evangeline's actually taken some pretty big hits from her friend for trying to defuse that sort of situation.)

Compare that straightforward desire to love Jesus and live as he wants us to, with the faith adults have. We often rationalize our way out of forgiving, out of loving, out of giving, and too often are willing to tolerate or overlook injustice when it doesn't directly affect us and to tell ourselves that "there's nothing we can do" when there is -- if we were only willing to do it.

It seems to me that that natural, holistic approach to faith is what Jesus wants us to model.

real faith

I have little doubt that I have the most beautiful daughter in all the world.

Today, my 7-year-old had a fight with Ishtar, her best friend and chief partner in crime at school. It was the sort of fight you would expect second-graders to have, over something as trivial as whether Evangeline would lend Ishtar her ruler, and it escalated into a day of muted hostility and deliberate ostracism.

Let those consider children to be models of innocence and purity, free of any blemish of sin, take note: Ishtar’s behavior was so upsetting that Evangeline couldn’t even bear to talk about it until bedtime.

As details of the fight gradually emerged, I asked Evangeline if she thought she might owe Ishtar an apology for anything she had done. I expected her to reject the notion immediately, or to argue that Ishtar’s behavior had been worse. To my surprise, she acknowledged immediately that she did owe her one.

She surprised me even more by telling me about other times she had upset Ishtar, by foiling an attempt to exact petty “revenge” on a boy who has made life difficult for them at school, partly to keep her best friend from getting in trouble. But then she added the kicker: “I keep remembering that Jesus said to love other people as yourself, and to bless people who curse you.”

I almost cried I was so impressed, and when she said, “That’s pretty much the only part of the Bible I can remember,” I said, “If you can remember that much, you’ve remembered enough.”

plagiarism

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but plagiarism is just outright theft.

Plagiarism the bane of writers everywhere. Few things are more aggravating than to spend hours working on a piece in an effort to get every word just right, every bit of the structure perfectly balanced, and the pacing down to exactly where you want it, only to see someone else steal it and pass it off as theirs.

I've been plagiarized repeatedly in my career as a writer. When I worked at The Princeton Packet, we regularly saw one of our competitors repackage and reprint our stories. Not word for word -- they weren't that unsubtle -- but very obviously derived from ours. Their stories would have the same structure, the same sources, the same essential information.

Another time I was plagiarized by a high school student. I found out when her father reposted a blog entry of mine and claimed that it was something his daughter had written. Ironically it was for an ethics paper.

I've had many thoughts over the years on the nature of plagiarism myself. The high school student's plagiarism is the most obvious sort, It's possible that she could have the same thoughts as me on an ethical situation, and even possible that she could express them similar. But there's no reasonable way to claim that she just happened to do it word for word identically to how I did, That's plagiarism, plain and simple.

It gets harder to detect, and I feel the subject gets murkier once we get into the realm of editing and rewriting. If a reader discovers this blog post and is moved inexpressibly to write about plagiarism, and writes her own essay on plagiarism and paraphrasing, would she be plagiarising me, or just being influenced by me?

That can be harder to determine. The other local newspaper that I would say plagiarized not only me but my co-workers and even our mutual competitors at The Times of Trenton, very obviously based their reporting on ours, not just the stories they selected but how they structured and reported them. The words were theirs, but not much else; and sometimes it was obvious that not all the words were theirs either.

The similarities were too close to be coincidence, and they never credited us for anything. Plagiarism? I would have failed students for that when I taught English writing, but I don't know how it would measure up legally. We never tried, although The Times did threaten that paper once, I heard.

Suppose I take someone else's writing and begin to edit and heavily rewrite it? I remove their personal anecdotes and replace my own, pick a better place to start the piece, and massage the writing until it reflects my voice, When I put it down, have I just plagiarized another person's work?

This is something that we did at WNC Newspapers a few times with editorials that addressed issues affecting more than one municipality. All local references had to change to reflect the community, and in my case at least, I wanted an editorial in my paper to be the best I could make it, which at times meant radically restructuring and rewriting them when I lifted them from other editors. (The editor I did this to the most found it amusing how different the editorial would be by the time I had finished.)

Since it was all work for hire and both editorials belonged to the published that wasn't an issue, but what happens when we do that with stories or essays where copyright laws inarguably do apply? At what point does it become an entirely different work, one where there is no need for a Fair use defense?

Personally, I think that there could be something to be said for such an approach to writing if it can be done well, especially on a medium like the Internet, where profit is not usually a motive. In Shakespeare's day, there was no such thing as plagiarism. He lifted material wholesale from Holinshed's "Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland," from Chaucer's "Troylus and Criseyde" and from just about everyone else who ever wrote before him -- I've read some of the source material, and there's no question that he plagiarised by contemporary standards -- and yet we consider him to be the finest writer of the English language.

Retooling extant stories and redoing familiar pieces of art builds up our language and our cultural heritage through the process of tying everything back into familiar stories. It enriches art by developing a visual language of symbols and memes. In a country where our national memory doesn't go back more than a few months and "Nick at Night" is considered a crash course in classic literature, don't we need more plagiarism rather than less?



Copyright © 2007 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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camping

So I’m back after spending Memorial Day weekend at a campsite in Hickory Run, a state park in Pennsylvania. About four years ago, my older brother conceived and pushed the idea that we should use an annual camping trip as a low-pressure, weekendlong family reunion, bringing our parents, and our brothers, wives and children for the entire Memorial Day weekend. It’s grown now to include three of our Hutton cousins and their families as well.

 

It’s a great idea. I love that for the entire weekend, Evangeline and Rachel were able to spend their waking moments with their cousins Balder and Morrigan, getting to know their uncle and aunt better, and getting to know my cousins and their children as well. It’s even better to see the girls bonding not only with their cousins but also with two of their second cousins. How many children in America grow up with their second cousins as part of their families? I didn’t. I’m not even sure I know who my second cousins are; in fact, there are some first cousins I wouldn’t know if I tripped over them. But we grew up with our Hutton cousins, seeing them two or three times a year, so I like it that our children and their children are growing up as parts of one another’s lives, twined round and round each other like two vines that trellis one another.

 

It’s also an idea I’ve had enough of ― not the reunion, which I love ― but the camping. I’m sick of camping. How the heck did this become something people do for fun? I’m trying to picture the guys in marketing as they concocted this idea over a couple of beers and God only knows what else. (And you know it was men who did this, as the women are much too sensible.)

 

Somehow, some corporate moron named Bob, with an IQ lower than my pet dog’s, came up with the idea that people would like the idea of sleeping on the ground. Somehow Bob thought people would like sleeping under the trees inside canvas shelters so thin that you can feel every degree the temperature drops, made of a plastic so designed that every rain drop echoes as it strikes, reminding you, “Any moment, you’re going to get soaked and then you’re going to be really miserable.” Somehow ― somehow ― Bob concluded the people would enjoy waking up in the middle of the night with a backache so severe that they would be unable to move and fearful that they would never feel anything below the waist again. Somehow Bob pulled that off, and not only convinced a roomful of other Bobs that it would be a good idea to throw out twelve thousand years of human progress and civilization, they managed to convince enough of the American public at large that an industry was born, under the rubric of “getting back to nature.”

 

I could point out that there’s very little natural about driving for two hours to set up a propane grill and cook prepackaged food on an iron skillet, but instead let me say that I want nothing to do with getting back to nature. The very notion is insane. Nature bites, it stings, and it gives you diarrhea. Getting back to nature means dying before you turn forty, and clearly it means moving like a sack of broken rocks in the morning because you never get enough sleep.

 

I loved seeing family for Memorial Day weekend, but we’ve got to find a better way to manage reunions than going camping together.

windows

Damn you, Bill Gates.

In memoriam: Jerry Falwell

There's a lot I didn't care for in Jerry Falwell -- the self-righteousness, the moralizing, and the alarmism that built walls between the church and the rest of society -- but I have to say, he was no worse a man than I, and in many ways, he was someone I could learn from.

He doggedly pursued a vision that he believed was from God and unquestionably emerged as a powerfully influential person, for both good and ill.

He was a tremendous benefactor on the Baptist Haiti Mission in Kenscoff, and through its ministry benefitted thousands of children, farmers, artisans, laborers and others throughout Haiti.

Rest in peace.

bees

Most articles I've read indicate the likely culprit is a particular insecticide that is used pretty widely for crops, lawns and other areas. (What a shock, that. Spray crops with insecticide to kill nuisance insects, and wonder of wonders, it affects beneficial insects like honeybees too.) Commercial honeybees, the ones that get driven round and round to fertilize crops, are the ones being affected; anecdotally, the privately owned hives largely have been unaffected -- probably because if you're a honeybee hobbyist or a smalltime owner of a hive or two, you're not going to go spraying or taking the bees where people have been spraying.

France had similar problems, banned this particular insecticide, and they have seen a rebound in their honeybee populations.

Of course, insecticide might be only the chief (as opposed to sole) culprit, or one of several factors in the die-off. In any event, it makes sense to me for people to voluntarily scale back or eliminate their use of insecticides and find other ways to control pests. Organic solutions don't eradicate whole beneficial species, contaminate the ground, pollute waterways or accidentally poison children, and it's been shown that organically raised crops have a higher yield than chemically treated crops, even during drought years.

Seems a like a good approach for all of us.

starbuck

Starbuck is a woman. Get over it, and deal.

There's no reason Starbuck shouldn't be a woman. the archetype of a woman making it in a man's world as a reckless and carefree buccaneer sort is just as valid as the diamond-in-the-rough of Han Solo. The new Starbuck and Boomer also correct the imbalance of sexes found in the original Battlestar Galactica, which had Athena as a viper pilot only for a short period before dropping her completely.

The only disappointment I had in the casting was the decision to make Colonel Tigh white instead of black. That was partly because now none of the main crew was black, but also because Colonel Tye was the first black man to arrive in the Americas.

miracles

I'm tired of hearing people talk about miracles that are mundane and ordinary. Unless it's something that defies all reason, like parting the Red Sea, it's not a miracle, it's just good luck.

biblically, miracles often require some measure of obedience: Naaman has to take seven baths in the Jordan River to be cured of leprosy, Moses has to throw a handful of dust into the air for gnats to appear; and so on -- but miracles properly speaking reflect a break with science as we know it, and are not a "little bit extra to put us over the top."

Real miracles are in short supply, as are clear and undeniable answers to prayer, and I don't fault anyone for disbelieving stories of them. I've heard unprovable stories of healings and such from the missions field (and a host of frauds from snakes like H*nn), but most often the term "miracle" is misused by Christians as a synonym for fortuitous coincidence.

As a wordsmith, I maintain that it cheapens the word "miracle" to use it for any incident where God may have put his thumb on the scale and tilted probability to favor one person or another, just as it cheapens the word "hero" to use it to describe someone just because he plays basketball well or thinks he's hot stuff for being a popular singer or rap artist. True heroes remain measures of character and not just of accomplishment, and true miracles beggar explanation.

war in heaven

Just out of curiosity: Can anyone give me the basis for the story about the war in heaven?

From what I've been able to tell, the story about Satan leading a third of the angels in rebellion in an attempt to supplant God makes a great Christian myth about hubris, but it is thoroughly extrabiblical. The notion of Satan being an adversary of God and not his underling doesn't even appear until some time after the Babylonian exile, when Jews came into contact with Zoroastrianism and its dualistic view of the world.

The actual passages describing the revolt appear to be taken grossly out of conquest. It wasn't until Jerome (I think) that Isaiah 14 was ever construed as referring to a fallen angel; prior to that, it generally was understood as referring to the actual king of Babylon. The passage incorporates elements of a well-known Babylonian myth about the morningstar Venus, and uses this myth to taunt the king of Babylon.

Similarly, when I read the passage about the "war in heaven" in the book of Revelation, I understand it refers to the spiritual events that took place at the Cross. I'm not aware of any sound reason for interpreting it as a pre-Creation event.

But of course, I may be wrong. I've read a lot, but I've never formally attended seminary, nor even Bible college.

And actually, now that I'm on a roll, there's the whole matter of all the angels that supposedly rebelled and fell at the same time. Again, it makes a terrific story, but there's nothing but tradition and supposition to identify the unclean spirits of the New Testament with fallen angels. Other interpretations I'm aware of claim that the unclean spirits were the souls of a pre-Adamic race of men (Gen. 1:2, "Now the earth became formless and void"), and that the term simply refers to a medical condition like epilepsy or a mental condition like schizophrenia.

For those who want to equate ha-Satan with the serpent and the Devil, though, there's still the interesting question of when Satan "fell from heaven like lightning" and why. Scripture places ha-Satan in the roll of a prosecutor or accuser, telling God that Job's piety isnt' all it's cracked up to be, and claiming that David relies more on the military might of Israel than on God's favor (or least that's how I'd interpret the parallel accounts of David's census in 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles).

So did Satan get overzealous in his accusations and become more adversarial, did he fall for some other reason, or did something else happen?

War is easier than peace. That doesn't make it just

I'm tired of hearing apologists for this war in Iraq. We're there, we're committed, but we cannot call it just.

This is not about the individual decision to serve during wartime. There are some who answer the government's call to take arms against another nation during wartime, and that's a matter of individual conscience. But war is such a fundamental abrogation of God's intent for the human race, that no war can be considered just. It is not in heaven.

Hitler invariably comes up in these discussion, with the question "What could you do to stop someone like him, that doesn't involve military force?" And my honest answer is, I don't know. I don't know what response makes sense against something as mindlessly evil as the Third Reich.

And yet, I can't see a way for the Romanians to overthrow a totalitarian government with all the firepower, and yet they did, in 1990.

I can't see a way for blacks, shoved to the margin of American society in the 1950s, to step forward and secure their right to vote, guarantee equal protection under the law, and thwarting a society built on racism and segregation, without resorting to violence,and yet they did.

I can't see a way for Mahatma Gandi to drive the British out of India without inspiring an armed uprising, and yet he did.

War is easier than peace. It allows the mighty to triumph and to get what they want. It forces the lesser party to acquiesce, swallow their pride (and even their dignity), and admit the superior claim of the other party.

The mindset that tells us "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God" is one that seeks peace by putting another's needs first, It calls for placing yourself in the position of weakness, and risking real and serious loss. It requires trying to understand enemies, listening to their needs, and putting them ahead of yourself and your own interests.

War is "just" only to the extent that bombing cities, killing civilians, and blowing up men and women because we disagree with their leaders can ever be said to be just. It always comes with the generational renewal of old injuries and grudges, and it takes its pound of our flesh from our souls. Even David, called a man after God's heart, was barred from building the Temple because his hands were stained with the blood of war,

War happens because we're willing to surrender the dictates of conscience to Caesar's rage and do his bidding.

It's our responsibility to say no more. The human conscience is not for sale. War is unjust, and we will not support it.

'the secret message of jesus'

I highly recommend this book. Brian McLaren is one of the leaders in the "emerging church" movement, and the book was definitely groundbreaking in its interpretation and application of the Bible.

I don't know what the experience of others has been, but as an evangelical, I heard a lot of stuff that boiled the gospel down to "Believe in Jesus, and God will take away all your sins so that when you die, you can go to heaven and be with him forever; now go and tell everyone else about it too."

McLaren takes the Christus Victor understanding of the gospel, and argues that the Kingdom of God as seen by the prophets is not some distant, post-Armageddon experience, but a reality that arrived in the person of Jesus, and spreads from person to person as we choose to live in the reality of the Incarnation.

A quick example that set the first H-bomb off in my head: I've always been taught that Isaiah and Micah, when they saw a time when the nations would gather by the river, beat their swords into plowshares and study war no longer, were seeing a period after Christ had returned, established his kingdom on earth, and was ruling unopposed.

McLaren notes that when Jesus arrived, his message was not that the Kingdom of God was coming, but that it had arrived, in his person. If Isaiah and Micah, and the other prophets, saw a glorious kingdom off in the distance, Jesus was announcing that it could be found now, through faith, in him.

For me, it was a revolutionary thought. Back in college, I had called myself a pacifist mostly because I hated the idea of being called up to fight and risk getting killed if the government felt a need to draft Selective Service registrants. I eventually acknowledged that cowardice, rather than conviction, was driving my stand, and was willing to argue about whether a war was just or not. But if the Kingdom of God has arrived in the person of Christ, then the question of "just war" is no longer a valid one. War itself must be seen as a gross abrogation of the fundamental purposes that God created humanity for, and in direct conflict of the gospel, which seeks reconciliation between God and humanity, and between the different peoples of the earth.

Of course, it's always easier to make war than it is to zealously pursue peace, because war allows the stronger to impose their will upon the weaker, while peace requires becoming weaker and surrendering your will for the good of someone you might not even love. (This is not to say that a Christian cannot join the military and fight in the service of king and country; this is a matter of individual conscience.) As I was discussing with a friend, it's something you can see in how we view the different leaders we've had. FDR and Churchill are well regarded as wartime leaders, but the respect we have for them generally pales in comparison to the awe and reverence we have for Mahatma Gandhi and men like him who stood their ground with unbowed heads and unraised hands when much stronger forces came against them.

"The Secret Message of Jesus" is an excellent book. Bump it up to the top of your list.

the third option

A good friend of mine in Texas is struggling to define his identity. Born male, he is transgendered and believes he would be happier as a female.

I watch this mess unfold, and honestly, I think we're going about this all the wrong way. Maybe it's not meant to be an either/or choice, a mutually exclusive pair of options. Maybe Sisyphus really did have to struggle and sweat and contend with that damn boulder for all eternity in order to receive the reprieve of the Elysian Fields that the gods had promised him, once he got it to the top of the hill; but maybe there was another option, some other way to get it up there, but he never stopped to consider it because he got it stuck in his head that the only way to get the damn thing to the top of the hill was to fight and struggle against its determination to stay at the bottom of the hill.

I'm not saying that transitioning into life as a woman is necessarily the right thing to do, because it is, I think, silly to believe that the inner gendered self is truer or more important than the outward physical self; if God created the one, then surely he created the other. And perhaps the evangelicals and the fundamentalists would be right to say that gender dysphoria is simply part of the sinful nature and you need to nail it to the Cross every day, along with every other question about sexual identity ... but maybe there's an asset to it that we haven't discovered because we've been taught to see it strictly as a right-or-wrong moral issue.

I don't know what I think, honestly. I have to say that Christ is someone who brings life and freedom from shame, while the Church often delights in putting people under the yoke of expectation. Christianist sharia is such a bitch to live under.

That's not a license to disregard our obligations or to revel in self-indulgence, but surely feeling dead all the time isn't what Christ intends for us, is it? I don't see the freedom and life that Christ brings in choosing to be miserable all our lives, any more than I see it in the choice to destroy our lives in the name of self-expression.

divest for darfur

"Your mutual fund is paying for the genocide in Darfur."

 

That was my wife's sole statement concerning an effort by SaveDarfur.org to get people with Fidelity mutual funds to urge the company to begin divesting. Divesting in companies that do business in nations with severe human rights abuses is a technique with a proven track record. It worked in ending Apartheid in South America, and hopefully it will work to stop the genocide in Sudan as well.

 

I'm calling Fidelity Friday morning and asking them to divest immediately. If you have a mutual fund with Fidelity, I urge you to do the same as well. Their number is (800) 532-5340.

 

At least 400,000 people have been killed in the last three years in Darfur in conditions that the Bush administration has classified as a genocide. If you want more information SaveDarfur.org has a post called "Background" that's worth checking out.

Viewing Jonah as divine fiction

One of the common objections among evangelicals to viewing the book of Jonah is ahistorical, is that such a view is the first step down a long and treacherous slippery slope.

Ken Hamm, a major name in creationist circles, asks "If the Creation and the Deluge stories aren't actual events, as described, then at what point does God start meaning what he says?" If you can't believe in Jonah, how can you believe in Jesus coming back from the dead? Especially when he referred to "the sign of Jonah" as the only evidence his generation would receive that he was messiah!

How can I believe in the Resurrection but not in Jonah's misadventure with a marine animal? It's actually pretty easy. I believe the story of Jonah being swallowed by a great fish is a parable about God's love for all nations. I believe that the Resurrection is an actual historical event. (See? It's not hard at all.)

The Bible is a collection of multiple genres. It contains mythology, from Genesis 1-12; it contains folk stories and legends, from Genesis 13-50, the books of Judges and Ruth, and parts of Exodus; and it contains history, from Samuel through Kings and Chronicles, plus Ezra, Nehemiah, and Acts. It includes poetry in the Psalms and the Song of Songs; and wisdom literature, in Proverbs, Koheleth, and Job.

There is mysticism in the gospel of John; theology in most of the Pauline and lesser epistles; personal correspondence such as Philemon; lessons on Christian living, such as the book of James; apocalyptic writing in Daniel and Revelation; and so on. The synoptic gospels actually combine several of these types of writing.

The Bible isn't a history text, though it contains history. It isn't a math text, though it contains some math; and it isn't a science text, though it contains some science. (And some of it appallingly bad, like the way Jacob breeds Laban's flocks so that he can get all the best ones and leave Laban with the weak ones.)

We do the Scriptures needless violence when we insist that there is only one way to understand it, and that its every word has to be treated as definitive in terms of science, history. Its only claim about itself is that it's God-breathed and meant for instruction, encouragement, reproof, and revelation.

Given the polyphany of voices in Scripture, it's reasonable to regard Jonah as divinely inspired fiction. In what way does that diminish its meaning or message? Either way, its inclusion in the canon shows that God's love abounds even to our enemies, and that his desire is for a broken heart and contrite spirit, rather than to leave a smoldering ruin where a great city once stood.


Copyright © 2007 by David Learn. Used with permission.

ouch (truth hurts)

sourdough buns

We've been invited to a friend's house for a cookout to celebrate her 25th birthday. Since there's a huge crowd coming, and if it's not too tacky, I thought I could defray some of the burden on our host by providing some homemade hamburger buns. So I found a recipe that calls for sourdough, and thought I would give it a shot.

 

Just to be sporting, I'm going to use Coma, Rachel's pet sourdough starter. We last used her about a week ago, to make pancakes, and I figure it wouldn't hurt to put her to use again. It gives Rachel a sense of ownership in the project anyway, and it gives me an excuse to clean out Coma's container too. (Nothing was growing it except Coma, but I don't see a reason to take the risk.)

 

We need to use Coma more often. There was a lot of hooch in her container, though thankfully she didn't seem to be any worse the wear for it.

 

Coma hamburger buns

2 cups sourdough starter
1 cup water
½ cup sugar
¼ cup oil
1 egg
½ teaspoon salt
2½ cups all-purpose flour

2½ cups whole wheat flour

Mix starter with water, sugar, oil, egg and salt. Stir in 2½ cups of all-purpose flour. Once the flour has been stirred in thoroughly, add 2 cups of whole wheat flour and mix thoroughly. When the flour becomes too stiff to stir, knead the dough for 10 minutes on a lightly floured surface, gradually working in another ½ cup of whole wheat flour. Remember that flour amounts are approximate, and depend on the wetness of the starter. If the dough remains sticky, continue to add more all-purpose flour, in small amounts, until the dough is smooth.

 

Place the dough in a greased bowl, turning the dough over. Cover the bowl loosely with plastic wrap and let sit about an hour. Once the dough has doubled in size, punch it down and then let it rest 15 minutes.

Divide dough into 20 pieces, roughly the size of a lemon, rolling each piece into a smooth ball. Flatten pieces to ¾ inch thick. Place pieces two inches apart on greased cookie sheets, and let them rise until they are almost the desired size.

Bake 15 to 20 minutes at 375 degrees.  Makes about 20 buns.

 

For hot dog buns, pinch off pieces the size of an egg.  Shape to the length of a hot dog, and roll to about ¾ inch thick. Place buns one inch apart on greased cookie sheets.  Makes about 24.

school funding

A letter I sent to my governor and state legislators. I wrote it tonight, based on a newspaper column I ghost-wrote for a friend, based on a speech she gave to our state officials at a public budget hearing. For the op-ed piece, I was trying to keep her voice. Here, it's mine.

Dear Gov. Culver:

I am writing to you as my governor to ask that you seek a more appropriate level of funding for the state's charter schools. A resident of Nova Bastille, I have a daughter who is attending second grade at Gary Barker Charter School, and as both a parent and a trustee of the school, I am deeply concerned about the current funding inequities, which seriously dampen the school's ability to perform its mission.

As I'm sure you're aware, the Iowa Charter School Program Act of 1996 stipulates that charter schools are supposed to receive 90 percent of the per-pupil spending of the sending school district. Unfortunately, that's not what is happening. In 2005-06, Gary Barker spent $6,102 for each student, compared to the $12,203 that Nova Bastille spends. That's not even close to 90 percent. It's barely 50 percent, even though three-quarters of the students at Gary Barker come from the city. Apparently the state funding regulations do not consider Gary Barker to be an Abbott district, even though most of our students come from one and we're located in one.

The state's proposed budget promises to increase funding for non-Abbott districts with large numbers of poor students. Since we're not eligible to receive Abbott aid, but half our students do qualify for free or reduced lunch, you would think that this aid is perfect for us. Instead we've been told we are ineligible, because the school is located in an Abbott district.

I get a headache just trying to figure that one out. How on earth can we be both Abbott and non-Abbott and yet neither one, all at the same time?

The whole point of the funding arrangement created by the Charter School Program Act is for funding to follow the child. Why isn't that happening? Why are my daughter and her classmates being denied the money for their education that would be spent on them if they attended Nova Bastille's other public schools? I don't get it. Either Gary Barker qualifies as an Abbott school because of its location and should receive Abbott aid, or it's not an Abbott school and it's entitled to the new at-risk aid because its student population meets the criteria.

My wife and I have lived in Nova Bastille since shortly before our first daughter was born, in 1999. In no small part because of Gary Barker and the tremendous education program it offers, we have stayed in our "starter home" for nearly eight years now, long enough to have a second daughter who is now finishing preschool and gearing up for kindergarten. We've built relationships with other families in the school, and we've grown deep roots in the city. We've discovered for ourselves the cultural treasures Nova Bastille has to offer, and we have become involved in other organizations working to make the city an even better place to live. We love our city, and we love our school.

I'm asking you to help guarantee that Gary Barker gets the funding it needs and its students deserve, so that it can continue to be an asset to the community. As the Legislature finishes its work on the 2008 state fiscal budget, please remember to give all the students in New Jersey's public school system the best chance at success. Remember to provide qualifying charter schools with either Abbott aid or the newly allocated "at-risk" aid.

Thank you for your time.

David Learn

'real' christianity and miracles

"Real Christianity" has nothing to do with whether Elijah miraculously provided enough oil for the widow at Zarephath to make it through the famine. "Real Christianity" has nothing do with whether the sun went backward 10 steps for Hezekiah. "Real Christianity" has nothing to do with whether God created the world in six days, flooded it in 40, and scattered everyone across the earth when they built the first skyscraper.

Being a real Christian does not require believing that God turned the Nile to actual blood and that the moon one day will turn to actual blood; nor does it mean believing that the author of Exodus was describing a periodic saturation of the Nile with red algae that would drive all the frogs out of the river, or that Revelation is describing a lunar eclipse.

All believers -- mainline, Catholic, evangelical, Coptic, fundamentalist, Orthodox, Pentecostal and other -- make up a bunch of junk, hang it on the Cross, and say "This is real Christianity. Believe it or go to hell." We're all guilty of that, because not one of us has understood. But thankfully, God isn't nearly as narrow as the people who follow him.

Paul gave the church its first creed -- "By this gospel, you are saved: that Christ died for your sins, according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, and on the third day he rose again." And James unequivocally spells out what true religion is: caring for the needy and the oppressed. Everything else is just straw, and maybe if we as a church stopped worrying about the straw, both church and society would be a lot healthier.

I gotta admit, I'm puzzled by the reaction some people have had to my comments of late, off-blog. The contention appears to be that my faith is diminished by being less literal than theirs, and that I require being rescued both from it and the very serious doubts I'm having about the faith in general. Isn't doubt good, because it motivates us to seek a more definitive Truth? I've always thought so.

It's best to remember that the Hebrew Bible comes from a Hebraic storytelling tradition that we lack the cultural context to properly understand in the West. Still, we can draw a parallel between that storytelling tradition and the one we have here in America, which includes stuff like George Washington either willfully engaging in deforestation or chopping down invasive species to safeguard America's native woodlands, depending on your political bent; it includes tales of Casey Jones and John Henry, Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan; and it includes other stories about people from a wide sampling of America's ethnic traditions.

In the long run, to us as a nation, it doesn't matter that George Washington never chopped down a cherry tree and then owned up to it, because it's more important to our culture to believe that Washington was a virtuous man who never told a lie. It also is unimportant that while Casey Jones was a real train engineer who died in a train wreck, John Henry probably didn't tunnel into a mountain faster than a steam drill and then die of a heart attack, because both Casey Jones and John Henry say something about our progress as an industrialized nation and the power of the human spirit.

And of course, while children might believe these stories, by adulthood, most of us come to accept that folklore has historical value even if the stories themselves aren't historical, because of the details they preserve about our nation's past, the nuggets they pass on about the conflicts and struggles of those bygone eras, and because of the richness they add to our language. If I say George Washington was a regular Paul Bunyan in that cherry tree episode, it doesn't mean I believe Bunyan ever walked the frozen lands of Minnesota.

As for the miracles, they have never been the point of faith. Would Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego be any less the heroes of the faith if they had been consumed by the fire of Nebuchadnezzar's furnace? Would Daniel, had the lions eaten him?

Would Elijah's authority to confront Ahab have been any less if he hadn't brought a dead boy back to life, or if he took up a part time job to keep the widow from running out of flour?

Would Moses have been less a deliverer for Israel if he had helped them dig a well to get water instead of striking a rock?

Of course not. The goal of faith isn't (or shouldn't be) to see miracles, or even to see prayer "answered" (though we always pray with the expectation that it will be). The goal of faith is simply this: to know God better. He is the reward we seek, not the gifts he litters our way with.

Nor does viewing some or all of the biblical accounts as nonhistorical constitute believing that God is incapable of performing or unwilling to perform them. Anyway, our belief in miracles in any event is a prerequisite for them only when dealing with the Force and while learning at the feet of Master Yoda. Where God is concerned, it is willingness to to do what he asks of us that leads to miracles happening.

Resurrection lies at the heart of faith

You know, it's the Resurrection more than anything else that keeps me from walking away.

It's not apologetics. A lot of apologetics involves either violence to the text, such as the rather involved, complicated, and beside-the-point efforts to justify scientifically the Deluge and a six-day creation, instead of just letting the stories be what they are; or they involve trying to convince ourselves that square pegs are round.

It's not experience, because experience can go be interpreted at least two ways. Do we sense God's presence during worship, or does something about music stimulate a part of our brains that we mistake for God's presence? Those who have gone to both have remarked that attending a Grateful Dead concert is like attending a Pentecostal worship service.

Those who attend churches with loud worship, heavy on guitars and drums, feel excited in the presence of God -- just as they would at a secular rock concert, because the volume triggers an adrenaline rush and makes those who listen feel excited.

And those who attend somber, serious-minded services with organ worship probably feel the same sort of sober response as concert-goers listening to Bach or Mendelsohn.

It's not the transformation, because I don't see much evidence of that. I've known absolutely saintly people of just about every religion, and even with no religion, and I've known some real jerks who claim to have been born again. Frederick Douglass in his autobiography noted that the cruelest slave owners were also the most devout.

Keep in mind that many Christians see nothing wrong with imposing Christian morality or views as the law of the land if we can build a large enough lobby for it. If that doesn't seem so bad, just ask a gay friend how much compassion they get from the church crowd for happening to be gay.

Think about the way Christians so lovingly rip to shreds spouses who file for divorce.

Consider the paranoid thinking that often comes from our evangelical leaders about the various agendas supposedly at work to destroy all that is decent in America, and the cavalier arrogance that marks the ways we discount as foolish those whom we disagree with.

Recall the ways we so carelessly classify one another as "real Christians," "cultural Christians," "counterfeit Christians" and "Christians who don't get it as well as I do" based on petty stuff like baptism, eschatology, doctrines of Scriptural inspiration, ethics and sexual morals, abortion, capital punishment, and so on.

And that doesn't even touch the Christians who  shoot abortionists, bomb clinics, or tacitly support those who do.

When you get down to it, I see very little difference between Christians and the rest of the world as far as spiritual renewal goes. As someone once observed, I'd find it easier to believe in the Savior if I knew more people who had been saved by him.

But the person of Christ is someone I can't let go of, and the Resurrection is something I just can't shake.