Shepherd

I've had a few brushes with childhood memories recently.

The precipitous weather change from crisp spring to what romantic Southern writers call "sultry" inexplicably throws me back to a wooden pew built with one-by-fours and tiger-striped with peeling egg-shell paint.

Halos of moths and june bugs encircle the fluorescent lights strung among metal pole rafters and high ceiling joists of an open tabernacle.

Camp meeting was always in June.

The other finger pointing to the past comes not from the current season, but current events.

Politics brings it to my attention, but it is not politics that I am reminded of.

The former pastor of former parishioner, Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Barack Obama, and now, Father Michael Pfleger, have a familiar look, a reminiscent tone.

Both men have superb oratorical skills. They have mastered the art of crowd connection.

I know this because I have observed many crowd connectors, some of the best; sermons where every sentence is measured, if not outright alliterated. Every inflection is the work of hours of practice, every shift of the eye is deliberate, every physical gesture is nuanced and calculating.

I watch Rev. Wright preach to the choir. He loves it and they love it. He sings their song. He provokes strong emotion. Coy, innocently sarcastic slides lead into thunderous blasts of conviction, taking the crowd where they want to go.

Father Pfleger comes to the pulpit hailed as a great friend of the church, and works that comission like a master. He turns his ire and the ire of the mob outward, excoriating the injustice of the world, condemning it in the harshest of terms. Hyperbole is inspiration, mockery is passion. He parlays the role of the voice crying in the wilderness into a pied piper's battle anthem. Such conviction must not go unheeded, such authority must not be ignored.

I believe I know the feeling in that sanctuary. It bleeds through the YouTube feed.

I sat once in the back of that open tabernacle, watching with dumbfounded amazement being overcome by uneasiness marching down my spine and lifiting hair on my arms.

I had just heard Pac-Man inserted into a litany of other dubious sins with a conviction that did not lend itself to unbelief. Indeed, the congregation took it, believed it, swallowed it, raised their arms to it, and ran with it, through the aisles and down to the altar. It was music to their world weary ears. The problem was out there. Here was heaven, with like-minded people who eschewed the Internet, Pac-Man and hair-bows. More sick of the world than sin, they found emotional relief in the rash, brash, corporate denunciation of everything secular.

The atmosphere was charged and electric. I felt the waves of something potent, tangible by virtue of the spell it cast as it rippled from the platform out over the congregation, scattering the faithful in every direction, down to the bench to be exorcised of the demon Pac-Man, through the aisles, overcome with team spirit, and possibly roaming the room in search of the skulking prodigal in the back.

I was unsettled, feeling a magnetic implosion, conscious of the power of an emotional gravitational pull, sucking people into a maelstrom of convoluted, whim-driven legalism. I watched with the fascination of horror, mesmerized and repulsed by the exploitation of feeling.

These people were not broken, they were not humbled, they were pumped!

As were the parishioners of Rev. Wright and Father Pfleger. They appeal to the basest of human emotion. A carnal vindication flows from the soul in chorus with the recitation of the creed. Pride fuses with emotion, hardening into a patriotic defiance, deflecting all attention from contrition and humility. And they are ready now to take on the world.

I am so thankful for my own pastor, who tells me repeatedly to juxtapose his words with Scripture, who digs deep into the loam of the Bible, and never ventures outside its boundaries.

Sandra Dee

In the way of book reviews, I've been reading a book about the Supreme Court entitled The Nine. ( a cryptic characterization indeed, if the author is a Tolkien fan)

It is the first book I've ever read devoted wholly to the Court and its personalities. All previous attempts to educate myself on the subject have been defeated by a lack of interest in the subject. I am aware of the significance, but law has a sedative effect on me.

Perhaps because the book focuses more on the justices who comprise the court, as opposed to the parched machinations of the proceedings themselves, I have been both intrigued and appalled at what I read.

In the way of disclaimers, I perceive a center to middle left bias in the approach of the author, which is to say, he is both an amalgam and a representative of relativistic, apathetic American morals. So I keep a cipher of salt close by as I read. He does appear to make an attempt at even-handedness, which makes the casual narrative of the nine's evolution and devolution more convincing and more outrageous.

I know and am thrilled at the upward swing given to us by Bush in Roberts and Alito. They join the outnumbered consistency of Scalia and Thomas, and it tips the balance right, more often than not, when you throw in the follower Kennedy.

But I am confused on several points. Do we, as conservatives, like or dislike judicial activism?

I think the proper answer is a vehement one. We shall have nothing to do with those who legislate from the bench!

But it appears we secretly wink at the bent of Scalia, and Thomas (whom the author contends is a country mile right of Scalia. Scalia even humorously expounded on the difference between Thomas and himself, "I am an originalist, but I am not a nut.")

No, this does not mean I disagree with their philosophy, but it causes me to question whether the ideal of "strict constructionist" equated to "conservative" is the result of sound legal knowledge or wishful thinking.

What I mean is, Scalia and Thomas, both of whom I am very grateful to have on the high court, have a lens through which they view the Constitution. And well they might, they're not computers, they are flesh. But to me the term, strict constructionist, implies a clinical detachment from the moral aspects of each and every case they accept, and maybe one day they will replace the nine justices with a supercomputer with a constitutional hard drive and an exhaustive precedent database. In my opinion, there is an element of hypocrisy when conservatives say they only want strict constructionists appointed to the bench. For my part, I want the justice to revere the law of God above the law of America, which, yes, many times will coincide. But, the point is, if the justice holds no fealty to any creed aside from the Constitution of the United States, he will disappoint Christians, at some point, on a grand scale.

(By the way, if someone has a better understanding of the conceptual strict constructionist, please opine. I certainly haven't studied the issue in depth.)

Interpretation of the law will dictate what a justice decides. And almost all of them have a predetermined philosophy which creates a fairly consistent voting record, in many cases regardless of the technical legal merits of any given case.

The worldview of Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito seems to dictate how they will come down, ditto for Ginsburg, Breyer, Stevens and Souter. Kennedy is the swing vote, the moderate, the justice to be courted. If a plaintiff can get through to Kennedy, he has won the case in most instances. Which is what I set out to talk about.

The author focuses a great deal of attention on a former justice, Sandra Day O'Connor.

Perhaps more than any other justice, she brooked no partisan morality. And no, this was not because she personified the elusive ideal of the strict constructionist. It is, or was, rather, because she unabashedly sought to rule in the favor of public opinion.

O'Connor is a very likable woman, from all accounts.

She has dealt admirably with the onset of Alzheimer's in her husband, John, refusing to relinquish care of him to anyone but herself. She is an engaging, phlegmatic but quirky socialite. She appears to like everyone. She was very close to Chief Justice Rehnquist, close enough to be grief-stricken at his passing, with no regard for their disagreements. She coyly dismisses the rhetorical rants of Scalia. "That's just Nino."(her nickname for Scalia) Translation; "Isn't he a silly old bear." She was thrilled at the nomination of John Roberts, despite the great divide in their judicial philosophy.

She was also, according to the author, elated with the election of Bush in 2000, because, as her husband let slip at an election bash, she was troubled at the prospect of vacating her seat during a Gore presidency. In fact, when the networks prematurely handed the election to Gore, she declared, a bit intemperately for her, "That's terrible."

But as time wore on, and Bush proved to be considerably different than the bland, insipid weather vane she had assumed him to be, she grew increasingly antagonistic toward the administration of the man whose father had nominated her in the first place.

Her disenchantment with Bush seemed to follow the trajectory of public opinion. But she would see no problem with that. She was simply representing the views of America, after all.

It is such a reasonable way of looking at things. Certainly no latent liberalism in the manner of Ginsburg, a curmudgeon of the left if ever there was one. No conscience stricken hand wringing ala Souter. A Republican to be sure, but a Republican able to see the subtleties of issues that escape ideologues such as Clarence Thomas, the angry black man. No extremes, just judicial conferment of the will of the people.

How chilling.

Her seat has been filled by Samuel Alito, a right-winger Bush managed to drag through the nomination proceedings. (We can hope that Alito and Roberts do not fall prey to the same high-minded global notions that afflicted O'Connor.)

Her strategic position as the swing vote is now in the possession of Anthony Kennedy, who is probably not quite as finessed as O'Connor when it comes to discerning which way the wind is blowing. He appears to be a little more distracted with the constitutional merits of a case, if not with the moral implications.

A Waste of Time

Well, I scuttled another evening in a bookstore looking for the meaning of life.

I started over in the music, looking for some musical force of nature to stir me, to entrance me.

Would you, Tchaik, transport me from this present world with your Russian wizardry, as you have before? Not this time.

Ludwig, what charms might you work? That would depend on the interpretation of the instrumentalist, upon which I am loath to speculate monetarily.

Ah, a collection of overtures. Three overtures. I need more bang for my buck.

Schumann, where art thou? Not here. Either the previous customers had excellent taste, or the compilers of inventory had poor.

Yanni. Yanni? Yes, Yanni. I had strayed from Classical into New Age, as in No Estimable Worth Ambiguous Genre Entrancement

Aside from being vain, the search was further hampered by sidelong mental glances at my fellow seeker, the elderly gentleman who suffered from an apparent lack of taste, and a certain lack of Crest and respect for personal space.

No matter, there are Tibetan mountains elsewhere in the store.

The classics. Melville, what do you have to say? Life is a fleshing out of a prerecorded narrative.

Homer . . . . naaaahh.

Dickens? An astute commentator of human nature, a gentle satirist, and a fine storyteller, but I'm looking for something new.

Bronte, Bronte, and Bronte? Might try Bronte, Ann, the one Devan wants me to read, but she has it at home.

Austen? Please, I am male.

London? Well, no tea parties in here. It's man against the elements. Man ain't got a chance. So, why bother?

Around to the Christian fiction. Mostly prosaic, but y'never know what you might stumble across.

Blackstock. Did I say prosaic?

Bunn. Good, very good. Alternates superbly written, spellbinding thrillers with superbly written, spellcasting sleepers.

Lahaye/Jenkins? I think maybe they've said all they have to say. But then, who's to say Christian thriller authors can't get as much mileage out of the end times as NPR can extract from Katrina or FOX from Hilton, Spears, and Lohann?

Morris. Wait, Morris? With the, the. . .that Winslow series, yeah. Volume what, 573?! The plot for this one includes a cameo with H.G. Wells' Time Traveller. Well, what do you know? The Winslow in the cover art has blazing blue eyes, a wedge-shaped jaw, and white, even teeth. I see they're still blow drying their hair in 2525.

Peretti? Well, I guess I could make it eight times for Piercing the Darkness, or eleven for The Visitation, but I already have it.

Philips, did I say prosaic? I meant formulaic.

Wick. Did I say formulaic? I meant Grace Livingston Hill. The villain in this one even has a weak chin. So kind of all the antagonists to sport identifying weak chins and weak, watery, pale eyes.

Religion section.

A book called Quantum Spirituality intrigues me. I've always been fascinated by the door quantum physics opens to the supernatural. So has the author. But he went out the back door and started thrashing around in the New Age backyard, and I put the book down and haven't seen him since.

Yes, I've always wanted Mary Magdalene for Dummies. Wonder what leering gnosticism lurks in the bowels of that book.

Never hurts to look for a NASB Study Bible. No luck. I could listen to an audio reading of the Bible by a cast of Hollywood narrators. I wonder if they have an audio book of An Inconvenient Truth read by Rush Limbaugh?

So, to the philosophy section.

Contemporary philosophy. What is that? Is that like Dippin' Dots, or listening to a MIDI file of the William Tell Overture?

Nietzsche. I never cease to be fascinated by the virulent little man. He exudes such a disarming, guileless arrogance. I understand Thus Spake Zarathustra for the first time in paperback was popular reading among the tenets of Auschwitz.

A collection of empiricist writings. Somebody compiled a collection of empiricists? If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't believe it.

Descartes. Kant. That's more like it, I think . . .therefore, I am going to go find Devan and have another whirl at the music section. Maybe Schumann was hiding.

How To Love God

A comment on my last post asked me to address how to love God. My first question was, what love language are you speaking? Are you asking, how do we show our love for God? In which case, helLO, keep His commandments, but, after speaking with my dear sister, the question was meant in a little more of an abstract way, as I was afraid of.

How do we feel love for God?

How do we experience intimacy?

I'll confess something. It is a subject that has made me slightly uncomfortable at times. I remember as a teenage boy being ill-at-ease particularly with the story of the fallen woman who washed the feet of Jesus with ointment and tears and dried them with her hair. Seemed a little too demonstrative, and little too earthy. Touching God's feet with your hair?

And emotional public displays of affection for God can still rattle me. I don't want to get into the debate over differing methods of expression and the "in the Spirit" or "in the human" discussion, but even what could very well be genuine demonstrations of love for God can cause me to fidget or close up. Emotion of that sort is an extremely private thing for me, and it repulses me to see it displayed publicly. It is no doubt partially a masculine hang-up and partially reactionary and also partially legitimate.

There is a school of thought that views the Song of Solomon as an allegorical expression of Christ's love for the Christian and vice versa. And, though I experience no awkwardness reading the Song as an ode to eros, I clinch up a bit reading it as a love poem from God.

St. John of the Cross, the man who gave us the phrase, "the long, dark night of the soul" used some very provocative language in his reflections.

"O living flame of love that tenderly wounds my soul in its deepest center! Since now you are not oppressive, now consummate! if it be your will: tear through the veil of this sweet encounter!"

If somebody came up with that in church, I'd have to run to the restroom.

But viewed allegorically, it is entirely appropriate and even a needful and sometimes lacking attitude in our view of God.

I am not suggesting that we can, or are supposed to, feel love for God. You are to show your love for Him by obedience in everything, but we are not commanded to manufacture emotion, if anything, we are not to manufacture emotion. But I empathize with the question, since it seems as if it should be such an integral part of our relationship with God.

We cannot see God, cannot touch Him, cannot even count on His felt presence, so how are we to love Him, in the sense we are using? ( Well, Jennifer, you might've asked someone else the question, given my relationship with emotion. I don't have much use for it, or it doesn't have much use for me.)

Obviously, the flavor of our relationship with God, the feeling it provokes is going to vary with personality. My grandparents serve as an example. On my mother's side, Grandpa comes across to me as more reserved publicly than Grandma. On my dad's side, there was a unique role reversal. Grandpa was always more emotional in his testimonies and conversation than Grandma was. There are no levels to this. And we were each created with personality differentials, so there is no right/wrong.

There is a long-lasting movement in the contemporary music scene called worship music. It generates a lot of mush, a lot of jokes, and a lot of satire. (read Frank Peretti's Visitation)

I've listened to some of it. Don't care for most of it, tolerate some of it, and actually like precious little of it, mostly because I don't care for the repetition. It makes me suspicious of two things; the writer's creativity and the entrancing aspect of repeating the same thing over and over again. Though, to be sure, my personal taste is not always the same thing as sound judgement. I remember being disgusted with the lack of depth and theology of a chorus in our chorus book. "What is this, 'the trees of the field will clap their hands', I mean, who writes this stuff?!"

Isaiah, it turns out, was the culprit.

But the attitude of much worship music, to be fair, is prayerful and seemingly genuine; an expression of love for God. Here again, this actually proves nothing. I remain quite convinced that the same person who could conceive, write and sing "I Could Sing of Your Love Forever," or even, "My Jesus, I Love Thee" could be, in practice, an outstanding hypocrite.

Can you cultivate love for God?

I think so. And this we are in fact commanded to do, by prayer, Bible reading, prayerful meditation and holy living. But the thermostat doesn't control weather outside. God may wish you to feel love as an emotion or, He may wish you not to. I mentioned the long, dark night of the soul, and I've written about Mother Theresa's crisis of emotionless service. I think part of the problem is conventional wisdom. The ability to feel love for God is viewed as the norm and even proof of your relationship. I'm to the point where I'll scream if I hear one more preacher say, "When is the last time you really broke through to Heaven?" as questioning the health of your Christianity. It is a shallow, emotions driven view of spirituality, but it pervades our thinking in other, more subtle ways. We are programmed to expect emotional victories to spiritual battles, bright rays of God's favor after spiritual storms, and mountains after valleys. Sometimes, however, we fight Vietnams, live in Seattle, or walk in Kansas.

The feeling of love, the genuine feeling, not the schmaltz, not the mind-numbed vain repetition, not the syrup, but the genuine freedom, the soaring flight, that feeling, is something that God may choose to allow us to feel, as a gift to us. The feeling of love is not a gift from us to God. Our obedience, our attentiveness, our willingness, our brokenness is our gift. The feeling is sometimes His reciprocation, but when it doesn't come, remember that this means that He trusts you enough to serve Him without the blessing.

Hope that helps.

'Course He Isn't Safe

A few days ago, we hauled out a chess board. I harangued Devan into playing, over protests she couldn't remember how to play. Five or six years ago, I taught her. I taught her so well, that she beat me in the second game. I quietly put the board away, and we spoke of it no more. But I figured to be mature enough now to take my lickings and enjoy it.

At the outset, I felt pretty good. Two white knights and two pawns were dispatched by my black bishop. But then she remembered how to play.

It is a little misogynistic, this superiority a man would like to feel when teaching the little woman to play chess. Not that I would want to totally annihilate. I could pause cryptically when she appeared to be about to make a dumb move, nod encouragingly when she made a good one.

Win reluctantly.

But I became aware, as I watched my hapless bishop succumb to her imperious queen, of a mind more patient and calculating than my own. Aside from reminding me how much I love the fascinating unique personality of the woman I married, it told something else to me.

I remarked to Devan that I thought we should play more often because I thought it would teach me patience. Something in me rebels at the effort required to consider every possible angle of attack before moving.

Yesterday morning I grimly went out into the garage to face my lawnmower. A love-hate union from the start, my relationship with the walk-behind suffers greatly when it doesn't start on the first pull.

It didn't. Abetting the alienation, what little affection I do possess for yard work had been transferred to a cute little manual reel mover at Lowe's. I had done little more than look, but the allure of a non-mechanical device, the quietness, the simplicity. . .I was definitely interested.

After two hours, I don't want to talk about how many pulls, and the desperate resort of crimping the wire tighter on the spark plug, the old-battle-axe started.

I mowed the yard, my satisfaction at having succeeded conflicting with my disgust at having to keep the dumb thing.

I lack patience. I want things resolved quickly, especially when it is a chore I resent spending time on anyway.

I suppose such a quirk would be acceptable were it limited to things of a more practical nature, but I sometimes find it spilling over-

Strike that. Okay, it's pervasive. No matter how much I study Job, or dump buckets of introspective observation over my head and everybody else's, I don't like it when I can't figure things out. I'm not a neat freak, and I hate routine, but when something comes along that bucks my traces, or won't fit in that one little box I have, as far as I'm concerned I don't have time for it.

There has yet to be an enigma in Scripture or a challenge in philosophy that I don't eagerly accept. I enjoy the unusual. But not much time escapes before I have it wrapped up in a neat little bundle and tied quickly with a string so the recalcitrant thing can't unroll again.

Now, on to the next unsolved mystery of the universe. Why does God allow suffering?

Hhmmmmm. Deep.

I think, (stroking my beard) it is for our own good.

Never mind my lack of experience in the field.

I enjoy thinking about abstracted conundrums. Trouble is, I don't stop there.

An innate fear of loose ends compels me to tie them up in your basic square knot.

A couple blogs ago, I mentioned how modern Christianity rushes toward happiness of a shallow depth. What differentiates me from, say, Zig Ziglar, or Joyce Meyer, is that I can package death and suffering with a little more flair for the melancholic, but still safe, far from the edge of the terrible unknown.

Do you understand? I look down my nose at the ostriches, over the rims of my rose-colored glasses.

God won't fit in your stupid little box, you have to have a much bigger one.

The subject has the fascination of horror. I don't completely understand my obsession with pain and suffering and the seeming cold transcendence of God Almighty.

A mortal perspective of the story of Job is a gloomy one. It appears to be blood sport or a cosmic image of two children placing a dog in between them and both summoning the animal to see who he will run to first.

The great question seems to me not one of circumstances. It is a question of motive.

Not God why did you make life so hard, or even, why did Grandma suffer?

No. God, what were You thinking when You infused dirt with a soul. Was the risk worth the reward? More to the point, was it worth it to us?

The mortal perspective gets colder when you widen it to include all humanity.

Why should we care how You suffered to save us, when we didn't ask to be born to be lost?

And "His ways are above our ways" has the same final unreasonableness as "Because I said so." Staring at the ground at our feet, God appears a capricious bully.

And in the spirit of this post, I will end my speculation here.

Slouching Anywhere But There

Bro. Wright makes a nice lead in to another topic.

In the 1880's, in Topeka, Kansas, a young Congregational minister began a series of sermons based on a thematic question, "What Would Jesus Do?"

He is also reported to have been the first one to inscribe WWJD on an adhesive label and apply it to the back of his horse-drawn carriage.

I'm sure you're familiar with the fictionalized message In His Steps, and the minister Charles Sheldon.

A Christian's place in society comprises the heart of the book and the moral decisions dictated by the characters' faith begin to revolutionize the town, and as memory serves, the revolution ripples all over the country, resulting in a wave of societal responsibility and temperance as it relates to alcohol, specifically.

It is a Christian classic and it has spread enormous impact over the last century.

In fact, the philosophy of moral responsibility propagated by Sheldon inspired a theologian named Walter Rauschenbusch, the man generally credited with creating the Social Gospel.

Time marches on. If you've read the book, you'll remember that some of the principles stood upon by the faithful would be enough to brand anyone a hard-line legalist in 2008.

Things change as the world slouches toward Gomorrah.

It's sobering to note the slide from the original Christian left to our current crop. You started out with Sheldon. The next memorable mark is William Jennings Bryan, the silver-tongued orator of the Scopes Monkey Trial. Then we go from FDR to Hubert Humphrey, Jimmy Carter, George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Jesse Jackson, Al Gore, to Barack Obama.

Then throw Tony Campolo, Jeremiah Wright, Cornel West, and, for good measure, former shock rocker Alice Cooper into the mix.

So why blame it all on Sheldon, the original Christian socialist?

You know everyone likes to point to the early church as a model of socialism. In fact, the earliest socialistic thinkers were Christians, or at least deists. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were disgruntled johnny-come-latelys who stripped the idea of the opiate and marketed it on a government scale.

What about that? Well, I think the obvious points to the fact that the communal living of the early Christians was as much of a matter of expediency and a sign of the times as was the gift of unknown tongues. And the tongues of fire.

Anyway, you know what Ronald Reagan said. Socialism only works in heaven where they don't need it, and in hell where they already have it.

But there is a serious question to all of this. Where does good Christian activism, i.e., pro-life, pro-family, anti-pornography meet Christian socialism?

It strikes me that Sheldon may have been spot on.

Initially.

Movements, however, lose inertia. And the coal to the fire becomes anything you can lay your hands on. And the problem with movements is they need self-justification to run on.

You start out, like Charles Sheldon, with a noble premise.

Complications arise when you have to incorporate.

I can say to myself, I need to be more vigilant of the danger of adultery.

Well . . .nothing amiss with that goal.

So I begin to guard my conversation and conduct around any member of the opposite sex.

So far, so good. I have to recognize that Satan always picks your blind side.

My daily devotions take on a theme. Lord, don't let me fall to adultery. Help me to be careful.

I testify at church. "I am determined never to fall to adultery!

"Amen, hear it." all around. Except my wife is giving me the cocked eyebrow. Methinks thou dost protest entirely too much, she thinks.

I start a men's group committed to being faithful.

No, I didn't say it was Promise Keepers.

But. . .

We begin a city wide crusade. Complete with rallies, and prayer breakfasts and I Heart My Wife bumper stickers.

I become the face of fidelity. I give talks, lectures, invocations and go on Focus on the Family.

Soon the concept of well-roundedness becomes confined to the orb of fidelity. I am well-rounded in the sense that I don't commit adultery, I don't lust after other women, and I don't read Cosmopolitan in the checkout line. I am a committed specialist.

Before long, I am something of an authority on faithfulness, and something of a rock star at church events and evangelical functions.

Hundreds of women gaze raptly up at me as I speak on the virtues of monogamy and hundreds of men ignore the snide little question nagging them as they sit beside their transfixed wives.

I am lauded and respected for making a production out of keeping a promise, and more to the point, I am majoring on the minors. No, fidelity is not insignificant, but it is a measure, a symptom of my love for the woman I married, and that whole love affair, when fallen into by two Christians, is a symptom of their love for God.

Or, to put too fine a point on it, I can write a little book on how a certain Old Testament prayer, when incanted today, can lead to a blessed life.

And before you know it, I'm smack in the middle of a boardroom meeting with my lawyer and ten marketing executives discussing copyrights and royalties for coffee mugs.

Humans can't leave well enough alone.

Jesus feeds five thousand.

Let's have a coronation whether He likes it or not.

Peter wants to hole up in a temple on the Mount of Transfiguration.

The Israelites pay homage to a golden ephod.

Charles Sheldon starts with a simple objective and a few decades later you have a bunch of zealots with blinders on drawing up their own Edict of Milan and institutionalizing the concept of being like Jesus.

And guess what? Sooner rather than later, their focus is on the movement.

I mentioned Rev. Wright. The most insidious, anti-christ phrase I heard coming out of his mouth was not "God damn America," or "Jesus taught me how to love the hell out of my enemies."

It was, "Jesus was a poor black man."

I must say this. The exegesis would have been just as poor had he said Jesus was poor white trash, or Jesus was a dirt-poor Irish farmer, or Jesus was an exploited Native American."

Jesus was, as it relates to His understanding of our dust-constructed frame, all of those and much, much more. He cried with and wept with the slave who longed for freedom, He walks in trailer parks, He hungered with the potato farmers, and He stayed by the bedside of every Indian dying with small-pox and walked their Trail of Tears.

But His message was not so small in scope.

The inherent human refusal to look Aslan in the face, or let God out of the box translates into our language in a thousand different mantras. And most of them are completely true within perspective.

The weakness introduced to Sheldon's idea was not one of zeal, it was more one of self-centerdness. It is more to the liking and the bent of our human nature if we can focus on anything, even missionary work, to tune out the still, small disruptive voice.

Oswald Chambers returns again, and again, and again to the sacrament of being in love with God, not with any creed or device, I think because even the concept of being in love with God is subject to distortion when you gaze at it too long.

Don't look at the concept, don't lionize your cause, don't revere your closet, don't focus on your devotion.

Look at Him!

Reverend Right

So I did a little reading up on this Reverend Jeremiah Wright. More specifically, I read up on his theology.
Black liberation theology appears to be a child of an effort launched in Mexico in the 1960's to pressure the Catholic church into a less autonomous, more empathetic philosophy.
And, indirectly, this appears to be an extension of the social gospel.
This is Christianity as a political movement, a societal revolution.
Seems that maybe the people who would've forcefully coronated Jesus as king of a political revolution were right after all and Jesus was just being a little timid or perhaps too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good when He removed Himself from their efforts.
Wright's shock talk isn't as tiring as his theologian role.
What is it, insecurity, immaturity, that paints a black face on Christ, or a white, Asian, Hispanic face?
It's not uncommon to hijack Jesus and crown Him as king of your agenda. It's Christianity extrapolated from humanism. Or, the reverse.
It is an effort to make the One who demanded you forget self the advocate of your self-interests.
It is an off-center portrait of Christ. He is fuzzy in the right foreground and the focus is on anything but Him.
He said, "The poor you have with you always."
What did that mean? Forget 'em?
More like, "Look at Me first. Focus on Me with all your soul and your priorities will realign the way I want them."
Social injustice grieves Jesus, almost as much as self-centerdness.
The one thing our Lord demands above all else is that we accept Him as the Creator of our desires and aims, and not attempt to re-create Him as the adjudicator of our interests.

Riddles

Are Christians afraid of sorrow?
Yes, and why not, you may ask.
An article I read recently discussed the tendency of Christians to rush to happiness and to generally shun full-throated lamentation.
The extremities of which are the prosperity preachers, the name it and claim it proponents, also known as the blab it and grab it disciples.
I don't think I need to spend any time discrediting that particular line of thinking.
But the majority of us find ourselves in the middle.
We are so averse to trouble that we're in a terrible rush to justify every misfortune or tragedy that befalls us. One might think we were attempting to justify God to others.
Not so much. I think we are trying to justify God to ourselves.
One obstacle that has always presented itself to me when contemplating a direct request to God is just this. What will I do if God does nothing in response to my request?
The initial problem may well be that of complacency. I have no needs so desperate that I cannot afford to make do without them. Well enough. No point in making a mountain out of every molehill. (But then, had I the faith, every mountain would be a molehill.)
Too many mountains. No problem. I'll climb them.
God no doubt watches me strap on spikes and sling ropes and picks over my back at the foot of every molehill and quietly urges a new perspective.
Hearing no earthquake, fire, or whirlwind, however, I carry on. I'll save the mustard seed for when I really need it.
So it is with sorrow. We are deathly afraid of that which we cannot put in a box labeled Romans 8:28.
Upon a tragedy or mysterious problem we immediately begin casting about for answers to the riddle until we find one that is presentably plausible. Having a good reason to look at makes us feel better. The reason might be something so simple as God wanting us to not have to look for a reason.
Or bluff.
"That didn't hurt so much."
You'll notice that although Job did an awful lot of complaining, we're told he never once sinned with his mouth.
And you'll notice that although God set him straight, He was proud of him.
At the end of the book Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis, Orual concludes, "I ended my first book with the words, no answer. I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You yourself are the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice? Only words, words; to be led out to battle against other words."
And to Job's anguished question, God replies, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?"
When we receive the answer to our questions, we are not so much awed by the answer as by the futility of the question.
The answer to these riddles undercuts the posing of them.
We have no right ask the question.
Yet, when we do, God supplies the answer.
I AM.

One More Slap

Its always difficult to admit to a shift in one's personal opinion.
That's why I'm not admitting to a shift in opinion.
A perspective shift is what I'll cop to, starting with the immigration furor over a year ago.
(I strongly suspect William Randolph Hearst of having stirred the whole thing up. Else explain the weary resignation of America to a porous border suddenly giving way to the out-of-the-blue frantic desperation. I shall state again that I am not opposed to fixing the problem. But I still think the sudden uproar is curious.)
All at once, I seemed to belong to, not so much a party, but an ideology, namely conservatism, that defined itself by one issue.
A reinforced border is a worthy goal, and the motivation for stopping the flow was largely well-intentioned, I think, but the din grew into a clamor such that a reasonable proposal offered by the president was labeled "amnesty."
To refresh your memory, the said proposal involved a fine leveled at illegals in the neighborhood of 6,000 dollars, retroactive collection of taxes, deportment for nine to fourteen years, a clean record for those nine to fourteen, successful background clearance, and a proficiency in English.
Then, and only then, could you attain legal citizenship.
If that's amnesty, then perhaps they've changed the meaning of the word and not told anyone.
But I digress.
Conservatives let their voice be heard. It was deafening.
I have not heard such a consensus on any other issue.
And that is precisely what began to nag at me.
I was willing to let it slide. Hey, what's a little jingoism among friends?
But the upcoming primary began to reveal another flaw in the conservative movement.
People calling themselves conservative supported Rudy Guliani for president and saw no incoherence in their own ideology.
Then as Guliani began his slide into history, following an ill-fated "don't sweat the small states" strategy, conservative punditry began to champion two other suspect candidates.
After the last three or four blogs, you may be thinking that I'm a little sore on the subject of talk radio.
Have patience. Maybe you never took these guys too seriously in the first place.
I think I took them more seriously than I should have.
I assumed they were coming from, and going in, the same direction I was headed.
Now whether the consensus of conservative punditry is the cause or the effect of the opinions of the majority of conservative voters out there, (I suspect the former) the fact is they were singing the song of a whole lot of people.
Aside from their exaggerration on McCain and Huckabee (Huckabee is a fire-breathing tax-raiser from Arkansas, thus a liberal, and McCain is no better, in some cases worse, than Hillary Clinton, in the opinion of a certain female columist who is long on shock value and short on substance) their praise of Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson was misleading.
Whether disingenuous or ignorant (I again suspect the former) the shut-out of all discussion about Mitt Romney's high-speed rotation on social issues and Fred Thompson's curt dismissal of past abortion lobbying was maddening.
They were true Reagan conservatives from way back. The seeds of Romney's stalwart Reaganism began to sprout as far back as 2004. Thompson appeared to be able to turn his off and on. But they were conservative by virtue of their position on immigration and big government. No mention of the social concerns that stem from the moral base that conservatism, I thought, was built upon.
My mistake.
Mike Huckabee, despite his numerous flaws, is a committed social conservative.
In the interest of clarity, could not the pundits have noted this, then pointed out his fiscal flaws and foreign policy hubris and let us make up our own minds?
Apparently not. He was a liberal. Because they said so.
Ronald Reagan combined morality with a strong distrust of big goverment and faith in capitalism and America. As far as I know, he never diminished social conservatism with an exclusionary emphasis on the other two legs of the stool.
In that sense, I guess Newt Gingrich was right.
The Reagan era really is over.

Nowhere to Go

What purpose, you may ask, does it serve to continually dish up dirt on the top two Republican presidential contenders?
Because it is revealing to note how the political process works, and sobering but important to note how far things have regressed in the past several years, notably since 2006.
After the Democrats regained control of Congress, I was fearful (pessimistic) that this would cause the GOP to lurch left. At the time, it was Guliani I was eyeing suspiciously.
Now we have the frontrunner, the maverick, the thorn in the side of the elephant, the evangelical basher John McCain who claims the conservative label as loudly as anybody but has little right to claim it.
But this post has to do with the other one, the man conservative talk and print leaders are ramming down our throats as the true conservative.
Try this: "Mitt and Kerry wish you a great Pride Weekend. All citizens deserve equal rights, regardless of their sexual preference" This was printed on a leaflet distributed in Boston in 2002 during the annual Gay Pride March. Romney was running for governor, Kerry (Healey) for lt. governor.
And this:"We must make equality for 'gays' and lesbians a mainstream concern." This from a letter from Romney to the Log Cabin Club of Massachusetts, a Republican gay and lesbian rights organization. Romney also stated in the letter that he would be a stronger defender of gay rights than, hold on to your hat, Ted Kennedy.
Alan Keyes contends that Mitt Romney is himself responsible for the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Supreme Court declared the current marriage law unconstitutional but gave the state legislaiture 180 days to redefine it. Romney beat everyone to the punch. Romney said he had no choice. "Exercising illegal legislaitive authority" says Herb Titus, constitutional law expert, Romney issued an executive order ordering all state clerks to change state marriage forms and begin registering same-sex couples.
This is our "conservative" option.
Begins to make the lesser of two evils sound like a gross understatement.

FYI

By way of confession, I find it easier to point out negatives.
It's easier, safer, and is more agreeable with my cynical nature.
This is why you will find more criticisms than endorsements in my opinions.
Endorsing anyone puts you out on a limb. You are then placed in a defensive position. The first time your guy does something stupid, people expect you to defend him.
It is not an exciting way to live, but you wind up eating less crow.
I would like to turn over a new leaf, and enthusiastically endorse a candidate for president. (I know how eagerly you await this endorsement.) but, I can't.
I assume that Mike Huckabee is floundering in the wake of McCain and Romney, and will most likely not regain footing.
So we have a two-man race.
I must admit that I struggle with personal preferences. I never cared much for McCain until Limbaugh and Hannity loaded up on him.

Rush Limbaugh said there was no difference between McCain and Clinton. And Sean Hannity in his usual intellectually dishonest fashion likes to remind people that McCain flip-flopped on such important social issues as tax cuts, immigration, and McCain-Feingold finance reform.

[In keeping with my nature, I would like to point out that the Limbaugh statement cannot even be called an exaggerration. It is a lie. And Hannity, well. . .Recently, a woman caller asked Hannity if John McCain had flip-flopped on any social issues in the past five to ten years. What issues, specifically, Hannity wanted to know. Abortion, gay marriage, the war, she responded. Well yes, Hannity deftly redirected, he has flip-flopped on several of those issues. He has flip-flopped on tax cuts, on immigration, and campaign finance reform. Are you confused, too? I think that was the point.]

I became so disgusted with their hyperbole that I unwisely began studying McCain more closely to dredge up something good.

In the pure spirit of reactionism, I reasoned that such obfuscation on the part of talk radio must conversely recommend the man.
But however unjustly they have judged him, he leaves much to be desired.
He has a consistent pro-life voting record, but is ambivalent on the repeal or overturning of Roe v. Wade. He has stated that he wishes there were "less intensity" on the issue of abortion.
He has staked out a disturbingly unclear position on embryonic stem-cell research.
He is opposed to a federal marriage ammendment, citing state's rights. (Though I would remind you that the early-on favorite Fred Thompson held the same position.)
He has yet to clear up what he was about in 2000 with his evangelical-bashing rampage.
I commend him for supporting the permanent establishment of the Bush tax cuts, but I would commend him even more had he the foresight to support them in the first place.
Robert Novak insists that McCain did, in fact, state that Samuel Alito was "too conservative."
And last and least, John McCain is a global warming disciple.

Now, the other one.
Was it not as recently as 2004 when conservative punditry justly deconstructed John Kerry for being a flip-flopper? Well, we appear to have the Republican equivalent in Mitt Romney.
I guess we all know that Romney was pro-life, then "effectively pro-choice" when running for governor of Massachusetts, then at some point during his governorship underwent a change of heart that he neglected to tell anyone about, and returned to his pro-life position.
In the interest of being unlike Hannity and Limbaugh, I researched this as carefully as I could.
Romney says he was "personally pro-life" originally, but when it came time to run for office felt that the issue of government intrusion into private life trumped his private pro-life beliefs. During his tenure in office, he became convinced otherwise, and is now, publicly and privately, pro-life, although he still retains an interest in letting states make the decision.
Even if you ignore the suspicious timing, there is still an enormous ideological problem with choosing civil liberties and now, state's rights, over the right of babies to live.
How pro-life are you when you feel that the issue is a personal or state decision?
On the issue of gun-control, Mitt Romney has a powerful lot of explaining to do.
While governor, he stated his support of the state's strict gun laws and vowed to let no one chip away at them. He also supported the Clinton assault weapons-ban.

I will vote for either one of these against Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, but I will find myself pining for the days of W, or even Reagan.
Input, anyone?

So Atlas Shrugged. . .

The problem would have been clearly illustrated to you a couple of days ago had you heard our local conservative talk-show host; a self-described Christian conservative.
He was enthusiastically recommending the book Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.
Now, apart from a snide suspicion that he was trying to display his intellectualism by discussing such a highly regarded but daunting book, I do not understand his connection of conservatism, (most particularly, that much maligned "compassionate" conservatism) with the ideology of a committed humanist.
But then, he is not alone.
Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, Tom DeLay, Trent Lott, Bill Buckley, Ann Coulter, Laura Schlessinger, George Will, Cal Thomas, Michael Reagan and Rush Limbaugh are all fond of quoting Rand and consider her a great influence on their thinking. I am aware that one can admire certain ideas of a particular person while discarding the rest of their ideas, but this goes deeper than that.
Some years ago, I heard Limbaugh discussing the book Atlas Shrugged. The only difference, he said, between he and Rand was that Rand did not believe in God and he did.
Small difference, that.
Hot or cold, night or day, living or dead, heaven or hell.
Ayn Rand's whole objective in life and the motivation for the book Atlas Shrugged, was the advancement of the complete autonomy of man.
"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." thus stated Rand in the appendix to Atlas Shrugged.
Having relayed that quote is sufficient proof of the problem we have here. I would consider it a small problem indeed had Limbaugh simply misspoke when he stated the difference between he and Rand, but I don't believe he did. I think that he simply thought that the one difference between them was of great insignificance.
So, let me ask, how solid is a conservatism based on the philosophy of Ayn Rand?
Were this an isolated incident, or if this propensity for Rand was limited to Limbaugh the subject might not be worth broaching. But in reading the who's who of conservative ideology and finding all those disciples of Rand, I'm troubled.
Add to that list Clarence Thomas, and you compound the problem. He supposedly requires all of his first year law students to watch the movie version of The Fountainhead, one of Rand's earlier works.
I have watched The Fountainhead. It is an old black and white starring Gary Cooper.
Don't waste your time. Unless you really like over-the-moon melodrama.
The problem is not a minor technicality, it is not the i dotted or the t crossed.
It is a foundational defect. It is a matter of structural integrity.
The reason Rand was an objectivist and championed individualism was because she hated the idea of God.
In her early life, she found inspiration in the works of Neitzche and shared his "reverence for human potential and his loathing of Christianity and the philosophy of Immanuel Kant."
Kant believed that we cannot have certain knowledge about the true nature of reality ("things-in themselves"), but only of the manner in which we perceive reality.
Rand was decidedly more arrogant. She believed that if any perceived object interacts with the senses, everything there is to know about that object can be gained by your sensory interpretation. What you see is what is and only what you see, feel, touch is what is.
Kant believed that reason could lead you somewhere. Rand's objectivist epistemology worshipped reason as lord of the pantheon.
Rand diverged from Nietzche in a curious manner. In the minds of many, she out Neitzched Neitzche. She supposedly transcended his philosophy and considered him too enslaved to emotion and a subjective interpretation of reality. Unlike Neitzche, she believed that if anyone would gain power by achieving control of the masses, and in doing so, sacrificed their ideals and standards, they then unintentionally became a slave to those masses.
Bottom line, Rand created a religion of breathtaking arrogance.
Rand may be forgiven for some of her excess when you take into account a large part of her "theology" was in reaction to communism.
However, she arrived at a conclusion that is inherently more antichrist than communism or socialism.
It is a clever twist on an old argument.
You shall be as God.
Whether you care about the particulars of Randian philosophy is beside the point.
I think the reason that this grand scope of humanity, this rugged individualism, appeals to such strong personalities as Limbaugh, Reagan, Buckley, and Thomas should be fairly obvious.
It is a philosophy of vibrant, brimming pride; pride in capitalism, pride in patriotism, pride, most of all, in self.
Thus the seduction of Ayn Rand. She takes away God with her left hand and hands you the key to your inner power in the other.
The phenomenon of objectivism is symptomatic of a big problem with political conservatives.
They would see the objection to Rand's humanism as hair-splitting.
Whereas I see it as the difference between right and wrong.
The manifestation of the larger problem with conservative ideology is the excitement of today's leading conservatives over the prospect of lower taxes and balanced budgets at the expense of moral issues.
I listen to these intelligent people and I hear them hold forth on fiscal policy, constructionism, civil liberties and immigration and they make sense on most of these issues.
I wish they would devote the same amount of intelligence to the problems of our nation's heart.
You talk about what you care about. Out of the abundance of the heart. . . .
Next time you hear a conservative hyperventilating over the genius of Ayn Rand, remember how foolish she really is, and remember the folly of placing too much trust in our uneasy alliance with libertarian leaning Republicans.

Occupation?!

Sean Hannity makes a show out of stating, over and over again, that he is not a partisan hack because he has disagreed with the President on immigration, on Harriet Miers, and the Dubai ports deal (a deal that I still suspect the President had his good reasons for making, not the least of which may be summed in Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.)
The issue I am about to raise is not to establish my objectivity credentials. I have immense respect for President Bush, and believe that he is a more committed social conservative than President Reagan.
But his stance on a Palestinian state is unacceptable. It is no more moderate than any of his predecessors, but it is still a solution that would place Israel in an untenable position. I believe it was Joel Rosenberg who said that for an American to understand the Israeli opposition to a Palestinian state, you would have to imagine how you would feel if Al-Queda was requesting statehood in an area adjacent to Washington D.C.
Most pretentiously, President Bush called for an end to the "occupation" of the West Bank by the Israeli military. This is incredible naivete, even for an optimistic peacemaker, and I question whether he really believes it is possible for Israel to protect itself with no buffers.
I think a more appropriate stance would have been a demand for all the rocket attacks from Gaza to cease completely and immediately. There have 2,500 since 2005, and, according to Rosenberg, 25 just since the President arrived in Israel. I don't understand the blindness that would ask for a peace settlement with enemies such as these.
I have heard it said that the Jews have a saying, "Never again." It is the defiant, to-the-wall determination of a people who have been hounded by every race on earth for thousands of years; a persecution culminating in the death of six million.
And it is this perceived paranoia that has protected them thus far. They cannot afford to be magnanimous. They share borders with four countries who wish them death and destruction.
I understand the idealism that propels the prospect of peace in the Middle East.
But peace, if I am not mistaken, has never been afforded by a compromise. Peace is gained when the aggressor is defeated.
More land will most definitely leave the Palestinians hungry for more.

Not Happy

Perhaps I've inherited a paternal quirk.
I tire easily when too much is made of one human being.
That is one reason I'm starting to roll my eyes when I hear the ubiquitous moniker "Reagan conservative."
I can't help but think the revered politician would be a little nauseous at the adulation and infallibility ascribed to him.
Another reason for the eye-rolling is because I feel this term has been bastardized.
Its chief significance is that of fiscal policy. Social policy is secondary.
To the extent that a candidate that is something of a conservative activist, socially, and something of a mishmash, economically, is branded a liberal by at least two of the big three conservative talking heads. And a candidate that is decidedly limp-wristed on the abortion issue and another that compartmentalizes morality and business is awarded the conservative label without a second thought.
Ambiguity aside, I don't really like Mike Huckabee. I think he is smart-aleck, inexperienced, and cynically patronizing. (And what is with this Ed Rollins clown, of Christine Todd Whitman fame?)
But I'm really sick and tired of this diminution of abortion and homosexuality by Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity. (I like Glenn Beck, but can't help but feel his views on Romney are a little biased with a foxhole mentality, being a fellow Mormon.)
If either one of these verbal maestros had spent half the time on either one of these issues that they spent on immigration, the upstanding, exploited, mistreated Duke lacrosse players, or the upstanding, exploited, mistreated Don Imus, it would've been time well spent.
I understand the importance of national security, national identity, and civil liberties violations but they are a distant second in comparison with the moral issues that we face.
I'm seriously disillusioned with politics at the present, to the point that I would kill for a Bob Dole right now.
The way things stand now, if I have to vote for one of the top five candidates, I won't just be holding my nose, I'll be holding a bucket.

Perspective

Can you see better in broad daylight?
Or are things clearer at night?
Does sunlight illumine, or obfuscate?
Depends on whether you are looking for a quarter dropped in the grass or looking at stars.
Can you think more clearly when wide awake, or when half asleep?
Sometimes the staggering improbability of the further stretches of quantum physics has a bizarre ring of truth to it. Why should there not be an infinite number of parallel universes, where exists every possible consequence for every possible action, when there is obviously an infinite number of possibilities?
The disputed glass; half-empty or half-full?
It seems to hinge on whether the glass is the one dumped over on your laptop or the one offered to you in the middle of Death Valley.
Is reality pressing in closer when you are depressed, or when you are glad to be alive?
The ambiguity is sometimes disturbing. It seems as if life ought to be true or false, instead of. . . . .an essay question, in which we are graded for effort and creativity.
Sometimes the reasons we have for being discouraged stack up evenly with the reasons we have for being happy.
Hypothetically, should a starving, homeless child in Calcutta be further discouraged by the rain pouring from the sky or delighted that he is alive to experience it?
(I found a challenge to my "don't expect too much out of life" philosophy in a book about Buddha.
A woman sorrowing over the death of her son went to the Buddha to ask him to bring her son back to life.
He answered her request by instructing her to bring him mustard seeds.
Specifically, she was to go throughout the village and obtain mustard seeds from any household where grief and death had not visited.
After going throughout the whole village and finding not one home where death had not been before her, she realized what the Buddha was trying to tell her.
Death and sorrow are facts of life and the sooner she realized this, the sooner she would find inner peace, the Buddhist apologist concluded happily.
It is all a matter of perspective, and no one would have been more cognizant of this than Jesus, yet He sobbed bitterly at the tomb of Lazarus and raised him back to life. This is not to mention the closer parallel of the widow's son.)
Do we suffer sickness and pain and labor at the hands of a capricious Creator or do we churlishly discard each and every nanosecond of the day, looking forward to its end?
We see through a glass darkly and are left the choice, every single day, to make of our existence what we will, until the silver cord is loosed and the golden bowl shattered.
And we are speechless with gratitude for the words of God,
"Let us create man in our own image."

The Problem of Pleasure.

"I felt in my bones, first that this world does not explain itself . . . .Second, I came to feel as if magic must have a meaning and meaning must have someone to mean it. There was something personal in the world, as in a work of art. . .Third, I thought this purpose beautiful in its old design.--And last, and strangest, there had come into my mind a vague and vast impression that in some way all good was a remnant to be stored and held sacred out of some primordial ruin."

G. K. Chesterton, on his return to the Christian faith, after his long odyssey through a desolate philosophical wasteland.
Atheists present us with a paradox. The existence of a loving God with the misery that we all witness. And none of us can deny the occasional complaint, Why pain and Why me?
Chesterton, however, cheerfully turned the problem of pain back to the atheists of his day.
The atheists said "There's pain. Thus, there's no God."
Chesterton said "There's pleasure. Explain, please."
He meant reconcile unwarranted, unnecessary delight with random chance.
In a world that exploded into existence out of sheer dumb luck, a universe squeezed by staggering odds out of the passing eons of time, what right had pleasure to exist?
As far as I know, they have yet to answer. They're too busy being mad at God for not existing.
And they have raised the heights of morality higher than the monument in Babel ever towered.
What heroism, to be moral, when there is no obligation to be so.
How achingly beautiful, to find meaning when there was none created.
And how courageous, to face a world without a benevolent Equalizer.
If they could just sell this idea of responsible nihilism to the masses, not to mention the occasional Hitler.
Atheists and agnostics face a giant obstacle in human nature.
Evil embarrasses their grandiose humanism, over and over again. Every day in a thousand little deeds committed by each of the five billion of this earth's inhabitants their aims are frustrated. I suppose, however, that is the seduction. The goal of altruism is a pipe dream. And pride drives them on like a sharpened ox goad. They need no God or threat of reprisal to force their goodness. We hold to morals because we are afraid. They hold to morality simply because.
Pleasure, however, does pose a problem for materialistic atheism.
I sat in a parking lot waiting for Devan tonight.
NPR played on the radio. (If they only knew how discordant and disruptive their commentary is to their music) Robert Schumann, I think, was the composer. Simple, contemplative piano.
A cold rain gusted down over the shopping center.
I was looking out the windshield at the reflection of the street lights mirrored on the dimpled surface of the parking lot. A yellow street curb lay directly in front of me, and an impressionistic portrayal of the curb lay directly below that.
Without even trying, I felt vaguely surprised at such beauty. And for my eyes only, apparently. No one else was looking.
On the dashboard, I then saw the image of the tiny rivulets of water coursing down the windshield, reflected on the vinyl covered Styrofoam. I felt unworthy to look upon it.
On the pavement outside, I watched as each drop of rain pelted into the shallow peddles, and saw each individual drop explode into a perfect symmetrical vision, as it collided with the asphalt and shattered up to catch the light and refract God's seven perfect colors.
Why me?
Why was I chosen to have the privilege of sitting in that resplendent rain-soaked parking lot, watching thousands of points of light dancing and twinkling before my eyes?
One drop was all I needed to see in order to justify my creation.
I assume since it was dark, no one saw me taking pictures with my phone of the puddles in the parking lot.
But I really don't care.
When I have the unmitigated gall to ask why me? in the future, I'll take out my cell phone, flip it open and shrug.
I have no idea.

The Huckster

Considering my options, Mike Huckabee has my vote thus far. He has yet to gain my respect, however.
Early on, his message about being the man that is hated by the far left, and the far right, was enough to make me roll my eyes. And the self-applied label "the conservative who isn't mad at anybody," was groan material.
He didn't help his case any by jumping in the Bush bash.
His comments that Bush's Iraq policy is "arrogant" and calling it a "bunker" approach is more of the same Bush bashing that puts me at odds with most Republicans these days. They, like the Democrats, were in full war cry at the outset of the Iraq war, citing WMDs, al-Queada connections, and general national security concerns. And now, like the Democrats, they are quick and comfortable to point out perceived mistakes in Bush's war policy. I suppose it would considered simplistic by some to point out that Bush's record for protecting our country is impeccable, and considered naive by still others to assume that he and his administration should be worthy of a little respect on that count.
But I guess that's not enough for Huck.
His credentials for snipping at the Bush administration's foreign policy reminds me vaguely of another Arkansas governor's resume, which consisted of calling out the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the disposal of chicken manure in the Arkansas River.
In the words of Bush the Elder, ". . .his foreign policy experience is limited to dining at the International House of Pancakes."
Quit the Bush bashing, Huck. It is insulting to us, and it exposes your own lack of experience, not to mention intelligence.

Job

I sometimes suspect that my fascination with Job is owing to a childish melodramatic interest in tragedy, and any pontification offered on the subject, pedantic, and stemming from a perfunctory knowledge of anguish gleaned from a brief but stormy voyage on the sea of despair, circa 1995. It is also no doubt the brooding indulgence of an occasionally melancholic temperament. ( And I am fully aware that my being transfixed by the trial of Job is no different than a silly sentimental school-girl's obsession with the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.)

However, the previously mentioned voyage has marked me forever, for better or worse, and forgive me if I seem to have yet to gain my land legs. And if I am to offer anything of the slightest worth, even interest, on this blog, it had better be something that begs my interest, or you will have wasted just as much time reading it as I will have writing it.

Job appears to have been something of an anomaly, from my limited viewpoint. He was extremely wealthy and absolutely devoted to God. According to my knowledge of human nature, when things go well, our appreciation for God can be likened to our appreciation for an Internet connection. When it works well, you really don't think about it, but when you don't have it. . .

This is interesting also, when you consider that Satan insisted that Job served God for the favors. Was he exhibiting an astounding lack of knowledge of human nature, or was he ignoring it in the interest of an opportunity to inflict misery upon a human? Satan's role in this is obscured by the larger story, but it is somewhat mysterious, starting with his presence among the angels before God. What exactly was he doing there, and why was he allowed?

Perhaps the incongruity of an exchange between God and Satan is what has led some to believe that this "Satan"translated "Adversary" means just and only that and that Satan in this case is not the arch-enemy Lucifer whom God banished, but, in fact, God's prosecutor. The problems with that theory are many and significant, not the least of which is the fact that from this premise you must assume that in this particular case God plays prosecutor (intimating Job had committed an act worthy of prosecution and we are nowhere in the book led to believe that he had), defense attorney (at the end of Job God clearly states that Job had done no wrong throughout the whole ordeal, unlike his friends) and judge. ( God settles the wrong done to Job by his friends and rewards him for his consistent resistance to sin.)

The question remains however, why would God allow Satan in His presence? Perhaps we can simply compare the occasion to Satan's temptation of Christ and let it go at that.

One of the first discomforting things about this exchange is you'll notice God Himself first mentioned Job. Thus leading to the discussion as to Job's motives in eschewing evil. God, in His omniscience, obviously knew the course this discussion would take. Some have suggested it was the result of God's pride in Job, and I don't necessarily dispute that although I think it goes deeper than my dad is better than your dad. God saw that the ordeal would benefit Job, which is even more discomforting. If a man like Job, dedicated and blameless and as upright as he was, was in need of being driven closer to God by such horrible disaster, what awaits a lesser man like me around the next corner? Or does God reserve such bitter medicine only for those He trusts enough to take it and crushes a baby aspirin in a spoonful of grape jelly for the rest of us?

The book of Job and stories like it present a giant stumbling block for some. How could God so cruelly, and so unjustly punish one of His most well-behaved children? The question nagged at one Bill Watterson, the creator of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin and his long-suffering tiger are laying awake at night, commiserating and pondering over the meaning of the death of a baby raccoon they had found and adopted. Calvin wonders why the little raccoon had to die, and what a rotten, miserable world fate had fashioned for us. The strip ends with Calvin and Hobbes both hiding under the bed and Calvin stating, "Either it's mean, or it's arbitrary, and either way I've got the heebie jeebies." You could take this as Watterson's denial of a loving God or the plaintive question posed by someone who is just trying to make sense of the world sans God.

More later . . .

who knows how much later

Is There a Pro-Lifer in the House?

My head is spinning.
How does a Republican presidential candidate who lobbied on behalf of an abortion clinic garner the Oscar for pro-life candidates?
Fred Thompson's latest response to the accusation of abortion lobbying was finally direct, and numbing. (His earliest response to the charge was an ill-conceived attempt at Reaganesque chutzpah. Something to the effect that it was summer and the flies were out. The flies were buzzing around his head alright, but it was mostly because they thought he was dead.)
But after playing coy about it for three months, he finally blurted out his excuse.
That was business, and this is politics, and he doesn't mix the two.
I don't have to extrapolate anything from that admission. He essentially said that profiting from abortion has nothing to do with opposing it. And the truly stunning thing is that he doesn't appear to be the least conflicted about it.
Add to that a television interview in which he was either desperately groping for the tolerance angle or possibly his brain hit the mother of all skip channels.
He stated that he didn't think it was right to consider jailing young women for having abortions.
The host of the interview still has to be scratching his head over that one. Did I ask?
I can't help but sympathize a little with Paul Weyrich and his surprised anger over the NRLC endorsement.
However, Weyrich suggesting that Thompson paid the nation's largest pro-life organization may be a little hasty. And did Weyrich presume that his guy was going to land that endorsement? Mitt Romney was initially pro-life until deciding to run for governor of Massachusetts. He then felt that choice was prudent, until deciding to run for president. Now he's back to pro-life. I wouldn't suggest that the timing was suspicious, merely that I feel sorry for him. All that hand-wringing must be emotionally exhausting.
One thing I can't help but like about John McCain. One thing. He is occasionally the soul of levity and brevity. Upon hearing of Pat Robertson's endorsement of Rudy Guliani, he managed, "Every once in a while, I am left speechless. This is one of those times."
It didn't really surprise me. The only time that Pat surprises me is when he does something normal. In a discussion with a black friend once, we were able to commiserate. "I got Jesse Jackson, and you got Pat Robertson." he said. Baggage neither one of us needed.
I guess I can only say one thing and I say it somewhat reluctantly.
Help, Huckabee.

Not much organization here, just a few thoughts.

Doomsday

Here in Kentucky, we appear to be on the verge of electing a Democratic governor.
We accept your condolences.
Four years ago, Kentucky took one small step forward out of the dark ages and elected Ernie Fletcher, a rising political star in the commonwealth.
It appeared to be part of a nationwide pattern, progressing toward a rational, business-friendly, consumer-friendly Republican paradise.
Once again, we seem to be part of a pattern, regressing toward big government and a tax ceiling higher than the starry host above.
The Democratic machine, after forty years in the governor's mansion, still had its claws dug into every other facet of our state's government, and refused to let go.
Their water boy, Greg Stumbo, the Democratic state AG, trumped up a host of discriminatory hiring charges against the Fletcher administration, and Fletcher spent almost the entirety of his term distracted by a created scandal. At the very worst, and with a liberal dose of fantasy added, Fletcher's hiring practices could be construed as unethical, but it is a painful stretch.
More realistically, it was a small act of retribution against forty years of constrictive Democratic cronyism. Additionally, it was a measure of expediency by Fletcher. He admittedly may have been trying to weed out Democrats in state offices to accelerate his agenda. To which I wished him the best.
This state is notorious for being unfriendly to big business and even more hostile toward the tax-payer. The overall tax rate in Lexington, the second largest city in the state, ranks third or fourth in the nation. From the top, not the bottom. The uncomfortable business environment has led to a mass exodus of the state's biggest business, horses, to states like Florida where they inexplicably believe that business is good for the economy.
The Democrats answer to this is that we must keep up with the times and our neighboring state of Indiana by voting in casinos.
Whether you eschew gambling or not, the support business systems brought in by casinos are somewhere between eighty and ninety percent organized crime.
Yeah, that's good for a party who is pledging to bring back ethics to Frankfort after that deviant Republican's merit hiring scandal.
I always feel a surge of hysteria rising to the surface when I hear Democrats talk about honesty.
Not to mention another big lie they sold when they brought in the powerball lottery.
They promised to shovel a big portion of the "stupid tax" (appropriately so called because the lottery is a tax for people who can't do math) into the education coffers. For the children, you know.
It may come as no surprise that they have not in fact, funded education with the stupid tax as they pledged to do, and would it have helped if they did? Why do we always assume that throwing money at kids will make little light bulbs come on in their eager little heads?
The polls show the Democratic challenger, Steve Beshear, with a fifteen to twenty-four point lead over the incumbent.
I am tempted to indulge in a little irrational exuberance (little Alan Greenspan lingo there) at the news of the statewide school poll. Schoolchildren have re-elected Fletcher by a margin of 54 to 46.
But there's a demographic caveat. Children obviously take their cue from parents, and parents will always prove to be a more conservative voting bloc than singles, college students, or, dare I say it, homosexuals. And that last voting bloc is nothing to sneeze at, with Lexington, once again a topper of dubious lists, the host to one the largest concentrated homosexual populations in the country.
The point is, voters don't care about anything important. They are fickle, astonishingly non-thinking, and apathetic.
Who care about the horses, bring on the casinos.