Amazingly, Christians have supported the behavior described below, and called it “conservative.” I’ve been guilty of supporting some of these behaviors myself. Now, I’m not naive enough to think that the Democratic Party is better–I’m just tired of giving the Republican Party a blank moral check, and trusting them to behave in a manner that pleases God. Being pro-life on abortion legislation doesn’t mean that the GOP values life the way God intends. One could argue that, based upon the demonstrated behavior of the last eight years, the opposite is true.

I’m more and more convinced that God will hold me accountable for not speaking out long ago… for not saying to the GOP “You will no longer be allowed to associate yourselves with people of faith. You’ve demonstrated that you’re not morally better, and in countless ways morally worse, than the liberal Democrats you so willingly demonize.”

I may not vote for a Democrat in November, but I’m feeling quite certain that I won’t be voting for the Republican ticket. They just don’t deserve another chance.

Link to the article:

We have been hearing since Reagan that “Government is the problem”; that government should get “out of the way”; that the private sector can always do it better and cheaper.

If one has this philosophy then it is natural to undermine government; to get it “out of the way”. Conservatives since Reagan have systematically undermined the efficacy of the government by gutting any agency which it views as “standing in the way”.

You appoint “your guys” no matter how incompetent; you oust the professionals; you gut their budgets. You oppose anything which might “impede” the private sector corporations – consumer protections; food inspections; road and bridge inspection; financial regulations.

You politicize the Justice Department, so that it finds nothing, even torture, objectionable. Anti-trust enforcement becomes non-existent.

You never lift a voice or use the bully pulpit against corporations shipping jobs wholesale overseas. Our retailers buy their inventory from China and you ship them our money, never insisting that China adjust its foreign exchange rate. Then you borrow the money back from China to plug our budget deficit, caused by corporate tax cuts and cuts for the top 1% of Americans. You ship the borrowed money to our oil suppliers and oppose any effort to reduce dependency by seeking alternative renewable sources of fuel. After all, you’re an oil man.

You start an unnecessary war costing hundreds of billions of dollars much of it going to favored construction companies doing work shoddy enough to electrocute ten soldiers in their showers. Hired thugs masquerading as “security details” rake in more of the money, answering to no one. You “rebuild” Iraq (which we never had to destroy anyway) while the Iraqis have almost $80 billion in the bank.

You shred the Constitution, abridge habeas corpus. You get elected by selling your “values” while robbing the country blind. You never talk about economics. You always scare the voters with the next bogeyman around the corner. When the media disagrees with you, you attack it as “unfair” with “liberal bias”. You start your own propaganda media outlets that parrot the party line.

You take the country into a permanent state of war with a volunteer army – a state so permanent no one even notices it anymore as they go to the mall. You ask nothing from them but their acquiescence. “Just go shopping folks!”

You want to spend a trillion dollars to rescue the financial sector, run up a half a trillion dollar budget deficit and still spew nonsense about “small government, deregulation and lower taxes”.

We are witnessing the impoverishment of America. ….and this Grand Old Party (remember it?) wants four more years.

Posted by: toritto | October 9, 2008 4:25 PM

What if, instead, we turned the process upside-down, and built a church in reverse? What would that look like?

“Tradition… Tradition!”
(Yes, you’re supposed to sing that heading to yourself, with a thick Russian accent, and in a mid-baritone, Tevye voice. Trust me.)

Let’s first consider the traditional steps of building a church, roughly defined as:

1. Buy/build a sanctuary of some kind
2. Buy/build educational space
3. Upgrade sanctuary for more space
4. Add facility for children’s classes
5. Add meal/fellowship area
6. Expansion of above
7. Add recreation space

Somewhere along the way, we realize that the buildings are almost always under-utilized (lots of action on Sunday, but almost nothing during the week), so we start looking for ways to “repurpose our space.” This typically involves trying to build community programs like day care, men’s basketball leagues, and so on.

Pineapple Upside-Down Church
What if, instead, the people who are starting a church (who say that they love the community, their neighbors, people they haven’t met, etc.), instead did the following:

1. Built a community recreation center, open to anyone
2. Added a low-cost/no-cost day care, open to anyone
3. Started literacy programs to help at-risk kids in school
4. Created/promoted programs for secular activities (theater, sports, etc)
5. Found ways to re-purpose these community facilities for “church stuff” as necessary, but without intruding upon established programs/activities (that is, when they’re not otherwise being used by the community for other stuff)

What would happen? What would happen if a bunch of “church people” discarded the many habits and behaviors that tell the world “we’re really just a different kind of social club,” and really started looking for ways to love the world around them?

What would happen, if the most vocal critics of “the church,” had much less to criticize, and were clearly welcomed into a place that had been built to serve them? Jesus didn’t wait for people to love and accept him before he served them, healed them, or helped them.

Why should we?

The hanging of Saddam brings new questions and new concerns, and clearly will not magically bring an end to violence in Iraq. What it does do, is bring closure to the reign of a tyrant.

Despot-ly Seeking WMDs
Lost in much of the current furor over Saddam’s hanging is the fact that he committed horrible crimes against the citizens of his country. Yes, he most likely did these horrible things with the complicit help of the United States (either by us supplying him with weapons, supporting his dictatorship, not removing him from power earlier, or all three), but that clearly does not release him from responsibility for his actions and choices.

Regardless of the culpability of the US in these matters (which I believe is not insignificant), Saddam tortured and murdered thousands, and made it obvious, even in the end, that he had no regrets about doing so. He was not, as he claimed, a bridge between Sunnis and Shiites. He was an enemy to a unified Iraq, other than to the degree that powerful dictators are able to completely suppress dissent.

Deposition Expedition
In holding our own government accountable (almost impossible, I know) for the amazingly poor choices of the past several years, we should not ignore the role that thousands and thousands of Iraqi’s have had in the institution of a new government. The recent trial of Saddam could not have happened the way it did without the Iraqi people turning out in huge numbers for last December’s elections.

Likewise, the execution of Saddam happened, not on a timetable or by a script set by the US (credible reports have US advisers stunned at how quickly the Iraqi government moved to hang him), but according to the wishes of those that the Iraqi people put into power. This is how it should be.

Post-Disposed
Next, there is the question of the sentence imposed. Tiffany points to the application of the death penalty to be barbaric, and something that puts the US (by its association with and support of the current Iraqi government) in the company of several third world countries.

At the outset, let me state that I have huge issues with the death penalty, but not from a philosophical standpoint. My issues are with the implementation of the death penalty, and the fact that it is so inconsistently applied (at least in the US).

In the case of Saddam, as was the case in Nuremberg, we have virtually no question of guilt. The evidence is public and overwhelming. Here, the only valid concerns about carrying out a death penalty sentence should be ethical questions (is it ethical for civilized people to put another human being to death, for any reason?), or concerns about further division of Iraqi society and sectarian violence.

Whether or not Saddam’s hanging with increase or decrease the violence in Iraq, either in the short term or long term, is something I can’t answer. There are wildly conflicting reports about how Sunnis and Shiites are reacting to his execution, and whether or not Saddam had more than a fragmented base of support remaining within the country. At the very least, he was a lightning rod for those who wanted Iraq to be a beacon of Islamic defiance of the West, and his death provides those same groups with a handy martyr.

With regard to the ethical and moral issues surrounding the death penalty, I think that it’s quite questionable to suggest that imprisoning someone until they die of natural causes, without any possible release from incarceration, is just as cruel, and no less ancient than executing someone. There is also the question of whether killing one person justifies killing another, and the similar argument that killing the killer makes society just as evil. What then, is the punishment for someone who kidnaps and imprisons another? Do we let them go, since imprisoning them would make society “just as bad?” Are we “just as evil” if we imprison the kidnapper, since we are doing the same thing? Rules of logic suggest that if the death penalty is to be discarded on such grounds, so too must be imprisonment.

In my view, Saddam has forfeited his “right to life” by his crimes, and society is just in taking that life away from him. It matters little, from the standpoint of justice, whether his life is taken by imprisonment, or by death. Either way, he has lost the remainder of his life. In fact, one could argue that prolonging his misery and suffering (by imprisoning him) is more cruel than killing him, where his suffering lasts only seconds.

Death Exposed
Lastly, there is the question of the public manner in which the sentence was carried out. Not only was the event televised in Iraq live (so to speak), but cell phone video has now surfaced, making the “proof of death” visible to all. Some are troubled by the public viewing of this, and by the insistence of the Iraqis to make it public.

I am not. I see two benefits to publicly broadcasting this event.

First, those whose lives had been virtually destroyed by Saddam have been living in fear that somehow, some way, he might escape justice, and return to power. After the first Gulf War, Saddam quickly moved to extract vengeance on those who had openly aided the opposing forces. How could the people of Iraq know, for certain, that he would not somehow return to power? Had his death been in secret, they might have forever wondered if it had been faked. Instead, it was clear to everyone in Iraq (and the rest of the world) that he was, indeed, dead.

Second, there is emotional closure for those who had suffered at Saddam’s hands. Vindictiveness and revenge are short-lived emotions (generally). In the same way that victims of any kind of physical or emotional abuse frequently feel “released from the bonds of the abuser,” the victims of Saddam can now be released from the bonds that he has held on them, even while in prison, even to recent days. They are now free. There is now no possibility of him returning to power, even if the US and allies were to suddenly leave Iraq, and the Bathists somehow regaining a political stronghold. (No matter how hard they might have tried, the Iraqis could not have guaranteed the Iraqi people that he would not one day be released from prison by some future, Saddam-favoring party.)

Given the above, I see no reason to stand in the way of a duly elected government in Iraq putting to death a ruthless and violent man, one who showed no remorse for his actions. Who am I to stand in the way of releasing them from the emotional bonds of Hussein’s reign?

Yes, we should hold our government accountable for its behavior over the last 20 years, not just in Iraq, and not just one party or the other. However, we should also refrain from suggesting that the hanging of Saddam Hussein is anything short of a victory for the nation of Iraq. Hopefully, 2007 will bring more victories, and not simply more bloodshed.

Oh, sure. I know an “approximate” value: 3.1415926535. I know that from memory. But I have to confess that I don’t know the exact value.

Relative Knowledge
In science, most things are exact. I suppose this is why Pi sets on edge, the teeth of any serious student of math at one point or another in their careers.

I suppose the most frustrating thing about Pi is, you can get pretty close, without a lot of education. My oldest son, when he was in pre-school, once guessed “pi” when the teacher asked how many jelly beans were in the jar. The other kids laughed and said “That’s not a number!”

My 5 year-old son quickly responded “Yes it is. It’s more than three but not four.” (An exasperated teacher was then left the interesting chore of teaching fractional numbers to a handful of confused preschoolers.) My son was wrong about the number of jelly beans (it was several hundred), but he had already developed a basic understanding of Pi.

Unfortunately, he didn’t know the true value of Pi, and he still doesn’t. Have I failed him as a father because I don’t know it either?

Pi, Any Way You Slice It
Most children are introduced to Pi as “3.14.” In school, I determined to get a bit more exact, and learn it to ten decimal places. Unfortunately, in the black and white of math, neither of those answers are strictly correct.

At the tender age of 5, my son was able to wrap his brain around the notion of fractional values. (My example was “You have three apples, and then I give you part of another. Do you have four apples yet? Do you have more than three?”). Now a freshman in college, he has a much deeper understanding of numbers and math, but he still has much to learn. When I look at research that documents thousands of digits of this confounding number, I realize that I have much to learn too.

Interestingly, there are people who have devoted their careers to studying Pi. They develop exotic proofs, study and learn ways to understand more and more clearly exactly what Pi is. There are countless web sites devoted to the search for the exact value of Pi, but as far as I can determine, none of them have it… yet.

Clearly, the simple logic of geometry suggests that there is, in fact, one and only one “true” value of Pi. We can pretend that it’s 3.14 or 3.1415926535, but we will be wrong. We can claim the moral high ground of our value being “true for me,” but that doesn’t make it true in all cases, everywhere, for everyone.

Only the true value of Pi (the value that, to this day, remains unknown), is always true, everywhere. To suggest otherwise is to be ridiculous.

Knowing the Unknowable
However, until the actual value is known and proven, people of various educational levels can engage in debates over this, sometimes expending huge amounts of energy in the process, and frequently accomplishing very little. Such is the case with subjects that we “split hairs” over.

At this stage, some scientists have abandoned their personal search for the “true” value of Pi, and are left to deal with the unsatisfying sense of there being a truth, out in the distance somewhere, that they cannot yet grasp or know or understand. How incredibly frustrating.

Interesting isn’t it, how closely this parallels the search for theological truth? The endless frustration of feeling that you’ve almost got it, and then finding out that you’re nowhere near knowing everything that there is to know, and that the “mind of God” seems to extend on to several more decimal places than you imagined. It seems so simple at first, and then you realize that what you “knew” and what you understood as “the truth” is merely an approximation, and that God has an infinitely rich and non-repeating pattern out there for you to discover.

Someday (though not, scripture says, in this life), I will see face to face, and know as I am known. Someday (though not, scientists say, anytime soon), I may see the exact value of Pi, and not just an approximation. Until then, I’ll just have to learn to live with the unknown, tell people the “best approximation” of the truth that my brain is currently able to comprehend, and hope for the day of complete understanding.

Reading the comments reminded me that when I bump across people who feel they have it all figured out, that they’ve definitively answered every possible question about a creator or no creator (and I’m not suggesting that this applies to Tiffany, or any of the commentors on her blog entry), regardless of their educational background or religious affiliation (or non-affiliation), I smile. My smile is not the smug smile of someone who knows more, smiling at the cuteness of those less wise than me. It’s a smile that says “maybe someday I’ll have it figured out like you apparently do, but I’m not there yet.”

Recently, another friend of mine recently said to me, “Tim, if you don’t have questions… if you’ve got it all figured out, your god isn’t big enough.” It seems to me that we all have gods, whether we use a big “G” or a little “g,” and whether we have one, or many. We just choose different things, and sometimes ascribe to them different powers, authority, and ability, but ultimately, they all sound like gods to me.

Oddly enough, the “other friend” I mentioned above is also the senior pastor of my church. Weird thing for a Southern Baptist minister to say, huh?

He responded by saying “Collossians 3:23… Whatever you do, do it as you would do it unto the Lord and not for men.”

In spite of the fact that I have been active in the Baptist church all of my life (including my time “in utero”), there are times that someone quoting scripture rubs me the wrong way. “Why?” you might ask, since what my friend said seemed completely valid, and perfectly in-context.

The best way for me to describe my negative reaction, is to introduce you to the term that comes to mind, which is the title of this blog: Soundbite theology. It drives me absolutely nutty.

Rote, Rote, Rote Your Quote
Let me be clear about this. I love the Bible. I love reading and studying it, and love teaching it on Sunday mornings. I find it endlessly facinating, on many different levels. Regardless of how many times I’ve taught a specific book, each time I teach it again, God reveals something new.

Regardless of how much I’ve studied the Bible, I’ve never been much of one to commit individual verses to memory. Sure, I remember Romans 3:23 and 8:28, John 3:16, 1st Corinthians 13, the 23rd Psalm, Genesis 1:1, and long stretches of Luke 1, but I’ve always had this inner struggle with intentionally memorizing one verse (along with its reference, of course) here, and another there.

As a Southern Baptist, I’ve felt a nagging guilt about this, since so many of my Christian brothers and sisters have dozens of verses seemingly at their fingertips, ready for quotation and instant application. In spite of this, the ready quotation of a given verse rarely stuns me with its applicability, and frequently makes me stop and want to say, “That’s an interesting quote. What do the preceeding and subsequent verses say?”

A Pretext Without a Context…
One of my former pastors was fond of saying, “A prooftext is a pretext without a context.” What he meant was, if we have an already formed thought process when we go into reading scripture, and ignore the surrounding context, we’ve set ourselves up for what’s generally known as “prooftexting.”

Prooftexting is one of the many ways that people can take a series of words or ideas, and use them to “prove” something that the text doesn’t necessarily say. Comedy shows have frequently used this, to great comedic effect, as it can make it look like the President is talking about something completely out of character, or inconsistent with stated policy.

In contrast, news programs are always looking for ways to summarize a story for the reader. A quality news organization will look for a way to capture the essence of the story, typically in a sentence or two, without losing too much of the true meaning of what happened. This is always a judgement call, and generally reflects the bias of the story’s author or editor. In recent years, the end result is generally known as a “soundbite.”

Sounds Bite
Unfortunately, if an author or editor isn’t careful in choosing their soundbite, they may (intentionally or unintentionally) cause the reader to infer something quite different from what they would gather from reading the entire transcript of what happens. Likewise, when we choose to be a “script-slinger” (think of a gunslinger that pulls the trigger on his or her scripture-quotation gun with a hair-trigger response), we run the risk of “sound biting” the quoted scripture. Unless the both of us know the context of the scripture well, both the speaker and the hearer are at risk of reading an inaccurate meaning into the text.

Yes, it’s good to know the Bible, and if you study it regularly, you’ll have to consciously work to not find yourself remembering various verses. Even so, use caution when quoting from God’s Word. When we do, we are putting ourselves in the position of being God’s editor. I don’t know about you, but my credentials just don’t measure up.

By wearing cleats that show a logo other than Nike or Reebok, Reggie Bush has violated one of the most important rules in the NFL: Thou shalt not market brands outside of our established relationships.

Unfortunately for the NFL, Nike, and Reebok, anything that happens from this point forward will result in a windfall of publicity for Adidas line of football gear. This is an effective “checkmate” by Bush’s marketing team. There is no response by any of these three parties that will do anything except give Adidas more (extremely inexpensive) market visibility.

As a bonus, the situation highlights the NFL’s lack of action against players who are convicted of domestic abuse, repeat substance abusers, and demonstrably incapable of dealing with the financial success that sports have afforded them. The harder the league comes down on Bush and Adidas (without taking even stronger action against those guilty of more serious crimes than taking money out of Nike/Reebok/NFL-marketing-team-kickback-recipients hands), the more incompetent they will be shown to be.

Perhaps a Master Card spoof is in order?

Adidas Football Cleats: $49-99

Fine for wearing “unauthorized” brand cleats in an NFL preseason game: $10,000

Making the marketing deparments of Nike, Reebok, and the National Football League look like morons while giving your fledgling brand of football gear unprecedented exposure: Priceless

• Why is it that so many of us who are Christians… demand that the world is 6000-8000 years old, and come up with any number of bizarre explanations for how this is possible, but we’re perfectly willing to accept scientific explanations for how our Sony HD TV brings Billy Graham into our homes in such wonderful detail, and how the latest technology gadgetry works (thereby allowing us to spend less and less time with our children)?
• Why is it that we read parable after parable, proclaiming that we really do get it, and that some man didn’t actually have a beam in his eye when he was trying to remove the speck from another’s, but we can’t accept the possibility that one or more fragments from Genesis are “dumbed down” explanations of what happened?
• Why is it that even though Pat Robertson demonstrates his marginal sanity on virtually a daily basis, hundreds of thousands of Christians continue to listen to him?
• Why aren’t more Christians distancing themselves from Rush Limbaugh and his hate-mongering?
• Why aren’t we as upset about President Bush’s foul mouth as were (appropriately) about President Clinton’s inability to keep his pants zipped?
• Why is it that Christians aren’t just as upset about rampant materialism as we are about gay marriage?
• Why aren’t we as upset about the millions dying of malnutrition or AIDS as we are about the millions of abortions?
• Why aren’t we willing to stand up and say, “the intolerance of other faiths that we have demonstrated for so many years is not much different from the intolerance that we see in extremist groups engaged in terror bombings”?
• Why aren’t we just as concerned about the Lebanese child crying in the bombed-out apartment as we are for the Israeli pilot dropping the bombs?
• Why is it that we are perfectly willing to make our children more and more ignorant (of science, literature, social sciences), and call it “protecting them” or “nurturing them”?
• Why do we hive our children off in “Christian” schools instead of getting involved in the local public school, and making it a better institution?
• Why aren’t more of us called to be teachers in public schools, and teach our moral values to an entire generation by the way we live day-to-day (and not just by the scripture we quote on Sunday morning)?
• Why are we willing to build social silos… pockets of Christian relationships (businesses, clubs, sports organizations, and so on)… and then complain that “the world” doesn’t seem to want to knock on the door of our churches?
• Why do we say “worship is not about me, it’s about God,” and then complain that the music isn’t what we like, that the praise choruses aren’t familiar, and that the preacher seems to talk too long?

I must be too dumb to understand. Maybe Pat or Rush can explain it to me.

Depending on who you ask, I might be any one of these (or something much less pleasant). Why is it that we have such a strong tendency to put labels on people, and why does this seem to be more of an issue in our current society than in years past? Does the label used to identify me also define me?

The truth is, I am non-violent in nature. However, I see the goal of world peace and the realities of pacifism in a different light from my friends.

Hitler vs Ghandi: Mano a Mano
Historically, there have always been violent people, who with or without video game encouragement will inflict pain and suffering on others. At any point in history, you can find legions of people (those who Ghandi referred to as “brutes”) whose first inclination was always toward violence, regardless of the circumstances. Ghandi ridiculed such types as being “less enlightened,” and spoke of the philosophy of non-violence in such a way that it actually becomes condecending to one who would even consider violence.

I believe that, in spite of his apparent acceptance of the possibility that violent behavior might be warranted against Hitler in the days preceeding the Holocaust, Ghandi underestimated the capacity for evil that some men have, and their willingness to continue unabated in their violent actions. Accordingly, I will, when pushed to the limit, use violence if that is the only recourse to defend my friends and family. In short, I am not willing to sacrifice those that I love to prove a philosophical moral point (and I’m not suggesting that you necessarily are).

A Worthy Goal
Accordingly, I see “world peace” as something that humans will never achieve, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to work toward that goal. What id *does* mean is that I accept that there will be times when violent behavior is the only option for dealing with violent behavior. (This is not always the case, but there are extremes.)

History seems to suggest that violent behavior is not a new problem, and it’s not clear that (compared to other societies) anything about current human behavior is “better” or “worse” in this regard. The largest difference is that we now have tools that cause our actions to have further reaching consequences, and cover a larger scale (i.e. more people affected by a violent choice by one individual).

My understanding of history suggests that the only chance we have to be a country or world at peace is for “good people” to be ready to use violence when it is necessary and appropriate. Yes, I want to open dialog. Yes, I want peaceful coexistence with people of other faiths and ideologies. Unfortunately, some people’s ideologies simply will not coexist with my peaceful existence (Islamic extremists are a current example, but if I were african american, I could say the same thing about the KKK). If they push their ideology to its limit, it threatens my existence, so my response is to violently defend my existence, and that of my loved ones.

Ultimately, Martin Luther King Jr was correct in that, within the US, peaceful protests were successful in bringing about societal change. Sadly, many peaceful african americans were murdered while waiting for “good people” to stand up and (using force and/or threatened violence) bring the KKK and others to justice. What would have happened if those standing up to the KKK (federal law enforcement officers) were without weapons or any instruments of self-defense? The law enforcement officers bodies would be lined up next to the innocents who had died before them, and the KKK wouldn’t have batted an eye.

Closer to Home
Like most concerned parents, I will not allow my sons to spend time at the home of someone who doesn’t properly lock their firearms, and have restricted my younger son from visiting someone for specifically that reason. The dad was making an effort, but not enough of one, and I found out that my son’s buddy knew how to “get to the guns” when dad wasn’t around. No more visiting that house… end of story.

Perhaps more interesting is that my younger son has a huge problem with cruelty to animals, and has boundless compassion for living things in general. This is the same child who has played WWII video games, and confided that he would be proud to serve in the military if it were necessary. He loves the physical intensity of football, particularly the violent contact, but feels genuine anguish when someone sustains an injury during the game. This is also the son who started crying during “CastAway” when he was 10, and didn’t stop for hours.

A Complex Equation
There are many things that condition our children, and I have been (and continue to be) an advocate for not allowing children to play violent games when they are at an age where they can’t easily distinguish reality. Sadly, this is different for each child, and there are some that aren’t mature enough as adults to process this kind of input. Does it have long-term effects? Most likely, it does. Can those effects be simply explained? I doubt it. The even larger question is, if I shield my child from this kind of input, does that automatically make them less likely to engage in violent behavior?

That, to me, remains a very open question.