Unity

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"What moral conservatives fail to perceive is thus how, to put it in Hegelese, in fighting the dissolute liberal permissive culture, they are fighting the necessary ideological consequence of the unbridled capitalist economy that they themselves fully and passionately support." –Slavoj Zizek

We Will Never Be Ancestors

I have never been able to imagine a future for humanity, only a timeline that extends far behind and not far ahead. We may have children and grandchildren, maybe even great-grandchildren, but we will never be anyone’s ancient ancestors, I just know it.

Maybe this is why I’ve always been so drawn to speculative fiction about future scenarios. Any future is better than no future, and with few exceptions, even the most dire dystopia has hope. I like to imagine that we will be able to overcome anything we face. I wish I could believe it, too.

The Well of Sacred Text

"Don't fall down the well of scripture.
Use the words to keep moving.

Thousands are trapped in the Qur'an
and the Bible, holding to a
rope.

It's not the rope's fault.
Let the wellrope pull you out.
Then let the wellrope go."

-Rumi "The Well of Sacred Text"

Election Day

If we chose to follow Christ, we are making a commitment to provide for the needs of others even at the expense of our own comfort and liberty. It is the Christian’s responsibility to love the poor, the marginalized and the victims of violence. It’s not always easy to know how to do that, and it will not look the same in every situation, but if our best resource for helping others is some arm of government, so be it. We should be open to that possibility.

I would prefer that Christians take the initiative to alleviate poverty by choice and conviction, but this has not happened. There are people in America eating out of dumpsters while Christians (and I indict myself first of all) accumulate luxury. Until this changes, we are in no position to argue. It is true that government aid is abused by some, but this is vastly preferable to the negative consequences that could result from withholding aid just because some take advantage. Even if the majority of those receiving aid are taking advantage, it is not the Christian's place to judge or withhold. The Gospel is clear: Give to anyone who asks.

That is not to say that Christians should be taking wealth by force and redistributing. The role of the Christian is to be the person from whom wealth is taken. We should surrender these worldly treasures with a glad heart. If the government taxes your robe, give them also your cloak. The uniqueness of the Christian Gospel is most evident in the fact that it is absurd by any worldly standard and will give us no comfort or happiness, and in the fact that we are not saved by these works but will live for others anyway, even at the cost of our own lives, simply out of love. That is the decision.

Our willingness to serve and suffer gladly will potentially be an example to the rest of humanity that there is a way beyond power and coercion. We won't live to see it, but we will do what we can anyway. Or perhaps our servitude and suffering will never impact the world around us and we will apparently sacrifice for nothing, but that's the risk. Better to follow Christ into hell than to stay with Satan in paradise.

The message of Christ is not one of fairness; it is one of absolute and unconditional compassion. It is not justice; it is grace. If we understand God as a just ruler who indulges our pretenses of legal jurisprudence, condones our wars as righteous, and proposes for us a rule-based political philosophy, then Jesus is not our savior. The Gospel stands in total opposition to individualist and American values, but if we are to profess Christ, this affiliation must take precedence over all else. It may even exclude all other affiliations. Our economic philosophies and our proud politics are idols and we should busy ourselves with the destruction of our idols. Find your life and lose it, lose your life and find it.

This is not an easy commitment to make, but I hope to truly make it someday. Until then, I'm not sure I have any right to call myself a Christian. The uncomfortable irony of my life has been that I repeatedly encounter people who live radically in accordance with Christ's teachings but in no way profess to be Christians, while those who do profess to be Christians so frequently slam the door in their Messiah's face. What we do to each other we do to Christ, after all.

If you choose to vote today, please remember that.

Waiting for The Great Pumpkin with Richard Dawkins

The title of this post is the title of a snazzy one-act (one joke?) play that I am too uninspired to write.

Though more commonly known as That Guy Who’s Married to That Girl Who Used to Be Married to Your Favorite Incarnation of Dr. Who, English scientist Richard Dawkins is also one of the more articulate and outspoken public faces of the New (sic) Atheism. While not likely to be remembered as an innovator on that front, Mr. Dawkins has a knack for maintaining composure in the face of the most exasperating questions, and his sense of wonder regarding the beauty of our universe is a contagious awe that makes him the most accessible among the latest batch of religious fundamentalism’s critics.

Some of his pithiest remarks, immortalized in Facebook profiles and countless blogs, reveal his limitations (calling pantheism “sexed-up atheism” is akin to calling biochemistry “sexed-up alchemy”) but no one mistakes him for a philosopher or sociologist. It is unfortunate in a way that the current de facto voice of atheism has to be a scientist. Working from that discipline enables a critique of only the most superstitious theological models. Horses don’t come much deader than that, though in the fallout from this (now obsolete) conversation, thinkers who remain in the religious spehere will happily find themselves in more sophisticated company.

To the project of developing a Christian position that was tenable for the 20th Century, it could be said that no one has contributed more than Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. (My friend Michael Stohrer told me this is a suggestion that would "make Nietzsche’s moustache quiver with rage".) In the same way, the popular atheists of this moment, by funneling essentially old-hat arguments into shiny new best-sellers, have brought the purging fire skepticism to a large audience, and the spiritual ideas that survive will be the ones worth saving. For that, believers should be grateful.

Rather than an heir to Bertrand Russell and Antony Flew, Dawkins is a charismatic provocateur whose civil and unwavering rhetoric could potentially contribute to getting participants in the popular conversation onto the same page so we can take the conversation farther.

Tomorrow’s Dawkins will have to be more sophisticated, someone who, like his audience, will accept the conclusions of hard science as a given but is willing to dive into abstract, even subjective concepts beyond myopic materialism. In any conversation, the no-saying position must be meaningfully occupied, (lest we fall into a sheepish consensus) and this position requires three-dimensional thinkers able to adapt, thinkers who are unbeholden to predecessors. The 21st Century’s religious conversation must move past simplistic science/religion binaries as well as the common inability to understand or distinguish between the diverse positions that exist within one tradition.

Parable #2

There was a man named Adam who walked the Earth when it was new. He had a wife who was beautiful and kind. God walked with them, and taught them how to care for the Earth and receive from it everything they would need.

Adam’s wife bore many children and, as Adam’s progeny multiplied, God promised that Adam would be the father of many nations. The children of Adam delighted in their world, bathing in the rivers and cooling their bodies in the shade of the trees. God walked among them in friendship, often appearing as a son of Adam so he could live among them without making them afraid.

Only Adam knew the secret name of God, because his relationship with God was a special bond. The whole Earth was a gift to Adam, given on the condition that he would attend to it faithfully and serve all who inhabit it with compassion and love. Adam served faithfully, and lived with his children in paradise.

Eventually, Adam took a second wife, who spoke to serpents and shared with him knowledge about new things called Good and Evil. She taught Adam that some people, called “sinners”, were not to be loved as others were loved. Adam and his new wife made laws, and began to rule over the nations they had begotten. They demanded that their children revere God, whom they believed had given them the wisdom to rule. Many rebelled against Adam and they were punished. Others obeyed and they were rewarded. God watched in silence as the Earth was divided.

Adam’s new wife had a jealous heart and she said to her husband “Your first wife is disgracing your name. Last night, on the bank of a river, I heard her talking to God and she called Him by his secret name, which is a privilege only allowed to you. This sin can not be pardoned. You must chase her away.” Adam, with a heavy heart did just that, and his first wife went away, never to be heard again.

Sensing a new possibility, the possibility of exile, Adam and his new wife made a decree that sinners would be banished to the vast deserts that surrounded their paradise. This banishment meant certain death, as nothing could thrive in those endless sands. Adam was feared by his children, but this fear made them righteous and good.

News reached Adam that God had been seen cooling in the shade of a tree with sinners, eating meals with them and calling them His friends. On the bank of a river one summer morning, Adam spoke to God. “You are spoiling our world. I rule by virtue, and in your name. When you are seen with sinners, my daughters and sons question your holiness.”

God rebuked Adam. “What do you know of holiness? I made you a steward of this Earth, not its ruler. I only asked that you serve with compassion and love, but you decided to rule over others with fear.”

Adam tried, but could not remember God’s secret name. He went away in anger, and in his heart he cursed God.

Adam told many others what God had said, and they all began to resent God. Finally, on one bright summer morning, Adam came to God, followed by a mob of his children.

Before nightfall, God hung from the gallows.

The following morning, the gallows was empty, and a young boy, who had been sleeping on the ground nearby, told Adam that God had come down from his noose in the night, waking up the boy to say goodbye. Now, said the boy, God would wander the endless sands of the desert with the sinners in exile. The child was whipped for his lies.

Without God’s company, Adam and his children felt a void in their hearts. So Adam made new gods. Some were statues, some were books and some were great buildings that reached toward heaven. Finally, even Adam himself became a god.

Proud and powerful, Adam and many of his children began to abuse the resources they had been given. Some acquired wealth and privilege, while others were left to suffer. Adam built machines to move across continents. He built terrible weapons and gave them to his children, who aligned themselves behind borders and waged bloody wars in the name of their gods. The keepers of the law tore through the lands of Adam’s children, persecuting anyone who blasphemed these new gods. Anyone who disobeyed was sent to the dessert.

Adam took many wives, and each bore him daughters and sons only to use them against him. Adman’s family was ravaged by manipulation and deceit.

Only physicians driven by avarice attended Adam’s bed as he died. The father of so many nations was buried in a secluded wood far from any city, and his burial was attended only by his children who had not reaped the riches of their legacy. Many of them had returned from exile in the desert. Standing over his grave, these sons and daughters of Adam made a pact with one another.

“On this spot, we renounce all that our father has built. We pledge to attend to this world faithfully and serve all who inhabit it with compassion and love.”

Not far away, in the dark of the wood, God smiled, approving. And He put faith in these new daughters and sons of Adam.

Tolerance

The arguments over the Islamic community center in New York have been frustrating, but they have given me the opportunity to think about what we are talking about when we talk about religious tolerance.

Tolerance is a fine ideal, but I think it sets the bar too low. We “tolerate” a crying baby on an airplane. We should try to sincerely RESPECT religious traditions, not just when it is fashionable to do so, and not out of a desire to feel More Multi-Cultural Than Thou.

Part of that respect means engaging in thoughtful, critical appraisals of the tenants of those traditions (and their countless permutations – those distinctions matter!) Patting people on the head and saying “Whatever beliefs make you happy are just swell with me, sport!” is not respect. That’s condescending bullshit. I’m not saying we all have to be Christopher Hitchens (I did say “thoughtful, critical” appraisals) but we don’t really respect these traditions if we don’t find them worthy of inquiry. For an example of what this respect might look like, we can turn to Islamic doctrine. One of the things about Islam that is so remarkable to me (even if it is an accident of chronology) is the way other faiths (well, the two other Abrahamic faiths, anyway) are deemed important and worthy of respect. That being said, Islamic doctrine is intellectually honest enough to temper that respect with the firm belief that (for example) the divinity of Christ is incorrect, perhaps even blasphemous. In that act of thoughtfully disagreeing, Islam is a million times more respectful than, say, the nebulous openness of Unitarian Universalists. (Sorry, UUs!)

We can think of the phrase “I respectfully disagree” as having an all-too-apt mirror-image: “I disrespectfully agree.”

The Declining Day

A woman in the city spun on her heels
She spoke in verses, she made an appeal
She lit a fire in paradise, poured water into hell
Some say veils were lifted, some say palaces fell
We paused for a moment
Then went on our way
Busy and blinded to that declining day

Along the River Tigress ashes were poured
Nine-hundred-Twenty-Two, the year of our Lord
Some would make a pilgrimage, a pilgrimage within
But the world fought a mystic and the world always wins
The moon was split open
The light died away
But something cast shadows on that declining day

Elephant in the Room: Abortion and Violence

Many people can not talk rationally about abortion, and I don’t blame them. It must be hard to have an open-hearted conversation with someone if you think they are oppressing women or killing babies. However, having that open-hearted conversation is required if we are to be intellectually honest people, and furthermore, that conversation is a necessary and subversive act against the manipulations of the powerful. Clearly, it is convenient for certain people if we continue to believe that abortion is a clear-cut issue of good and evil. For these people, debate over abortion has little to do with protecting the unborn or defending the autonomy of women. For these people it is a way to manipulate us to vote for one political party and not for the other political party. The internal consistency of a prescribed set of views does not matter. What matters is the acquisition of power. I find it endlessly strange when a person whose politics strongly emphasize fiscal pragmatism, even occasionally at the expense of human life, is opposed to abortion, which is, if we are to be frank, fiscally responsible. Likewise, it has always troubled me that so many otherwise “liberal” people, opposed to the death penalty and militarism, can be so comfortable with abortion, which is, if we are to be frank, an act of violence.

Much of our public conversation on abortion in the US has to do with religious arguments, primarily arguments from an ostensibly Christian standpoint. What the Christian standpoint should be, however, is not always obvious.

In an essay titled “On the Soul of the Embryo” Umberto Eco points out Thomas Aquinas’s view that an embryo is given a vegetative soul, then a sensitive soul, and finally, in a body already formed, a rational soul. A supplement to Summa Theologiae says that an embryo that dies before it is infused with a rational soul will not take part in the “resurrection of the flesh” while even those born dead will take part. The pre-rational-soul embryo is not human. Eco makes a connection to Catholicism’s reluctance to accept evolution, not because it conflicts with a literal understanding of the creation story, but because it erases the distinction between human life (possessing a rational soul) and life more generally. The position that the embryo qualifies as human life because it will eventually become human is, according to Eco, the position “once adopted by the materialist-evolutionists of the past” and a position that contends that “there is no dividing line… in the course of evolution from plants to animals to humankind.” Defending human life is a noble goal, defending ALL life is impossible unless we become motionless, and starve ourselves so as not to kill any insect or plant.

Modern believers are less likely to believe in the literal “resurrection of the flesh” believed by Aquinas, either because we no longer subscribe to his pre-modern world view or because our ideas of the afterlife are more informed by diluted Dante than any theologian. Regardless, Eco’s essay raises quite eloquently the difficulty of defining the limits of personhood in a way that allows us to defend a consistent and tenable position on human rights.

The history of Christian thought does contain a precedent for opposing abortion. “We are so forbidden to murder,” Tertullian said, “we may not even kill the fetus in the womb.” His phrasing implies that even if abortion is the mildest form of murder, Christians are still not allowed to do it. Like many early Christians, Tertullian’s opposition to abortion was a logical extension of his pacifism.

The refusal of Christians to serve in the military is not an invention of Quakers or Mennonites or Jesus-hippies protesting the Vietnam War. It is a tradition dating back to the early centuries of the Christian faith and precedent can be found in the writings of Ignatius of Antioch, Origen, and Justin Martyr. Even under the ostensibly “Christian” rule of Constantine, Bishops like Basil of Ceserea called for soldiers to be excommunicated. Athanasius (who so famously gave Arius the verbal smackdown of a lifetime at the Council of Nicaea, thus defining Christian doctrine for centuries to come) believed Christianity was inherently non-violent. Martin of Tours asked to be released from military service saying “I am Christ’s soldier; I am not allowed to fight.” When his conscientious objection was refused, he offered to stand on the front lines without a weapon. This refusal to serve had to do, in part, with a generally untrusting attitude towards the state, which was understandable considering the on-again, off-again persecution faced by Christians (a persecution which was typically met with non-resistance) as well as passages in the canonical gospels such as Christ’s command to “turn the other cheek” and his forbidding Peter to use a weapon in the Garden of Gethsemane. Before Christian pacifism buckled under the influence of the “Just War” theory of Augustine, Christians were considered bad citizens in Rome because of their refusal to serve in the military. Centuries later, Jean-Jacques Rousseau would state in “On the Social Contract” that Christians are of no use to the state. Along those lines, Christian anarchists like Leo Tolstoy have pointed out that the state is of no use to Christians. Both of these points are somewhat correct, but neither is reflected in the values of our present situation, one in which Rousseau’s vision of a diluted State-religion compatible with the best interests of the state has been fulfilled by the pop-Christianity that overlaps so greatly with the Pro-Life movement.

Not only does the Pro-life movement overlap with many pro-military sentiments, this movement is bent on changing the law, which puts the focus not on questions of love and compassion (the priorities of a Christian) but on issues of legality and power (decidedly NOT the priorities of a Christian.) Christians are to respect worldly authorities and submit to them (“Resist not an evil man”) but only God is to be obeyed, because one can not serve two masters. How should a Christian respond to abortion, then?

One of the forms of abortion to which the early Christians reacted was the act of abandoning unwanted infants to die. This is not what we are referring to when we talk about abortion, but those early Christians did not make a distinction, and the situation offers a precedent. The early Christian Church was disproportionately populated by women and orphans, abandoned babies rescued from garbage dumps and raised by the communal Christians who shared all of their property (from each according to his ability, to each according to his need, you might say…) All things considered, it wasn’t a bad life for these orphans (other than the potential for being burned alive or fed to lions on account of their faith, of course.) This was a case of people passionately sacrificing whatever they had to defend and maintain human life.

Standing outside of a clinic and hurling stones, demanding that a woman carry her child to term, give birth, and then raise that child, despite the possibility that she may be psychologically or financially incapable of doing so, is bald hypocrisy. Until we cultivate communities that offer a guarantee that all children will be cared for, we have no right to express moral outrage over abortion. In our situation, corrupted by inexcusable economic disparity (as exemplified by the public school system) and a culture founded on individualist selfishness and “poor-by-choice” Protestant-ethic mythology that blames people for their own hardships, Christians have an obligation to oppose this conventional wisdom and give everything to care for anyone in need. Anyone can say they support life, but it is only very few who will open their home to unwanted children and struggling single mothers. In fact, most people won’t even spend a Saturday volunteering.

There are people, shining examples, who are willing to make sacrifices for the life of another. They are not exploiting the abortion debate to seize power, they are not sitting in judgment, and they are not carrying signs or threatening doctors. These few distribute food and diapers to struggling parents, arrange meetings with adoption agencies, and lobby to fix the foster-care and education systems that so frequently allow children to slip through the cracks.

Human life is precious and should be defended. Human beings have a moral obligation to protect each other from violence, be it the violence of abortion, the violence of militarism, the violence of social stratification or the violence of state-sanctioned executions. Preventing the act of violence isn’t enough though. Anyone can rage against death, but supporting life, anyone’s life (the truly “pro-life” position) is a long-term project that will demand everything from us.