Gaming the System

This is a post that been brewing since the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, and recent events plus a conversation I had during vacation brought it back to the forefront of my thinking.

After Katrina, I read a news article about some folks who were none too happy that some of the displaced victims who received cash cards from the government were buying things like beer, booze and tattoos with the taxpayer-funded handout. I recall that at the time I found this rather intriguing, because it's a bit interesting if you think about it. It's not like the non-victims would see much wrong if the victims were buying booze and tattoos with their own money, and it's not like the non-victims see anything wrong with buying booze or tattoos for themselves. And, it's not like the non-victims would complain about the victims buying food with the handout. I'm not saying this is here nor there, right nor wrong, but what the non-victims were saying in essence is, "If you're using my (that is, taxpayer) money, I want to approve of what you're using it for."

So the first thought I had was, how many of these non-victims work jobs that are taxpayer funded? How would they react to somebody telling them they shouldn't be buying booze or getting tattoos with their civil service paycheck? It seems that the argument would be that they "earned" their money, so they can spend it anyway they want.

When the economy went to the crapper in 2008, I was talking to a guy whom I admire and respect quite a lot yet who has significantly different social views than I. He was very upset over the economy, his pension, and his 401K. For all he knew, he might just lose it all, and what would that do to his decades-old plan for retirement? "It isn't fair," he said. "I've worked hard, I've played by the rules, and this is what I get? That's not right."

I empathized with the guy, but I walked away from the conversation puzzled, perhaps because I've worked hard, I've played by pretty much the same rules as he, and yet I have never thought that doing so implies that I should or will get a particular payback in the end. So I wondered, if there were rules he and I had been following, then what was the game we'd been playing? And, if it was a game we'd been playing, what was its object, and who is to say that it should be the privileged game, the game that gets to say what is right and fair?

Of course we each and all tend to think that our game is the privileged, correct one. We don't like, therefore, to see other people benefitting from a game that is other than our own. And since we tend to judge all other sets of rules against our own, we reject the differing rules of others as violations, and therefore we judge their game as illegitimate. We call such people, via various names, cheaters. Another aspect to this is we tend to believe that anybody on earth could ascend to our (correct) set of rules if they wanted to, but many of them don't. They choose not to play our game. They are therefore not only cheaters, but are also lazy and/or immoral. Both aspects' judgments trace of course to the easiest, most common and most exasperating human failure in reasoning: Even though I've never honestly and thoughtfully questioned my beliefs, I am convinced they are right; therefore if you disagree with me, you are wrong.

And so I started thinking once in a while about games those few years ago and, round and round, what I started thinking about over the past few months and over vacation is that the purpose or object of the game has to do with gaining the most possible benefit for ourselves, with the least possible effort and discomfort, from the American System of socio-economics. The game we play is defined by the rules we play by, which are the methods we utilize to leverage things to our advantage and are sanctioned by the particular socio-economic discourse we've grown to inhabit. The System (in a very large and non-trivial sense) is the same for all of us because we all live in the same country. The object is the same for all of us because of our natural human, creaturely, Darwinian if you will, tendencies to thrive and persist with the least possible exertion. But the game we use to accomplish this object, the way we game the system in order to win, varies significantly between and based upon numerous legitimizing (and typically incompatible) discourses. Again, who is to say which game is to be privileged above others and which, therefore, has a legitimate claim to being the "right" game by which all others are judged? Who gets to say, really, what is fair and what is not?

Is it fair that by the time I itemize my deductions each April, my effective tax rate is lower than that of many other people simply because at some point in my life I chose to be materialistic enough to buy myself a house? Is it fair that just because I work hard for thirty years, I should get to live comfortably for the rest of my life without having a job? If I'm an entrepreneur and at the age of twenty-four make a hundred million dollars, and then live the rest of my life doing nothing but living in excess, is that fair? Is either of these much different from the man on the street who decides he doesn't want to work anymore, either? If the legitimizing aspects of a game are all about earning my money via hard work and a decent day's effort, is it fair that I work in a climate-controlled office solving engineering problems and make an order of magnitude more money than the guy who spends eighty hours a week in the stifling heat or freezing cold working his muscles to their limits and his fingers to the bone? There are many arguments used to justify a "yes" answer to all of these, but the truth is, the "yes" answers only make sense because I have been told they do, and as long as I have never seriously and honestly examined the value of a "no" answer.

After all, a "no" answer is extremely difficult to ascertain by the person who already and always benefits from "yes." Why after all would I question the game by and in which I am always a winner? I've gathered a lot of benefit for myself, and not with all that much effort. Since that is the goal, after all, and since this game has worked, doesn't this imply that it is the right game? It's not possible that I could be winning while playing the wrong game, is it? Doesn't this prove beyond any doubt that my set of beliefs is the correct set? And doesn't it prove that those who disagree with me are mistaken; that they are lazy cheats? That whatever benefit they have happened to conjure up for themselves is ill-gotten and reprehensible? And, by God, since my game is the correct, proper and moral game, hasn't something unfair obviously happened on the day I don't win? Of course, and whose fault is it? Those who don't play by the same rules I do, obviously!

 

This concept is not limited to socio-economics, and involves any system where personal gain is at stake. Managers in places of employment have a different rule set than the people they manage. Parents have a different rule set than their children. Politicians have a different rule set than the citizenry. Prison guards have a different rule set than prisoners. Police officers have a different rule set that the people within their jurisdiction. The list is a long one, but what all of the juxtapositions have in common is they represent a striving for power; the power to obtain benefits for oneself with the least possible effort or consequence. In this sense we are all alike, all striving for the same basic things and using whatever means we can get away with in order to accomplish our goals.

I have a friend who once went to a historical area and did some metal detecting with a congressman he knows. It was a successful trip; the congressman found a few tiny antiquities buried in the earth, which he promptly pocketed to take home. Now, given that this was done in a designated historical site, where such acquisition is illegal, it seems a contradiction that a man who makes his living making laws, finds it so easy to break a law—a law of any kind no matter how "trivial" the law might be. But then again, power comes into play. Like the congressman who spoke at the little church I mentioned in a recent post, this congressman was gaming the system: using the power afforded to him to allow him to ignore certain laws for the sake of personal gain.

Back to my vacation, I spent some time in a small farming community up around the Kansas-Nebraska border. Sometimes I think I want to move to a small town like the one I was visiting; I know an English Lit instructor there who owns a beautiful little home that cost a fraction of my own, and he teaches at a high school that is less than a five-minute walk away. He's spent most of his life farming in the summers, and he says he loves farming and knows a lot of farmers he loves and respects. Interestingly enough, though, he said the farmers there don't much like public school teachers. The reason? The farmers say that teachers don't do real work for a living, and they live off of the taxes paid by honest, hard-working people. "To them, we're glorified welfare recipients," he said. I looked at him, and I was puzzled. "How much money will one of the big farms around here make this season?" I asked. He started talking about return per bushel, bushel per acre, acres per circle, and the number of circles. "That's… that's millions," I said. He smiled. "But when they have a bad year, they get…" He interrupted and nodded with a grin; not cruelly, but as if he was simply and quietly amused. Then he talked to me about subsidies and taxes, and explained why the big farms are one of the most heavily government-subsidized, least-taxed endeavors in the American economic system. "I've got kids at high school driving brand new fifty-thousand dollar pickups to school every day, and they were bought with cash, without sales tax and they're a tax write-off because they're a farm vehicle." He laughed and went on to tell me more about how some of the big-time farmers there are opposed to just about every form of taxation, yet they pay less taxes than almost anyone else, and they benefit more than just about anybody from the taxes that everybody else pays. I walked away, and this present post sort of formulated in my mind, because he had shared such a terrific example of the self-referential gaming principle in action. Pretty interesting, to see it from the outside for a change.

I've talked about a lot people here. I've talked about myself. I've noted that it's incredibly difficult to lay one's own game alongside others, and to be objective about what's what. It's pretty tough, almost impossible, to admit the truth: we are all lazy and we are all cheats. We all game the system, by use of our uniquely (and selfishly) effective game. Very few of us are able to see or willing to admit that this is true. Simply, the reason is this: we like to win. We like to take all we can, and we have little regard for who loses. The games are the lies that make our greed seem justified and normal, seem right and proper, and seem—God help us—moral.

 

Could it be that as I have benefitted myself while others have not, could it be that by winning the game so handily, that instead of learning the meaning of compassion I have instead gained the pride necessary to complacently legitimize both my own comfort and suffering of others? If so, is this what I want to go on record as claiming to be fair? Is this what I'm willing to say to the world is right?

No, it isn't. I am not willing to say so, but there are many, many people who are. And to be honest, this summer has led me to simply say that I find it deeply disturbing that some of these people spend their lives promoting the idea that Christianity is the very Thing that legitimizes their game (i.e., the game). I'm tired of seeing rich, powerful, good looking people standing in front of an American flag and a Bible as if wealth, power, good looks, a particular political agenda and Christianity are all inseparable. It's disturbing that Christianity has long been, and continues to be, used to legitimize a particular way of gaming the system, while the teaching of Jesus was not about legitimate ways to game the system. The teaching of Jesus was that his followers were to live outside of the system, and outside of the human creature's tendency to take what is easy for him to take. The teaching of Jesus was to stop striving, to put one's self last, to renounce power in all of its myriad forms, to be just, and to be equitable.

Instead, we use his teachings to justify our greed. My God. We weave webs so tangled, we call them truth, forgetting we have spun them from nothing but our own selfishness.

Come on, people. Really?

After the congressman in church, I wasn't in the most receptive mood a few does later when I was handed a copy of a speech by Texas Governor Rick Perry. An excerpt of the speech that left me perplexed and a little torqued off (but, sadly, completely unsurprised) is this:

On Aug the 6th of this year, 2011, we are going to have a day of prayer and fasting.

And it's going to be the real deal. It's not going to be some program where we line up a dozen political figures to come in and talk.

It's going to be people standing on that stage, projecting and proclaiming Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior at Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas .

Let me tell you, that's a big stadium and there will be a lot of people. But it's going to send a powerful message across this country!

Our country's broke.

Well, actually, Washington's broke; our country's going to be just fine. But we've got to have men and women who are willing to stand up to proclaim the values that this country was based upon.

In 1774, at the Continental Congress when they got together and penned that first document, they talked about "life" and "liberty." Interestingly, the third thing they talked about was "property." A couple of years later, when they actually wrote the Declaration, they changed that "property" to "the pursuit of happiness." I just signed a piece of legislation today, the immanent domain legislation.

I tell people, that "personal property" and the ownership of that personal property is crucial to our way of life. Our founding fathers understood that it was a very important part of the pursuit of happiness. Being able to own things that are your own is one of the things that makes America unique. But I happen to think that it's in jeopardy.

It's in jeopardy because of taxes; it's in jeopardy because of regulation; it's in jeopardy because of a legal system that's run amuck. And I think it's time for us to just hand it over to God and say, "God, You're going to have to fix this." (I think it was Herman Cain who stood up the other day and said, "How's that "Hope and Change" thing working out for you?")

I think it's time for us to use our wisdom and our influence and really put it in God's hands.

That's what I'm going to do, and I hope you'll join me. I hope you'll join us in Houston on the 6th day of August and really start a revival across this country.

Here's what I want to leave you with. I know from time to time, people will say something like, "There goes Perry. He wants to secede."

But I love this country.

We're a special place. We were created by God-fearing individuals who understood those biblical values and how powerful they could be and would be in the future.

In response to this, there's a part of me that wants to comment upon how interesting it is that politicians are so completely unabashed in shaping their words to utilize the fear of the day — today's fear being not so much that we're all being turned into socialists, but that somebody is going to take away all of our toys.

There's a part of me that wants to quote something from Thomas Merton, off the top of my head something like:

[People] imagine that they can only find themselves by asserting their own desires and ambitions and appetites in a struggle with the rest of the world. They try to become real by imposing themselves on other people, by appropriating for themselves some share of the limited supply of created goods and thus emphasizing the difference between themselves and the other men who have less than they, or nothing at all. They can only conceive of… cutting themselves off from other people and building a barrier of contrast and distinction between themselves and other men. […] I have what you have not. I am what you are not. I have taken what you have failed to take and I have seized what you could never get. Therefore you suffer and I am happy, you are despised and I am praised, you die and I live; you are nothing and I am something. And I am all the more something because you are nothing.

But, I think the simplest thing I want to do is just ask a question about "those biblical values." Question is, just where is it that Jesus says owning property is a very important part of my happiness?

Do me a favor and email me the reference when you find it, because I'm at a loss here.

A Congressman Walks Into a Church...

I was at a church and after the sermon was done and things were winding down, a guy got up and said that there was a special guest speaker there to speak for three minutes about his (the speaker's) faith; a sort of personal testimony. The guy doing the introduction noted that the guest was a U.S. Congressman, but of course he would not be making a political speech because the church doesn't support a particular political view. (For those who aren't in the know, I'll note that it's illegal for a nonprofit organization like a church to promote a particular political view.)

I knew right away this could be nothing but problematic. It seemed obvious to me that a politician asking to speak at a church he doesn't normally attend, to speak about faith, as we near the time for candidates to throw their hats in the ring, could be nothing but political. It seemed obvious enough, in fact, that the immediate response in my head to the idea was something along the lines of, You gotta be kidding me...

And so, sure enough, the guy got up and talked for about ten minutes, speaking about how much we need God and prayer to inspire us to make the "right" decisions about laws, and about how he goes to room whatever-it-is to pray regularly with others in congress. He made sure he noted how we could search the internet for the names of those who join him in that room, and made sure he explicitly dropped the name of one of them: a person who happens to be a front-runner for the upcoming presidential primaries. He also made sure that he called that person "a good strong Christian," as if this was the main point he'd make about that candidate no matter what venue he might be speaking in.

Just to cover the most obvious problems with this, for one thing this guy who stood up to talk about the all-importance of God couldn't talk about God without making God subservient to a political end. He cheapened his view of God and faith, thereby undermining his own message. Number two, this guy talked about God and law and country as being of utmost importance, but apparently he doesn't value the law enough to obey it for three minutes. Or, number three, this guy who talked about the all-importance of God wasn't afraid to risk the loss of a hosting church's legal standing; as long as he bought a couple of votes for himself or his party in the process. Is this a guy you want making laws? Is this the guy you want defending your church? Is this a guy who really cares about God and church above himself or a party or an ideology? I understand that I perceive and analyze things differently than your average conservative church attendee, but as far as I could tell the message of the speech was, What I care about is votes for me and my party, and if I can take advantage of God, a church, your personal faith or your own lack of sophistication in order to do so, then thanks for the opportunity to do that here today.

I'd like to say I was appalled, and I suppose I was, but mostly what I felt wasn't even emotional. What I felt was more like a breaking of the last strand of thread within me that wanted to believe politicians could rise above themselves, for even just three minutes, in a house of worship. Apparently, they can't.

I'll guarantee you two things. Given a chance, I wouldn't vote for this guy. And, given a chance, I won't vote for the candidate whose name he inappropriately dropped in church the other day.

I've reached my limit for being insulted by people who make their living winning votes. And I'll have a bit more on this in an upcoming post.

Singing a Song of Refusal

I had been thinking for a year or two about putting together a post with some of my favorite song lyrics, and got a start on it the other night. But, as things tend to go (or not) with my plans, it didn't work out so well.

It's impossible to separate performance from lyrics. Even the same lyrics by the same artist come across differently from performance to performance, so just to throw some words into a post doesn't really do justice to the cause. I happen to think that Joan Baez's later performances of her "Diamonds and Rust," and certain performances of Pearl Jam's "Black," are examples of tremendous lyrics made clear by particular performance, but even these songs lose their impact when only the words are presented. Other lyrics/performances on my list were Meat Loaf's "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad," Patti Smith's and Bruce Springsteen's "Because the Night," and Jewel Kilcher's "Foolish Games." But, after watching various performances of these five works for an hour or two, and as is often the case with me, I got distracted by tangential thoughts.

I started thinking about the times of intense passion, devotion, ecstasy, heartache, futility, exasperation, love and loss between the partners in romantic relationships. I think that's why I like this group of songs; they do a better than average job of capturing some of the more potent emotional aspects of human relationships. So then I started thinking about how a great deal of what it means to be human becomes the exigency for songs like these. And then I thought of the need to expand our thinking from the idea of romantic relationship, and to think of things like disease, hunger, ignorance, economic struggle and all forms of poverty that involve the deepest, rawest aspects of our humanity. Then, I thought about the need to think beyond these and to the issues of basic, individual human identity—the struggle for the most basic apprehension, understanding, and expression of who and what we are as creatures and creations.

For the sake of brevity, I'll mention the rest of my thoughts like this: These issues are manifestations of the dirty issues of being human. I don't mean morally dirty; I mean they are dirty in the sense that they aren't simple and tidy and easy to define and constrain. If you want to look at them, recognize them, acknowledge them and talk about them, you have to be willing to get dirty yourself; you have to let go of absolutes and preconceived judgments and wander in a less certain moral, ethical and spiritual landscape. Metaphorically, you have to be willing to step off of a nice pristine sidewalk in the middle of an affluent and fashionable neighborhood. You have to be willing to go into the inner city, hang out on the street at night, and be exposed and vulnerable. You have to be willing to hear things, to witness things, to be confronted by things, find yourself in the middle of things and contemplate things that you'd rather pretend don't exist. You have to be willing to leave the sanitized, wax-museum world inside your privileged mind and be slapped with the cold realization that human life isn't the make-believe story you think it is. You have to be willing to admit that your fiction of perfection will never become reality. You have to somehow come to realize that no matter how much you want your fiction to be true, it never will be, because it can't. You have to be willing to take your lament that says most of the people in the world don't fit your paradigm of what people should be, and honestly ask yourself if maybe your paradigm is questionable.

And my final thought was, fundamental religion is completely unwilling to do any of these things.

So here I am a few days later, wondering what that means in practicality. It seems to me that if you refuse to acknowledge and deeply contemplate the dirty aspects of being human and of the human condition, you are in all practicality refusing the reality of what we might call The Human. If the only thing you are willing to consider and accept as Human is a pristine, sanitized, stylized view — this is, your own sanitized paradigm— of what it means to be individually and collectively Human, then you are refusing The Human altogether.

And here's the kicker: if true religion is about the relationship of the Human to God—and most fundamental monotheistic religions claim that it is—then to refuse the Human is to refuse the possibility of an authentic Human/God relationship (as if there were any other kind).

The conclusion I come to is simply this: fundamental religion rejects and refuses the Human, and in so doing it at once rejects true religion, and refuses God.

 

I feel the need for a Part 2…

Ruff! Ruff-ruff!

I had a lot of blog post ideas over the weekend, but didn't make time to solidify any one of them into a standalone post. There were a couple of impossible-to-miss news items that each in its own way left me feeling clueless. Dr. Stephen Hawking, et al, has a new book in which the idea of multiple universes reduces the "large anthropic" problem to another case of the "small anthropic" problem. Don't get me wrong; I respect Hawking and at the consumer level I get the large/small idea and the Mtheory idea and so forth. But the whole part about spontaneous creation of something from nothing I don't get, and I seriously doubt I will ever be able to comprehend the idea of nothingness; let alone the idea of nothingness spontaneously giving way to something-ness. It is at this point that I start thinking about the grand narrative of Science and the grand narrative of Religion and figure a person could flip a coin, but for me the latter narrative works better.

At least to a point…

Also in the news is the Dove World Outreach in Gainesville that wants to burn a stack of Qurans. I tend to think that this news "event" is a comparative slide from the sublime to the ridiculous, but at any rate, I am left clueless. How anyone could decide that burning a stack of Qurans (or Bibles, etc.) has a point—let alone a positive one—is beyond me. The thing is, after I read an article about something like that, I end up feeling a little queasy and ashamed and… soiled. Both Science and Religion can and do manifest themselves in shameful ways. Whenever there is fundamentalism of any form, it is willing to destroy much in its name. While I certainly believe that a person should be willing to die for his or her faith (be it in religion or science or some combination of the two), I also believe there is a deep flaw in any faith that concludes those who don't agree with it are by definition expendable.

Such a view seems to miss the most important thing of all…

I love the moments in my life when I am in the presence of my daughters and for perhaps five or ten seconds I am completely overcome, as if by a gentle wave of the sea, with their perfection and their beauty and their grace. In such moments I consider life perfect and complete and I know there is nothing else I need. I am grateful for the simplest and most priceless of things—their health, my health, the smiles on their faces, and for the miracle that they and I exist, here, in this place, together, for a moment. I am overcome with the ontological perfection of humanity, and spontaneously I grin and thank God that I am, and that they are. The perfection of living and loving is such that it can be felt and known deeply and profoundly in a single moment in time, and this to me is a glorious mystery. It is poetic, but it is true, that love's glory cannot be broken into or measured by time. Five seconds of perfected love is just as perfect as ten years of it. Love, like gold, is elemental.

Other things are less unadulterated…

I am a religious and spiritual mongrel, I suppose. While it is true that I call myself Christian because—as Marcus Borg would say—I view Jesus as the decisive revelation of God, the influences upon my own faith have been and continue to be numerous. I am not a complete stranger to Taoism, Buddhism, Judaism or Islam. I am not completely uninfluenced by non-religious yet gifted insights into the nature of man and the world. I've read enough philosophy to last me for a while. And certainly within the Christian realm I am informed by the variety of views espoused and argued over the past two millennia. I spend a lot of time pondering the idea of God and Man and the great Questions unanswerable; of faith and grace, of truth and falsehood, of probabilities and odds, of what is best and worst in Man and me, and of luck and providence. Most of my moments are spent consciously aware of all of these things; of the paradox of their gravity vis-à-vis their ultimate message that the burden is supposed to be light. Most of all, I believe in the Kingdom of Heaven; an ontological state wherein God's rule and reign is shared by all—a metaphorical "place" that, in truth, is all around us in this very moment. And the struggle is no more and no less than this: part of me longs to enter the Kingdom gates more than I want to be alive, more than I want to breathe. I've seen inside the city: It is glorious beyond all articulation. And yet the rest of me is too base and selfish and petty to let the other part of me go. We battle all the time, the many of us inside this shell that others see; wrestling at the city gate.

Such is the nature of being human, and that's the way it is…

But I know a dog named Daisy. I really, really like Daisy. And whenever we go to the house where Daisy lives, she waddles her tired old body over to me with her tail wagging, wanting some loving from me. "Daisy loves daddy" my wife always says to my kids. And she does; in the devoted, humble, soul-ish way that some dogs are capable of loving, Daisy loves me. And so I will sit on the floor, and Daisy will come and sit by me. I'll pet her head, and slowly rub her face and her ears, and after a minute she will stare at me with a request deep in her dark round eyes, and slowly lay down, rolling to her back and curling her front paws just so, and I will slowly rub her belly. After a while her eyes will half-close as she luxuriates in the touch of my hand. And in those long minutes that the two of us are partaking in this loving give and take of dog-kind and human-kind together, I think of relationships small and large, and I hope that Daisy is to me, as I am to God. For me this is a deeper consideration than one might at first believe—the ideas of what a creature gives to and what a creature takes from its god, what its motivations are, what makes it a "good" creature, what of its personality and its nature and its genes and its environment, of what its particular being demands of it; is it culpable for anything at all, and if so, what? Then reverse all this and try to figure out why I value in this creature the things I do; what to me defines a "good" dog, and what is it in my personality and nature and genes and environment that leads me to establish this particular set of criteria? Ultimately, the questions lead a person to ask him or herself about the criteria for being human and for being God, who and what is good, and who is created in whose image after all? Place these latter questions, perhaps, on the list of Questions unanswerable. But dogs do not ask such questions. They know nothing of Mtheory, or of religion and holy books. Neither are they plagued by the austere clouds of existential wandering; they do not try to understand themselves or the mind of a god they cannot begin to fathom. For them there is only a never ending moment, best spent beside their god to feel the warm and gentle presence of its hand. For dogs like Daisy, being is basking in this love as if there is nothing else. Perhaps it takes a mongrel to know this, and if so, then as my Questions fall still and silent, I smile and say softly to myself: Ruff! ruff-ruff!

Honesty and Memoir

I've been re-reading Merton's Conjectures this week. I never cease to be at once laid low and yet set free when I read Merton. What amazing clarity of thought concerning the nature and relationship of Man to God.

Two weeks ago I read Philip Caputo's 1977 A Rumor of War, the memoir of a Vietnam-era Marine 2^nd Lieutenant. I really like it; it is well written, it makes the reader think, and—I have to conclude—it's unflinchingly honest. For me, the meta-experience of reading the book, beyond the undeniable impression of hell as the absence of reason, beyond the unsettling clarity of what Caputo notes "men do in war and war does to men," is the deep power of honesty.

And so today I'm thinking about honesty in one's communication of self, and about how honesty is no doubt related to truth but is not explicitly tied to truth in the ways we want it to be. I'm thinking about the power and correctness of truthfully relating one's self to another, regardless of whether one's self is in line with truth or not. I'm thinking about being honest about being wrong or right. More to the point, I'm thinking about being honest without an inordinate concern for being right or wrong in terms of logic or facts or even "morality"—that honesty is a deeper correctness, a deeper truth, than the things we attempt to advertise or conceal with the fictions of self we are so willing to share with (and sell to) others.

Maybe that is the catharsis of memoir for men like Caputo; not that a final honesty undoes the evil one has done, not that honesty somehow turns falsehoods into truths—but rather that honesty offers a different, more basic compensation for unavoidably living according to the nature of Man.

I think we each need to pen such a memoir. And yet I wonder—how many of us could write an honest one?

One Implies the Other

I've been wondering if I'm growing up, or if I'm just going through a bit a mid-life crisis. On summer vacation this past month, I followed my home town news over the internet, and when I noticed we'd received heavy rains and almost daily flood warnings, I had a desire to be back home so that if our search and rescue team was called out, I'd be there. It was an odd feeling for me, but for the first time in my life, I felt truly devoted to the lives of my community. I think this is growing up.

At the university and at church are plenty of attractive young women, and the other day when one approached me with tears in her eyes and wanting help with her relationships, I felt only as though she was a daughter to me. My mind didn't wander. My gaze didn't divert. I felt, considered and treated her, like she was my own kid in need of support. I think this is growing up.

A few years back I was co-leading a summer program for kids, and one of the kids struck me as a magical young person; full of life and wanting to make something of his own life. (I guess is helps the story to mention that his father is in prison and his mom takes food from dumpsters to make ends meet). He said he liked to write, so at the end of the summer I gave him a journal and wrote him a letter in which I told him he was a special kid, and he could be anything he wanted to be in life. I ran into him the other day and gave him a ride home, down south to a little apartment on a dirt street; a dwelling he doesn't want me to enter. I gave him my phone number and told him he was a good young man, and if he needed anything, give me a call. Since then he's called four or five times, and last night I took him school supplies and a pair of shoes. A big part of me knows he can make it as far as he wants in life. He has the brain and he has the personality for it. But a big part of me knows he first has to beat poverty, stay out of gangs, and keep saying no to drugs. In four years he'll be a senior in high school. All of those big parts of me want to send him to college. I think this is growing up.

If I could retire from my current career next month, it wouldn't be soon enough. The world is full of people who are in the middle of some of privation; some sort of hunger and danger and sorrow and they need another human being to be willing to be there and love them. And I am in a job where money and politics and bureaucracy believe the most important things in the world revolve around little triangles and diamonds on a project schedule. I spend most of my waking life in a world driven by ego and the almighty dollar. I want out. I want to go to bed at night and know a life is better because of me; that somebody will hurt and suffer less tomorrow because of what I did today. And yet, I'm stuck in the wealth of the life I've created for myself and my family, and the fear that we'd go under in a heartbeat without the paycheck. It unsettles me to know full well that maybe this is the point; to put one's money where his or her mouth is—to decide beyond all doubt if I really believe what I think I believe. I think this is a crisis.

But the crisis is potential growth, and the growth is about crisis. To risk one's life for others involves crisis; theirs and mine. To recognize that twenty-something year old women see me as uninteresting except for fatherly advice, and too that I see them as daughters in need of paternal love and encouragement, is a bit of a crisis at the male ego level. To know that I may not or cannot ensure a decent future for young people—even my own children—is a crisis. To desire to do something more substantial, more real and more personal with my life is about growing as a person. So to ask which comes first, crisis or growth, is to know that one implies the other. Crisis invites growth. Growth creates crisis. To grow is to come to love the world more deeply, more profoundly, more truly. And yet, ironically, love always involves some kind of crisis at the personal level; sooner or later. That's the way it is; nothing worth anything comes without a cost.

I'm growing. And I'm in crisis. I'm in crisis. And I'm growing. And you know what? It's a pretty wonderful thing to know that I am.

Can I Borrow the Car?

The following is extracted from some of my comments I posted a few years ago on a Christian forum; I found it in my notes and decided to post it here in slightly modified form:

When a child commits a wrong, and feels guilt, Christians often say that this is an example of God's law written onto the hearts of Man. Purposely avoiding any discussion as to the validity of that claim, I would note that when those same children are quick to accept other people just the way they are, the same Christians might say that this is evidence that children are ignorant of the wages of sin, the need for justice, etc. Given that we have a tendency to view things this way, it seems to me that we tend to view God as having more to do with guilt than grace. And I end up wondering if this view causes us to confuse radical mercy and grace with ignorance or, worse yet, moral bankruptcy.

More to the point, might it be that much of what we see in the world and judge as moral decay is in fact manifestation of God's grace, albeit unnamed, in the lives of the secular? Must we consider a "liberal" stand on an issue as a lack of morality, or might we instead be able to view it as an abundance of Christ's compassion, in a form we have yet to grasp ourselves?

Some (e.g., Thomas Merton) have written extensively about the "hidden Christ" and his action in the lives of all people. I favor the idea that God is presenting himself to each and every person every day, in mysterious ways, striving to touch them and reach them. Sometimes, this presentation becomes real enough to move a person to understanding, compassion and mercy. In this sense, such people have already experienced God and been moved by God. They just have no words, symbols, nor doctrine to attach to their experience. It becomes our role, therefore, to reach those people in that place; to offer a name and reasoned understanding to what they have experienced, so that they may cling to that experience and seek it more fully. I have heard time and time again that evangelism is about planting a seed, but I tend to think it is more about believing in and recognizing that seed, already planted by God, in others.

If this is at all correct, then while we help these people put a name to their experience, we can also, if we are free from judgment and being offended, learn from their unique experience of God. The secular world can teach us about the mystery of Christ in positive ways and not just negative, because he is positively presenting himself to the entire world.

It helps me, at least, to look upon and enter a situation/issue centered in this trust that it is Christ striving to work in the lives of individuals that is always happening and is always paramount. Relatively speaking, proving a philosophical, political or doctrinal point has very little to do with anything, and the manifest presence of Christ has very much to do with everything. I have to devote myself to people, to the nurturing of their unique experience of God through Christ, above and beyond everything else. I think we as Christians often want to change the world. I know as well as anybody that it is an easy thing to want to make a big impact with our actions and words. But it is much more likely that the change we are able to make is at this individual level. Mother Teresa, whatever one may say about her, had a wonderful view of this. She was once asked by a journalist (if I recall the story correctly) how she ever expected to be successful in Calcutta, when it was so big and there were so many poor, and she was only one person with a handful of helpers. Her reply was simply, "God does not call me to be successful. God calls me to be faithful."

Roughly speaking, it seems to me that arguing issues often has more to do with the first part, and compassionately loving people falls into the second part.

I think it's a sad thing that when people come into Christian community, knowingly or unknowingly seeking to tie their very real experience of God into a group of believers and into some sort of "religion" they can claim, we brush their experience aside and tell them that what they really need is to accept our particular religious teaching before they'll ever know anything about God. In brutal practicality, what we are telling them is that what they experienced couldn't have been God, because they aren't good enough (i.e., enough like us) for God to use them for his purposes; as if God can't work in anybody's life unless and until we sanction it. This is the height of arrogance; to think we are the keepers and controllers of God and all his ways, as if he were something akin to a set of car keys. Shame on us.

Emptiness and Equality

You and I will never see one another as equals until we are both made empty.

A more direct and personal way to say this is that I will never see you as my equal until I empty myself of all the distinctions that I claim make you different from me.

A more honest way of saying this is that I admit I create and cherish these distinctions in myself, and that while some of them may be real, most of them are fictions.

The direct and personal, honest and pragmatic way of saying this is that I sin against you all of the time by judging you, because I think you are different from me and, of course, that I think I am better than you.

The spiritual truth I need to face is that I must willingly place myself onto a path that teaches me all such distinctions are meaningless, that they are meaningless regardless of whether they are real or fiction, and that since they are all meaningless, they are all ultimately fictions.

Black. White. Brown. Red. Olive. Yellow. Rich. Poor. Democrat. Republican. Young. Old. Liberal. Conservative. Healthy. Sick. Sane. Crazy. Man. Woman. In-between. Tall. Short. Fat. Skinny. Christian. Muslim. Jew. Beautiful. Ugly. Attractive. Repugnant. Left. Right. Wrong. Easterner. Westerner. Northerner. Southerner. Straight. Gay. Bi. Confused. Phobic. Deserving. Undeserving. Educated. Ignorant. Pro. Anti. Innocent. Guilty. None of the above. Us. Them. You. Me.

If I want to walk a spiritual path, I must come to understand that life in God is not about what separates us from other people, but rather it is about what joins us with other people.

And what is it, in a phrase? That we are all frail, and broken, and longing to be made whole.

Thinking about Truth

I like to think that the idea of truth is one that I carry around with me each moment of my life, and I suppose it is. I like to think that the truth guides my life, and I suppose it does. But sometimes I think about it more than I do at other times.

The truth is a strange thing, and I suppose that before I get started talking about it I should mention that the simple little word "truth" can be mean a thousand different things, and although sometimes we can say "Truth" with a capital letter to help delineate what we're talking about, there are still a thousand ways to think of it. But the truth I'm thinking about, the truth on my mind, is a strange thing. I decided some years ago, and haven't changed my mind since, that Truth always presents a paradox to the human mind. At least, a Truth that comes imposing itself from outside of one's normal perceptions and habits seems to do so. And certainly this is nothing new. Buddhists have taught by way of paradox for ages. Jesus taught in paradoxes. And it isn't so much that a paradox is truly a paradox in an absolute sense; it's just that at the moment we hear it, we don't have the tools to decode its seemingly opposing pieces in a way that they will fit together along with our other tools and ideas.

A few years ago I wrote that I believe in a truth that cannot be spoken. I still do, and at the moment I'm thinking that I'd like to channel Meister Eckert's thoughts about God and say that Truth must remain this way; it must remain mysterious and unspeakable. If it ceased to be a mystery and if we could measure it and point to it, it would become just another fact or figure that Man calls his own. And for me, it would lose what makes it Real in any meaningful sense.

But anyway the Truth I'm thinking about is the Truth that is way, way down deep—somewhere in the vicinity of the questions about what it means to be alive, what it means to be human, about purpose and fulfillment and being and doing. It's certainly not a truth of mathematics or simple historical facts, and neither is it a Truth discussed in the field of epistemology—although that's closer to it. And I have to admit, with an idea that to many people I know seems like blasphemy, it isn't even the Truth of theology or Man's religions—although those are closest yet. No, it's beyond those things. It's way out there in a place where metaphorically I push my mind till it can go no further, and so then I push my heart until it confesses it can see no longer, and then I push it a bit more. I am talking about the Truth that is still beyond me when, with all that I am, I have done my best to leave everything I believe to be true—all the little truths I've learned to accept—and opened myself to Truth. And oh my God, it is a profoundly beautiful place where only silent and slowly forming tears attempt to give it voice. I love that place. With all that I am, I love that place.

And it is in that place that Paradox presents itself in full force, for Truth surrounds everything—and who are we, we who scarcely know how to form a thought unless it is one of division and categorization, to do with such a Unity? How do we understand that Truth is surrounding the sacred and the profane, the beautiful and the ugly, the joyous and the sufferable, the laughing and the weeping, the living and the dying, the cruel and the merciful, the full and the empty, the light and the dark, and every other supposed duality that we have defined? How are we to grasp that? I don't think we can; not well enough to intellectualize it and then speak of it.

But we can feel it—in a certain sense, anyway. We can be exposed to it or experience it as one who stands at an open gate and peers awestruck into an endless field of glory. And our minds can process that feeling; recognize that it is somehow present, and store it away and remember that on that day, in that moment, I experienced something—something beyond all things, and of which I know not how to speak.

It's that something that helps me to know there is a God.

To Change the World

I feel badly for not having kept up with this blog. This past year has got to be one of my most disorganized, and I can't believe how quickly this summer is passing. Some days, I can't even distinguish whether I'm getting important things done or if I'm only treading water. But, I have tried to make a concerted effort to spend extra time with my wife and kids, and there's no way that's a bad thing…

Our oldest kid just got back from a 7^th-12^th grade church camp. One of the college-aged kids who spends his summers working at that camp makes DVDs that cover some of the highlights of each camp session. He shoots video, edits it and sets it to music to produce a fifteen or twenty minute keepsake that the campers can take home with them. I was very moved watching the video this year, to the point of my eyes welling up, as I witnessed a camp full of young people enjoying life and God in community. Anyone who has all but given up on the youth of today should take some time to watch videos like the one I watched this past week. I know that it is easy to look at youth today and to think they are spiritually bereft, and certainly I worry about the challenges, temptations and risks that my three children face, but in many ways I am completely filled with optimism about the future that rests in the hands of our next generation. I need only look at the good will, joy, hope and innocence thriving in the youth of today to find my hope renewed. Faith is still alive. Good will is still alive. Selflessness is still alive. Generosity is still alive. Love in its eternal beauty and unstoppable force is still alive. And really, should we ever doubt this? The Love of God will never be stilled. It can never be overcome nor nullified. It lives for forever and ever more.

This past semester when I got a few chances to talk to teens, I told them they can change the world, and that I believe this with all of my heart. It's true, I do. The world is not that big of a place, and all it takes is a tiny bit of goodness to change it for the better. For you and I as adults, the solemn task before us is to enable our young people to make this possibility a reality. The kid whose heart and mind we touch may be the next MLK, or may go on to touch the kid who will be. The child we hug and convince of his or her immeasurable worth may go on to save a village in the Third World. More practically, through our support we may break a debilitating cycle of violence, abuse, addiction or apathy—changing the path of a family for future generations. A single person can change the destiny of the world, and any child we encounter could be that person. It is true, therefore, that you and I can change the world. At the age of forty-five, in all my years and experience, I am no less convinced of this than I was at seventeen, when I had all the naïve optimism and hope that only youth can afford. Yet and in truth, I am far more deeply and fully convinced of it today, than I ever have been.

My thought for the day? Let's be open to the enormous possibilities that lay before us. Let's keep our eyes, our minds, and our hearts open. Let's invest in youth. Let's encourage them, show them they are worthy of being loved, tell them how great they are, teach them that they can change the world, and share with them whatever portion of God's Love we can. You and I have the chance to change the world by something so simple as a few hours of devoted, loving kindness given to a child. We won't find a much better deal than this, nor a better use of our time. May God bless us, and the chain of lives God touches through us.

What’s in Your Garage?

Here's a quick one…

I was reading on the internet that GM may be coming out with a Z28 in 2011. Cool. I had a 1968 Camaro when I was a kid, so I'm thinking it would be a kick to go and test drive a new Z28. But, alas, I am such a troubled soul—here's where the thought soon took me:

There are a few basic places a person can fall in the Ford/Chevy debate, and the first one is this: There are people who have never owned a Ford (or Chevy), and have never driven one, and who swear it's because Ford (or Chevy) is a far inferior product. There is no real reason for this belief, other than the person has been taught that it is absolutely true— quite likely from somebody else who has never owned the brand, either.

So I've made up the following theoretical dialog, based upon conversations I've heard, to help make a point. (And by the way, I have no idea about the actual performance of the new Camaro and the new Mustang. I'm making this up, so don't comment and call me an idiot because of what I say about a couple of cars. Please. This is just a metaphor, okay?)

The fictive dialog starts like this:

Ford Lover: "Chevy's totally suck."

"Really? Why?"

"Because, man; they suck."

"Yeah but, why? Why do you say that?"

"Because, man. They totally suck! Fords ROCK!"

Now consider the following continuation of the dialog:

Ford Lover: "…My neighbor is a total idiot. I'm not even inviting him to come watch the game on my new big screen."

"Really? What he'd say? What'd he do?"

"Nothing, man. I haven't even met him. He doesn't have to say anything. Dude. Come on. He drives a Chevy. It's there in his driveway."

"I don't understand. That's why he's an idiot?"

"Absolutely. Only an idiot would own a Chevy."

"Oh. Wait, why does that make them an idiot?"

"Because, man. Don't you get it? Because Chevy's suck. Chevy's suck, he drives a Chevy, therefore, he's an idiot."

"But, he's driving a 2011 Z28. That's a pretty cool car. And the reviews say it's pretty impressive."

"No that's a bunch of crap. GM pays those people to say that. No way it's as good as my 'stang."

"You mean yours is faster?"

"Yeah. Way, dude. Mustangs have always been better than Camaros. Camaros suck."

"Yeah but the reviews say it outruns your model of Mustang in the quarter mile by…"

"Doesn't matter. A quarter is nothing. I'm talkin' on the street, man. That's what matters. Quarter doesn't matter at all. I'm talking cornering, braking, mileage, all that stuff. Full package ride. No comparison."

"Yeah but the reviews say the Camaro beats your model of Mustang in all those categories, and gets similar MPG, too, so..."

"Yeah right if you want to pay TWICE AS MUCH for a stupid Camaro, man. That's jacked. Only an idiot would pay that for a Chevy."

"But if you want a performance car and you want to spend under 40k, then, it seems like the Camaro might make sense…"

"No, man, you're not getting it, okay? No amount of money for any performance is worth it if it's a Chevy. It doesn't matter how it performs. It doesn't matter what mileage it gets. It doesn't matter how good it looks on paper, how good the fake reviews are, or that a bunch of idiot Chevy lovers say it's awesome. It's a Chevy. It sucks. Anybody who really knows anything about cars knows that. My neighbor's an idiot. The ride in his driveway proves it."

"Okay, but, I read articles in Car and Driver and in Road and Track, and out of twelve test drivers, eleven said they'd take the Z28 hands-down over the Mustang, and so it seems to me your neighbor…"

"Aw geezus. You're not listening to what I'm saying. Those car magazines get paid off, okay? You can't trust a car magazine to tell you what's best, okay? You have to ask people who know, you know? The people who have the facts."

"People who know? Like, you and your friends you mean?"

"Yeah, like me and my friends, folks who have driven the cars, you know? People who know that the Mustang is awesome, and that the Camaro sucks. It's so obvious, man. You have to be blind not to see it."

"So you've driven the Z28, too?"

"No, no way! I wouldn't be caught dead in that piece of crap. Are you kidding? I mean, people who've driven Mustangs, man. Like, all their life. They know."

"But, so, the people who've driven a Camaro, like your neighbor, he doesn't know? I can't ask him?"

"No of course you can't ask him to tell you. He doesn't know his butt from a hole in the ground. All he's ever driven is a stupid Camaro, so how could he know about Mustangs?"

"Wait. So, I don't get it. If you've never driven a Chevy, then how can you… how do you know…"

"Awww you know what, man? You're starting to piss me off. Are you a Chevy man? 'Cuz you're sure starting to sound like one. Naw you know what man? Just forget it. You're one of those people who's, like, blind to the way things are and you don't want to see the truth. You know what? Just leave, okay? 'Cuz I'm done talking to you. You can go hang with your fellow idiot over there next door."

This discussion is not very far from reality, and indeed, you may have heard a similar one for automobiles, sports teams, brands of computers, musical groups, or almost anything else you can think of. Now, imagine how much more out of hand, how much more ridiculous, how much more sad, and how much more pointless the above conversation would be if the individual asking the questions was exactly like the Mustang owner in terms of his myopic perspective, his logic and his knowledge, but was a Camaro fanatic?

This resultant conversation would be a representative analog of the vast majority of the political and religious discourse I've witnessed.

So what's in your garage, and why is it sitting there? Just something to think about the next time you look at another person and call him an idiot.

Down by the Tracks

I live down by the tracks. I've never counted how many freight trains each day make their rumbling, rattling way past out neighborhood. It doesn't take long to get so accustomed to the sound that you don't notice it any longer; even the deep wail of the horn is seldom heard within one's conscious. I suppose it's the same for those who live in houses a couple of blocks to the east, those in which the big picture windows visibly bend and shake as the cars grind by.

At a traffic light this week I sat and waited as I have so often for a length of train cars to pass. You can learn what's in those cars, if you care to, by studying the symbols on the sides. Chlorine… Sulfuric Acid… Vinyl Chloride... I sometimes wonder how fast I could get my family to safety in the event of an accident and derailment. I usually decide not fast enough, and move my thoughts to other matters. For instance, on this day I sat and stared as I have before at the canvases of graffiti on the rail cars lumbering through my vision from left to right. A lot of the graffiti is the basic, run of the mill, letters and numbers hastily applied by single strokes of a spray can. But once in a while, there is some good stuff. I mean, some really, really impressive artwork deftly applied. It must take years, and a whole lot of practice, to be able to produce what some people can create with a palette of spray cans and a canvas of weather-worn metal. Wow, I'll sometimes mutter to myself, That's really good…

And yet I always end up feeling as though there should be some twinge of guilt within me, a bad feeling in response to the fact that I'm impressed by something that, according to most people, is an illegal act and, by definition, is committed by criminals. If I extrapolate, I suppose that in their view, I might as well praise the "art" of those who commit grand thefts from art galleries, or from banks once thought to be beyond robbery. Admittedly, there is arguably some truth to this charge, and it raises all sorts of interesting questions about one's point of view. I've been sitting here thinking as I type, that the issues start small and grow quickly to the biggest questions of all, covering topics far and wide—from vandalism to grand theft to war and nations and to what it means to be alive and to be human. At the end of the thinking, it comes down to indeterminability, to relativism, and to "morality" — the elusive adhesive that strives to rightly bind and bound humanity, and keep things from falling apart in the face of it all.

I have to say it anyway: I think it's a shame to glance at a rail car that has been made into a display of art, and to be so preoccupied with ethics and morality that one can't, at least for a few moments, ascertain and value an image of creative beauty for what it is. I think in this simplest of cases, we should learn that sometimes we sacrifice what is most human and inspiring, trading them instead for a set of rules, and that it is not always best that those rules become our first thoughts—making things like grace and beauty impossible. Even a proper adhesive is a terribly, terribly difficult thing to apply well when it is not used sparingly. It spills over to destroy all it touches, left to collect a useless and ugly grime that is too often impossible to remove.

But on the other hand, an appreciation for human brilliance should never trump the necessarily prime value of a shared and communal human goodness. Morality in our thinking and in our actions is something we cannot afford to ignore, for we cannot together live well nor long without it. Those who dilute morality to ineffectiveness will find nothing left amongst us to hold together anything of true and lasting goodness. We will all drift apart, and forever remain alone. In our prideful, greedy and pleasure-filled pursuits we will trample others asunder, and in so doing we will declare humanity to be worthless. We will make the epic struggle of our entire human history pointless.

We must each and all strive for morality, but in precisely the proper measure, and in precisely the proper places. This is the conscience-rending line to walk within ourselves—and the only path we can long travel together.

Mr. X

I admit this is a bit thrown together, but I just have to comment on something because it has been bothering me for quite a while now.

It's Mr. X. He's one of the folks who can make me very sad over the state of Christianity in politics and media.

What's normally said about Mr. X in the blogosphere is simply, "He's an idiot." Here are a few of the reasons why:

1. Mr. X "totally concurred" with a certain Mr. Y when the latter said that blame for 9/11 had to be shouldered by the ACLU, abortionists, feminists, gays, lesbians, pagans, and People for the American Way.
   
2. According to Mr. X, Katrina was largely a function of America's views on abortion.
   
3. Mr. X says that the earthquake in Haiti is related to Haiti's eighteenth century slave revolt and pact with the Devil.
   
4. Mr. X says that Islam is not a religion, but rather a political movement intent on taking over the entire world.
   
5. While I'm at it, just for good measure I'll note that this past Halloween the website associated with Mr. X's ministry noted that we shouldn't eat candy sold in stores during October, because it's all cursed by demons.
   

I have to admit, I'm a bit confused. I kind of thought that conservatives typically didn't like the whole "blame the victim" approach. I didn't realize that God would kill (or allow the killing of) tens of thousands of Christians today, because of something their political ancestors did hundreds of years ago. For the life of me, I really thought Islam was a religion. And if demons are so intent on cursing our children, why would they only do it with candy, and only in October?

So, anyway, here's what I'm thinking. I watch videos of this guy, and I think, you know, maybe this guy believes what he's saying. I mean, I think, really, sincerely, he believes it all. And so yeah, if you want to say so, then I can see you saying he's not very bright. Even if you choose not to attack his theology and simply look at his timing, you could say it. But, I'm saying, so what if he's not terribly bright? I'm not sure I can hold much against somebody who is sincere but simply isn't the sharpest tack in the box. In fact, I'd take a sincere idiot over the alternative, because I'm also thinking the following…

Is it really possible for this guy to be the idiot people say he is? Can you really get to be as famous as Mr. X is, even to the point of being under any kind of consideration for being in a Presidential bid, and be an idiot? Don't you at least have to be a bit shrewd? A bit clever and calculating? A bit driven by a plan? Well if so, then I have to wonder where Mr. X is really coming from when he says the things he says.

To be fair, it isn't only Mr. X whom this applies to. I think I could make a list of media personalities who make me wonder if they are just really, really dim, of if there is something a bit, well, sinister behind their remarks. There are quite a few folks in the world who say stuff, and I think, "Good Lord. That's sad. That's ignorant on so many levels, I don't even know where to begin explaining how ignorant it is." And then I think about it, and I think, "No. Come on. You can't be that ignorant. You just can't. You're a reasonably sharp person, and you have to be so to have gotten where you are. You can't possibly believe what you've just said. So, why are you saying it?"

There's a certain flavor of analysis that can be done in each case, but what it generally comes down to in its conclusion is this: The person doesn't even care if what they are saying is correct or incorrect, right or wrong, brilliant or idiotic, responsible or irresponsible. He or she knows that there is a group of followers out there who will believe anything that he or she says, let their emotions lead them, and who will continue to buy books, watch a show or listen to a radio program, or simply send a check. The conclusion is simply that people say these things for no other reason than it profits them, and they will take a profit from anybody no matter what kind of damage it does to society or to individual souls.

And that's why I hope people like Mr. X truly are just a bit dim and genuinely think they are doing good in the world when they dribble their opinions all over themselves; I don't like having to face the idea of the obvious alternative.

Closet of Belief – Part I

Remember reading this post of mine concerning transparency? Well, it's not like I've forgotten about it. It's a constant struggle with me, one that seems to ebb and flow as the months and years go by…

One of the reasons I haven't posted much to speak of in quite a while is that I've been doing quite a lot of thinking and more than a little soul searching. It isn't that this plague is new to me; it's simply that the landscape I've been wandering through is rather vast and the mental contrast is a bit low.

To start with, I've been thinking about systems of thought—more specifically, "highly developed" systems of thought like political ideologies, religious doctrine, "the scientific method," the "engineering process" and other such things. Quite frankly, I've been stuck in a quagmire of mild contempt. I've decided that at this stage of my life, I have very little tolerance for such systems; more accurately said, I have very little tolerance for blind, arrogant allegiance to such systems.

All of this has one of its roots in the idea of verifiable empirical data, about which I've written before. I consider it a great irony that we have been conditioned to consider such data to be the litmus test of truth, when in fact such data is perhaps the one thing that can be most manipulated to pass off falsehood as truth. Facts, figures, data, polls, process and procedure, statistics, sanctioned and ratified interpretations and the like all fit into this idea of "empirical data."

All of this has another root in the tendency of people to respond to two basic aspects of animal nature: pleasure and fear. That pleasure and fear are the main motivators of people is not an unknown idea; it is not even a lesser known idea. It is common thought. Likewise, it is common thought that verifiable empirical data is manipulated in its use to appeal to pleasure and fear, and thus accomplish the ends of those who wield the data. But what is less common is the recognition that verifiable empirical data itself—indeed, the ideas of "verification" and "empiricism" are themselves informed and constructed by the motivations born of fear and pleasure. The untruth is the claim that there is a readily available, highly developed system that is above all of this and is therefore qualified to judge, manipulate, and abuse those people who are outside of (typically considered "beneath") that system. Closer to the truth is that the system itself is at least somewhat flawed, and that blind buy-in to all of its claims is already always in error.

This error now seems to obvious to me that I'm not sure what to do about it, nor why so many of us are willing to be victim to it. But I tend to think that, no surprise, it has to do with fear and pleasure. Buying into a system with little or no critical questioning brings a certain protection from fear, and a certain appropriation of pleasure, be they from gaining access to (or avoiding exclusion from) a particular social group, or perhaps from avoiding the pain of introspective thought, or what-have-you. Whatever the case may be, I've been thinking that I'm about done and finished with battling such systems. I'm about ready to raise a white flag, and my new mantra become a couldn't-be-less-interested, Yeah. Okay. Whatever.

But this leads to the second thing I've been thinking about at length, which is the inferred buy-in that apathy and silence allow. Although most of these thoughts are nothing new for me, the somewhat less-old thought is that I don't think I want to be guilty by association anymore. I'm tired of idiotic paths in science and engineering. I'm tired of political platforms and ideologies that are moronic and embarrassing and insulting. I'm tired of doctrinal systems that justify all manner of greed, selfishness, hatred, injustice and like evils. I'm tired of the common occurrence of people presuming that by my silence I share in, or at least offer tacit approval if, their views in any of these areas. And most of all, I'm tired of the inescapable conclusion that I am living a fundamentally dishonest life by allowing such presumptions to arise and continue. It's as I'm living in a closet of beliefs. And I have to say, my trembling hand is wrapped around the door knob, and my knuckles are turning white.

Now, this gets me to thinking about the more common, pop-culture use of the term "coming out of the closet," and although I don't pretend to fully understand the difficulties that people of varying orientations face in doing so, in a certain sense all of these concepts can be grouped together. Some of us live in one or more closets of belief; those things we believe about ourselves, about the world, about the Divine, about politics, about family and friendship and love, and all manner of things. We keep them closeted and locked away—because of fear and pleasure. At some level, we are fundamentally different from our closest associates, and it breeds a tremendous, horrific, deeply unsettling and sometimes incapacitating fear surrounding the threat of us being "found out." I wonder if the fear and trepidation of coming out of all such closets is largely the same.

At any rate, I fear telling people what I really think and/or feel about things—about what my opinions really are with respect to various matters . I've been that way all of my life; since I was a little kid. I understand intellectually that it's a fear of being rejected and a loss of the pleasure one gets from feeling like you belong with the people around you, and that you're accepted by them. But I also understand intellectually, quite clearly, that this is completely senseless. The nagging reality is that if all those people you hide from aren't seeing the real you, then it isn't you they are supposedly loving and accepting. In the effort to apprehend true, genuine love and acceptance, you are making each completely impossible. This is one of human life's more unsettling ironies of the human psyche: in the pursuit of love, we make of ourselves a fiction, and since love is truth, our fiction makes being loved impossible.

I know this. I know this. To the very core of my being, I know this. I can remember thinking as a teenager, "you know, if somebody really loves you, there isn't a thing in a world you can do make them stop, and if somebody doesn't love you, then there's not a thing you can do to make them." I've known this for years and years and years. And yet, I persist in my stasis.

And so a third thing I've been thinking is that I can only deduce that within me is a deep, primal, irrational, instinctive, pathological, call-it-what-you-will overwhelming fear that I have yet, in decades, to overcome. I'm an insightful person. I'm a deeply introspective person. I'm a well educated person. I'm a reasonably intelligent person. I'm a good-hearted and well-meaning person who wants to experience humanity in the fullness of its promised freedom and peace. I want to be open. I want to be seen. I want to be known. And I want to be loved in all of that transparency. And yet, I cannot kill this monster inside my head.

But maybe, just maybe, if nothing else, simply mentioning the beast is the first few degrees of rotation of the closet's doorknob. I've optimistically suffixed the title of this post with "Part I," as if there are more parts to follow.

Time will tell, but for now the Monster is simply eyeing me with a complacent, challenging, half-smile. He doesn't seem scared at all.

When You Ride the Train too Long

Man, have I been busy lately. Well. For a while. And now I find myself still with not a lot of time, feeling like I need to post, wanting to post a catch-all, this is what I've been thinking post, and not having enough time to do so. But here's a reasonably quick one.

Consider two trains on the same track, their cabooses touching, about to head off in opposite directions on a long straight track that perfectly circles the earth. One train is the liberal train and one is the conservative train. And… off they go!

It isn't hard to look at stuff in media, or stuff you receive in email, and notice that some folks have just plain bought hook, line and sinker into a particular way of thinking for a long time, and it's snowballed on them. As their own locomotive picks up speed and steams off toward the horizon, they confidently wave good-bye and good riddance to the wicked "train of error" receding from their vision.

They just don't seem to realize that soon enough, if they don't jump off that train, it's going to run head-on into its counterpart and the two are going to be not so far different from doppelgangers, demolished and wrapped into a giant, twisted mass of indiscernible wreckage.

I was thinking about this late last year, when the folks at the Conservative Bible Project announced they're creating a conservative Bible that is minus, among other things, what they consider to be liberal bias. Take a look at it. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out this is an epic train wreck waiting to happen. I mean, these folks are intent on creating a "framework against liberal bias" they claim has distorted the original texts, but are also intent on creating a translation that will express many of Jesus' parables with their "full free-market meaning." This would be fairly humorous if it weren't so serious. (And just for good measure, I am dubious of any wiki that calls itself "The Trustworthy Encyclopedia." It's much the same as "fair and balanced," in my opinion.)

What got me back into thinking about this lately is an email I received a few days ago, one that I may blog about under a different title, wherein the author talks about how the truth of the doctrine of Christ is being destroyed by liberals. Later, he goes on to say that the doctrine of Christ, the truth of Christ, begins with the second chapter of Acts and excludes all of Jesus' teaching before his crucifixion. The truth of the doctrine of Christ does not include what Jesus taught while he was alive, and that essentially we need to stop teaching from the Gospels.

I kid. You. Not.

Now, this post is made up of examples about conservatives who seriously needed to jump from the train a long time ago, but the same is true for some liberals who should have done the same thing but didn't, either. I fully admit that. But my point is simply this: You do not have to do this. Please. You do not have to check your brain and your heart and your soul at the steps of an ideology train when the conductor checks your favorite brand of boarding pass. You're smarter than that, and you deserve better.

The Bread Metaphor, Applied

I have an apparently irresistible tendency to speak in terms of metaphors…

My wife and I have been together for over 20 years, and our familiarity with one another aids, at least a little bit, our communication. For example, if I were to be driving home from work and receive a text message from her that read, "pick up bread," I would have a specific response. Namely, I'd stop at the local warehouse store and pick up a two-pack of a particular style of sliced sandwich bread from a specific baker. We do this approximately every two weeks, so I know the routine. I pretty much know what "pick up bread" means, and the fact that I do is kind of an amazing thing.

It's kind of amazing because suppose that the situation were a bit more complex. Suppose that what "pick up bread" means is: "Stop at Druer's Bakery on 4^th street and see if they have their sourdough bread fresh baked today. If they do, please buy a loaf. If they don't, but it was baked within the last three days and is half-priced, get that. If they have neither, see if they have their plain sandwich bread with the split top, baked today or yesterday. If they don't, then go to Jones Bakery at the corner of 6^th and Ash. They make lousy sourdough bread, but their rye is excellent so see if they have any. If they do, it will be fresh because they only keep it two days, so it should be fine. Buy a loaf and bring it home. If they don't have the rye, then go across the street to the supermarket and pick up any kind of sandwich bread they have as long as it is wheat and feels fresh. But if that weird guy with the greasy hair and half-grown beard is the clerk, then don't buy it because he freaks me out and I swore we'd never deal with him again." In fact, we could make the meaning of "pick up bread" as complex as we wanted; say, complex enough to require ten pages of rules to articulate on paper, and I would still know, in an instant, what the simple phrase means. That's kind of amazing, especially when you realize that this goes on with every single one of us with every single language construct we encounter throughout the day.

It's obvious that the meaning of "pick up bread" differs from person to person, but the tricky part is that even for my wife and me, the meaning might change from time to time. "Pick up bread" on this particular day may refer to the conversation I had with her the previous night, wherein she noted that she needs French bread to take to a party tonight. Or, "pick up bread" might mean that I am to pick up a box of frozen, pre-buttered garlic bread—and I will assign this meaning to the phrase if I am at the top of my game and recall that we are having spaghetti for dinner tonight.

Anyway, the point is that "pick up bread" means something different for different people, and possibly means something different for the same people, given the circumstances. This is my way of saying, for purposes of this post, that meaning is contextual. Words themselves, as symbols written or spoken, have no intrinsic meaning. The meaning is embedded in the context of relationship, history, and the momentary circumstances and environment at hand.

The reason I bring this up is because there is a church I know that has a slogan: "Loving God, loving neighbors. It's that simple," and every time I think about that slogan I think of meaning being embedded in context. I think about how most of the Christians in the world agree with one another in principle, and how they really don't agree in actual practice.

With all of my heart, I would agree with the idea that loving God and loving neighbors is the simplicity of Christian faith and praxis. I really, honestly believe it's that simple. It's that simple, and if all the Christians in the world would just stop bickering about doctrine and focus upon the simplicity of this idea, life in Christendom would be far more harmonious. But, it's not that simple, and the reason is context. I would be willing to wager that nine out of ten Christians surveyed, if they are Christians who spend much time reading the Bible, would say that the two greatest commandments are: Love God with all your heart, soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. This is not a tough answer to come up with, because Jesus was extremely explicit about this. But this is analogous to "pick up bread." We all know "pick up bread" means our spouse wants us to show up at home with the type of bread product he or she in mind when they constructed the message, but the trick is, from one person to the next, from one context to another, what does "bread" mean? So in other words, what does it mean to "love God", and what does it mean to "love my neighbor?" That's the extremely complicated part, and there are limitless answers, many of which are accompanied by very highly developed, intricate and strongly defended doctrinal systems.

There are some, for instance, who would say that loving God begins with moral behavior, and some who would say that loving God begins with the heart and leads to moral behavior. Some would say the two are the same. Some people would say that loving the drunkard who asks for money means ignoring him and not supporting his addiction. Some would say loving him means giving him money to stop his pain of the moment. Distinctions exist for almost every situation a person can dream up, from the very tiny and subtle to the large and blatant, and I don't want to go into any of them herein; it is an exercise left for the reader. The point is simply that it is quite possible that the Christian across the pew from me is doing his or her best to love God and love neighbors fully, as am I, but our beliefs and our praxis as to what those two things mean are very, very different. As Christians living in communities small (i.e., congregational) and large( i.e., Christendom), what do we do with this? I think there are things we can do with it, and things we cannot. Let me return to the bread metaphor again…

There are times when, despite all my familiarity with my wife, I just get it wrong. Maybe the store is out of the normal bread so I take a guess at a substitute, and it's a really bad guess. Maybe I forget that we talked about tomorrow's party. Maybe I neglect to read the menu stuck to the refrigerator door and so don't notice that we're having spaghetti tonight. I miss it. I fail to interpret "pick up bread" correctly. But here's the deal: Did I fail with the best of honest and sincere intentions, or did I fail because I just didn't try? In my opinion, if I make an honest effort to get what she wanted, and do my best, I've "picked up bread." This could mean that I could tell from the parking lot that the warehouse store would take an hour, and she'd much rather me get a substitute bread at the quickie mart than be home late. It could mean that in a myriad of ways I get a substitute that, all things considered, she would accept as a thoughtful and caring attempt to fulfill her request. (This is, in actuality, due to the very great depth as to what "pick up bread" really means; it's quite a deep definition that is buried in the relationship that exists only between my wife and I.) But on the other hand, it's entirely possible for me to decide that I don't care about her request as long as I can think of some plausibly arguable excuse as to why I couldn't fulfill it. Maybe I'm tired and cranky and I don't want to go to the warehouse store today and so I stop at the quickie mart and get whatever they have. Maybe I'm feeling particularly uncaring on a particular day, or even mean and cruel, and so I pick up a package of hamburger buns. "Hey all you asked for is 'bread,' and hamburger buns are bread" I might defiantly remark in the midst of her protests. For that matter I could buy kosher crackers and when she complains, "this isn't even bread!" I could sarcastically demand, "Well you call it bread on Sunday mornings, don't you? Which is it: bread, or not?" And so there is more to fulfilling my wife's request than meeting the particulars of what she meant when she asked me "pick up bread," and ultimately in the relationship between my wife and I this "more" is what matters most: There is leeway, and there is devotion. If my heart is devoted to her request, there is (and rightly should be) leeway in what I do. But I have a responsibility to—in fact if I love my wife I will— devote myself to trying to meet her requests as best as I can. And of course, picking up bread is only one—one of the most simple—in a list of countless items in our life together.

And so there is leeway and there is devotion. In Christian terminology, we might say that the leeway is Grace. And, we might say that the devotion is the loving of God and neighbor through the heartfelt giving of one's self as a living sacrifice. The takeaway is that in a church that says it's all as simple as loving God and loving neighbors, there are two things that must be present in order to live up to the slogan. One, each Christian much devote his or her self, deeply and profoundly within the depths of his or her uniquely individual soul, to the love of God and neighbor. But two, the church in general must understand that there is leeway; that loving God and neighbor are contextual, and that it is the heart (providing the why of praxis), rather than the mind (judging what the praxis must be), that makes loving what it is. The call for the Christian is to love God and love neighbor, but not to tell another Christian precisely how this has to be done. And the church, as a whole, should continually encourage and foster just such a devotion in each individual member. I tend to think the apostle Paul would agree, for he said:

Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand. Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God. We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, "As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God." So then, each of us will be accountable to God. Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another. (Romans 14:1-13. NRSV)

Loving God, loving neighbors. It's that simple. Well, if each Christian passionately and profoundly devotes his or her self to loving God and neighbor from the heart, and
if each Christian is given the trust and freedom to do so as he or she sincerely understands it, then yes: It's that simple. And yes, I believe this with all of my heart.

Names in the News, The Manhattan Declaration, and some Personal Baggage

Well the semester has come to a close, and it's been a while since I posted anything, so I suppose I should post something. I've been keeping notes about a few things that have been in the news, and I should remind my readers that I spend a fair amount of my time inhabiting the space that spans between opposing factions in culture. For example, I wrote some notes about the Miss California, Carrie Prejean, Perez Hilton, gay marriage, gay rights, conservative, liberal, Christian, what-have-you saga that filled the news media for a while. In short, the story that shouldn't have been a story at all was intriguing to me, simply because it is a perfect model of the type of large-scale discourse contention we see in culture today—and it is significant that one of the ways in which it is a perfect model is that it is absolutely asinine and embarrassingly stupid on all sides. On another note, a friend of mine recently notified me of The Manhattan Declaration, and so I spent a few minutes reading it and then searching the web to see what's being said about it, and then reading it again. I think I have a couple of months' worth of exasperation built up inside of me and need to release some of it, even if it means standing on a soapbox for a few minutes. So here's part of what I have to say about the Manhattan Declaration (MD), although it's very much mixed in with some other assorted baggage, frustration, and curiosity thrown in for good measure.

For example, the other stuff could begin with David Letterman and Tiger Woods. What is interesting in these stories is that Letterman got off lightly in comparison to Woods. Why? I see this as tying in with something I write about once in a while on this blog, and the difference between the stories as basically this: Letterman has never attempted to position himself on the moral high-ground of society, but in a certain sense Woods has. Letterman has never made a buck off of a squeaky clean image, but Woods has. And I don't think the American public really cares, comparatively speaking, whether you have sex with a few of the women who work for you, or whether you have sex with a few women in each of the cities the PGA happens to visit. There are plenty of actors, rock stars and athletes—as well as less famous people—who do this all of the time and in some cases it's even expected of them. Nobody complains much about these people and their antics. But, people don't like it when somebody who presents himself as above it, does it. People don't like hypocrisy, and that's the core of the issue. Furthermore, I dare say that people would be a lot less upset with Woods if, say, he had only a single infraction whom he claimed was more or less a one night stand. This could be passed off and probably widely accepted as a far less sinister "mistake" induced by "moral weakness," which people tend to understand and forgive. Weakness we understand, because we all have it. Fraud we don't accept, because most of us try not to commit it.

Of course, the folks who "handle" famous people know this, which is why they often recommend a rapid and public display of remorse over one's weakness. This sometimes works, but there's not a lot of hope of inciting people to confuse simple temporal weakness with fraud, when the "weakness" has perpetuated itself, hidden in the shadows, for a long time. There's simple moral weakness in a cop taking a bribe once in his life; there's outright fraud in a perpetually corrupt cop.

I'd say it isn't always the case, but it is often the case that moral fraud begins with simple weakness (although the waters get muddied if you want to call fraud a form of moral weakness). It seems intuitive to me that the weakness has to be dealt with quickly, by confessing it to another person with the intent of ending it, or else fraud will shortly follow. I tend to think that this is thy the Christian tradition, in its various forms, involves confession of one's transgressions. Confession helps to prevent weakness, which we all possess, from progressing onward to fraud, which we can choose to avoid. What this requires is humility, and I would contend that the inhibitor of confession is pride, either in the form of "I don't want other people to know" or "Hey, I gotta right to do what I did because…." And this is another of the practically limitless reasons why pride is the foundational enemy of a "holy," spirit-filled life, and why humility is necessary for such a life. But I digress…

The MD contains, I think after a couple of readings, a lot of carefully considered and eloquent words. It also has some good thoughts in it; at least in principle. Its preamble mentions the history of Christianity in terms of its devotion to the outcast and downtrodden, which is in my opinion undeniable as the very root of Christian faith. It notes the role of Christians in modern social causes such as slavery, women's suffrage, and the civil rights movement. To me this is all well and good, and certainly it is true that Christians were instrumental in bringing about much needed moral change in those areas. The MD also does a good job of making it clear that it does not condemn any particular individual human. Although it does speak against certain behaviors and general directions of society, it admits that all humans are weak and flawed and all are in need of God's grace. I think this is a good thing. Additionally, the MD explicitly positions itself as a non-political declaration, which is, in theory, laudable. At the highest level, and if I can wave my hands for a moment, the MD claims that it is about the sanctity of human life, the sanctity of marriage, and religious freedom. As such, the MD is a positive document and I would likely support it with a signature if it was only a preamble and a simple statement of these three ideals. Unfortunately, it is not that simple:

Noting that Christians have been instrumental in supporting great causes completely ignores that many Christians have also opposed great causes. There was plenty of slavery, gender bias and racism that was justified in the name of the Bible, and this continues to be the case today. Benefitting from a claim of Christian courage in righting wrongs is weakened when one fails to address the fact that those wrongs were also, perhaps in greater numbers, justified in the name of Christianity. The call involving the sanctity of life is directed at abortion, assisted suicide and euthanasia, but mentions nothing of war and capital punishment. The call involving sanctity of marriage is circumscribed and limited to a definition of marriage presupposed by the MD, and I infer from the document that its statements regarding freedom of religion and conscience are similarly constrained. Some of these topics will be discussed further below, but in general I find it personally impossible to sign the MD, for various reasons.

First of all and in general terms, I have to admit that I'm not much of "a joiner" when it comes to petitions, clubs and organizations; I just never can feel fully comfortable with other people packaging together a set of statements, beliefs and opinions, and asking to me to align myself with them. I suppose it's simply because I haven't found a package I align with fully. It is almost invariable that by aligning one's self with a statement, organization or person because of one or more similar beliefs, you are also going to wind up associated with other beliefs that may not be similar to your own. In the end game, you have to make sure that you feel strongly enough about the former things that you are willing to view the latter as comparatively insignificant. And this is one of things I see in the Manhattan Declaration; in some interesting ways.

For example, one of the things I wonder about the MD is that I know a lot of folks who are pretty fundamental in their Protestant views, and they don't consider Catholics and Orthodox folks—well, most other Christians, actually—to be Christians. These folks tend to think that only their brand of Protestantism is actual Christianity. But I would bet that many of them would be all for signing the MD, and so what are they implicitly saying when they sign a document that considers all these other people of varying "ecclesiastical" views to be "Christian?" Do people realize that by signing the MD, they may be making an implicit claim they don't believe?

The MD's invitation to sign goes further, welcoming your signature even if you're an unbeliever in a Christian sense but yet agree with the three main principles of the declaration. This seems odd to me on a couple of levels, the obvious being, "We know you don't believe what we believe about God and Jesus and all that, and so we tend to think you're going to Hell, but, would you sign up with us and help us fight the things with which we disagree?" On the second level, this seems a bit like when the Moral Majority joined forces with feminist groups to fight pornography a few decades ago, even though the former often considers the latter to be culpable for many of our society's ills. This seems foundationally duplicitous to me; shameful, even. I think all Christians need to think about the aspects of moral honesty and integrity in what they say, and I'm not sure they're doing so when, in the interest of their own agenda, they align themselves with people that on any other day they malign and consider to be part of what they are fighting.

This seems to me to be symptomatic of the tendency I've noted in the conservative Christian movement as it plays out in media, and please don't think for a second that the movement is innocent in the media game, as if it tries not to play but always gets sucked in by the "liberal media." No, it willingly places itself into the arena, a point I'll talk more about in a moment, and the sad thing is that it does a really bad job of positioning itself whenever it tries. Part of the problem is that it's obviously desperate to find its own heroes to place upon a placard. For example, it did this with the young lady who prayed with a killer-on-the-run and convinced him to turn himself in to the authorities without a fight. The movement jumped all over her courage and prayer; but it wasn't sure what to do with her shattered family life and drug use that came to light a few days later—as if the movement shouldn't have been able to see this coming (this was the subject of my very first blog post, in fact). The movement also did this most recently with dethroned Ms. California, making her a poster child for family values and Christian morality, soon trying valiantly to continue to prove their point amidst her subsequent talk of breast implants, semi-nude photos and a video of her performing autoerotic acts for her ex-boyfriend. (And again, that the Christian right didn't see this coming is disturbing.)

In my opinion, and please, please I don't intend to sound misogynistic here at all—in fact quite the opposite—the real reason the movement was especially quick to clamor for these two particular heroines, in addition to its normal famished-induced quest for any hero, is that (though nobody likes to play this card) they're both good looking women. "Never mind that we have to look to someone who tries to make a living pedaling her flesh," (and, by the way, that's what swimsuit modeling and beauty pageants are) "we need a good looking role model that will capture people's interest! The liberals in Hollywood have all of them on contract!" I realize I am digressing a bit, but I have a point here. The point is that, as the MD further exemplifies, the Christian right is so desperate to get people on its side, and/or to demonstrate that people are on its side, that it will turn to people who flaunt their bodies, anyone remotely claiming to be Christian, and even nonbelievers as long as they are willing to agree with the movement on three basic things: Abortion, Marriage, and Religious Freedom (more on what "religious freedom" means in the context of the MD will follow in a moment). It is so desperate that it will attach itself to people that oftentimes represent the very things that, on any other day, the movement considers to belong to the "enemy." To me, this is tragically sad—to the point of being morbidly fascinating.

The Christian right, as finally definitively stated via the MD, is saying to people that "if you agree with us on these three things, even if you are a non-believer, you are more like us than the professing Christian who disagrees with us." Think about this for a long moment. It is tantamount to saying that if you are an atheist who is pro-life and anti-gay marriage, we want you with us. If you are a Christian who is pro-choice and/or pro gay marriage, you need to repent and change because you're not, really, what we consider to be fully Christian. All I can say to this at the moment is, so much for agenda item number three of the MD: religious freedom and stands of conscience.

And this brings us to the MD's call for such: Religious freedom and the freedom to act according to one's conscience. This is a fantastic idea (as are the face-value ideas of the sanctity of human life and marriage), but apparently, what the MD means is that freedom of religion and adherence to conscience are fundamentally important to being human—as long as what they mean is that religious freedom is the freedom to be conservative Christians (read: your agenda is pro-life and anti-gay praxis) and that freedom of conscience applies as long as your conscience is the same as theirs. Rhetorically this is very similar to a position that is usually reversed and causes conservatives to claim (often rightly so)that liberals are hypocrites, but be that as it may it is an appalling shoe no matter whose foot it covers, and it is part and parcel as to why the Christian right is losing the media battle that, again, it willingly engages. It's been said that if you ask the average young person on the street to say what contemporary Christianity is about, he or she will begin by saying it is pro-life and anti-gay. To me it is a terrible tragedy that the populace would even begin to view Christianity in such a pathetically circumscribed manner that is infinitely removed from the riches and depth of life in God through the Spirit as revealed in Jesus. But, you know what? If that's the view, it's at least partly because conservative Christianity has positioned itself in the media battle, right in this very spot, willingly and on purpose. The MD for all its well-written and careful eloquence is, in a certain sense, just another example of how the movement does so—to the great detriment of Christianity's cultural standing.

In fact, once you think about the MD in this light, that all in all it makes almost zero sense from an overarching Christian perspective, nor from a perspective of trying to effectively engage contemporary culture, nor from a simple media battle perspective, you really have to conclude one of two things: either the people who wrote it are absolute idiots, or the MD is not so much about religion as it is about politics. Now, if the MD is about politics, then this, in and of itself, makes it questionable from the start. And if it is about politics, then I would advise religious leaders not to promote the MD in any way that is officially associated with their churches; they would be dangerously close to violating the terms of their 501c designation.

[Before I continue, I want it to be crystal clear that I have no bad thoughts whatsoever about the genuinely courageous young woman who prayed with the killer and convinced him to turn himself in. I care not about her family problems nor her drug use, except in the sense that I hope she has and continues to work through those. I wish her the Love of God and all good things in life. As for Ms. California, I have no negative judgment for her, either. I couldn't care less about her implants, her photos or her video. Her story is so boring that it should have never become a story, and it is incontrovertible that she is famous only because has been victimized by the left and by the right; a twenty-one year old kid made a pawn in a media game of power, politics, and embarrassingly sophomoric rhetoric from all involved. I wish her, too, the Love of God and all good things in life. I hope both of these young women find good people in life to help them along and to give them meaningful lives. They need and deserve these things no less than any of the rest of us. In short, I wish them both the blessing of God's Grace, and I only talked about them because they help to demonstrate the desperation of the Christian right to claim for itself some sellable mix of a hero in terms of morality and culturally requisite sex appeal. The apparent horrendous, insidious hypocrisy of this is, well, a post for another day.]

I had a rather lengthy conclusion, but I've deleted it. My final point gets back to my opening statements, though, in the question of what claims a signer of the MD is making about Christianity, both explicitly and implicitly. Are you as a signer willing to plant your feet and say, "Hell no we're not going to take it anymore" over these three issues? Of all the things you could stand before the world and claim as key to your faith, are these, in precisely the way they are presented in the Declaration, them? Are you willing to imply that for you they come before Christ and him crucified? Before Faith and Grace? Before the issues of social justice, financial greed, and pride-fueled complacency in general culture and in our churches? Before the catastrophically suicidal ways in which conservative Christianity continues to position itself in a media-fueled cultural debate? Are you willing to publicly call "Christian" those you privately denounce as not? Are you willing to stand arm in arm with the atheist while you cast a disapproving eye to professing Christians who disagree with you and yet who, after all, are only following their conscience and therefore—according to your own signature—should be defended for doing so? If you only get one shot in life to sign a worldwide declaration that in essence says, "My way is the right way and by God I want it that way now," are these
three things, in precisely the way they are stated in the declaration, the ones you pick?

Maybe so, maybe not. It's totally your choice and your freedom and your conscience either way. But I'd like to make a suggestion before you sign. Imagine yourself meeting a stranger, about whom you know nothing. He or she looks deeply troubled, and asks you to share, in two minutes, what being a Christian means to you. If that two minutes is a rough paraphrase of the Manhattan Declaration, then you should sign it. But if you share something else, something more foundational and basic and essential about God making all things right and holy in the end no matter who you are, where you've been, and what you've done, then maybe you should think twice before you pick up that pen to let others do your talking—and your thinking—for you.

*Cough* Soapbox mode is now set to OFF.