Trying to be Balanced may be Overrated!

I am aware that I am considered a liberal on most measures. In an attempt to be as open as possible to "all sides", I do read some people's opinions that I do not necessarily agree with, especially if what they write makes some sense. I cite my daily reading of Walter Mead's blog who has to be one of those people with conservative views that are most thought provoking. His intelligence is noted by the arguments he cites, not merely his opposition to the more liberal views in question.

I cite two of his repeated views. While he thoughtfully traces our more democratic system of supporting its citizens with public pensions, he now views this support as unsustainable and an indication of the need to revise the entire government employment structure, whether federal, state, or city. It is hard to disagree with him. Some cities have gone bankrupt, e.g., Stockton, CA and some states of tottering on collapse, e.g., Illinois. It is clear that the employment benefits need to be changed to address fiscal realities.

Another issue he regularly addresses is green energy. He is forever pointing out the problems confronting those pushing for further initiatives to advance clean air. His problems are two-fold: the technology is still not sufficient and in addition, at the moment, not economical. The increase in natural gas and oil has made the economic costs of green energy seem overwhelming. I cannot disagree with his assessment, but I still think that the harm to our environment is still great and requires us to go down a road that may not be economically to our advantage at the moment.

My attempts to be somewhat balanced in my views was jarred while watching Bill Moyers' latest program. Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann were interviewed a year after their book on their assessment of our congressional stalemate was published. Their book was quickly noticed and, as quickly, discarded. Their thesis was that the malaise of the government is due to the Republican intransigence based on ideology. It is noted that these two senior political scientists have a history of esteem, one in the more conservative community, and the other, in the more liberal community. But, they are in total agreement with the principal cause of the problem. They are aware that there are some problems attributed to Democrats. However, they feel that the media's attempt to be "balanced" distorts the reality of the problems generated by the Republicans.

Their assessment that the "balanced" views are a distortion of reality gets to the point that I may need to reassess my attempt to be "balanced". As liberal as I may be, it is possible that I could be "right".

I feel that I am willing to accept some modification in entitlement programs, recognizing that there are fiscal issues maintaining the status quo. I cannot deny the economics of green energy are presently problematic, but I do think that introducing a carbon tax would start us down a road that would be good for the environment and promote growth in revenue that could be used for improvements in our infrastructure. I doubt that ACA will work out well. It is too complicated and does not address the triggers that inflate healthcare costs. Nothing will work until we provide universal health care, e.g., Medicare, to everyone. It would clearly reduce the costs of health care, as Steve Brills' TIME article portrays. I support transparency in the government, e.g., we should know about the operation of drones, and recognize that the government cannot solve all problems. However, there is a need to understand that the economic inequities in our nation will require government intervention to offset the policies generated by the special interests promoting the more wealthy segment of the population.

The bottom line is that I have to be aware of the viewpoints of others, but I need be too "balanced" if I want to remain honest with reality. And the reality of our government's current nightmare is caused principally by the Republicans who have given up any attempt to provide solutions to national problems, rather than ensure that programs advocated by Democrats get buried by exploiting the "rules of Congress".

Looking Back Six Days

It has not yet been a week since the Marathon Massacre and there are still so many thoughts and feelings to process. It is impossible to avoid a sense of confusion when some violent act involving innocent human life occurs relatively nearby. Reviewing my thoughts helps me in the business of dealing with such a tragedy.

Such violent acts have occurred elsewhere, at times rather frequently. It is easier for someone to hurt many others. Making bombs and other devices are easily fabricated by using internet. Violent acts may become more frequent; at least one cannot avoid thinking that random acts of violence are part of life. While we were accustomed to think that leaving one's house in an automobile is a risk, we always thought that the risk is very low. In the big picture, the risk of experiencing violent acts of terror will also be a relatively low risk affair.

Over the past several years, I have become more attuned to the intolerance generated by all religions. While Islam has been a major source of violent acts on the public during the past several years, Islam cannot be totally isolated from other religions. When a religion distorts the inherent value of another human being, there is an act of violence, albeit without overt injury. In the name of religious values, gay rights have been trashed and gay people a source of scorn. Religions inherently generate bias against others who do not share their views. While one would think that religions would promote love and justice for all, often times it is not evident. How religions can align a belief in a loving God is often the backside of a belief in a vengeful God. From my perspective, now, a vengeful God is an absurdity. While it may be difficult to conceptualize a loving God in the context of human hatred, as in Monday's violence, is easier for to live with this quandary than trying to make sense of a vengeful God.

I have often shared my view that it amazes me that humanity can be so primitive. Our behavior towards others, including animals and nature, is still so base at times. You would think that after these approximately 60 million years, one would think that we would be further advanced in our behavior towards others. From a self-interest perspective, each of us would be better if we all promoted love and justice. At times, reading about violence within families, even towards children, is painful. Extending our observations to communities and the nations, it is disheartening to think that we are still resort to such primitive acts of violence.

Of all that I have read this week, the most helpful review was done by an atheist (cannot retrieve the article). While he was unable to cope with the violence of the Boston Marathon by relying of faith in a higher being, he was able to look ahead because of his faith in his fellow man. He was aware that there are those who make a mockery of being human, but he cannot live without recognizing his faith in the goodness of most people. That sentiment was most helpful to me. I experience goodness so often and I have fortunately not suffered much from violence (apart from my own childhood). My only adult experience of violence is vicarious, as seen in others. And, as noted by so many, the tragedy of last Monday was more than matched by the slew of people who have responded so heroically and, for others, as beautifully if not as heroic.

Love and justice are stronger than hatred and violence. At times, it may be hard to believe, but I clearly identify with the view: Promote Love and Justice!

How Stupid!

I hate using the word, "stupid". The word is not even permitted by our grandchildren, Mika and Emi. There are so many other words to describe behavior that it is less the most intelligent. However, I am not sure that "stupid" is sufficiently pertinent to the behavior of the US Senate who refused to pass legislation to extend background checks for purchases at gun shows and through the internet.

While one can rationalize the behavior of the Senators who voted against the legislation, e.g., they were expressing "the will of the people". Whatever the rationale for the votes, it comes down to their being stupid.

Democracy is at peril. We understand that the monies involved in special interests are distorting the "will of the people". Although it is reported that 90% of the population was in favor of this particular legislation and even though the parents of victims of Newtown personally presented their issues with the senators, there were enough senators voting against the legislation to deny the "will of the people".

In a prior blog, I referenced the benefits of considering tragedies within the context of "what if". What if members of their families were killed, what if others considered as family were killed, would they still be able to vote against the legislation?

Rather than considering their votes within the context of "what if", it seems that the only meaningful factor was whether the monies required to support their re-election would continue to flow. Such crass behavior, I label as stupid! I am sure that there are other words that would capture the reality, but we know that indeed have a problem in our democracy.

What if?

The Boston Massacre is a tragedy that we all can identify with. To think that innocent people watching a traditional spring sporting icon would be killed or seriously injured touches us all. We cannot help but think, “What if I or a member of my family were there?” Such random acts of violence touches us so deeply because we can easily imagine that it could have been me. We can identify with the awesome meaningless of such violence. We often refer to this feeling as empathy.

It seems that our ability to empathize is related to our ability to identify with the victims. It could have been us.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could empathize comparably with other tragedies that are remote? We identify with the Newtown tragedy, but there are so many others becoming victims throughout the world. Whether we consider the violent circumstances of South Chicago, the streets of Damascus, the bombings in Iraq, the senseless disregard of women in many cultures, the violence initiated by religious bigotry, we tend to “regularize” the events as almost normal. We become jaded by the constancy of the horror.

It is helpful at times to sensitize ourselves to all sorts of violence that seem so prevalent. Wherever it occurs, it is wrong, it is senseless. The more we are sensitized to such horrors, the more able we will be to do something about it.

So much of political discord flows from the differences in empathy among people. Identifying with victims of gun violence rather than gun-owners, identifying with women as they deal with male domination, empathizing with those who have been decimated by economic conditions beyond their control, as well as so many other tragedies, leads to meaningful action.

         

Current Understanding of God

Recently, a friend raised the question, “what am I doing wrong?” to try to understand why some bad things have happened altogether too often. Then, I was at a hospice volunteer supper when two men seemed interested in my responses to their questions about Christianity. They had questions that the institutional church did not seem to address.

And even though I have shared my history from a traditional faith aligned with the Catholic Church to my present understanding that is rather different, I thought that I would try articulating my views with more detail. 

To preface my current understanding, it is important to know that I still read authors that support the more traditional understanding of God and Christianity. Recently, I read Questions of Faith by Peter Berger who is now an 84 year old scholar, a sociologist with a long history and interest in religion. He has been a faculty member of many universities, including Boston College and, for many years, Boston University. He is a Lutheran and most conversant with a range of religions and the intellectual or theological sources that support those religions or institutions within a specific religion. He surely comes well prepared to review in great detail the Apostles Creed, section by section.  He is clearly a believer and a committed Christian. Yet, I found his approach forced and presumptuous. In order to avoid conclusions that were personally unacceptable, e.g., the “naturalness of death”, he asserts the need for God to maintain life after death. To think that the Holocaust occurred without God’s rectifying the horror is unacceptable to him.

I am still working on Hans Kung’s Does God Exist? I will never complete the 700-page book. In fact, I have no intention of reading every page. While I marvel at Kung’s brilliance and appreciate shis many books that have been such an influence on me, his approach to the issue of God flows out of a history of philosophical thought dating back centuries. It is very analytical and highly intellectual. There is a basic problem with the approach, from my perspective. God, however one may interpret the word, is by definition unknowable. God is Other than humans. There is no common ground that would enable us to understand God. Whatever we say about God, then, has to be some form of projection. The exercise to rationalize the inference of our reality to God represents an inherent problem. How can any human inference to God be supported except by an element of preconception?

I am not directly disparaging anyone whose understanding of God has been formed by either personal history, including involvement with an institutional church, or personal experiences, however subjective they may be. I was “there”. I spent much of my life using rational analysis to support a faith-based God. And I surely have experienced feelings of discomfort with the notion of the consequences of one’s behavior in terms of “eternity”. Whatever works for a person is more than acceptable. Life is tough enough in so many ways, more so for some than others, that I support anything that helps.

However, I am not there and have not been there for some time. It is not that I never questioned theological assertions or faith-based statements. However, I have transitioned over time as I have previously documented. The sources referenced in the linked blog remain the principal influences of my thinking, especially for this document, Dairmuid O’Murcho.

  

My current understanding starts with three facts: (1) creation, as we know it, started with the Big Bang approximately 13 billion years ago, (2) humankind is dated to 6 million years ago, and (3) institutionalized religion, i.e., “an organized collection of belief systems, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values”, dates back 10,000 years. Thinking about these facts in the context of God, albeit unknowable by definition, it appears evident that God was always present. It would be difficult to comprehend a God that had a beginning. Whatever God is, God has to be outside time.  Otherwise, God would be temporal and God would be “one of us”. When I think of the listed facts, 13 billion years of creation and 6 million years of humans, I realize that God was as present for these eons of time, as in these past 10,000 years when a more natured-based approach to God, polytheism relating to natural powers, e.g., sun, moon, became more rigidly defined, as in written scriptures attributed directly to God. All of creation, from eons past, has to be vibrantly included in our understanding of religion.

Creation then is a key element in understanding God.

Relying on the work of biblical scholars, e.g., John Dominic Crossan, and other writers, e.g., Garry Wills, I understand now that virtually all of the institutional understanding of Jesus and Christianity is an extrapolation of people trying to justify and expand on personal experiences rather than writing attributed to God and/or Jesus. Without belaboring what others have written, I conclude that Christianity has been a creation of people to support preconceptions of reality and the institutional requirements required to support the power structure.

Formal religion, whether Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, now represents a problem to me. Not only is the formal content questionable, as pertaining to its sources, e.g., New Testament attributed directly to Jesus, Koran attributed directly to Allah, these various religions are inherently divisive and intolerant, resulting in all sorts of violence and death.

Formal religion, then, may represent a help to some, but is principally a tool for those in power.

I finally come to my understanding of God which starts with the premise that I do not understand God. He/she is unknowable. However, by focusing on creation in all of its 13 billion years, I can be overwhelmed with awe. To think that I am a part of this amazing universe is amazing. My basic approach to God, then, is through this appreciation of Creation.

While the universe is generally benevolent, it is inherently involved in ongoing creation and destruction. Observing animal life as survival of some at the expense of others is a prototype of creation, as we know it. Granted that extrapolating animal existence to human life does a gross disservice to the horrors and hate perpetrated by humans on other humans and nature, there is no escape from the realities of evil. Since I do not understand God, I am comfortable not understanding evil. From my point of view, evil simply is.

Bad things happen, not as some action designed by a God that wants to send either a positive or negative message to people. Praying may be helpful to cope with tragedy, but it would be impossible to attribute positive outcomes of prayer, e.g., someone surviving serious illness or accident, to God without also attributing negative outcomes to God. Why help some and not others? While I may not be able to know God, I can reasonably assume that God is benign and loving to all.

While much of what I read cannot be easily summarized, I conclude with how I understand personal morality. The challenge of life is to live in a benign relationship with creation, all of creation ("radical inclusiveness"). The appropriate response to being created is to address the needs of all, the planet itself, nature, animals, and our fellow human beings. Our attention is best devoted to those in need, whether it is restoring nature that we have threatened, or rescuing animals or humans from the miscarriage of justice. (N.B. I previously claimed to not understanding either God or evil. Evil is a given; God, as totally Other, is a reasonable hypothesis for a Ground for creation.)

In the context of my relationship with Creation, death may be the end of human experience, as we know it, but I understand that we will continue to part of creation. Admittedly, conceptualizing reality after death is difficult, if not impossible. However, I can live with the awareness that the inherent benignness of Creation will be extended forever to me and everyone else.

"What Money Can't Buy" by Michael Sandel

Michael Sandel is one of Harvard’s most popular professors. His class on Justice is jammed packed with standing room only and now available online.  His talent is focusing on issues that are pertinent and questionable. He raises the complexity of the topics by addressing both the economic and moral implications of the topic.

In “What Money Can’t Buy”, Sandel is essentially addressing the commercialism of virtually anything. His ultimate point is that money’s impact on parts of our lives and society may erode values and morals to our social and personal detriment.

While he is not against marketing and fair trading of property, he is clearly uncomfortable with the downsides of the pervasive use of money’s intrusion to our personal and public lives.

The issues addressed the prevalent spirit that everything has a price. He questions the intrusion of money is simple transactions, like (1) paying someone to stand in line for an event, e.g., seat in the Supreme Court for a special suit, (2) buying tickets at scalper’s (or an agency) prices because money is not an issue due to your wealth, (3) selling blood, (4) pervasive advertisement, e.g., naming rights to athletic fields, buses.

Without coming down hard on the problems of aggressive marketing, he raises the downside effects of the phenomena. He recognizes that cohesive nature of our society is jeopardized when the influence of money separates the rich from everyone else in virtually everything. Without referencing the noteworthy 1%, he points out that these people essentially are divorced from the rest of society and, as a result, society is less a whole. The willingness of people in financial straights to sell the rights to commercialize their property by having the house become plastered with an advertisement may represent good marketing, but what does it do to a community? You can think back on Lady Bird’s work to beautify our highways that have now become a series of electronic ads.

In short, he raises the issue that some things that are precious to human beings and society are threatened when they become commodified as subjects of trade. He raises the issue that our values can be degraded when subjected to aggressive marketing and trade. He recognizes the dilemmas that individuals and civic institutions, e.g., cities and towns, are stressed with the need for additional revenue, but solving them by giving naming rights to public institutions, e.g., schools, is corrosive of values deemed important.

From my perspective, I admit to having noticed his invasion of commercialism with some uneasiness, but it never became crystallized as Sandel depicts the problem. He does not lay out a plan of action as much a cry to think about what is happening and question the possible losses to our personal lives and social fabric. 

"Why Priests" by Garry Wills

A major problem of the Catholic Church is its inability to be truthful. If an active and dedicated Catholic were asked about the beliefs that are part and parcel of the Catholic Church, the list would include much more than can be attributed to Jesus. In fact, if we start off with an understanding that Jesus was only interested in reforming Judaism and addressing the hypocrisy and distortions of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Priests of the time, then we can start to strip away much of what has generally been attributed to the teachings of Jesus.

Garry Wills are just published a remarkably clear book, Why Priests, that clarifies that Jesus surely did not establish a priesthood. The author in great detail zones in on fact that all of the Christian scriptures, except for the Letter to Hebrews, have no reference to a priesthood. The Letter to Hebrews is given much attention because its history is most confusing. A testimony to its singular status is that it was not generally accepted as a part of the New Testament until the early 400s. Suffice to say, the fact that the Letter to Hebrews is unique, as well as confusing, provides reasons for giving it less attention than the remainder of the New Testament.

To review the highlights of the book, it is essential to lay aside any preconceived ideas.

As mentioned above, Jesus was never in the business of creating a new religion. He was a committed Jew who wanted to rectify the abuses he observed. His approach was not appreciated. Due to the striking approach of his observations, he was killed.

As when he lived, Jesus had followers after his death. For some time, the followers were only Jews, but then Gentiles became interested. The Jesus Jews remained faithful Jews until the end of the first century when it became clear that the majority of the Jewish people were not going to identify with Jesus. Until then, they observed the Sabbath and participated in the synagogues. The Temple remained the most sacred place until the Romans destroyed it in 70 AD. During the years following his death, the Jesus Jews and, then the Gentiles, gathered in homes to remember Jesus. In this gathering, they understood that Jesus was alive. And it was at the shared meal that this understanding was confirmed. They believed that Jesus was present in the community itself. This priestless celebration of communal love, symbolized by the shared meal, was the Eucharist. No priests, no special words, just the gathering around a shared table was sacred.

There was a development of leaders within a community. These were essentially servants to the members. They were, at times, called deacons. Not all were male. The community selected them because they were considered leaders. There was no idea of an ordination.

The prevalent understanding that Jesus established the Eucharist at the Last Supper is not consistent with scholarship. And in spite of all sorts of references of how the Eucharist, as we know it, was established, e.g., Yale University, there is no historical basis for this understanding. The first century ended with no priests, no understanding of a ritual where one person would have the “power” to change bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, and no understanding of sacraments, as we have come to understand. Baptism was an experience for people being incorporated into the Christian community, but it was not a ritual delegated to a class of persons, called priests.

 The author devotes much of his book to the Letter to Hebrews since it is so different from all the other parts of the New Testament.  From my reading, it does not seem that there is any solid basis to virtually any one viewpoint. There definitely was quicker acceptance of the letter in the East, e.g., Alexandria than the West, e.g., Rome. This fact itself demonstrates the unevenness of the process of “theologizing” what was a rather simple, uncomplicated way of life that characterized the early followers of Jesus. The fact that it so long to accept this letter as part of the official canon (AD 393), speaks to its uniqueness. 

As often happens, the vision of the founder of any movement takes on a new life when it becomes institutionalized. The early notion that the collective gathering of believers was the Church and that the shared meal was the Eucharist became an institution where power was relegated to a few and where access to the sacred was in the hands of these few. The power attributed to priests and other ordained ministers, e.g., bishops, was developed to ensure their uniqueness.

All of the current angst associated with the decline in the celibate priesthood is essentially a false problem. The Church, for believers, would continue quite successfully if they returned to the model of first century. You can imagine smaller communities being empowered to worship simply by sharing a meal and remembering Jesus, as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. You can imagine that these communities would identify certain ones, male or female, who had leadership qualities to serve their needs. These people would serve on a part-time basis as many lay people do now and maintain a full-time job to support their family.

It does sound ridiculous since power structures, by their nature, never want to lose power.