So far in the Book of Mormon

As I mentioned back in February, I've been reading the Book of Mormon. I'm at Alma 22 now, for those of you who can appreciate that, and still plodding along. So far, a couple of things have jumped out at me.

The parable of the trees in Jacob 5 seems to be loaded with more meaning than I can make out at this time. I'm hoping to get some more explanation when I get to Doctrine & Covenants. But it seems to presage the entire history of the people who emigrated from the land around Jerusalem to the Americas. Certainly the imagery is evocative, and an echo of it appears in Orson Scott Card's "Ender" Quartet of science-fiction novels.

One very striking thing in the Book of Mormon (may I abbreviate it as BOM?) is that people can initiate covenants with God. In the Bible, God initiates the covenants. The other is the clarity with which predictions about Jesus Christ are stated. He is called by name, and the Christian "salvation history" is clearly laid out, up to 600 years before the coming of Christ! In the Hebrew Bible ( or Old Testament - henceforth abbreviated OT) allusions to Christ are so vague that one must be a Christian to interpret them as such.

Then there is the ebb and flow of the Church among the immigrants to the Americas. First the Church (and it is a distinctly Christian Church, even though it is centuries yet before the birth of Christ) grows among the Nephites, and then as it starts to decline among them, it blossoms among the Lamanites. The Nephites and Lamanites are related peoples, having separated after their landing in the Americas. Among the tribes of Israel in the OT, the belief in the God of Abraham pulsates, growing and shrinking, but is does not seem to slosh between tribes. And it is straight Judaism, that looks forward to some kind of Redeemer who will restore Israel and even resurrect its inhabitants (at least in the Book of Job), but it is specifically Jewish rather than the Christianized Judaism of the Nephites and eventually the Lamanites before the coming of Christ.

I also note that the quotations from Isaiah in 2 Nephi are altered slightly so as to make their meaning more obvious. (Not only did I read them Blain, I compared them with the King James Version).

I note the ubiquity of conversion or "Born Again" experiences as compared to the OT. In the BOM these are typically occur after prayer and fasting, or being taught by one of the prophets.

And then there is the voice of our friendly editor, Mormon. In the OT the final collectors, editors, and redactors take care not to intrude in the text. In the BOM, it seems to me that Mormon (who appears to have collected writings on metal plates from several sources and in several languages, and then translated them into his own language) occasionally comments, especially in the Book of Alma.

I wasn't really looking for these differences, but for the differences in theological perspective between the LDS and the rest of us Christians. I'm still looking, and still reading.

Silly Barack, Rednecks are for Real

So, Barack Obama couldn't quite close the gap to Hillary Clinton in today's Pennsylvania Democratic Primary. As others have noted, there were two reasons: Reverend Wright and the "bitter" comment.

Now, in the game of Presidential Monopoly I find enough "typical white person's" guilt in the Community Chest to give Senator Obama a Get-Out-of-the-Wright-Association free card. But there is no card that lets you get elected President by insulting one of the most numerous and important groups of people in America.

Rednecks. If you want to learn what the word "passion" means, date a Redneck. As a corollary, you can't have a truer and more loyal friend than a Redneck, or a worse enemy. Rednecks pride themselves on living with an emotional intensity that makes your typical Ivy League educated politician seem tepid indeed.

Sure, they can be bitter. But not about lack of government intervention in their lives. If they "cling to their guns and religion" it's to keep the government from interfering too much in their lives. They got their guns from their fathers, and their fathers' fathers, back to the generation that used guns to feed and defend themselves because back then there was no government. And they have sustained their religion because their religion has sustained them through tougher times than most Americans can remember or imagine. But mostly, Rednecks are determined. Determined to be themselves no matter who likes it or not.

Barack, by talking as if you know them, you have shown that you don't. Well, you should get to know them. You're going to need their votes.

Brother Jed has a Point

I think it was the spring of 1978 at The University of Texas at Austin when I first encountered the Preacher Man. Only later did I realize that he was probably the famous George Smock, aka "Brother Jed." He was saying something like

All the women on this campus are whores, and all the men are just boys!

One of my students, Tawny, took him on. She argued boldly that a mature, responsible, and moral sexuality was possible without adhering blindly to the blanket prohibition of sex between people not married to each other. I admired her courage. And I thought she was right.

Thirty years later the Centers for Disease Control states that nineteen (19) million new STD (sexually transmitted disease) infections occur each year, almost half of them among young people ages 15 to 24. Whether you agree with Brother Jed or not, he has science on his side. If absolutely everyone abstained from any kind of sexual activity outside of marriage, STDs would die out. And if people resumed their present habits after the STD die-out, new ones would arise to take advantage of the ecological niche offered by networks of sexual contacts.

Simply put, abstinence and chastity are good public health. If you are screwing around, don't expect the rest of us to take you seriously when you admonish us about the environment, vegetarianism, or any issue demanding behavioral changes to improve public health, safety, or sustainability. First get your own act together.

Now I don't expect everyone to be abstinent outside of marriage. But I do expect you to keep the number of your sexual contacts low as part of your obligation to respect and preserve our human environment.

Lord of the Flies

Third graders in Waycross, GA, plotted to kill their teacher. At Yahoo News, the Associated Press story begins

Allegations that third-graders hatched an elaborate plot to knock out, handcuff and stab their teacher were met with shock by neighbors and with doubt by psychiatry experts who said it is unlikely that children that young seriously intended to hurt anyone.

Police say the plot at Center Elementary School began because the children, ages 8 to 10, were apparently angry after the teacher disciplined one of the students for standing on a chair.

Students brought a crystal paperweight, a steak knife with a broken handle, steel handcuffs and other items as part of last week's plot, police said Tuesday. They said nine students were involved, but prosecutors are seeking juvenile charges against only three of them.

Experts said children that age are certainly imaginative and capable of creating elaborate games. But Dr. Louis Kraus, a child psychiatry expert at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, said he doubts they would have actually attacked.

It continues in that vein to leave the impression that the writers think this is an unusual and isolated incident. It is not. Just a few days before another group of kids about the same age were in the process of hatching a plot to kill their teacher in a public city school in Manhattan. This one didn't make the news, but I can report it here, because I know the teacher.

And now, just last evening my neighbor's teenaged son was mugged. The neighbor's email reads, in part

He was walking home from his girlfriend's house at 11:30 pm . A car (new Lexus) with 5 boys drove up, they jumped out of the car and surrounded him. They had baseball bats and golf clubs. All he had was his cell phone which they took. They did not believe that he didn't have anything else, so they patted him down. They also wanted his shoes, but didn't take them when they found out they weren't expensive ones.

He called 911 as soon as he got home. The police were there very quickly. They caught the guys at the Shell station by Lucky.

When they were caught they had a trunk full of shoes and other stolen goods. They confessed to the mugging and were linked to other crimes. They had been cruising PLS neighborhoods looking for open garages and people to steal from.

Two of them were over 18 so were taken to jail the other 3 were juveniles.

"Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?" laments Henry Higgins in the musical comedy, My Fair Lady. To which I reply, why can't the Americans teach their children how to behave?

What are we teaching our children? Where are they getting these ideas? Are we exposing morally immature minds to crime shows like The Sopranos, and Law & Order? Or are we simply not paying attention while they form their own little violent tribes or gangs, partly in cyberspace, partly all too really in this world?

William Golding knew what kids will do when left without close and powerful adult supervision. They act uncivilized because they are uncivilized. It takes constant effort on the part of their parents and their society to civilize children, and that effort must last for the first 18 to 25 years of the children's lives. If you don't know what I mean, go to your local library and check out a copy of Golding's short novel, Lord of the Flies.

I've read many pieces on the decline of the West, most of which are bulls--t, and none of which put their finger on one inescapable truth. If you want to have a civilization, you must civilize your kids. And don't assume you can delegate the task to your schools (which are overwhelmed with uncivilized kids) or even your churches.

So to the educators, psychiatrists, and parents out there: Get out of your denial, get control of your kids, and socialize them to norms of decent behavior. Otherwise, it will be every one for himself, and us aging boomers will have no choice but to get concealed-carry permits.

Sunday of the Resurrection

I confess that my eyes tear each Easter Sunday when we sing "Jesus Christ is Risen Today." It isn't so much the words of the song as it is the triumphant melody and the exuberant singing of the congregation. It reminds me of what we as church should be, but are not. Called to testify of His Glorious Resurrection, to show its effect in us by becoming His ministering hands to his world, we fall short. We become dysfunctional social groups, combinations of feel-gooders, self-haters, do-gooders. And having fallen so short of the mark, we sometimes turn on each other and debate about theology. If church is the "body of Christ," we are a work unfinished.

And I am a work unfinished. Oh, I'm a good enough person compared to most, despite my working on "force multipliers" for the US military. Besides, not only has no one ever died (as far as I know) because of anything I've done (and on one or two projects not for my lack of effort), my particular history once put me in a position to help prevent a conflict that would have killed thousands. Yes, unlike the demonstrators in front of my lab on Good Friday, I have actually helped to make peace.

It's just that I want to be so much better than I am. And when I am in church, I want us all to be so much better than we are. Indeed, if we were as good as we are called to be, we would be almost unrecognizable. We would all radiate so much goodness, that you would have to spend some time in our presence to be able to tell that we were still really us.

Maybe that's why the followers of Jesus took so long to recognize him that first Easter morning, and in the days after. Maybe that's what Resurrection does to us. As our perfected, transformed, good unalloyed with bad, resurrected selves, maybe we are barely recognizable as having once been the masses of contradiction and compromise between good and evil (in other words ordinary human beings) that we once were.

Maybe that's what I yearn for — for myself and for all of us together. Resurrection. To follow our Lord, who on this day more than two thousand years ago by His Resurrection began the Resurrection of us all.

Surrexit Christus hodie! Alleluia!

The Vigil of Easter

We Christians celebrate the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday as the "Vigil of Easter." In truth, there was no vigil for the first Christians, the frightened and depressed band of Jesus' followers. They spent this day hunkered down, wondering whether they would be caught in an oncoming wave of persecution, of whether this was all going to just blow over, now that their leader had been so brutally humiliated and executed. Some didn't wait to find out, and left Jerusalem on foot for Emmaus.

They were probably in a mixture of grief-stages: the horror of the past days must have seemed at once to be an unreal nightmare, and an all too real trauma. They didn't know whether to hide, flee, or fight and lose a hopeless last battle. Or just sit and wait, in mourning.

No doubt some prayed, even as Jesus had taught them. And the answer was a dead silence.

Yet life went on. The men cared for their wives, the women for their children. Meals had to be made, the little ones fed, the sick tended.

So, on this day, I took my elderly dogs (one of whom will likely die within weeks to months) for a walk, including a little off-lead time by a creek. I helped my elderly mother with her finances. I wished my sister a happy birthday.

Take care of those whom God has placed in your care, this Easter Vigil. And wait. Tomorrow is quite another day.

Good Friday: The Sin of Indifference

When one contemplates the Crucifixion, one would be remiss not to contemplate the opportunities to have prevented it.

At his trial before Caiaphas and some part of the Sanhedrin, nobody spoke in defense of Jesus. Nobody said, "If he is a heretic, then so am I. You will have to take me with him." When given the cruel choice of which of the condemned should be freed, the supporters of Barabbas shouted, but the New Testament records no shouts for Jesus. And it probably took at most three Roman soldiers to nail Jesus to the cross and raise it up. Supposedly a crowd watched this, yet nobody is recorded to have raised a hand against this small force.

It didn't take much force at all to crucify Jesus, or any of the thousands that the Romans crucified during their history. That's because it was enabled by the cowardice of the few and the indifference of the many who might have acted, or at least spoken up.

We've seen it again. The Nazis slaughtered six million Jews and millions of others, including Roma (Gypsies), Poles, Jehovah' Witnesses, and homosexuals. It took relatively few Nazis to do the actual killing, or to run the extermination camps. That's because it was enabled by what was effectively the cowardice or indifference of everyone who might have done something about it, but did not.

But many times, the alternative to cowardice and indifference amounts to suicide. We become hostage to our natural desire to live just one more day, to see if we can live until the horror passes. Can any of us who are thus normal honestly claim that we are good?

Ah, but sin is an insidious thing, and if we free ourselves from one sin, we often substitute another in its place. Those who free themselves from their natural desire to live — they become suicide bombers, prey to the Islamofacist Industrial Complex that makes the explosives, the vests, the triggers, that gives the instructions, that points to the targets, most of whom are non-combatants.

Yes, there are occasional saints, moved by the Spirit, who desire to live, who desire not to kill, and yet have the courage to speak and act. But odds are, dear reader, that you and I are not among them.

You and I are more likely to be among the indifferent crowd, who just want to pursue their lives as best they can. Can anyone say, "Darfur," or "Lhasa" (to name the two the media mentions of God knows how many current conflicts there are)? You and I are more likely to be among those watching while the nails are driven in, while the sky darkens, while the last breath is gasped.

And that is why, when Jesus gasped, "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do," he was pleading for us as well.

It is now sundown. The Vigil of Easter has begun. Peace and mercy be upon you.

Good Friday: The Bomb vs The Sopranos

Probably the most ridiculous thing I can say about myself is that I work at a US defense research lab, but I can't stand to watch the Sopranos, because the show is just too violent for me. It's ridiculous because the US military, with its nuclear arsenal, can dish out way more violence than the mob.

The work I do — designing some of the tools of the military trade, be they material or just software — is done to create so-called "force multipliers" which amplify the ability of our uniformed men and women to break things and kill people. It is one of those activities that His Holiness John Paul II would have classified as intrinsece malum — intrinsically evil. And indeed, tomorrow morning protesters will stage a demonstration at my lab, as they do each Good Friday.

It is as if they are trying to communicate that by pursuing my line of work I crucify Christ. But in large ways and small, we all do that. Their fantasy is that if the US just lays down its arms there will be peace on earth. The reality is that war is all too normal a part of the human condition, and that if you get rid of your own military, you will have to get comfortable with some other country's military.

In other words, if nobody did what I do, if nobody stepped into the moral gray zone of keeping our military well-armed, liberal democracy might have already have perished from the earth. Huge portions of humanity would be less free and less prosperous, if they would be alive at all. The effect of what I do is good, even if the intrinsic intent is bad.

Conversely, even though the intrinsic intent of the protesters is good, the effect of their policy, if put into effect, would be bad. This is because they are not actually making peace by what they do. They are merely making war on war itself. If their cause were chastity, they would be fornicating for it.

I can't really blame them. Fighting against war is almost infinitely easier than making peace. But fighting against war will not reduce or eliminate the need for a large, well-armed military. Only making peace can do that.

What I take from the protesters is that they don't like the way I crucify Christ. They want me to crucify Christ the way they do. That's the message of Good Friday. We all stand together on the same side of the cross. The side into which we hammer the nails.

So, in light of the Crucifixion, I have no problems with "right livelihood." But in light of the Resurrection, I have no answer except to say that the Spirit has not led or kicked me elsewhere. At least, not yet.

But I've said all this before, and another guy has said it at greater length. I guess as long as the protesters keep repeating their message, I may as well keep repeating mine.

The Words of Jeremiah

Read now the words of Jeremiah:

Listen, destruction has come upon you! Foreign fighters have come from a distant land, and raised their hands and bodies against your towers... Your conduct and your acts have brought this upon you. This is your bitter punishment.

The words of Jeremiah Wright? They could be. But they are actually my paraphrase of Jeremiah 4:15-18, of the Holy Bible, Jewish Publication Society translation.

Yes, Jeremiah Wright was and is full of himself, more than he is of the Holy Spirit. Yes, he is the Man of Words, out of ancient African tradition, that gives the church in Africa as well as the African-American church its voice and its power. And yet, he is also speaking out of the ancient tradition of the Hebrew prophets, who reviled their societies for their shortcomings. Indeed, the original Jeremiah blamed the destruction of Solomon's temple and the expulsion of the Israel into captivity in Babylon on the conduct of Israel itself. And as you would expect, he was "repeatedly imprisoned and castigated as a traitor for his views," according to the Introduction to Jeremiah in the Jewish Study Bible.

It is thus misleading to judge Jeremiah Wright (and Barack Obama for his association with Wright) without the contexts of the historical development of politically black Christian rhetoric, the development of Black Liberation Theology, and their roots in the Old Testament and African oral stylistic tradition.

Still, blaming America for 9/11 is blaming the victim. It is on the same moral level as white people blaming black people for white people's prejudices and stereotypes. It is as ugly for a black man to say it as for a white man to say it. And it is just as wrong. And blaming the US government for AIDS, particularly claiming that it introduced AIDS into African-Americans is a vicious lie (i.e, it is morally and factually wrong), and Wright is morally culpable for believing it and promulgating it from the pulpit.

One has to ask what Barack Obama, as a sitting senator — a man already holding a national office , a position of trust with respect to all Americans — was thinking when he continued to associate with Wright. The most likely answer, given what I've been trying to explain in this and the previous post, is that Obama was simply desensitized to this style of rhetoric. In other words, Obama was probably not thinking at all.

So I doubt that Barak Obama's association with Wright serves as evidence that Obama is anti-American, anti-military, anti-white, or anti-Semitic. But I have to wonder how far to the left Obama might actually be, given that this style of rhetoric didn't faze him enough to get him to go find another church.

Note added on 3/18: Here is the text of Obama's speech on this subject. And you can watch the video here.