Sunday, May 31, 2020

Come, Holy Spirit!

This may not be the best time for me to write. My heart is heavy—grieving. I’m not angry; although, anger surrounds us and increasingly becomes the norm among some parts of our American population. I’m sure I’ll be angry at some point. Anger is a normal part of grief.

I find myself on the verge—and sometimes into the abyss—of tears more and more frequently. I recall that dreadful news clip of the fiery crash of the Hindenburg, and the sobbing voice of the reporter, “Oh! The humanity! The humanity!”

How calloused have we become when we so rarely are moved to tears at the sight of human suffering? What hideous kind of demon possesses one human to kneel on the neck of another human—a human who is face-down on the ground, handcuffed, with two other humans kneeling on his back—a human who is crying, “I can’t breathe! Please!”? And what kind of inhuman creature looks on, apparently more concerned about the camera that is recording it all than about the human who is gasping for his dying breath?

“Kneeling on a man’s neck is an extreme and dangerous step, well out of bounds for ordinary police procedures. The kneeling officer appears to have a long track record of complaints.”[1] I’ve seen three videos, each from a different perspective. In none of them did it appear that Floyd was resisting or uncooperative.

I know: there is a report that George Floyd had preconditions “including coronary artery disease and hypertensive heart disease”; and the preliminary autopsy showed, “no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation.” The report said death likely was caused by the "combined effect of Floyd being restrained by the police, his underlying health conditions, and any potential intoxicants in his system.”[2]

Does such an analysis diminish the inhumanity of three humans sworn “to serve and protect?” As a medical layman I have to ask, “Would such unnecessary use of force exacerbate the preexisting factors, thereby possibly—even probably—contributing to Floyd’s death?”

But, I linger too long on one specific instance, when my grief is over the increasing commonness of justifying inhuman behavior on the basis of ideological absolutism. The controversy over where to stand in relation to George Floyd’s death appears to line up consistently with every other controversy in America: conservatives line up against liberals.

There seems little possibility that there ever will be an issue in which both liberals and conservatives agree. And there seems little possibility ever again that those disagreements will be pursued with respect and integrity. I see very little indication that anyone on either side wants to resolve any of the issues that divide them. Most just want to win the fight.

And so, I grieve. And the tears come more frequently.

We are watching something cancerous grow faster and faster each cay. It is, in my estimation, the satanic spawn of absolutized individualism run amok. Don’t misunderstand. I serve a master whose sacrificial love for individuals is unsurpassed in human history. But, Ayn Rand notwithstanding, the master I serve also called his followers to love one another sacrificially, to serve one another in humility, even to the point of washing one another’s feet, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. And he defined one’s neighbor in his Parable of the Good Samaritan—a parable, incidentally, about reaching across lines of ethnicity to serve anyone who is in need.

The individual is important, and the individual’s importance is embellished in service to other individuals. Our individual importance reaches its highest potential when we “lose ourselves”. All four gospels report Jesus saying, “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. (Matthew 10:39 NRSV). I like the way the Message Paraphrase puts it: “If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me.

I write as a Christian Pastor to Christians; however, Christians are as divided and as hostile as the rest of the culture (which is a primary reason the church has been in decline for a half-century), and I struggle to find hope that peace and reconciliation can come from Christianity so divided. Therefore, my appeal is to all who are of a similar mindset, regardless of your spiritual base. I believe respect, integrity and compassion have no ideological or credal boundaries, and that people of all spiritualities can unite in the effort to be agents of healing and reconciliation.

Today is Pentecost. Christians celebrate it as the birthday of the church and recite the biblical story of the Holy Spirit of God descending upon a broken, frightened little band of Jesus’ disciples. The Spirit filled them, and they turned the world upside down. I suspect that our nation will not be healed by human effort apart from that same Spirit.

So, come Holy Spirit. Come as wind and breathe into us a passion for the humility of Jesus, who washed his disciples’ feet.

Come Holy Spirit. Come as fire and burn away all the divisive arrogance that solidifies our human understandings of your purpose.

Come Holy Spirit. Come as a dove and bring us peace.

That’s the way it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim


[1] https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/george-floyd-death-minneapolis-riots-justice-requires-order/. I point out that the “National Review” is a conservative source. The inherent danger of such restraint was reported in several additional sources.


Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Crybaby


Maybe it’s my reaction to being self-quarantined, but I’ve gone beyond anger to grief. I’ve stopped responding to most Facebook posts (who knows how long that will last?), and often find myself weeping at what I’m reading. I guess I’m a crybaby.

Beyond my relatively narrow sampling on Facebook, the news on all media (and I do watch all media) extends my impression that our American culture is growing more and more angry and hostile—more filled with hatred and rage—by the day.

There has long been a tendency among some Americans to prioritize political ideology over human need and to focus on the miniscule percentage of fraud to justify not working toward meeting the multitude of need. Today on Facebook there was a photo of a couple carrying a banner that read, “I won’t sacrifice my rights for your safety.” What a rotten attitude! And there was that 2017 quote from a voter who said, “I trust Trump more than Jesus.” And it’s well established by now that at least part of one political party has declared publicly that the economy is more important than human life. Pro-life? Indeed.

Last week someone posted, “I’ll take my chances.” That’s fine if your chances are all that’s at stake. When you take your chances you also are gambling with someone else’s chances—including mine and my family’s; so, I tend to take it personally.

How is love demonstrated in any of the above? Or has the message of Jesus also become a hoax in this “Christian” nation? A conspiracy inflicted upon us by “liberal theology?”

And I grieve over the growing anti-empiricist mentality among a significant subset of a whole generation. Expertise of any kind is equated with idiocy and stupidity. Empirical evidence that can be seen and measured and graphed is denied as manufactured. It’s easier and more convenient to believe that the scientific and medical communities are lying—they’re involved in a conspiracy to take away our freedoms. One always can find somebody with a degree or a title to support one’s previous presuppositions; therefore, the information bubble is preferred over empirical evidence.

The upshot is that a large portion of the American public just refuses to believe that the CoVID-19 pandemic is real. It’s a hoax. It’s no more dangerous than the annual round of flu. I hope they’re right. I truly hope I’m wrong—that medical science is wrong. Maybe medical science was wrong about smallpox, too. And polio. And the Spanish flu in 1918. Maybe those killers would simply have run their course and life would have gone on, even without medical intervention. Maybe medical science didn’t shorten the duration of those pandemics. No big deal.

Maybe the bubonic plague would have simply run its course without a massive clean-up of heaps of rat-infested garbage in the streets. No big deal.

The really big deal that makes me weep is the number of deaths that could have been—that still could be—prevented. If the risk can be reduced by temporary inconvenience and discomfort, why would anyone refuse to accept those inconveniences? It’s not as if it’s forever.

What wrenches my gut is the haunting, tragic image of that photo I saw this morning—that banner that said, “I won’t sacrifice my freedom for your safety.” Is that really—REALLY—where we are? I wonder what would have happened if the government (whoever that is) had issued a proclamation demanding that everyone disregard the pandemic and carry on as usual. My suspicion is that those who flaunt their freedom today would have burrowed in while whining, “The government isn’t going to tell me what to do! I’m not going to risk my safety for your freedom!”

Maybe that’s really what it’s all about: “Nobody’s going to tell me what to do.”

When Jesus’ disciples were arguing over which of them would be the greatest, he got up and washed their feet. And then he said, I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” John 13:15 (NRSV)


But, yeah, don’t sacrifice your freedom for anybody else’s safety.

That’s the way it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,
Jim

Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Your Rights and My Nose


Rights. As a colleague said quite often, "Your rights stop where my nose begins."
My unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness do not take precedent over your rights, nor yours over mine.

Each citizen has the right to choose the sources and data upon which he or she bases his or her understanding of truth, whether it be scientific or medical, or supermarket tabloid, or something in between.

All citizens, in theory, have the right; indeed, the responsibility to vote in public elections, thereby giving voice and support to their respective positions.

Every citizen enjoys the right to assent or dissent in response to governmental action. Some do so based on socio/political ideology, while others stand on ethical principles. The former often place their ideology above human needs, while the latter stump for more humanitarian, idealistic results. The former see idealism as impractical and useless.

These are not hard dichotomies, but rather a continuum whose statistical curve peaks somewhere near the middle. As one moves toward either extreme the protagonists become more rigid and intractable, their intolerance of differences more belligerent.

The foregoing is neither new nor particularly keen insight. It’s sociology or political science 101.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American sceintist. Since 1996, he has been the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York. He says there are three levels of truth:

(1) scientific truths or “objective truths” or beliefs that one can substantiate through objectivity, impartial science, facts, and reasoning.  

(2) political truths are inaccuracies repeated so often they become recognized and accepted as true. Examples of political truths include the belief that Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb, or that Christopher Columbus discovered America.  

(3) personal truths are perspectives that fail the test of scientific reasoning. He argues that individuals cling to these beliefs, even when presented with overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  One example of a personal truth is the belief that the earth is flat.

I do not present Tyson’s categories as in any sense final; indeed, I take issue at more than one point. I present them here as representations of a new relativism related to truth. I respect his categories as perceptions and/or applications of truth; but not of truth, itself. If one believes, as I do, in absolute truth, there are no relative truths or levels of truth.

As I have said and written many times (and am far from unique in this perspective), while I believe in absolute truth, I do not believe in the human capacity to comprehend truth absolutely. The best we can do is point to a “preponderance of evidence.” And always—ALWAYS—we are compelled by the limitations of the clay of which we are made to acknowledge our perception of truth as partial.

As a theologian, in making this point I almost always quote St. Paul’s dictum in I Corinthians 13:12 “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” (NRSV) As you may have noticed, it is adapted into my blogsite name, “Flawed Glass.”

Given, then, that human perception of truth at best is vulnerable to distortion, I return to my opening focus, which is the perceptions and applications related to our rights as American citizens. The two topics, though divergent, are related, and the issue at hand is where we get the data upon which we base our respective positions.

Never in human history has more data be more readily available to more people. This presents us with a humongous dilemma because the data closely parallels the aforementioned ideological continuum. Compounding the dilemma is a growing tendency toward confirmation bias in far too many efforts to research available data.

If one looks long enough, and knows the ideological biases of enough sources, one eventually can find someone with a degree or a title who will validate virtually any thought or idea one has. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and I am grounded in the scientific method, and I accept the findings of those who apply the scientific method.

For my entire life up to now I have accepted mainstream medical community's counsel (including the value of vaccinations—think "smallpox" and "polio"), and I have enjoyed good health and excellent health care. I especially give credence to their informed findings in contrast to sources outside the medical mainstream or the biased opinions of non-medical sources; therefore, I am concerned about the risks of opening up our culture too soon vis-à-vis the COVID-19 pandemic.

I have the right to determine my own risks and to gamble with my own health and safety, and maybe even with that of my household. But my rights stop where your nose begins, and neither I nor you have the reciprocal right to gamble with each other’s health and safety.

I hope I'm proven wrong, and that the COVID-19 pandemic is a tempest in a teacup and hasn't been much of a real threat to anything except to our economy. The preponderance of evidence from mainstream medical and scientific community doesn’t support that hope; therefore, until proven otherwise I choose to stay in my home, and to wear a mask when I venture out; and I will have difficulty not resenting those who discount the seriousness of the virus and are willing to trust their biased opinions and gamble with their own safety and the safety of others (including me and my family).

And, BTW, I also don't have a problem with the government stepping in and setting boundaries when the preponderance of observable evidence suggests too many people are not smart enough to be trusted to protect themselves or to not gamble with others' safety.

That’s the way it looks through the “Flawed Glass” that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,
Jim