Courage - part 1

What is courage? The answer may seem obvious … until one actually attempts to put the definition into words. The Oxford English Dictionary defines courage as “the ability to do something that frightens one.” That definition has two key components:

1. Fear is integral to courage; doing something that does not cause one to fear does not entail courage.
2. Courage is evident in doing something, not in discussing a hypothetical.

That definition of courage coheres well with Aristotle’s definition of courage found in the Nichomachean Ethics. Aristotle defines courage as the mean between the extremes of rashness and cowardice appropriate to a particular situation. In other words, specific contexts determines whether the same action may constitute an example of rashness (foolish action without regard to the probable consequences), courageous, or cowardice. Thus, Aristotle helpfully extends the Oxford Dictionary’s definition by insightfully observing that courage and rashness denote different categories of action and that situation determines when an action belong to which category.

The Bible contains over one hundred exhortations to people to be courageous. The gospel of John records that Jesus told his disciples to be courageous, for he has conquered the world (John 16:33). However, the Bible unfortunately does not define “courage.”

Linking the definitions of courage found in Aristotle and Oxford English Dictionary clarifies that we rightly understand courage as a concept in moral psychology. The moral dimension of courage lies in deciding if and when and how to exercise courage; the psychological component of courage lies in mustering the wherewithal to act. If so, then punishing people for a lack of courage seems inappropriate. Some people may not know when they should exercise courage. Alternatively, the issue may become a psychological question: how, if possible, to help a person who lacks courage develop the ability to act in specific situations when frightened. Reserving that issue for the second part of this essay on courage, this essay will focus on the prior moral question of how to determine if and when to act in the face of fear.

Describing courage as a virtue, a character trait that describes how a person habitually acts, begs the moral questions implicit within the virtue, i.e., determining if and when a person should act in the face of fear. Is courage a deontological or utilitarian problem, i.e., should we determine if and when to exercise courage based on an absolute rule or a cost-benefit analysis?

The Christian tradition has helpfully recognized courage’s moral dimension by identifying courage as one of the four cardinal virtues. Discussions of courage in that context, however, rarely address the strictly moral questions of if and when a person should exercise courage because the cardinal virtue of prudence answers those questions. Unfortunately, those discussions necessarily remain at the level of vague generalities because of the wide diversity of situations that can call for a person to exercise some measure of courage in the face of fear. Linking prudence and courage complements Aristotle’s insight that courage is the mean between rashness and cowardice determined for each situation.

PowerPoint theology

PowerPoint (PPT), a powerful communications tool, can cause unintended communication problems:

• Oversimplifying analysis by reducing it to a set of bullet points, glossing over nuances and complexities
• Substituting a summary for genuine intellectual engagement
• Creating the illusion that a person can focus on more issues than in fact the person can handle
• Implying that the topic is linear, when some topics take vastly different forms, e.g., circular, random, or matrix

To what extent does PPT theology shortchange Christians and the Church? In a generation attuned to sound bites, thirty second commercials, and PPT presentations, the danger that our clergy, seminarians, and others never develop more than a superficial knowledge of the substance of Christianity is very real. If (As?) that happens, the Church will likely become more and more easily viewed as irrelevant to life’s deepest issues when in fact nothing else could be more relevant to those issues.

Reflecting on food stamp statistics

The number of food stamp recipients has climbed by about 10 million over the past two years, resulting in a program that now feeds 1 in 8 Americans and nearly 1 in 4 children. (“Food Stamp Usage Across the Country,” New York Times, February 11, 2010)

Those statistics should give people who contend that hard work is sufficient to overcome adversity in the United States, the land of opportunity, considerable cause to reevaluate their position. If hard work were sufficient to assure economic sufficiency, surely fewer people would need to rely on food stamps.

For me, those statistics are a siren call that underscores the moral problem with the growing disparity between the affluent and the poor in the United States. I believe that capitalism offers incentives to people that simply sharing according to needs fails to accommodate. The early socialistic experiment recorded in the book of Acts in which Christians pooled all of their assets and drew upon the common treasury according to need failed, as have several attempted repeats in the last two centuries. However, unregulated capitalism tends toward monopoly power in which the rich progressively increase their exploitation of the less rich and the poor. This process culminated in periods of devastating economic hardship following the eras of the robber barons in the nineteenth century, stock speculators in the first half of the twentieth century, and most recently financial speculators.

A Christian economic system incorporates not only economic incentives to encourage individual initiative and responsibility but also sufficient regulation to keep the wealth and income differences between the rich and poor within reasonable bounds. One interesting suggestion is that no employee of a corporation earns more than one hundred times the earnings of the lowest paid employee.

Simply providing a social safety net, of which food stamps constitute one element, is inadequate. In the short-run, dependence on a social safety net can ease difficult transitions. Long-term dependence on a social safe net tends to make people comfortable receiving public assistance and thereby undermines their self-esteem and commitment to self-sufficiency. In other words, the longer term consequence of too wide a disparity between the rich and the poor is social disintegration of the type seen in some third world countries in which elites siphon off the wealth, completely disenfranchising and alienating the have-nots.

Virtual communities

In response to my posting, “Say one for me,” a reader of this blog responded with two comments:

> Online communities suffer many drawbacks, mostly related to the absence of shared physical presence.

Yes, but virtual world technology like Second Life is gradually reducing those drawbacks. Check out the Anglican Cathedral of Second Life at http://slangcath.wordpress.com. I have seen some next-gen virtual world demos that are very powerful.

> Eucharistic sharing is impossible.

A Methodist church whose services were televised made sure that their shut-in's were supplied with bread and grape juice. On Sundays of Holy Communion, the pastor encouraged shut-in's to arrange bread and grape juice before the service began and then to tune in. During the prayer of consecration, the pastor alluded to the elements elsewhere. During administration, the pastor encouraged the shut-in's to partake while those in physical attendance made their way to the altar rail.

Catholics/Episcopalians would say, that's what the ministry of Eucharistic Visitors is for. But, I found the Methodist practice interesting and also reconcilable with a memorialist or receptionist theology of the Eucharist.

The limiting difficulty with both of those expressed views is their incompleteness given the Anglican tradition’s emphasis on a sacramental theology in which physical items become visible symbols of an inner grace. In the Eucharist, the celebrant to place her or his hands on the vessels that contain the bread and wine expressing the action of the Holy Spirit in transforming the elements or the experience into something more than a memorial remembrance. In human contact, the laying on of hands has similar sacramental efficacy in ordination and healing; the exchange of the peace is a more generalized practice that physically incarnates our love for neighbor.

Virtual communities have taken great developmental steps in recent years and certainly have an important role in ecclesial life. However, those communities will always be inadequate substitutes for participating in an actual community of God's people who gather on a regular basis (preferably weekly, in accordance with scriptural teaching). Reducing the mystery of the Eucharist to a memorial guts one of the important Anglican distinctives.

Of course, one of the potential difficulties with the Anglican emphasis on sacramental and incarnational theology is that such a theology can easily appear more akin to magic than reason in view of scientific insights. In time, the Church will need to develop new and more profound rationales for the importance of actual community and participation in the sacraments, find itself in the paradoxical position of supporting the compatibility of science and religion while proclaiming a message contrary to good science, or develop a new understanding and acceptance of virtual communities and religion.

Say one for me

Bishops in the Church of England have undertaken a different form of Lenten discipline: offering intercessions at the behest of the public. To request a bishop to say a prayer for you, follow this link. The bishops advertise their initiative using the title that I’ve copied, “Say one for me.” (Titles, incidentally, are not subject to copyright laws; copying, at least in this instance, is a sincere form of flattery.)

The bishops’ offer is terrific; I have previously blogged about the efficacy of prayer. And so I’m going to make the same offer as the bishops. If you would like me to say a prayer for you, just email me.

Online communities suffer many drawbacks, mostly related to the absence of shared physical presence. People online without video cannot communicate using body language. Eucharistic sharing is impossible. The benefits of love expressed through appropriate physical contact are lost.

On other hand, online communication offers a level of anonymity comforting to many and perhaps promoting more honest sharing of ideas. So “say one for me” is my Lenten offering, an experiment in creating online community removed from the hucksterism of much modern religion.

Ash Wednesday

The observance of Ash Wednesday seems to fly in the face of what the gospel of Matthew reports that Jesus taught, i.e., not to make an obvious show of one’s piety. Ironically, that text, Matthew 6:1-6, is part of the day’s gospel reading. Or, is it not really ironic?

Perhaps what seems obvious irony is in fact not so upon closer examination and reflection. We now live in a largely post-Christian society. Wearing a small ashen cross smudged on one’s forehead may not flaunt piety as much as raise questions about who and why. If attendees at my parish’s Shrove Tuesday pancake supper are at all indicative, they themselves did not understand the symbolism of either Shrove Tuesday or Ash Wednesday. Answering those questions affords an informal, unthreatening opportunity to speak about ideas central to Christianity.

Shrove Tuesday takes its name from the past tense of the verb “shrive,” which means to “hear the confession of, assign penance to, and absolve” (Concise Oxford English Dictionary). On Shrove Tuesday, medieval Christians would cleanse their houses of all foodstuffs forbidden during Lent and consume those items during a feast on the day before Ash Wednesday, which marks the first day of Lent. In some Roman Catholic nations this feast became the parties of Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday); in quieter Protestant circles, this feast became a pancake supper. Now that Christianity less explicitly defines the shape and flow or life, both Mardi Gras and pancake suppers have largely lost their connections to the beliefs that birthed them.

Behind the customs of Shrove Tuesday hides an important question: What in our lives will impede our Lenten journeys of spiritual development toward God?

Ash Wednesday symbolism incorporates and updates the pre-Christian practice of pouring ashes over one’s head to signify mourning or sorrow. Ashes visibly remind the wearer every time she or he sees a self-reflection that we really are dust, a concept with several layers of meaning. We are dust – the same substance as the earth and should not think ourselves any better than the earth. Gods calls us to lives of stewardship, not to lives of exploitation. We are dust – transient, perishable, and need to cherish each of our allotted days accordingly. We are dust – we have failed to be the person God created us to be, doing and not doing things we know pleasing to God. Others seeing ashes on us might helpfully consider those same questions with respect to themselves.

Behind the symbolism of Ash Wednesday hides an important question: What in our lives, by its presence or absence, displeases God?

Thoughts about church unity

The leader of the Methodist Church in the United Kingdom has indicated a willingness for the Methodist Church “to go out of business,” reuniting with the Church of England for the sake of the Kingdom (“Methodist Church in UK to go out of existence?” Episcopal Café, February 12, 2010). Of course, the Methodist Church in Great Britain has experienced years of steep numerical decline. The number of congregations has declined from 14,000 in 1932 to 6,000 in 2007 (Ruth Gledhill, “Thousands of churches face closure in ten years,” Times Online, February 10, 2007). Membership in those congregations totals approximately 265,000. Merger with the Church of England appears increasingly likely (Martin Beckford, “Methodists likely to merge with Church of England,” Telegraph, February 12, 2010).

Mainline Churches in the United States are experiencing declining attendance. Regrettably, few, if any, of the mainline Churches will follow the lead of the British Methodists in proposing their own dissolution. The twentieth century ecumenical movement foundered on proposals of structural reunification. People are loathe to surrender organizational power and prerogatives, even when the likely benefit is better stewardship of the resources people have given to do God's work.

On a less macro level, few individual congregations voluntarily decide to close their doors even when they spend virtually all of the time, talent, and treasure given to the congregation on simply maintaining the physical plant and sustaining ministries directed to meeting the needs of the remaining handful of members. Surely, these congregations would do more for God and their members by merging with a neighboring congregation, regardless of whether that congregation has the same denominational affiliation.

Church is about building God's kingdom, not perpetuating a comfy ecclesiastical fellowship for the few. With Sunday attendance in about half of all Episcopal congregations averaging 65 or fewer, the members, clergy, and chief pastors (Bishops) for many of those congregations should consider closing the doors, selling the property, and finding better, more efficient and effective ways to serve God.

Half-truths about healthcare and U.S. founders

Two recent items about healthcare caught my eye. First, Paul Krugman in a New York Times op-ed column observed that the Republican Party has taken contradictory stands with respect to Medicare funding cuts, both opposing and advocating cuts (“Republicans and Medicare,” February 11, 2010). Krugman’s column prompted questions about how many groups obstruct progress toward meaningful healthcare reform in order to gain a tactical or strategic advantage for the group’s agenda unrelated to healthcare. I doubt that Democrats behave any better than Republicans. Yet, voters presumably elect members of Congress to enact legislation that if not in the best interest of the nation appears to be at least in the interest of the member’s constituency. Obstructionism of the type Krugman identified avoids addressing substantive issues by posturing for political gain.

Second, in the next few years as many as twenty new medical schools may open in the United States and some existing medical schools may expand enrollment. (Anemona Hartocollis, “After Years of Quiet, Expecting a Boom in U.S. Medical Schools,” New York Times, February 14, 2010.) In a free market economy, competition drives down prices. Increased supply results in increased competition. Perhaps part of the answer for controlling healthcare costs in the United States is to promote a free market among healthcare providers by increasing the supply of physicians. At some number of licensed physicians, excess supply will drive down the price of physician services. Heretofore, the American Medical Association, a de facto union, has aggressively advocated limiting medical school enrollment. The trend of U.S. students going abroad to attend medical school finally seems the catalyst for breaking that logjam.

Almost all biblical scholars agree that Jesus healed people. In other words, Jesus promoted good human health. The Congressional failure to enact healthcare reform in 2010 represents a sad commentary on the influence of special interest groups to prevail over the welfare of the broader community. I cannot construe debates driven by half-truths and narrow agendas as a genuine attempt to improve our dysfunctional healthcare system. Sadly, I no longer have much hope for significant improvement in the near term. The disparity between the healthcare of the nation’s affluent and its poor remains a scandalous indictment of how un-Christian the United States is.

In the meantime, some Christian fundamentalists in Texas, including a majority of the state school board, strive to rewrite U.S. history (Russell Shorto, “How Christian Were the Founders?” New York Times, February 11, 2010). Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and other significant voices during the nation’s founding years would bristle and object forcefully to efforts to characterize them as Christian. Nor did they want to found a Christian nation. For example, Jefferson rejected conventional understandings of Jesus as divine, a miracle worker, and resurrected. He constructed his own version of the New Testament by systematically removing every passage that he thought portrayed Jesus as divine, a miracle worker, or resurrected. Jefferson, like many of the key leaders during that formative period, was a deist rather than an orthodox Christians. To preserve their personal religious freedom and that of other dissenters, these founders supported the separation of religion from state control.

These same Texan Christian fundamentalists have prevailed in having Margaret Sanger removed from the curriculum for promoting eugenics (she actually was a birth-control pioneer) and in inserting Phyllis Schlafly as pivotal in the 1980s conservative resurgence in the United States. Both women played significant roles in American history. The reliance on falsehoods to promote a narrow agenda is deeply upsetting, paralleling what is happening in the healthcare debate. Margaret Sanger did not rise to prominence because of any stance she may or may not have taken with respect to eugenics. Those Texan Christian fundamentalists want the emphasis on abstinence rather than birth control; they also believe that abortion is murder. So they have twisted Sanger’s real views, labeling them eugenics, and rallying sufficient opposition to have Sanger removed from the textbooks from which the Texas public schools teach history. The positions on which they base those actions, which I find unsupportable, do not justify rewriting history to exclude divergent views. Similarly, I object strenuously to Schlafly’s understanding of gender differences and roles. However, even though I find her and her organization an embarrassing element of American history they remain part of that history as do slavery, child labor, and many other reprehensible events and practices. Failing to study the past honestly and critically greatly increases the likelihood of repeating sinful mistakes.

Peace demands justice

In an incredibly ironic move, the U.S. based Simon Weisenthal Center has announced plans to build a “tolerance museum” in Jerusalem on an Arab graveyard that contains at least 800 graves. The Weisenthal Center has led the way in seeking the apprehension and adjudication of former Nazis accused of involvement in the Holocaust. (“Simon Weisenthal Centre to build ‘tolerance museum’ on Arab graveyard,” Times Online, February 12, 2010.) Promoting tolerance for Jews and demanding justice for those who persecuted the Jews while disrespecting Arabs is paradoxical and self-defeating.

New York Times op-ed columnist Roger Cohen recently (“Hard Mideast Truths,” February 13, 2010) echoed that point:

Here’s what I believe. Centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust created a moral imperative for a Jewish homeland, Israel, and demand of America that it safeguard that nation in the breach.

But past persecution of the Jews cannot be a license to subjugate another people, the Palestinians. Nor can the solemn U.S. promise to stand by Israel be a blank check to the Jewish state when its policies undermine stated American aims.

Peace without justice for all is impossible.

Happiness and religious education

Richard Layard (Happiness (New York: Penguin, 2005), pp. 200-201) argues that school systems should include a class that teaches people skills essential for happiness as part of each year’s curriculum:

• Understanding and managing your feelings (including anger and rivalry)
• Loving and serving others (including practical exercises and learning about role models)
• The appreciation of beauty
• Causes and cures of illness, including mental illness, drugs and alcohol
• Love, family, and parenting
• Work and money
• Understanding the media and preserving your own values
• Understanding others and how to socialize
• Philosophical and religious ideas

Those subjects outline what in many respects constitutes the goals of good religious education, i.e., learning to love self, others, and God. Too much religious education achieves little beyond a basic familiarization with some Bible stories and appears to have no over-arching goals. The question of what clergy, parents, and others hope that religious education will achieve is admittedly difficult but essential for a religious education program to achieve much. (NB: Religious education is not for children only. An adult religious education program should build on essential lessons learned in childhood.)

Layard’s enumeration of essential life skills not surprisingly reflects the essential elements of the human spirit: ability to love and be loved; creativity or imagination; aesthetic sense; self-transcendence or self-awareness; autonomy; and capacity for language.

Bible, sex, and the environment

Eric Lax in an Op-Ed column in the New York Times (“Have Faith in Love,” February 7, 2010) wrote an excellent and moving piece on why full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the life of the Episcopal Church is a profoundly Christian move. He rightly recognizes that both Church and society have grown in their understanding of human sexuality and divine love since the 1970s.

The Church of 2010 seems splintered into factions, each pushing a relatively narrow agenda. Individually, many of these agendas constitute part of the mission God has set before the Church. However, fidelity to that mission requires focusing broadly on God's love, incorporating many disparate interests. The Bible is the story of God's love for all, not just a few.

One of my seminary professors observed that most preachers, even with the help of the lectionary, routinely emphasize a handful of themes in their preaching. Over the years of my ministry, I have regularly and consciously attempted to preach on a diverse set of themes and topics. Paying attention to the lectionary helps. Auditing my sermons, asking what is the primary theme/topic for each, and then intentionally working to preach on spirituality, self, others, the world, current issues, relational issues, etc., has enabled me – most of the time, I hope – to avoid falling into the habit of repeatedly hitting the same themes/topics.

Thus, the selection of February 14, 2010 as Environmental Sunday dismayed me. None of the lessons in the Revised Common Lectionary utilized by the Episcopal Church and many other denominations, at least as I read them, easily and directly speak to the extremely important and timely issue of environmental stewardship. The sermon resources the sponsoring group posted on its website completely ignore the lessons. Why not choose the following Sunday as Environmental Sunday?

If we believe that the Bible is a window through which the light of God shines, illuminating our lives, then connecting sermon and scripture seems a sine qua non for most Christian preaching. Not every sermon must connect directly with one or more of the lessons, e.g., I have preached on the Creed. However, when many people in the Church sadly and wrongly believe that the Bible says little or nothing about environmental issues, emphasizing that connection seems especially important.

Factors important in human flourishing

Social science research has identified seven major factors that determine the happiness of an individual (Richard Layard, Happiness (New York: Penguin, 2005), p. 63):

• Family relationships
• Financial situation
• Work
• Community and friends
• Health
• Personal freedom
• Personal values

Conversely, six factors explain 80% of the variation in happiness between people and across cultural/national boundaries (Richard Layard, Happiness (New York: Penguin, 2005), p. 71):

• Divorce rate
• Unemployment rate
• Level of trust
• Membership in non-religious organizations
• Quality of government
• Fraction believing in God

Those lists provide a practical agenda for promoting human flourishing useful to individuals engaging in self-examination to improve their life and to organizations wanting to promote human well-being. Although a person may little control over the quality of the government under which he/she lives or the prevailing level of unemployment, well over half of the items are ones over which most individuals can exercise considerable control.

Shoes, tea parties, and happiness

Tamara Mellon, in her own words, is the “inspiration, the heart and soul” behind Jimmy Choo. Before moving into her newly acquired 7200 square foot condo in New York City, she enlarged the bedroom closet into an L-shaped space that is 15 by 23 feet at its widest. She’s lost count of how many pairs of shoes she owns somewhere after reaching 800. A recent Wall Street Journal article provides photos and more details on the extent of her wardrobe (Rachel Dodes, “Jimmy Choo's (Shoe) Closet,” February 6, 2010).

That article prompted a couple of different musings. First, Mellon’s lifestyle (and that of most middle and upper class Americans) starkly contrasts with the lifestyle of the very poor, including many of Haiti’s earthquake victims. Assuredly, some Haitians live comfortably. But significant numbers of Haitians, prior to the recent earthquake, subsisted on the edge of one of the world’s poorest societies. If that were not true, Haitian parents would not give their children to misguided Christian missionaries from Idaho in the hope that the children would have a better life than was possible in Haiti. The desperation and lack of hope that combine to cause a parent to give away a beloved child willingly, a child whom presumably the parent loves as deeply as any parent we know loves her/his child, is difficult to imagine.

Attempting to reconcile my affluence with Jesus’ injunction to love my neighbor as myself leaves me feeling guiltily uncomfortable. Yet I persist in my lifestyle, rationalizing that the affluence of a Tamara Mellon makes me look relatively poor. I also know that we do not have very many good answers about how to aid other nations in their economic development effectively. Charitable assistance may alleviate immediate suffering, which is important, but does little to move a nation or community towards long-term prosperity. I wonder what Jesus might think of a closet full of clothes for a single person that has 800 pairs of shoes and similar surfeits of other items.

Second, a group of angry Americans has gathered in Nashville, TN, this weekend for the first Tea Party Convention. Those Americans appear united by their anger at the status quo and divided by their proposed solutions. Some of the rhetoric is simply silly, e.g., former U.S. Representative and 2008 presidential candidate Tom Tancredo declaring that people who voted for Obama in 2008 could not spell “vote” or say it in English put a committed socialist into the White House. Sadly, much of the rhetoric is implicitly white supremacist, railing against non-English speakers and those with non-European ancestors. The rhetoric also troublingly weaves a narrow, bigoted form of Christianity with politics, suggesting that God best loves an English speaking, white, capitalist America. (Ann Gerhart and Philip Rucker, “The Tea Party is still taking shape,” Washington Post, February 6, 2010; Tim Reid, “Tea Party turns nasty: ‘It’s our country – let’s take it back’,” Times Online, February 6, 2010)

The current recession fuels much of that anger, leaving some in the Tea Party feeling threatened and others certain that their prosperous lifestyles are rapidly nearing an end. Meanwhile, the poorest Americans do not have enough to eat and mostly have no hope of ever sharing in the American dream. In other words, the Tea Party movement represents a further tattering of the fabric of American society. Their xenophobia, wanting to exclude any new immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, is a function of the desperation they feel in trying to hold on to their prosperity.

Studies of happiness show that a person’s standing relative to others has more of an impact on that person’s level of happiness than does the person’s absolute standing (Richard Layard, Happiness (New York: Penguin, 2005), pp. 149-166). By global standards, the vast majority of Tea Party supporters are among the economic elite. By American standards, especially compared to several years ago, these Tea Party supporters are moving backwards, less well off than before and losing ground when compared to their neighbors. This similarly explains some of the anger at the large bonuses financial company executives have received even though those companies accepted government bailouts. Nobody is bailing out the average American; foreclosures continue to spread; unemployment remains unacceptably high (did people getting jobs or quitting to search for employment cause last month’s decline of 0.3% in the U.S. unemployment rate?).

Super bowl weekend is a often a time of excess in the United States. Perhaps the combat of two teams on the field, playing a game that has become far more than a mere sports contest, is an appropriate metaphor for the struggle between nations and within people over a moral lifestyle.

Feeding the mind

Two hundred years ago, the advent of national and international media really lay in the future. Major metropolitan newspapers published stories about national and international events. However, those stories generally lagged the actual event by days if not weeks or months. Stories of violent crimes rightly remained the purview of the local area in which the incident occurred. Electronic media was not yet on anyone’s horizon.

Even if possible, I would not want to turn back the clock on progress. Being more aware of what is happening around the world confers many positive advantages, e.g., an ability for nations to intervene as genocide occurs, to respond in a more timely fashion to natural disasters, and for voters to have more awareness of the issues they and their nation face.

However, one significant negative consequences of a global perspective is that much of the media profits from reporting what are truly local incidents, e.g., a horrific murder that is not part of a broader crime wave or perpetrated by a serial killer. Such reporting can make people who are secure feel threatened and create the false impression that crime has become more prevalent than in prior generations. The fact that media that report emotionally intense stories often attract a larger market share promotes this unfortunate practice.

This week, I surprised someone when I remarked that I did not read reports of sensational crimes in the local paper. I explained that I knew such crimes occurred and that I had concern for the victims and the criminals. But I also emphasized that reading such reports did nothing to improve the quality of my life. Specific knowledge of specific crimes, sometimes with shocking visual images, polluted rather than enriched my life.

Life, as I have observed before in this blog, is inherently risky. Every individual should take prudential precautions to safeguard loved ones, self, and possessions. Nevertheless, absolute security does not exist. Succumbing to the an unhealthy fascination with spectacular evil does not promote human flourishing. Similarly, the media pandering to that human proclivity does not promote human flourishing even though it may increase corporate revenues.

Government censorship is not the answer. Instead, people must develop self-discipline, choosing to bring into the self only that information which seems likely to promote human flourishing. This practice parallels the self-discipline by which people choose to eat and to drink only those substances likely to promote human flourishing. Nobody ever achieves perfection with respect to these goals. Yet overtime a person can truly cultivate a healthier body, mind, and spirit by trying to control intentionally what he or she allows in.

The gospels report that Jesus said that what comes out of a person, not what goes into a person, is the source of pollution (cf. Matthew 5:10-20). He spoke of ritual pollution, Jews refusing to eat certain foods because they believed those foods ritually unclean.

Jesus’ point is a very different than my point. All foods are ritually clean. Not all food is healthy, e.g., a person with gluten intolerance should abstain from foods with gluten. Furthermore, people either had not recognized or invented the problems of impure water, contaminated foodstuffs, and food additives. Scripture teaches that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:190); humans are to exercise good care for the body. Likewise, Jesus promoted healthy thoughts, denouncing thoughts of adultery as being as bad as the act itself (Matthew 5:27-28).

What do you feed your mind?

Don't ask, don't tell - part 2

On February 2, 2010, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen both testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee supporting the abolition of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that discriminates against gays serving in the military. Some of the points that Gates and Mullen emphasized I had highlighted in my last post on this subject. (Elisabeth Buhmiller, “Top Defense Officials Seek to End ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’,” New York Times, February 3, 2010)

Their testimony event signaled a critical turning point in that debate. This is the first that time that the senior civilian and uniformed military leadership have advocated full inclusion. Although some members of the Senate panel voiced opposition to the change, momentum in favor of the change now seems irreversible. Continuing opposition from religious bigots seems likely.

Everyone in the religious community should be clear, regardless of their views about the morality of homosexuality. Gays and lesbians serving in the military is not a religious issue but a civil rights issue. All citizens have duties to their nation that include paying taxes, voting, and perhaps serving in the military. Sexual misconduct – whether heterosexual or homosexual – has no place in the military (or civilian life, for that matter). Religious conversations about the morality of homosexuality have a place in the public square but have no right in a secular nation to limit civil rights. Religious leaders should take the lead in denouncing religious bigotry and in opposing misguided efforts to impose that bigotry on public life.

Haiti - part 6 - not God's chastising

I recently received this email regarding my posts on earthquake theology and the earthquake in Haiti not being God's judgment:

A friend sent me a radio commentary:

"VERY INTERESTING

you may need to copy and paste

http://www.irnusaradio.com/our-programs/viewpoint

Scroll down the this program and click on it

01-15-2010 "PACT WITH THE DEVIL" Did God bring judgment on Haiti?"

I listened to this and did a search on the internet to see other points of view -- I saw yours.

There was a flurry of outrage at what Pat Robertson said. I saw one interviewer who had the Haitian Ambassador to the UN in the studio. He acknowledged the voodoo pact, proud of it from a historical point of view (I believe one of their leaders declared Voodoo the national religion), but put forth an argument that there were many things since that time that Haiti had done to benefit the US. It struck me how the interviewer jumped directly back to condemning Robertson, not even seemingly noticing what the Ambassador was saying, or questioning him further on what many have openly called the curse Haiti has suffered over the years.

The scenes of the tragedy in Haiti are horrific. Our prayers and support are for them, of course. Looking up what Christ said in Luke about a tragedy where a tower fell on eighteen, it was interesting His reply.

The Bible talks about God judging the nation of Israel for its unbelief. If one were to acknowledge God to be capable of chastisement, even of nations, would it, to you, be a worthy thing for the nation of Haiti to consider repentance on a national level?

My answer to the respondent’s question has four parts. First, sufficient evil exists in the world that God does not need to cause more evil. The God of love, the God whose unconditional and immeasurable love incomprehensibly manifested itself in Jesus did not “chastise” Haiti.

Second, God can and frequently does bring good things out of bad. National repentance would benefit every nation, including Haiti. However, Haiti does not have an established religion, voodoo or otherwise. Haiti’s sin, like ours, is the failure to love God and others fully.

Third, if the earthquake is God's judgment on Haiti, then helping earthquake victims puts us in the awkward position of mitigating God's judgment. God's call to aid the least among us is clear. Arguing that God chastised Haiti with an earthquake but calls those in other nations to provide disaster aid makes no sense.

Fourth, why would God choose to chastise Haiti, one of the poorest nations in the world? Why would God not chastise a larger, more sinful nation? Singling out Haiti seems capricious; if God is chastising the nations, why not start with the biggest sinner or chastise all simultaneously? The claim that the earthquake represents God's judgment makes God's justice appear extremely unjust.

Finally, God surely would not punish both the innocent and guilty. The earthquake killed many Christians, many good members of the clergy, and destroyed many religious ministry facilities, including the Anglican cathedral. Contending that all of these Christians were part of a voodoo pact is ludicrous. God surely can discriminate more effectively between the innocent and the guilty!

God gives humans the capacity to reason and therefore expects us to reason. Allegations of voodoo pacts may stir the emotions. However, when emotionally charged claims seem to defy good theology, we have a moral obligation to examine those claims in the light of God's love as revealed in Christ Jesus. In the case of Haiti’s earthquake representing God's chastisement, that claim lacks cogency.

Prayer can improve personal happiness

Prayer can improve personal happiness. That conclusion may seem strikingly obvious to some and ludicrous to others. Yet that assessment, supported by scientific data, is important in an age of growing fears, financial insecurity, and post-traumatic stress.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts medical school, conducted an experiment with business employees. He offered the corporation’s workers a course in meditation. Half of the volunteers he placed on a waiting list; this constitute the control the group. The other half of the volunteers received a weekly instruction session in meditation for eight weeks. He expected those receiving instruction to meditate daily on their own. Before and after the experiment he measured the happiness of both groups using a questionnaire and EEG tests. People who took the course were significantly happier than the control group four months after the course ended. (Richard Layard, Happiness (New York: Penguin, 2005), pp. 187-188)

The meditation in that experiment was a form of Buddhist meditation. However, unknown to most Christians, the Christian tradition includes a strong emphasis on meditative prayer among some monastics and mystical theologians. The failure of the Church at large to teach meditation widely and to encourage many to engage in meditative practices has spiritually impoverished Christianity.

If God is omniscient – all knowing – as Christian theology generally claims, then petitioning God may seem like a form of whining, pleading one’s case until a beneficent parent relents and grants the child’s wish. Listening to God – meditating – offers an approach to prayer in which the person seeks to know more of God, becoming more aware of God's presence and God's love. Meditation does not preclude intercessory prayer but can enrich the prayer life.

However, that so few Christians spend extensive amounts of time in prayer may reflect the bankruptcy of Christian theology with respect to prayer. God is not a heavenly vending machine, a transcendent entity who delivers the goods when we deposit the right currency (prayers). Although untrained theologically, most people seem to have rejected that approach to life. Otherwise, they would spend more time praying.

Meditation, whether focused on an object in the outer world or on the inner self, can lead to a deeper awareness of the abiding presence, the life-giving force, that we commonly call God. Meditation techniques may have one focus on breathing, an image (e.g., the cross), a phrase (e.g., the Jesus prayer), or an exercise (e.g., breathing). All of these techniques have a long Christian history. The techniques also have a long history in other religious traditions, which suggests the common reality that lies beyond.

Richard Layard, the author who reported the exercise in meditation, is a highly respected British economist, not a man with a religious agenda or mission. Layard argues that happiness is life’s goal, a view to which I subscribe. Paying attention to the inner life, the life of the human spirit, is essential for maximizing human happiness and well-being.

I wonder what the world might be like if everybody spent fifteen minutes per day meditating. Certainly, the amount of fear, insecurity, and post-traumatic stress would diminish even though I am far from being so naïve as to expect that meditation is a panacea for those ills.