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In my blog post today about Daniel Frick's Reinventing Richard Nixon: A Cultural History of an American Obsession, I'll use as my starting-point a passage on pages 167-168. There, Frick states:
"For
liberals, Richard Nixon serves as more than an easy target----he
functions as a touchstone for the validity of their values. In 'Angst
for the Memories,' a September 1993 episode of Murphy Brown, a situation comedy about a 60 Minutes-like
television newsmagazine, Murphy (played by Cand[i]ce Bergen) lands an
interview with the reclusive author of a landmark 1960s novel, Technicolor Highway.
The excitement of this scoop fades when Murphy discovers that her
literary hero has become a virulent neoconservative. Commiserating
afterward at their favorite tavern, Murphy and her co-workers admit that
they too have changed. One by one, these denizens of the liberal media
offer confessions----one now believes that many welfare recipients are
lazy, another has considered purchasing a gun----until one of them cuts
to a final test: 'Does anyone here think Nixon might have gotten a raw
deal?' Instant denials reassure them, and, with great relief, Murphy
and her colleagues clink glasses, toasting, 'At least we've still got
that,' affirming Nixon's villainy as their one bedrock belief."
I
checked the Internet Movie Database for this episode, and I noticed that
Martin Sheen was on it. I wonder if he was the actor who played the
author who became a neoconservative. It would be cool if he was!
Change.
I'm interested in shows that depict a change in one's ideology or
religion, whether that change be from right to left, or from left to
right, or from either extreme to someplace in the middle. I was
intrigued when I read a description of an episode of Family Ties,
"My Back Pages," which was during Season 5: "An old college friend
comes to Steven to ask his help in starting up an old left wing
political magazine, 'The Scavenger.' But after hanging around with the
other staff, Steven realizes he no longer has the same ideals he had
back in the 1960's, fearing he has accepted the middle of the road
thinking he protested against as a youth." What specifically was
Steven's ideological change? Essentially, he came to support the PTA,
and he voted Democratic rather than taking the radical approach of
rejecting both parties.
Frick elsewhere in his book talks about
people's ideological changes. There was Ron Kovic, whose belief in
American myths about America being the good guys and the good guys being
winners were undermined by his own experience in Vietnam, along with
its aftermath. There is another Vietnam vet Frick quotes, who said that
he realized that the American soldiers in Vietnam were like the
Redcoats during the American revolution, the ones who were depicted to
him as evil back when he was a child.
A conservative relative of
mine once told me that more liberals become conservatives than
vice-versa, as if liberalism is naive idealism, whereas conservatism is a
more realistic, "grown-up" perspective. But my conservative relative
is wrong, I suspect, in saying this, for I know a number of
conservatives who became liberals as a reaction against the extremism of
the Tea Party. While I believe that the inefficiencies and
intrusiveness of government can convince a liberal to question his or
her faith in big government and to become a conservative, I also think
that a conservative can lose faith in the tenets of conservative
mythology, as they shatter against the brick wall of reality: that
everyone has a chance to succeed in America, that many who are poor are
poor due to lack of effort, or that America is consistently a force for
good in the world.
A problem that Frick highlights more than once
in this book is that liberals have not successfully replaced the
widely-accepted conservative mythology with their own narrative that can
catch on. There may be some truth to what Frick is saying. I can
think of reasons that cause me to doubt his sentiment. For example,
liberals are good storytellers in terms of crafting populist
narratives. Which is more inspiring: the little guy taking on a big
corporation that is polluting his area's water supply, or a corporation
resisting big government regulations? I suppose that Atlas Shrugged
is a fairly good story, even though it's in the latter category, and
yet I find the former narrative to be more widespread and inspiring.
Championing the downtrodden against the rich and powerful makes for good
storytelling.
But I cannot deny that conservatives have crafted
quite an influential narrative. During the debate on Obamacare, a
liberal I know was complaining that, although Democrats were in power at
the time, conservatives had still managed to shape the debate about
health care. We were hearing, and many were assuming, standard
conservative lines about the issue: that government-run health care is a
bad thing, that the Canadian health care system is terrible because it
has long lines, and the list goes on.
One problem, if you will,
with the liberal narrative may be that it just does not resonate with a
number of Americans. That does not mean that the liberal narrative is
necessarily false, but rather that it's not what many Americans may want
to hear. In a country that prides itself on rugged individualism and
pioneer spirit, many may not want to hear about community, or the
importance of society taking care of the least of these. In a country
that sees itself as a force for good in the world, many may not want to
hear the argument that America does not consistently do good when it
comes to its intervention in other countries. I realize that my
definition of "liberal narrative" here is rather simplistic, since there
are times when a liberal might support American interventionism into
other countries, whereas a conservative may not. But it is often those
on the left who question the assumption that America is a force for good
in the world.
Anyway, that's my rambling for the day!
Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Nixon Reconsidered 8
I finished Joan Hoff's Nixon Reconsidered. I have three items.
1. I liked something that Hoff said on pages 344-345:
"...the parents of those born after 1974 either strongly opposed or supported Nixon for reasons their children still do not quite understand: 'My parents hate him,' one of my students responded on a questionnaire asking why she was taking a class on Nixon, 'and I want to know why.'"
Why did I like this passage? I can't really say. I guess it's because it warms my heart to see people wanting to learn more about the world around them, due to something in their background that they don't quite understand.
I was one of the people born after 1974. What did my parents think about Richard Nixon? My impression is that they neither hated him nor loved him. They believed that he was a shady politician, but they didn't have high expectations about politicians, in general.
Although my parents didn't appear (at least to me) to have strong opinions about Nixon, there were a couple of times when they expressed an opinion about him. When I was in the sixth grade, I was reading The Final Days, by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The back cover quoted the New York Times saying about the book: "Unprecedented....Mr. Nixon emerges as a tragic figure weathering a catastrophic ordeal...and weathering it with considerable courage and dignity." When I read that quote to my Mom, she responded that she felt that way about Nixon during Watergate.
My Dad one time told a story about a conversation that his father had with someone about Nixon. A relative was really gun-ho about Nixon, saying that Nixon would be a great President, and my Grandpa retorted, "Nixon will be the last President, and, not only that, he will be the worst President." My Dad in telling the story may have been implying that my Grandpa was not too far off the mark: while Nixon did not turn out to be our last President, Nixon's Presidency did end on a dismal note.
2. On pages 345-346, Hoff talks about how Nixon during the 1990's was deemed by many to be authentic:
"He insisted on speaking out on issues, especially foreign policy ones; he looked like a real person, not a talking head, on television; he stood for something rather than nothing or everything, as is now the trendy postmodern fashion...Nixon's potential appeal by the early 1990s because of his own 'real' look was lost on him; he once said to me that 'blow-dry hair is now as important as brains' when running for office. It is truly a postmodern moment when Richard Nixon, who had to deal with charges of inauthenticity all his public life, became more real and authentic than the totally packaged variety of contemporary politician."
Throughout Richard Nixon's political career, there were many who did not regard Nixon as particularly authentic. With all of the "new Nixons" coming out, many wondered who the real Nixon was. According to Hoff, however, Nixon during the 1990's was regarded by many as more authentic than most of the politicians who were on the scene. I can attest to that, on some level. I was watching a YouTube clip of David Frost's interview of Nixon, in which Nixon was responding to Frost's questions about Watergate. One of the commenters said that she liked Nixon because he was comfortable with being who he was. Granted, this clip was of an interview of Nixon from the late 1970's, not the 1990's. But I could see the commenter's point. I don't know if Nixon was telling the truth or not in the Frost interviews, but he did come across to me as authentic, as a real person. I have the same impression whenever I watch Nixon's Checkers Speech from 1952----and this is a speech that detractors consider to be particularly inauthentic, with its staged den and Nixon's sappy reference to the family dog. Many say that Nixon was uncomfortable in his own skin, and they may be right. But there were a number of times when Nixon came across as authentic, as if he were conveying a message of "This is who I am, take it or leave it."
3. For this third item, I'll offer my general assessments of Hoff's book. Overall, the book has a lot about policy, and I had to reread parts to grasp what exactly Hoff was narrating. The book is important, but it is very dry, in areas. At the same time, I enjoyed Hoff's anecdotes about her interviews with Nixon. In terms of her argument that President Nixon had significant and progressive accomplishments in domestic policy, she may be right about that, but I wish that she addressed certain liberal arguments against Nixon's domestic policy. For example, a number of progressives were critical of Nixon's welfare reform plan of giving cash benefits to the poor, maintaining that the funding would not be adequate. Hoff should have addressed that charge by saying whether or not the poor would have been able to live on the amount of money that Nixon's plan would give them. Another point that I would like to make is that I found Hoff to be rather elliptical, in places. She seemed to agree that the Joint Chiefs of Staff was bugging the National Security Council, for example, but I wanted her to go into more detail about why it would do this.
Good book, though!
1. I liked something that Hoff said on pages 344-345:
"...the parents of those born after 1974 either strongly opposed or supported Nixon for reasons their children still do not quite understand: 'My parents hate him,' one of my students responded on a questionnaire asking why she was taking a class on Nixon, 'and I want to know why.'"
Why did I like this passage? I can't really say. I guess it's because it warms my heart to see people wanting to learn more about the world around them, due to something in their background that they don't quite understand.
I was one of the people born after 1974. What did my parents think about Richard Nixon? My impression is that they neither hated him nor loved him. They believed that he was a shady politician, but they didn't have high expectations about politicians, in general.
Although my parents didn't appear (at least to me) to have strong opinions about Nixon, there were a couple of times when they expressed an opinion about him. When I was in the sixth grade, I was reading The Final Days, by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The back cover quoted the New York Times saying about the book: "Unprecedented....Mr. Nixon emerges as a tragic figure weathering a catastrophic ordeal...and weathering it with considerable courage and dignity." When I read that quote to my Mom, she responded that she felt that way about Nixon during Watergate.
My Dad one time told a story about a conversation that his father had with someone about Nixon. A relative was really gun-ho about Nixon, saying that Nixon would be a great President, and my Grandpa retorted, "Nixon will be the last President, and, not only that, he will be the worst President." My Dad in telling the story may have been implying that my Grandpa was not too far off the mark: while Nixon did not turn out to be our last President, Nixon's Presidency did end on a dismal note.
2. On pages 345-346, Hoff talks about how Nixon during the 1990's was deemed by many to be authentic:
"He insisted on speaking out on issues, especially foreign policy ones; he looked like a real person, not a talking head, on television; he stood for something rather than nothing or everything, as is now the trendy postmodern fashion...Nixon's potential appeal by the early 1990s because of his own 'real' look was lost on him; he once said to me that 'blow-dry hair is now as important as brains' when running for office. It is truly a postmodern moment when Richard Nixon, who had to deal with charges of inauthenticity all his public life, became more real and authentic than the totally packaged variety of contemporary politician."
Throughout Richard Nixon's political career, there were many who did not regard Nixon as particularly authentic. With all of the "new Nixons" coming out, many wondered who the real Nixon was. According to Hoff, however, Nixon during the 1990's was regarded by many as more authentic than most of the politicians who were on the scene. I can attest to that, on some level. I was watching a YouTube clip of David Frost's interview of Nixon, in which Nixon was responding to Frost's questions about Watergate. One of the commenters said that she liked Nixon because he was comfortable with being who he was. Granted, this clip was of an interview of Nixon from the late 1970's, not the 1990's. But I could see the commenter's point. I don't know if Nixon was telling the truth or not in the Frost interviews, but he did come across to me as authentic, as a real person. I have the same impression whenever I watch Nixon's Checkers Speech from 1952----and this is a speech that detractors consider to be particularly inauthentic, with its staged den and Nixon's sappy reference to the family dog. Many say that Nixon was uncomfortable in his own skin, and they may be right. But there were a number of times when Nixon came across as authentic, as if he were conveying a message of "This is who I am, take it or leave it."
3. For this third item, I'll offer my general assessments of Hoff's book. Overall, the book has a lot about policy, and I had to reread parts to grasp what exactly Hoff was narrating. The book is important, but it is very dry, in areas. At the same time, I enjoyed Hoff's anecdotes about her interviews with Nixon. In terms of her argument that President Nixon had significant and progressive accomplishments in domestic policy, she may be right about that, but I wish that she addressed certain liberal arguments against Nixon's domestic policy. For example, a number of progressives were critical of Nixon's welfare reform plan of giving cash benefits to the poor, maintaining that the funding would not be adequate. Hoff should have addressed that charge by saying whether or not the poor would have been able to live on the amount of money that Nixon's plan would give them. Another point that I would like to make is that I found Hoff to be rather elliptical, in places. She seemed to agree that the Joint Chiefs of Staff was bugging the National Security Council, for example, but I wanted her to go into more detail about why it would do this.
Good book, though!
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Leaders 3
A theme that came up more than once in my latest reading of Richard Nixon's Leaders was alcohol. Here are some stories that Nixon tells:
----Page 143: "[German leader Konrad Adenauer] had other weapons besides the cold steel of logic, however. When a cabinet meeting grew difficult, he would sometimes suspend debate for a while and pass around a bottle of wine. After a few glassfuls and some friendly small talk, he would resume the meeting. The opposition would then be substantially less resolute."
----Page 155: "[Soviet leader Nikita] Khrushchev was then relatively new to power and unfamiliar with the leaders he would be confronting in the free world. He was clearly intent upon testing Adenauer's mettle. During one banquet he proposed a seemingly endless series of toasts to see whether the seventy-nine-year-old Adenauer, so intractable at the negotiating table, could be worn down by liquor. Though he preferred wine to vodka, Adenauer had a stomach as well as a will of iron. After fifteen toasts he was still both upright and alert----alert enough, in fact, to notice that Khrushchev had been drinking water. The next morning Adenauer confronted Khrushchev with the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that any man who would do such a thing could not be trusted. Surprised to find that he had been caught in the act, Khrushchev could only laugh."
Page 188: "The table was laden with every manner of Russian delicacy and soft and hard drinks. Despite his well-deserved reputation for drinking heavily, Khrushchev only sampled the array of vodka and wine. He appreciated good food and drink. But just as his famed temper was always his servant and not his master, his drinking on this occasion was strictly for pleasure and was never permitted to interfere with business. He was cold sober throughout our long afternoon of talks."
Alcohol can indeed be conducive to camaraderie and socializing in a relaxed manner. I one time heard a person with Asperger's Syndrome talk about how he did not really fit in with his Irish extended family----until they started to get drunk together. Then, they could have fun and bond with each other.
But alcohol can also hinder some people from doing the business that they need to do. Khrushchev did not want to get drunk when negotiating because he wanted for his mind to be alert and sharp during that time. And, speaking of the negative effects that drinking lots of alcohol can bring, that one person with Asperger's whom I discussed in my above paragraph eventually decided to quit drinking, for he thought that he was degenerating into a sour alcoholic.
I used to drink for a variety of reasons. I drank socially because I hoped that it would loosen me up in social settings. Social settings make me nervous. I tend to clam up within them, which is not particularly attractive to people and which can even draw mockery. Drinking helped me to loosen up, to relax, and to talk more. Did that make me more attractive to people? To some people it did, and to some people it didn't. One person told me I was fun when I was drinking, which was probably true because I loosened up when I was drunk, whereas when I was not drinking I was more stiff, reserved, formal, and guarded. But not everyone likes to be around someone who's drunk and who's saying a lot of silly things with bombast. Come to think of it, I myself don't, particularly.
But I drank even more in solitude. The reason was that it made me feel better. I have Asperger's Syndrome, and what that means is that I don't do too well socially. I have a history of not fitting in and of being rejected by people, and I become resentful when I think back about that. I also have fear about the future: how will I make a living in the future if I have a hard time getting people to like me? Drinking was a way for me to self-medicate. And it got to the point where no amount was enough. I would go through a six-pack on certain nights and still want more. I could identify with something that Leo McGarry said on an episode of The West Wing: he kept on drinking because he wanted that feeling to go on! But waking up with a hangover was no fun. I think of what Scotty said on that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation: never get drunk unless you're willing to pay for it the next morning!
I decided to stop drinking, and I have been sober for what I consider to be a respectable number of years----though, regardless of how many years that one is sober, it's always one-day-at-a-time. What do I do now that I don't drink? How do I do socially? How do I cope with my resentments about the past and my fears about the future? How do I self-medicate?
Socially-speaking, I'm not as nervous now as I used to be when talking with people. But I still can be rather stiff, formal, and reserved. I doubt that I would be the life of the party were I to go to a party. By and large, my policy about a lot of social gatherings that I have to attend is "suit up and show up." I show up, do my duty, and I leave. Sometimes, I can end up having enjoyable, interesting conversations with people. Sometimes, I just want to rush to the door! I'm just speaking for myself, and there are plenty of people within recovery groups who would tell you that they became more fun----more happy, joyous, and free----when they quit drinking and did the spiritual work on themselves that would help them to stay sober. That's fine (even though I get rather sick of people bragging about how happy and spiritual they are), but it's just not me. Come to think of it, though, I do have a little more serenity now that I don't drink. I'm not the life of the party, but I do have a quiet, flat sort of peace. One thing I will add: I'm not sure if my social mettle has been truly tested over the past couple of years. My Mom and her husband accept me, even though I am quiet. I go to church, and there are plenty of people at the pot-lucks who themselves are quiet, so I don't feel out-of-place being quiet. That doesn't mean that I feel compelled to throw myself into hyper-social situations, though.
How do I cope with my resentments about the past and my fears about the future? This is still a struggle for me, to tell you the truth. Many within recovery groups find that working with a mentor or a sponsor is helpful. It can be. I don't do that as much nowadays, since I'm not really in recovery groups, due to my struggle to fit in at them. But I did find one time that talking with my pastor really helped me. I was nervous about a social event that was coming up, which I had to attend, and my pastor gave me encouragement. It's good when you can find someone who's rooting for you and can give you guidance to hang on to within a tough setting. Another way that I cope is through prayer and Bible reading, and, the more I feel resentful on a given day, the more I pray and read the Bible. That doesn't necessarily solve my problems, to tell you the truth, but it does help me to alleviate feelings of resentment or fear that I may have.
----Page 143: "[German leader Konrad Adenauer] had other weapons besides the cold steel of logic, however. When a cabinet meeting grew difficult, he would sometimes suspend debate for a while and pass around a bottle of wine. After a few glassfuls and some friendly small talk, he would resume the meeting. The opposition would then be substantially less resolute."
----Page 155: "[Soviet leader Nikita] Khrushchev was then relatively new to power and unfamiliar with the leaders he would be confronting in the free world. He was clearly intent upon testing Adenauer's mettle. During one banquet he proposed a seemingly endless series of toasts to see whether the seventy-nine-year-old Adenauer, so intractable at the negotiating table, could be worn down by liquor. Though he preferred wine to vodka, Adenauer had a stomach as well as a will of iron. After fifteen toasts he was still both upright and alert----alert enough, in fact, to notice that Khrushchev had been drinking water. The next morning Adenauer confronted Khrushchev with the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that any man who would do such a thing could not be trusted. Surprised to find that he had been caught in the act, Khrushchev could only laugh."
Page 188: "The table was laden with every manner of Russian delicacy and soft and hard drinks. Despite his well-deserved reputation for drinking heavily, Khrushchev only sampled the array of vodka and wine. He appreciated good food and drink. But just as his famed temper was always his servant and not his master, his drinking on this occasion was strictly for pleasure and was never permitted to interfere with business. He was cold sober throughout our long afternoon of talks."
Alcohol can indeed be conducive to camaraderie and socializing in a relaxed manner. I one time heard a person with Asperger's Syndrome talk about how he did not really fit in with his Irish extended family----until they started to get drunk together. Then, they could have fun and bond with each other.
But alcohol can also hinder some people from doing the business that they need to do. Khrushchev did not want to get drunk when negotiating because he wanted for his mind to be alert and sharp during that time. And, speaking of the negative effects that drinking lots of alcohol can bring, that one person with Asperger's whom I discussed in my above paragraph eventually decided to quit drinking, for he thought that he was degenerating into a sour alcoholic.
I used to drink for a variety of reasons. I drank socially because I hoped that it would loosen me up in social settings. Social settings make me nervous. I tend to clam up within them, which is not particularly attractive to people and which can even draw mockery. Drinking helped me to loosen up, to relax, and to talk more. Did that make me more attractive to people? To some people it did, and to some people it didn't. One person told me I was fun when I was drinking, which was probably true because I loosened up when I was drunk, whereas when I was not drinking I was more stiff, reserved, formal, and guarded. But not everyone likes to be around someone who's drunk and who's saying a lot of silly things with bombast. Come to think of it, I myself don't, particularly.
But I drank even more in solitude. The reason was that it made me feel better. I have Asperger's Syndrome, and what that means is that I don't do too well socially. I have a history of not fitting in and of being rejected by people, and I become resentful when I think back about that. I also have fear about the future: how will I make a living in the future if I have a hard time getting people to like me? Drinking was a way for me to self-medicate. And it got to the point where no amount was enough. I would go through a six-pack on certain nights and still want more. I could identify with something that Leo McGarry said on an episode of The West Wing: he kept on drinking because he wanted that feeling to go on! But waking up with a hangover was no fun. I think of what Scotty said on that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation: never get drunk unless you're willing to pay for it the next morning!
I decided to stop drinking, and I have been sober for what I consider to be a respectable number of years----though, regardless of how many years that one is sober, it's always one-day-at-a-time. What do I do now that I don't drink? How do I do socially? How do I cope with my resentments about the past and my fears about the future? How do I self-medicate?
Socially-speaking, I'm not as nervous now as I used to be when talking with people. But I still can be rather stiff, formal, and reserved. I doubt that I would be the life of the party were I to go to a party. By and large, my policy about a lot of social gatherings that I have to attend is "suit up and show up." I show up, do my duty, and I leave. Sometimes, I can end up having enjoyable, interesting conversations with people. Sometimes, I just want to rush to the door! I'm just speaking for myself, and there are plenty of people within recovery groups who would tell you that they became more fun----more happy, joyous, and free----when they quit drinking and did the spiritual work on themselves that would help them to stay sober. That's fine (even though I get rather sick of people bragging about how happy and spiritual they are), but it's just not me. Come to think of it, though, I do have a little more serenity now that I don't drink. I'm not the life of the party, but I do have a quiet, flat sort of peace. One thing I will add: I'm not sure if my social mettle has been truly tested over the past couple of years. My Mom and her husband accept me, even though I am quiet. I go to church, and there are plenty of people at the pot-lucks who themselves are quiet, so I don't feel out-of-place being quiet. That doesn't mean that I feel compelled to throw myself into hyper-social situations, though.
How do I cope with my resentments about the past and my fears about the future? This is still a struggle for me, to tell you the truth. Many within recovery groups find that working with a mentor or a sponsor is helpful. It can be. I don't do that as much nowadays, since I'm not really in recovery groups, due to my struggle to fit in at them. But I did find one time that talking with my pastor really helped me. I was nervous about a social event that was coming up, which I had to attend, and my pastor gave me encouragement. It's good when you can find someone who's rooting for you and can give you guidance to hang on to within a tough setting. Another way that I cope is through prayer and Bible reading, and, the more I feel resentful on a given day, the more I pray and read the Bible. That doesn't necessarily solve my problems, to tell you the truth, but it does help me to alleviate feelings of resentment or fear that I may have.
Monday, June 3, 2013
The Debs Museum and My Ideological Shifts
On page 197 of Norman Thomas: The Last Idealist, W.A.
Swanberg refers to Terre Haute, Indiana as Eugene "Debs's town and a
holy place to Socialists". I grew up close to Terre Haute, and I
visited the Debs museum twice. The first time was with one of my
relatives, who was an admirer of Debs. The second time was when I was a
tutor at a public library, and I took an English-as-a-Second-Language
student (from South Korea, I think) to the Debs museum. I was a little
taken aback to read Swanberg refer to Terre Haute as a holy
place----it's all right, I guess, but a holy place? But the Debs museum there is worth visiting.
Both times that I visited the Debs Museum, I was rather conservative. The first time, I didn't quite know how to handle visiting a museum that honored a Socialist, but some of the old political cartoons at the Debs museum intrigued me, particularly their anti-Establishment tone. The second time that I visited it, a couple that was also visiting the museum asked me if I was interested in the history of labor unions, and I replied that I generally took the side of management. They were slightly aghast! We started to talk about the closed shop, and I said that I did not care for how labor unions spend members' dues on Democratic candidates. They responded that corporations also contribute money to candidates. I'm not sure how true that is, technically-speaking, for I have read a couple of things that say that corporate donations to political campaigns are against the law. But I recognize that special interests, which includes corporate interests, still have some way to contribute to candidates or causes, especially after the Citizens United case.
Where do I stand on Eugene Debs and labor unions now that I am more liberal? I still don't know a whole lot about Debs, but my relative one time quoted Debs as saying that he would rather the government be in charge of the railroads than for the railroads to be in charge of the government. There are probably pluses and minuses to both scenarios, but I feel that Debs' statement can be applied to health insurance companies, especially since (in my opinion) their influence on the government has hindered health care reform in the past. I rather would have the government running or taking the place of health insurance companies, than for health insurance companies to exercise a profound influence over the government.
On labor unions, I'm rather mixed. I don't like the way that unions are able to bring services that companies provide to a complete standstill if they don't get their own way. And yet, unlike my younger self, I don't entirely trust management to consistently do the right thing in terms of their workers. In my latest reading of Swanberg's book, Swanberg refers to a young Socialist preacher who taught sharecroppers arithmetic "so that they would know when the planters were defrauding them on the contracts" (page 180). It's sad that there were planters in the 1930's who would defraud their very own sharecroppers. Yet it's not surprising, for, in a number of cases, management tries to maximize profit at the expense of its workers----at least when it thinks that it can. If management eagerly wants someone's talents and input, it will most likely pay him or her a handsome salary. But, when it comes to work that is more menial, when there is a lot of competition for jobs, and when some of these jobs can be exported overseas, management often feels that it's in more of a position to give workers the shaft.
I think that unions played a role in the existence of a strong middle class in the 1950's, which helped the economy. Another of my relatives said, however, that she thought that unions tend to insist upon themselves. She said that she preferred Socialism, in which workers would actually own a share of the company. I don't know much about this issue. One reason that I decided to read Thomas was to learn about how Socialism differs from an economy in which unions are influential. In what I have read, however, it seems that Socialists were rather supportive of unions and strikes, even though many within unions did not return that support!
Both times that I visited the Debs Museum, I was rather conservative. The first time, I didn't quite know how to handle visiting a museum that honored a Socialist, but some of the old political cartoons at the Debs museum intrigued me, particularly their anti-Establishment tone. The second time that I visited it, a couple that was also visiting the museum asked me if I was interested in the history of labor unions, and I replied that I generally took the side of management. They were slightly aghast! We started to talk about the closed shop, and I said that I did not care for how labor unions spend members' dues on Democratic candidates. They responded that corporations also contribute money to candidates. I'm not sure how true that is, technically-speaking, for I have read a couple of things that say that corporate donations to political campaigns are against the law. But I recognize that special interests, which includes corporate interests, still have some way to contribute to candidates or causes, especially after the Citizens United case.
Where do I stand on Eugene Debs and labor unions now that I am more liberal? I still don't know a whole lot about Debs, but my relative one time quoted Debs as saying that he would rather the government be in charge of the railroads than for the railroads to be in charge of the government. There are probably pluses and minuses to both scenarios, but I feel that Debs' statement can be applied to health insurance companies, especially since (in my opinion) their influence on the government has hindered health care reform in the past. I rather would have the government running or taking the place of health insurance companies, than for health insurance companies to exercise a profound influence over the government.
On labor unions, I'm rather mixed. I don't like the way that unions are able to bring services that companies provide to a complete standstill if they don't get their own way. And yet, unlike my younger self, I don't entirely trust management to consistently do the right thing in terms of their workers. In my latest reading of Swanberg's book, Swanberg refers to a young Socialist preacher who taught sharecroppers arithmetic "so that they would know when the planters were defrauding them on the contracts" (page 180). It's sad that there were planters in the 1930's who would defraud their very own sharecroppers. Yet it's not surprising, for, in a number of cases, management tries to maximize profit at the expense of its workers----at least when it thinks that it can. If management eagerly wants someone's talents and input, it will most likely pay him or her a handsome salary. But, when it comes to work that is more menial, when there is a lot of competition for jobs, and when some of these jobs can be exported overseas, management often feels that it's in more of a position to give workers the shaft.
I think that unions played a role in the existence of a strong middle class in the 1950's, which helped the economy. Another of my relatives said, however, that she thought that unions tend to insist upon themselves. She said that she preferred Socialism, in which workers would actually own a share of the company. I don't know much about this issue. One reason that I decided to read Thomas was to learn about how Socialism differs from an economy in which unions are influential. In what I have read, however, it seems that Socialists were rather supportive of unions and strikes, even though many within unions did not return that support!
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Aaron Jastrow's Sermon
I finished Herman Wouk's The Language God Talks: On Science and Religion.
At the end of the book, Wouk quotes the sermon of Professor Aaron Jastrow, who was a character in Wouk's book, War and Remembrance. As I read the sermon, it seemed familiar to me, and that was because my family watched the War and Remembrance miniseries when it was on TV in 1988. The miniseries was jarring to me at the time because it was the first time when I saw on television a depiction of the Holocaust, and I remember that I cried when Jews (including Professor Jastrow) were being gassed in the concentration camp. I recall that Professor Jastrow was reciting Psalm 23 as he went to his death.
Professor Jastrow in his sermon spoke about Job. Jastrow's assumption was that Job was a Jew, which is not explicitly in the biblical text. But his main point was that the Jews themselves are like Job, in that they praise God even when the universe does not make sense. After my family watched the sermon scene, my Dad said that it was a good sermon.
I recently watched the miniseries' depiction of the speech on YouTube (see here), and it was more pious than what I read in Wouk's quotation of the sermon in The Language God Talks, for Jastrow in the book questions whether God's reason for allowing the Satan to afflict Job (namely, to meet the Satan's challenge) was a good enough reason. But the main point in the book's version of the sermon is the same as what was on the miniseries.
Although I finished The Language God Talks, I may still write another post about it, maybe even two.
At the end of the book, Wouk quotes the sermon of Professor Aaron Jastrow, who was a character in Wouk's book, War and Remembrance. As I read the sermon, it seemed familiar to me, and that was because my family watched the War and Remembrance miniseries when it was on TV in 1988. The miniseries was jarring to me at the time because it was the first time when I saw on television a depiction of the Holocaust, and I remember that I cried when Jews (including Professor Jastrow) were being gassed in the concentration camp. I recall that Professor Jastrow was reciting Psalm 23 as he went to his death.
Professor Jastrow in his sermon spoke about Job. Jastrow's assumption was that Job was a Jew, which is not explicitly in the biblical text. But his main point was that the Jews themselves are like Job, in that they praise God even when the universe does not make sense. After my family watched the sermon scene, my Dad said that it was a good sermon.
I recently watched the miniseries' depiction of the speech on YouTube (see here), and it was more pious than what I read in Wouk's quotation of the sermon in The Language God Talks, for Jastrow in the book questions whether God's reason for allowing the Satan to afflict Job (namely, to meet the Satan's challenge) was a good enough reason. But the main point in the book's version of the sermon is the same as what was on the miniseries.
Although I finished The Language God Talks, I may still write another post about it, maybe even two.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Seize the Moment 3
For my write-up today on Richard Nixon's 1992 book, Seize the Moment: America's Challenge in a One-Superpower World, I will again quote passages from the book, following each quote with my comments.
1. On pages 176-177, Nixon discusses what the U.S. should do in response to China's unfair trading practices (i.e., barriers to imports and failure to "protect intellectual property rights"):
"Our response, however, should not be across-the-board tariff increases but rather more discriminating tactics such as blocking China's entry into GATT or cutting back China's export quota under the International Multifibre Agreement of 1974, which regulates all textile imports into the United States. If we want to have an impact on the changes occurring in China, we should not pull the plug on trade. Increasing economic progress will bring progress on human rights and civil liberties."
Nixon is a big proponent of free trade in this book, for he believes that this can encourage countries to become more self-sufficient. He is not naive about free trade, mind you, for, like Pat Buchanan in The Great Betrayal, Nixon argues against the idea that free trade can contribute to peace by making countries economic beneficiaries of each other. Nixon notes historical examples of countries with mutual economic relationships that went to war with each other, and Nixon thus contends that free trade should not be seen as a substitute for an effective military. Still, Nixon likes free trade.
Nixon does well to address head-on a question that protectionists have asked: What do we do if other countries are not playing fair? I don't know enough to evaluate his solutions. I wonder if blocking the entrance of China into GATT would be a short-term solution, since what if China were to behave itself to get accepted into GATT, only to return to its unfair trading practices after being accepted? Could China then be kicked out of GATT? Would the World Trade Organization effectively police China's unfair trading practices? (I'm sure there are answers to these questions, but, as I said, I don't know much about this issue.)
It's interesting that Nixon says that trade with China can encourage its progress on human rights, for Nixon on page 259 argues that the U.S. should not establish diplomatic or trading relationships with Cuba and Vietnam until they "meet specific political and human rights conditions..." Nixon in his memoirs and in this book often argues that we can encourage progress in Communist dictatorships through cultivating diplomatic and economic relationships with them, rather than leaving them in isolation. Why does he deem Cuba and Vietnam to be exceptions to this rule? Incidentally, the next book that I will read by Nixon, Beyond Peace (1994), appears (at least from the back cover) to advocate trade with Cuba.
2. On page 265, Nixon responds to the charge that liberal trade policies will result in the outsourcing of jobs to countries where workers are paid less:
"If U.S. corporations located their facilities simply on the basis of lower wages, they would all have moved to Mexico already. In addition to wage levels, other variables such as output per worker, transportation capabilities, and the quality of human resources are all part of the economic equation."
Nixon probably has a point here. There are still manufacturing companies that remain in the U.S. If outsourcing were too lucrative, how would there be any manufacturing companies here? Perhaps they stay because our infrastructure is better, or for other reasons. And yet, it seems to me that outsourcing is still a problem. My understanding is that manufacturing jobs are on the decline in the U.S., and that outsourcing is probably one reason for this.
I wish that Nixon had addressed more extensively in this book the question of what we would do if we had a hard time competing. Nixon criticizes U.S. agricultural subsidies because he thinks that they give U.S. farmers an advantage over foreign farmers, who are looking for a market for their goods (and need that market for their country to advance economically). But what would happen to us if loads of cheap foreign crops are coming into our market, in direct competition with the American farmer?
3. On page 256, Nixon criticizes the way that foreign aid to Africa has been wasted, hinting that free-market capitalism can set Africa onto the road to prosperity:
"Over the past decade, the United States and other Western industrialized countries have injected over $100 billion in aid and credits into sub-Saharan Africa. Most was wasted because inefficient and corrupt governments refused to put into place policies to provide average farmers and workers with incentives to produce."
Ironically, John Bircher Gary Allen made a similar argument in his right-wing critique of Richard Nixon, entitled Richard Nixon: The Man Behind the Mask. Gary Allen essentially argued that foreign aid props up socialism and ends up being wasted, and that the best way for impoverished foreign countries to advance economically is for them to embrace the free market.
What stood out to me in what Nixon said on page 256 was that he saw a place for the average farmer in Africa: the average farmer should have incentives to become more productive. This, in my opinion, conflicts with what I've heard often takes place in the Third World, in the name of capitalism: multinational corporations come into the country, take people's land, use that land for cash crops or mass production, and reap handsome profits, while paying their Third World workers dittly-squat. Nixon actually argues that it can economically help a Third World country to allow multinational corporations to come in. Indeed, multinational corporations provide Third World countries with capital and produce a lot of goods. But I wonder if there is a way for small farmers to be able to keep their land, and to produce enough to be competitive on the global market. Or should they be competitive in the global market? What would be so wrong with small farmers producing enough to feed their own country? Is there a way to make private ownership work for people in the Third World, as opposed to making it work for multinationals?
And yet, I'd like to mention an example that Nixon cites of foreign investment contributing to improved conditions for the poor. On pages 257-258, Nixon lambastes Apartheid in South Africa, contending that its discriminatory policies are "economically stupid" because they deny blacks "equal economic opportunities" and thus end up squandering their productivity and talents. But Nixon does not think that American disinvestment from South Africa is the answer. Nixon states on page 258 that "Many American companies, such as Ford motor company, had financed black housing, schooling, recreation, and health facilities."
4. On pages 219-220, Nixon appears to take a rather anti-Israel tone, as he defends a "land for peace" approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
"While we are right to support Israel's survival and security, we would be wrong to back the current Israeli government's extreme demands. [W]e should understand how the occupied territories came into Israel's possession through the 1967 war. Aggressive military moves by Arabs created the crisis----perhaps even made the war inevitable----but Israel launched the first attacks. Former prime minister Menachem Begin said in August 1982, 'In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him'. [T]he Arab-Israeli conflict poisons our relations with the Muslim world and undercuts our ability to cooperate with countries with modernist, pro-Western leaders. Israel's occupation of Arab lands----and particularly its increasingly harsh treatment of the Palestinians----polarizes and radicalizes the Muslim world."
Nixon is for Israel going back to its pre-1967 borders, while Jordan would possibly administer the West Bank, and Syria the Golan Heights. Nixon addresses the question of whether this would compromise the security of Israel. Under Nixon's proposal in this book, conventional offensive weapons would be banned from the territories that are returned to the Palestinians, the returned territories would be a "buffer zone", checkpoints would ensure that weapons are not smuggled into the West Bank for an attack on Israel, and the U.S. would consider an attack on Israel to be an attack on the U.S., and would respond accordingly. I wonder to what extent this overlaps with and differs from current proposals for a Palestinian state.
I was talking with my brother about Nixon's claim that Israel started the 1967 war. My brother agreed that Israel attacked first, but he said that it was a pre-emptive strike----that Egypt was planning to attack Israel, for Egypt had been anti-Israel since the 1940's. This wikipedia article quotes Nasser as saying on May 27, 1967: "Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight."
5. On page 226, Nixon argues that Palestinians in the occupied territories should elect representatives to the peace talks, without Israelis exercising a veto power over their choice:
"...elections should be held in the occupied territories to select Palestinian representatives for the peace talks. Israeli leaders have insisted on advance approval of those who might serve in that role and on blackballing anyone with any association----no matter how distant----with the PLO. That is unreasonable. We did not like negotiating with Stalin or his successors, but since they held power, we had to deal with them. Unless Israel comes to terms with its enemies, no peace agreement will enhance its security."
The reason that this passage stood out to me was that it reminded me of a question that Katie Couric asked of Sarah Palin in 2008. Palin was saying that we should support democracy in the middle-east, and Couric then asked about Hamas' victory in a Palestinian election. What happens when democracy leads to an outcome that the U.S. considers undesirable? I've wondered how I would answer that question, for it is indeed a difficult question. I'd probably give an answer similar to what Nixon said about Palestinian elections for representatives at the peace talks: that we should accept the Palestinians' choice, and try to deal with that choice if we can. That doesn't mean that we should be okay with everything Hamas does----threatening Israel, after all, is wrong. But part of democracy is accepting people's choice (though whether Nixon consistently did that as President has been debated).
1. On pages 176-177, Nixon discusses what the U.S. should do in response to China's unfair trading practices (i.e., barriers to imports and failure to "protect intellectual property rights"):
"Our response, however, should not be across-the-board tariff increases but rather more discriminating tactics such as blocking China's entry into GATT or cutting back China's export quota under the International Multifibre Agreement of 1974, which regulates all textile imports into the United States. If we want to have an impact on the changes occurring in China, we should not pull the plug on trade. Increasing economic progress will bring progress on human rights and civil liberties."
Nixon is a big proponent of free trade in this book, for he believes that this can encourage countries to become more self-sufficient. He is not naive about free trade, mind you, for, like Pat Buchanan in The Great Betrayal, Nixon argues against the idea that free trade can contribute to peace by making countries economic beneficiaries of each other. Nixon notes historical examples of countries with mutual economic relationships that went to war with each other, and Nixon thus contends that free trade should not be seen as a substitute for an effective military. Still, Nixon likes free trade.
Nixon does well to address head-on a question that protectionists have asked: What do we do if other countries are not playing fair? I don't know enough to evaluate his solutions. I wonder if blocking the entrance of China into GATT would be a short-term solution, since what if China were to behave itself to get accepted into GATT, only to return to its unfair trading practices after being accepted? Could China then be kicked out of GATT? Would the World Trade Organization effectively police China's unfair trading practices? (I'm sure there are answers to these questions, but, as I said, I don't know much about this issue.)
It's interesting that Nixon says that trade with China can encourage its progress on human rights, for Nixon on page 259 argues that the U.S. should not establish diplomatic or trading relationships with Cuba and Vietnam until they "meet specific political and human rights conditions..." Nixon in his memoirs and in this book often argues that we can encourage progress in Communist dictatorships through cultivating diplomatic and economic relationships with them, rather than leaving them in isolation. Why does he deem Cuba and Vietnam to be exceptions to this rule? Incidentally, the next book that I will read by Nixon, Beyond Peace (1994), appears (at least from the back cover) to advocate trade with Cuba.
2. On page 265, Nixon responds to the charge that liberal trade policies will result in the outsourcing of jobs to countries where workers are paid less:
"If U.S. corporations located their facilities simply on the basis of lower wages, they would all have moved to Mexico already. In addition to wage levels, other variables such as output per worker, transportation capabilities, and the quality of human resources are all part of the economic equation."
Nixon probably has a point here. There are still manufacturing companies that remain in the U.S. If outsourcing were too lucrative, how would there be any manufacturing companies here? Perhaps they stay because our infrastructure is better, or for other reasons. And yet, it seems to me that outsourcing is still a problem. My understanding is that manufacturing jobs are on the decline in the U.S., and that outsourcing is probably one reason for this.
I wish that Nixon had addressed more extensively in this book the question of what we would do if we had a hard time competing. Nixon criticizes U.S. agricultural subsidies because he thinks that they give U.S. farmers an advantage over foreign farmers, who are looking for a market for their goods (and need that market for their country to advance economically). But what would happen to us if loads of cheap foreign crops are coming into our market, in direct competition with the American farmer?
3. On page 256, Nixon criticizes the way that foreign aid to Africa has been wasted, hinting that free-market capitalism can set Africa onto the road to prosperity:
"Over the past decade, the United States and other Western industrialized countries have injected over $100 billion in aid and credits into sub-Saharan Africa. Most was wasted because inefficient and corrupt governments refused to put into place policies to provide average farmers and workers with incentives to produce."
Ironically, John Bircher Gary Allen made a similar argument in his right-wing critique of Richard Nixon, entitled Richard Nixon: The Man Behind the Mask. Gary Allen essentially argued that foreign aid props up socialism and ends up being wasted, and that the best way for impoverished foreign countries to advance economically is for them to embrace the free market.
What stood out to me in what Nixon said on page 256 was that he saw a place for the average farmer in Africa: the average farmer should have incentives to become more productive. This, in my opinion, conflicts with what I've heard often takes place in the Third World, in the name of capitalism: multinational corporations come into the country, take people's land, use that land for cash crops or mass production, and reap handsome profits, while paying their Third World workers dittly-squat. Nixon actually argues that it can economically help a Third World country to allow multinational corporations to come in. Indeed, multinational corporations provide Third World countries with capital and produce a lot of goods. But I wonder if there is a way for small farmers to be able to keep their land, and to produce enough to be competitive on the global market. Or should they be competitive in the global market? What would be so wrong with small farmers producing enough to feed their own country? Is there a way to make private ownership work for people in the Third World, as opposed to making it work for multinationals?
And yet, I'd like to mention an example that Nixon cites of foreign investment contributing to improved conditions for the poor. On pages 257-258, Nixon lambastes Apartheid in South Africa, contending that its discriminatory policies are "economically stupid" because they deny blacks "equal economic opportunities" and thus end up squandering their productivity and talents. But Nixon does not think that American disinvestment from South Africa is the answer. Nixon states on page 258 that "Many American companies, such as Ford motor company, had financed black housing, schooling, recreation, and health facilities."
4. On pages 219-220, Nixon appears to take a rather anti-Israel tone, as he defends a "land for peace" approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
"While we are right to support Israel's survival and security, we would be wrong to back the current Israeli government's extreme demands. [W]e should understand how the occupied territories came into Israel's possession through the 1967 war. Aggressive military moves by Arabs created the crisis----perhaps even made the war inevitable----but Israel launched the first attacks. Former prime minister Menachem Begin said in August 1982, 'In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him'. [T]he Arab-Israeli conflict poisons our relations with the Muslim world and undercuts our ability to cooperate with countries with modernist, pro-Western leaders. Israel's occupation of Arab lands----and particularly its increasingly harsh treatment of the Palestinians----polarizes and radicalizes the Muslim world."
Nixon is for Israel going back to its pre-1967 borders, while Jordan would possibly administer the West Bank, and Syria the Golan Heights. Nixon addresses the question of whether this would compromise the security of Israel. Under Nixon's proposal in this book, conventional offensive weapons would be banned from the territories that are returned to the Palestinians, the returned territories would be a "buffer zone", checkpoints would ensure that weapons are not smuggled into the West Bank for an attack on Israel, and the U.S. would consider an attack on Israel to be an attack on the U.S., and would respond accordingly. I wonder to what extent this overlaps with and differs from current proposals for a Palestinian state.
I was talking with my brother about Nixon's claim that Israel started the 1967 war. My brother agreed that Israel attacked first, but he said that it was a pre-emptive strike----that Egypt was planning to attack Israel, for Egypt had been anti-Israel since the 1940's. This wikipedia article quotes Nasser as saying on May 27, 1967: "Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight."
5. On page 226, Nixon argues that Palestinians in the occupied territories should elect representatives to the peace talks, without Israelis exercising a veto power over their choice:
"...elections should be held in the occupied territories to select Palestinian representatives for the peace talks. Israeli leaders have insisted on advance approval of those who might serve in that role and on blackballing anyone with any association----no matter how distant----with the PLO. That is unreasonable. We did not like negotiating with Stalin or his successors, but since they held power, we had to deal with them. Unless Israel comes to terms with its enemies, no peace agreement will enhance its security."
The reason that this passage stood out to me was that it reminded me of a question that Katie Couric asked of Sarah Palin in 2008. Palin was saying that we should support democracy in the middle-east, and Couric then asked about Hamas' victory in a Palestinian election. What happens when democracy leads to an outcome that the U.S. considers undesirable? I've wondered how I would answer that question, for it is indeed a difficult question. I'd probably give an answer similar to what Nixon said about Palestinian elections for representatives at the peace talks: that we should accept the Palestinians' choice, and try to deal with that choice if we can. That doesn't mean that we should be okay with everything Hamas does----threatening Israel, after all, is wrong. But part of democracy is accepting people's choice (though whether Nixon consistently did that as President has been debated).
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Letchworth State Park
I didn't go to church this morning because I took a little trip with
my brother (who is visiting), my Mom, and my Mom's husband to Letchworth State Park. In addition to having a waterfall and a dam, this park is the burial place of Mary Jemison.
Mary Jemison was captured by Native Americans during the French and
Indian War. From what the wikipedia article says, she was transferred
to another tribe, and she eventually married a Native American. I
vaguely recall reading somewhere in the park that she married a chief.
An inscription underneath a statue of her said that, soon before her
death, she trusted Jesus Christ for salvation.
The waterfall----by which I mean the biggest one at the park----is definitely an awesome sight. I wonder at times where theology should fit in when I am looking at nature. Can I appreciate nature for its own sake? Or do I have to believe that it somehow reflects the Christian God's power, wisdom, and love for beauty? If natural phenomena did not arise through an instantaneous act of God, but rather came about through natural processes that occurred over a long period of time, does that detract from nature being awesome? I think of the movie Jurassic Park, which I saw at the Imax a couple days ago: the main characters in that movie who were scientists stood in awe of nature. They saw nature as delicate, yet as something that we should not mess with. It has a certain order, and yet life contains chaos. And, in the movie, life found a way to circumvent boundaries and limitations that human beings tried to place on it. In my opinion, nature deserves a degree of awe, whether it was created by God or not. Yet, I think of the Book of Job, which held to a theism in tandem with an observation that nature is mysterious.
On Mary Jemison, it's interesting to me that a person with a pluralistic background----who lived for a long time among people-groups who presumably did not hold to the Christian religion----could somehow arrive at the point of trusting Christ for salvation. I wonder how she herself addressed the question of whether the Native Americans she knew and loved were in hell for not having been Christians.
The waterfall----by which I mean the biggest one at the park----is definitely an awesome sight. I wonder at times where theology should fit in when I am looking at nature. Can I appreciate nature for its own sake? Or do I have to believe that it somehow reflects the Christian God's power, wisdom, and love for beauty? If natural phenomena did not arise through an instantaneous act of God, but rather came about through natural processes that occurred over a long period of time, does that detract from nature being awesome? I think of the movie Jurassic Park, which I saw at the Imax a couple days ago: the main characters in that movie who were scientists stood in awe of nature. They saw nature as delicate, yet as something that we should not mess with. It has a certain order, and yet life contains chaos. And, in the movie, life found a way to circumvent boundaries and limitations that human beings tried to place on it. In my opinion, nature deserves a degree of awe, whether it was created by God or not. Yet, I think of the Book of Job, which held to a theism in tandem with an observation that nature is mysterious.
On Mary Jemison, it's interesting to me that a person with a pluralistic background----who lived for a long time among people-groups who presumably did not hold to the Christian religion----could somehow arrive at the point of trusting Christ for salvation. I wonder how she herself addressed the question of whether the Native Americans she knew and loved were in hell for not having been Christians.
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Finishing the Bible Study on Romans
My church finished its Bible study about Paul's Epistle to the Romans last night! We were going through Romans: The Letter That Changed the World, with Mart De Haan & Jimmy DeYoung.
This will be a brief post, since I'm rather tired right now. I went to the Imax today with my brother, my Mom, and my Mom's husband. We saw Jurassic Park in 3-D. I was afraid that the 3-D would make the dinosaurs in the movie even scarier, since they would look like they're right in front of me, in real life space. But that's not exactly what happened. I thought that the 3-D was excellent in making tables, plants, and rooms look three-dimensional, but (in my opinion) it was not as effective in making the dinosaurs and the people look 3-D. The movie was scary, due to the plot and the special effects, but that was unrelated to the 3-D nature of the film.
But back to Romans! There were two things in particular that stood out to me. First of all, we were looking at Romans 14, in which Paul was talking about how the strong and the weak in faith should interact. The picture of the chapter that we got was this: the weak in faith eat only vegetables and observe special days, whereas the strong have a broader diet and treat every day as alike. The strong were to respect the weak, and the weak were not to judge the strong. What confuses me is this: Paul seems to imply that the strong and the weak are aware of each other and of each other's practices, and Paul is exhorting both sides to exercise tolerance. And yet, in Romans 14:15-21, Paul appears to be saying that the strong should not eat meat or drink wine in a setting that would cause their weaker brothers to stumble or to become offended. But, if the strong and the weak know of each other and are supposed to tolerate each other, why should the strong have to keep their practices a secret from the weak? Shouldn't the weak exercise tolerance towards the strong, rather than assuming that everyone in the church shares their outlook?
Second, the DVD that we watched said that, according to Romans, God's love brought Jew and Gentile together into one body, the church. Rome tried to bring people together by force and by fear, but God brought people together by love.
This will be a brief post, since I'm rather tired right now. I went to the Imax today with my brother, my Mom, and my Mom's husband. We saw Jurassic Park in 3-D. I was afraid that the 3-D would make the dinosaurs in the movie even scarier, since they would look like they're right in front of me, in real life space. But that's not exactly what happened. I thought that the 3-D was excellent in making tables, plants, and rooms look three-dimensional, but (in my opinion) it was not as effective in making the dinosaurs and the people look 3-D. The movie was scary, due to the plot and the special effects, but that was unrelated to the 3-D nature of the film.
But back to Romans! There were two things in particular that stood out to me. First of all, we were looking at Romans 14, in which Paul was talking about how the strong and the weak in faith should interact. The picture of the chapter that we got was this: the weak in faith eat only vegetables and observe special days, whereas the strong have a broader diet and treat every day as alike. The strong were to respect the weak, and the weak were not to judge the strong. What confuses me is this: Paul seems to imply that the strong and the weak are aware of each other and of each other's practices, and Paul is exhorting both sides to exercise tolerance. And yet, in Romans 14:15-21, Paul appears to be saying that the strong should not eat meat or drink wine in a setting that would cause their weaker brothers to stumble or to become offended. But, if the strong and the weak know of each other and are supposed to tolerate each other, why should the strong have to keep their practices a secret from the weak? Shouldn't the weak exercise tolerance towards the strong, rather than assuming that everyone in the church shares their outlook?
Second, the DVD that we watched said that, according to Romans, God's love brought Jew and Gentile together into one body, the church. Rome tried to bring people together by force and by fear, but God brought people together by love.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
The Different Tithing Laws in the Torah
I'm going through the Book of Deuteronomy for my daily quiet time,
and what I would like to talk about in this post is the different laws
on tithing in Numbers 18 and Deuteronomy. Biblical scholars have
discussed this issue in the past, and so I'm not coming up with anything
new in this post (as far as I know). At the same time, I remember
something that Madeleine L'Engle said in one of her Crosswicks Journals:
When her husband told her that her thoughts in her writings were not
original, she replied that, even if her thoughts had been said before by
others, she had to say them herself. Learning does not always
entail coming up with something new, but it also includes learning old
stuff for yourself, and articulating it (to yourself, and maybe even to
others) as part of your learning.
In Numbers 18, the tithing law goes like this: The Israelites give a tithe to the Levites, and the Levites give a tenth of that tithe to the LORD, which seems to mean giving it to the Aaronic priests. Moreover, the firstfruits and firstborn of cows, sheep, and goats belong to the Aaronic priests (though parts of these animals are sacrificed to the LORD). In Deuteronomy 12 and Deuteronomy 14, by contrast, the Israelites eat the tithe themselves at the central sanctuary, but they are instructed to share the tithe with the Levites. Every third year, the Israelites are to store their tithes within their towns, and the tithes are to be used for the Levites, resident aliens, widows, and orphans. So, in Deuteronomy, are the Levites expected to survive on whatever scraps from the tithes the Israelites are willing to spare? According to Deuteronomy 18, the Levites are to eat from the animal sacrifices, and the Israelites are to give the Levites their firstfruits.
The impression that I get from these passages is this: In Numbers 18, the tithe goes to the Levites, and the firstfruits go to the Aaronic priests. In Deuteronomy, however, which does not elevate the Aaronic priests above the other Levites, the tithe belongs to the Israelites at the festival, and they can share it with the Levites. Meanwhile, the firstfruits belong to the Levites in general, not just the Aaronic priests.
In Armstrongism, people in the church were expected to pay three tithes. The first tithe went to the ministry. The second tithe was to be used by the church members during the Feast of Tabernacles. And the third tithe occurred every three years and was supposed to be for the poor. My understanding is that Second Temple and rabbinic Judaism, too, maintained that the Torah commanded at least two tithes: one (the one of Numbers 18) went to the Levites, and the other was used by Jews at the festival, but every third year it went to the vulnerable of society.
My Dad once gave a sermon in which he argued that there was only one tithe. I don't remember every argument that he made, but I do recall him pointing out that, according to the Armstrongite interpretation, a lot went to the Levites, with whom the Armstrongites equated the ministry. After all, the Israelites gave an entire tenth to the Levites, and the Israelites were exhorted to share some of their festival tithe (which they used for their own enjoyment) with the Levites.
I myself wouldn't say that there was only one tithe, for Numbers 18 commands the Israelites to give a tenth to the Levites, and Deuteronomy tells them to put aside a tenth for their own (the Israelites') enjoyment at the festivals. When these laws are put together, I do not think that we can get out of the Torah that the Israelites only had one tithe, part of which went to the Levites, and part of which was used by the Israelites at the festivals, for Numbers 18 seems to present the entire tenth going to the Levites (though the Levites are then to give a tenth of that to the Aaronic priests).
Rather, what I think is going on is that we have two different tithing laws, from two separate sources in the Torah. When the two laws are put together, of course the Levites are getting rich! Not only do they get a tenth from the Israelites, but the Israelites also have to treat the Levites like vulnerable poor people during the festivals and every third year. But why would the Levites be so vulnerable, if they are receiving tithes every year? My guess is that tithes amounted to a lot of domesticated animals, fruits, and vegetables, and so I doubt that the Levites would be poor and vulnerable if they were getting tithes every year! But in a scenario in which the Levites are not receiving tithes but rather firstfruits and sacrificial meat, which is what we see in Deuteronomy, the Levites are not getting as much, and so they are poorer. And since they are poorer, it makes sense that Deuteronomy would exhort the Israelites to share what they have with the Levites during the festivals. In the Deuteronomic system, the Levites are more vulnerable. And, on a side note, because the Levites are so vulnerable in Deuteronomy, some scholars question the proposition that Levites wrote the Book of Deuteronomy, for why would the Levites support a system in which they would be so lowly?
In Numbers 18, the tithing law goes like this: The Israelites give a tithe to the Levites, and the Levites give a tenth of that tithe to the LORD, which seems to mean giving it to the Aaronic priests. Moreover, the firstfruits and firstborn of cows, sheep, and goats belong to the Aaronic priests (though parts of these animals are sacrificed to the LORD). In Deuteronomy 12 and Deuteronomy 14, by contrast, the Israelites eat the tithe themselves at the central sanctuary, but they are instructed to share the tithe with the Levites. Every third year, the Israelites are to store their tithes within their towns, and the tithes are to be used for the Levites, resident aliens, widows, and orphans. So, in Deuteronomy, are the Levites expected to survive on whatever scraps from the tithes the Israelites are willing to spare? According to Deuteronomy 18, the Levites are to eat from the animal sacrifices, and the Israelites are to give the Levites their firstfruits.
The impression that I get from these passages is this: In Numbers 18, the tithe goes to the Levites, and the firstfruits go to the Aaronic priests. In Deuteronomy, however, which does not elevate the Aaronic priests above the other Levites, the tithe belongs to the Israelites at the festival, and they can share it with the Levites. Meanwhile, the firstfruits belong to the Levites in general, not just the Aaronic priests.
In Armstrongism, people in the church were expected to pay three tithes. The first tithe went to the ministry. The second tithe was to be used by the church members during the Feast of Tabernacles. And the third tithe occurred every three years and was supposed to be for the poor. My understanding is that Second Temple and rabbinic Judaism, too, maintained that the Torah commanded at least two tithes: one (the one of Numbers 18) went to the Levites, and the other was used by Jews at the festival, but every third year it went to the vulnerable of society.
My Dad once gave a sermon in which he argued that there was only one tithe. I don't remember every argument that he made, but I do recall him pointing out that, according to the Armstrongite interpretation, a lot went to the Levites, with whom the Armstrongites equated the ministry. After all, the Israelites gave an entire tenth to the Levites, and the Israelites were exhorted to share some of their festival tithe (which they used for their own enjoyment) with the Levites.
I myself wouldn't say that there was only one tithe, for Numbers 18 commands the Israelites to give a tenth to the Levites, and Deuteronomy tells them to put aside a tenth for their own (the Israelites') enjoyment at the festivals. When these laws are put together, I do not think that we can get out of the Torah that the Israelites only had one tithe, part of which went to the Levites, and part of which was used by the Israelites at the festivals, for Numbers 18 seems to present the entire tenth going to the Levites (though the Levites are then to give a tenth of that to the Aaronic priests).
Rather, what I think is going on is that we have two different tithing laws, from two separate sources in the Torah. When the two laws are put together, of course the Levites are getting rich! Not only do they get a tenth from the Israelites, but the Israelites also have to treat the Levites like vulnerable poor people during the festivals and every third year. But why would the Levites be so vulnerable, if they are receiving tithes every year? My guess is that tithes amounted to a lot of domesticated animals, fruits, and vegetables, and so I doubt that the Levites would be poor and vulnerable if they were getting tithes every year! But in a scenario in which the Levites are not receiving tithes but rather firstfruits and sacrificial meat, which is what we see in Deuteronomy, the Levites are not getting as much, and so they are poorer. And since they are poorer, it makes sense that Deuteronomy would exhort the Israelites to share what they have with the Levites during the festivals. In the Deuteronomic system, the Levites are more vulnerable. And, on a side note, because the Levites are so vulnerable in Deuteronomy, some scholars question the proposition that Levites wrote the Book of Deuteronomy, for why would the Levites support a system in which they would be so lowly?
Saturday, March 16, 2013
RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, Volume 1
I'm actually writing this post on February 26, 2013. I've just
returned from Indiana, where I was attending my sister's wedding and
visiting with family. The Internet connection was not that good where I
was staying (most of the time) in Indiana, and so I decided to postpone
my blogging to when I would return to my home in upstate New York.
Plus, I needed a bit of a break from blogging! During my time in
Indiana, I still did my reading for My Year (or More) of Nixon. I read
volume 1 of Richard Nixon's memoirs, which goes from Nixon's birth
through his Presidency in 1971. The copyright for the memoirs is 1978,
which was four years after Richard Nixon resigned from office. I read
300 pages during the car ride to Indiana----and it was a good book for
car ride reading, on account of Nixon's clarity, pleasant conversational
style, and stories. Then, during the eight days that I was in Indiana, I
followed my usual practice of reading 30 pages a day. I finished the
book on the car ride back to New York.
The book is 669 pages, and I don't think that I've ever covered the entirety of a book that long in one post. I have a list of topics to cover, but I may not go through them all. Rather, I'll make some points. Some of them will get into the nitty-gritty, whereas others will focus more on the forest rather than the trees.
1. As in Six Crises, Nixon in his memoirs comes across as a basically decent person. Nixon admires goodness in others and is fair-minded. He empathizes with people, even political opponents and those he did not particularly get along with. He is compassionate towards the disadvantaged. He has had a long-standing love for peace and an admiration for pacifists (even though he admits that he's not a pacifist), and he has seen the horrors of war. He recognizes mistakes that he has made in the past. And yet, it was noteworthy to me that Nixon in volume 1 of his memoirs sometimes appeared to be rather shady, or he sought to justify activities within his administration that many considered shady, as opposed to flat-out denying that accusations had merit, as was the case in Six Crises.
For example, Nixon talks about his 1968 campaign for President, when President Lyndon Johnson was about to suspend his bombing for the Vietnam War. Nixon was receiving inside information about Johnson's policies from Henry Kissinger, who (in some capacity) was advising Johnson at the time. Nixon was all for suspending bombing, as long as North Vietnam met certain conditions, such as ceasing its aggression. But what astounded me was that Nixon in his memoirs was quite up-front in narrating his concern about how Johnson's move would impact Nixon's campaign. That just looked devious to me. I mean, shouldn't a statesman be rooting for the President to succeed in bringing forth peace, rather than thinking about how a certain policy would affect his (the statesman's) political future? Nixon often portrays himself as one who was concerned about the good of others rather than himself. That's why his narration of how he handled LBJ's Vietnam policy in 1968 stood out to me like a sore thumb.
In some cases, Nixon's justifications for certain shady practices struck me as poor, even if they were understandable. For example, Nixon says that he supported dirty tricks in campaigns because the Democrats themselves engaged in dirty tricks, and he wanted the Republicans to fight back. That's understandable, but "they did it first" or "they do it too" (not that Nixon uses those exact words) sounds rather childish to me. One justification that Nixon offered seemed to me to contradict another position that he holds. Nixon, for example, expresses support for intelligence people stretching the law in order to fight domestic terrorists, such as the Black Panthers and the Weathermen, and he cautions that following the exact letter of the law is not always wise because the authors of the law could not have foreseen every circumstance that might come up. That's a valid point. And yet, Nixon emphasizes the value of appointing strict constructionists to the judiciary. Perhaps Nixon's justifications that made most sense to me concerned his attempts to keep a lid on leaks. Nixon talked about how leaks to the press about his foreign policy plans had the effect of disrupting those plans, since it's not prudent to let the people with whom one will be dealing to know everything one has in mind; moreover, according to Nixon, the Pentagon Papers contained some sensitive information, such as the names of sources of information to the U.S. Good points. It's ironic, though, that Nixon criticizes leaks, when elsewhere in his book he acknowledges that Kissinger was his source within the LBJ administration. But it's still a fairly decent point.
2. In reading the first volume of Nixon's memoirs, I thought about previous books that I had read about Nixon. First, regarding Nixon's run for the U.S. House against Democratic incumbent Jerry Voorhis, Stephen Ambrose essentially argued that Nixon was unfair to say that Voorhis had the support of NC-PAC (a group that was believed to have been infiltrated by Communists) in 1946, for Voorhis had NC-PAC's support in 1944 but not in 1946, when Voorhis had a reputation for having anti-Communist beliefs on foreign policy (see here). Nixon in his memoirs, however, says that the Los Angeles branch of NC-PAC indicated in 1946 its support for Voorhis, and Nixon said that this branch had a lot of Communists. Nixon's issue was that Voorhis (in Nixon's eyes) was not sensitive to the problem of Communist infiltration. Ambrose said that Nixon tended to misremember places, as when Nixon said that a fried-chicken lunch with Senator Joseph McCarthy and other officials occurred in Nixon's own office, when it actually took place in Senator Everett Dirksen's office (see here); on page 174 of the first volume of his memoirs, however, Nixon says that the fried chicken lunch occurred in Dirksen's office.
Recently, I've been reading psychological profiles of Nixon (one by Bruce Mazlish and another by Eli Chesen), which assert that Nixon was not open to pursuing in-depth self-examination. In reading his memoirs, did I find Nixon to be one who speculated about how early events in his life shaped the sort of person that he became? Occasionally. Nixon said that his father was argumentative and that his father's fights with Nixon's brothers made Nixon want peace. Nixon also stated that his mother's low-profile religiosity----which focused on doing good rather than wearing religion on one's sleeve----made him adverse to wearing his religion on his sleeve. But I didn't see anything about Nixon's earlier experiences in life making him an insecure perfectionist who sought control, which was the picture I got from the psychological profiles that I read. Nixon even mentioned the incident of him falling out of a buggy at a very young age, but he did not comment about how that shaped the way that he turned out.
3. There were a lot of interesting discussions about public policy in volume 1 of Nixon's memoirs, ranging from such topics as the Vietnam War, to welfare, to civil rights. (And I'm still scratching my head about Nixon's discussion of civil rights, for Nixon brags about how more schools became racially desegregated under his administration, while also making the bizarre argument that Brown vs. the Board of Education had no problem with segregated schools, just so long as they were equal, which was one reason that he opposed busing while supporting more federal support for education.) For this item, however, I'd like to highlight something that stood out to me on page 640:
"The budget I submitted in January of 1971 was set to be balanced at full employment and run a deficit to help take up the slack when unemployment was high."
Nixon appeared to be walking a fine line. Inflation was a problem during his administration, and he attributes that (at least in part) to the heavy government spending under the LBJ Presidency, as LBJ increased government spending for both the Vietnam War and also the Great Society, running a deficit in the process. At the same time, Nixon acknowledges that unemployment was rather high under his Presidency, and Nixon seems to be aware that austerity (clamping down on spending) is not that good on the economy when unemployment is a problem. Nixon does not mention Keynes in the first volume of his memoirs, but he may very well have had a Keynesian notion that the government needs to spend money to stimulate the economy.
Overall, on the issue of the Great Society, it seems to me from Nixon's memoirs that he was for the government spending money to alleviate poverty, but he did not care for how welfare split up families, and he wanted for there to be work requirements or job training for poor families who (under his proposal) would receive a stipend. He also thought that George McGovern's proposal that every family of four receive $6,500 a year went way too far!
The book is 669 pages, and I don't think that I've ever covered the entirety of a book that long in one post. I have a list of topics to cover, but I may not go through them all. Rather, I'll make some points. Some of them will get into the nitty-gritty, whereas others will focus more on the forest rather than the trees.
1. As in Six Crises, Nixon in his memoirs comes across as a basically decent person. Nixon admires goodness in others and is fair-minded. He empathizes with people, even political opponents and those he did not particularly get along with. He is compassionate towards the disadvantaged. He has had a long-standing love for peace and an admiration for pacifists (even though he admits that he's not a pacifist), and he has seen the horrors of war. He recognizes mistakes that he has made in the past. And yet, it was noteworthy to me that Nixon in volume 1 of his memoirs sometimes appeared to be rather shady, or he sought to justify activities within his administration that many considered shady, as opposed to flat-out denying that accusations had merit, as was the case in Six Crises.
For example, Nixon talks about his 1968 campaign for President, when President Lyndon Johnson was about to suspend his bombing for the Vietnam War. Nixon was receiving inside information about Johnson's policies from Henry Kissinger, who (in some capacity) was advising Johnson at the time. Nixon was all for suspending bombing, as long as North Vietnam met certain conditions, such as ceasing its aggression. But what astounded me was that Nixon in his memoirs was quite up-front in narrating his concern about how Johnson's move would impact Nixon's campaign. That just looked devious to me. I mean, shouldn't a statesman be rooting for the President to succeed in bringing forth peace, rather than thinking about how a certain policy would affect his (the statesman's) political future? Nixon often portrays himself as one who was concerned about the good of others rather than himself. That's why his narration of how he handled LBJ's Vietnam policy in 1968 stood out to me like a sore thumb.
In some cases, Nixon's justifications for certain shady practices struck me as poor, even if they were understandable. For example, Nixon says that he supported dirty tricks in campaigns because the Democrats themselves engaged in dirty tricks, and he wanted the Republicans to fight back. That's understandable, but "they did it first" or "they do it too" (not that Nixon uses those exact words) sounds rather childish to me. One justification that Nixon offered seemed to me to contradict another position that he holds. Nixon, for example, expresses support for intelligence people stretching the law in order to fight domestic terrorists, such as the Black Panthers and the Weathermen, and he cautions that following the exact letter of the law is not always wise because the authors of the law could not have foreseen every circumstance that might come up. That's a valid point. And yet, Nixon emphasizes the value of appointing strict constructionists to the judiciary. Perhaps Nixon's justifications that made most sense to me concerned his attempts to keep a lid on leaks. Nixon talked about how leaks to the press about his foreign policy plans had the effect of disrupting those plans, since it's not prudent to let the people with whom one will be dealing to know everything one has in mind; moreover, according to Nixon, the Pentagon Papers contained some sensitive information, such as the names of sources of information to the U.S. Good points. It's ironic, though, that Nixon criticizes leaks, when elsewhere in his book he acknowledges that Kissinger was his source within the LBJ administration. But it's still a fairly decent point.
2. In reading the first volume of Nixon's memoirs, I thought about previous books that I had read about Nixon. First, regarding Nixon's run for the U.S. House against Democratic incumbent Jerry Voorhis, Stephen Ambrose essentially argued that Nixon was unfair to say that Voorhis had the support of NC-PAC (a group that was believed to have been infiltrated by Communists) in 1946, for Voorhis had NC-PAC's support in 1944 but not in 1946, when Voorhis had a reputation for having anti-Communist beliefs on foreign policy (see here). Nixon in his memoirs, however, says that the Los Angeles branch of NC-PAC indicated in 1946 its support for Voorhis, and Nixon said that this branch had a lot of Communists. Nixon's issue was that Voorhis (in Nixon's eyes) was not sensitive to the problem of Communist infiltration. Ambrose said that Nixon tended to misremember places, as when Nixon said that a fried-chicken lunch with Senator Joseph McCarthy and other officials occurred in Nixon's own office, when it actually took place in Senator Everett Dirksen's office (see here); on page 174 of the first volume of his memoirs, however, Nixon says that the fried chicken lunch occurred in Dirksen's office.
Recently, I've been reading psychological profiles of Nixon (one by Bruce Mazlish and another by Eli Chesen), which assert that Nixon was not open to pursuing in-depth self-examination. In reading his memoirs, did I find Nixon to be one who speculated about how early events in his life shaped the sort of person that he became? Occasionally. Nixon said that his father was argumentative and that his father's fights with Nixon's brothers made Nixon want peace. Nixon also stated that his mother's low-profile religiosity----which focused on doing good rather than wearing religion on one's sleeve----made him adverse to wearing his religion on his sleeve. But I didn't see anything about Nixon's earlier experiences in life making him an insecure perfectionist who sought control, which was the picture I got from the psychological profiles that I read. Nixon even mentioned the incident of him falling out of a buggy at a very young age, but he did not comment about how that shaped the way that he turned out.
3. There were a lot of interesting discussions about public policy in volume 1 of Nixon's memoirs, ranging from such topics as the Vietnam War, to welfare, to civil rights. (And I'm still scratching my head about Nixon's discussion of civil rights, for Nixon brags about how more schools became racially desegregated under his administration, while also making the bizarre argument that Brown vs. the Board of Education had no problem with segregated schools, just so long as they were equal, which was one reason that he opposed busing while supporting more federal support for education.) For this item, however, I'd like to highlight something that stood out to me on page 640:
"The budget I submitted in January of 1971 was set to be balanced at full employment and run a deficit to help take up the slack when unemployment was high."
Nixon appeared to be walking a fine line. Inflation was a problem during his administration, and he attributes that (at least in part) to the heavy government spending under the LBJ Presidency, as LBJ increased government spending for both the Vietnam War and also the Great Society, running a deficit in the process. At the same time, Nixon acknowledges that unemployment was rather high under his Presidency, and Nixon seems to be aware that austerity (clamping down on spending) is not that good on the economy when unemployment is a problem. Nixon does not mention Keynes in the first volume of his memoirs, but he may very well have had a Keynesian notion that the government needs to spend money to stimulate the economy.
Overall, on the issue of the Great Society, it seems to me from Nixon's memoirs that he was for the government spending money to alleviate poverty, but he did not care for how welfare split up families, and he wanted for there to be work requirements or job training for poor families who (under his proposal) would receive a stipend. He also thought that George McGovern's proposal that every family of four receive $6,500 a year went way too far!
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Accountability, Seeing Miracles, and the Israelites in the Wilderness
As I've done my daily quiet time in the Book of Deuteronomy, I've
thought about a view that one of my relatives has. According to my
relative, people in this day and age can be saved, but they cannot be
lost. Why? Because there is not enough unassailable evidence that
Christianity is the one true religion for God to judge people according
to their response to it. In the Bible, particularly the New
Testament, my relative notes, miracles accompany the proclamation of the
Gospel in order to attest to the Gospel's truth (see John 15:24;
Hebrews 2:4). When miracles do not accompany the preaching of the
Gospel, however, how can God judge people for rejecting it? On what
basis should people believe in the Gospel as opposed to other religions
and philosophies, if God does not prove to them beyond a reasonable
doubt that the Gospel is true?
A number of my evangelical friends say that the people who reject the Gospel would probably reject it even if they saw a miracle (see Luke 16:31), but I have issues with that claim. So people should be judged according to a hypothetical----according to what they would have done? That makes no sense to me.
So what's this have to do with Deuteronomy? I read Deuteronomy 1, and it talks about how the Israelites were barred from the Promised Land because of their unbelief. They were intimidated by the walls of Canaan and the size of the Amorites, and thus they did not want to attempt to conquer Canaan. I wondered if God likewise judges me when I am afraid, but then I saw that the Israelites in Deuteronomy 1 had advantages that I myself do not have. As Deuteronomy 1:30-33 indicates, the Israelites had seen and experienced God's power: God's deliverance of Israel from Egypt, God taking care of the Israelites in the wilderness, and God guiding the Israelites by cloud and by fire. I haven't seen miracles at that level, so, while I can understand God judging the Israelites of that time for being afraid, I have a hard time believing that God judges me for my fear.
Some may argue that God does judge people in the here and now, as God judged the Israelites in the wilderness, for the wilderness generation are paraded before New Testament Christians as an example. After all, does not the Epistle to the Hebrews warn its Christian audience not to be unbelieving, as were the Israelites in the wilderness, lest they fail to enter God's rest? And does not Paul in I Corinthians 10 exhort the Corinthians not to be like the sexually-immoral Israelites in the wilderness? Does not that imply that the lessons of Deuteronomy 1 are for all time, and apply even to those who have not seen God's miracles?
But it can be argued that the Hebrews and the Corinthians, too, saw and experienced miracles. Hebrews 6:10 refers to people who have tasted the powers of the World to Come. And I Corinthians 12:28 mentions miracles and the gift of healing.
So is the Bible irrelevant, if people are not held accountable over whether or not they believe in it? I don't think so. It has good principles. I think of the hyper-dispensationalist saying that I've heard that parts of the Bible are for us, but they were not written to us. For example, I know of hyper-dispensationalists who do not believe that (say) all of the Gospel of Matthew is normative for Christians today, for they maintain that the Gospel of Matthew teaches a works-salvation, whereas Christians are saved by grace through faith. But they still study the Gospel of Matthew because they believe that it has edifying stuff, even for them. Similarly, while I am not in the same position as the Israelites in the wilderness or even the early church, I can still be edified by lessons pertaining to them: how we can trust God because he loves us and wants to take care of us, for example.
I should say this about accountability: I do not want to imply that human beings in the here-and-now are not accountable to God for what they do. The issue that I'm addressing is salvation: when does God hold people accountable for how they respond to the Gospel? How much knowledge do they need before they indeed are held accountable? Of course, one can point out that morality and salvation are intertwined issues, for salvation is God saving us from the punishment that we deserve for our immorality. So things are thornier than I may think.
A number of my evangelical friends say that the people who reject the Gospel would probably reject it even if they saw a miracle (see Luke 16:31), but I have issues with that claim. So people should be judged according to a hypothetical----according to what they would have done? That makes no sense to me.
So what's this have to do with Deuteronomy? I read Deuteronomy 1, and it talks about how the Israelites were barred from the Promised Land because of their unbelief. They were intimidated by the walls of Canaan and the size of the Amorites, and thus they did not want to attempt to conquer Canaan. I wondered if God likewise judges me when I am afraid, but then I saw that the Israelites in Deuteronomy 1 had advantages that I myself do not have. As Deuteronomy 1:30-33 indicates, the Israelites had seen and experienced God's power: God's deliverance of Israel from Egypt, God taking care of the Israelites in the wilderness, and God guiding the Israelites by cloud and by fire. I haven't seen miracles at that level, so, while I can understand God judging the Israelites of that time for being afraid, I have a hard time believing that God judges me for my fear.
Some may argue that God does judge people in the here and now, as God judged the Israelites in the wilderness, for the wilderness generation are paraded before New Testament Christians as an example. After all, does not the Epistle to the Hebrews warn its Christian audience not to be unbelieving, as were the Israelites in the wilderness, lest they fail to enter God's rest? And does not Paul in I Corinthians 10 exhort the Corinthians not to be like the sexually-immoral Israelites in the wilderness? Does not that imply that the lessons of Deuteronomy 1 are for all time, and apply even to those who have not seen God's miracles?
But it can be argued that the Hebrews and the Corinthians, too, saw and experienced miracles. Hebrews 6:10 refers to people who have tasted the powers of the World to Come. And I Corinthians 12:28 mentions miracles and the gift of healing.
So is the Bible irrelevant, if people are not held accountable over whether or not they believe in it? I don't think so. It has good principles. I think of the hyper-dispensationalist saying that I've heard that parts of the Bible are for us, but they were not written to us. For example, I know of hyper-dispensationalists who do not believe that (say) all of the Gospel of Matthew is normative for Christians today, for they maintain that the Gospel of Matthew teaches a works-salvation, whereas Christians are saved by grace through faith. But they still study the Gospel of Matthew because they believe that it has edifying stuff, even for them. Similarly, while I am not in the same position as the Israelites in the wilderness or even the early church, I can still be edified by lessons pertaining to them: how we can trust God because he loves us and wants to take care of us, for example.
I should say this about accountability: I do not want to imply that human beings in the here-and-now are not accountable to God for what they do. The issue that I'm addressing is salvation: when does God hold people accountable for how they respond to the Gospel? How much knowledge do they need before they indeed are held accountable? Of course, one can point out that morality and salvation are intertwined issues, for salvation is God saving us from the punishment that we deserve for our immorality. So things are thornier than I may think.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
James H. Job, Sr.: I Can't Help It: Do We Do What We Must Do?
I was in Indiana from February 16-25, attending my sister's wedding
and visiting with family. I stayed for some time at my Grandpa and
Grandma's house. For years at that house, I've noticed a pamphlet on
one of the shelves. It dates to 1925 (though there was an earlier
edition in 1924), and it's by James H. Job, Sr., a pastor, who also was
my great-great grandfather (not that he was alive when I was born).
It's entitled I Can't Help It: Do We Do What We Must Do?
The title long intrigued me. I had heard that James Job, Sr. was a rather cold and hard man, and I thought that his pamphlet might be about our human struggle to fulfill our moral obligations to God and to our neighbors. I tend to gravitate towards the theme of people who have weaknesses, and yet deep inside of them there is a humanity, love, and a desire to do what is right. How many times have I felt that underneath my cold and aloof exterior is someone who genuinely cares for other human beings, but who struggles to express that care in his day-to-day life? I can easily exclaim at times that "I can't help it", while asking if I do what I must, and, if not, why? I thought that Job's pamphlet would wrestle with those kinds of issues.
Because I wasn't going to church when I was in Indiana, I decided to read James H. Job's pamphlet and to blog about that on Sunday, in place of my usual Sunday post of blogging about the morning's church service that I attended. But, because the Internet connection was slow where I was staying, I decided to postpone my blogging for when I would return to upstate New York. Well, I have returned, and this is my post on James H. Job, Sr.'s pamphlet!
It turned out that the message of the pamphlet was not what I anticipated. It wasn't about the human struggle to be good. Rather, it was a defense of Calvinism. It's not that Job explicitly mentioned Calvinism or predestination, but his essential argument was that human free will is an illusion, which is why we need God to transform us unilaterally by God's grace. In certain respects, Job's argument overlapped with that of Jonathan Edwards in Freedom of the Will. Job contended that we have desires inside of us, and we follow the desire that is strongest at any given time. We did not choose those desires, but they are just there, and we cannot help but to follow the stronger desire. This is true of fallen human beings. It is true of converted people, who have good and sinful desires inside of them. It is true of God and of Satan. It is even true of plants, which gravitate towards the sunlight. We cannot act otherwise.
So, according to Job, how can we be held morally accountable, when we cannot help what we do? And what is the basis for society to enact laws, if people's acts are essentially determined? For Job, we're accountable when we know that something is wrong and do it anyway, though, on some level, we're also accountable if we sin out of ignorance (since Luke 12:48 says that the one who does not know his master's will and violates it will be beaten with a few stripes). The reason for laws, according to Job, is to maintain societal order. But how can laws maintain societal order, if we can't help what we do? According to Job, if I understood him correctly, laws can essentially influence our desires, strengthening some at the expense of others. Remember that Job said that we follow the stronger desire. Suppose that (say) Ralph desires to rob the bank. Ralph has a desire for money. But the law against theft means that Ralph could go to jail if he is caught. That reality brings another desire into play: Ralph may want money, but he may also want his freedom. If Ralph's desire for freedom is stronger than his desire for money, Ralph would be discouraged from robbing the bank. The law throws another desire into the mix, and that could dissuade Ralph from doing wrong. Job is deterministic, but he realizes that the desires that we have come from a variety of factors, including the impact of other people upon us: we, as we are, are shaped by our environment, and we also have an influence on others.
That's Job's overall argument. But there were a variety of side issues in his pamphlet that intrigued me. Here are some examples:
----When Job was comparing humans with vegetables and animals, I wondered if he was open to evolution. It turned out that he was not, for he said that evolution was unable to explain the existence of the male and female sexes, whereas the Bible was, and that evolution could not account for the variety of organisms in certain environments. Actually, my understanding is that evolution does explain why there are certain organisms in particular environments. I don't know how evolutionists would account for the existence of the two sexes, however, but I'm open to learning about this.
----Many biblical scholars contend that Genesis 1-2 has two different creation accounts, by at least two authors. Those who don't accept that have to deal with a problem: God creates human beings in Genesis 1, and God creates human beings in Genesis 2. So did God create human beings twice? Some say that Genesis 2 is a microscopic elaboration on the creation that occurred in Genesis 1: Genesis 1 says that God created human beings, and Genesis 2 shows how God did so. Arnold Murray (if I understand him correctly) maintains that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 present two acts of creation: the people whom God creates in Genesis 1 are not the same as the people whom God creates in Genesis 2 (which, according to Murray, would explain where Cain got his wife!). Job has another proposal: Genesis 1 is about the creation of the soul, whereas God in Genesis 2 places that soul in a body.
----I appreciated Job's discussion of how we often act according to the knowledge that we have at the time. When we make a mistake, we can learn from its consequences, but, unfortunately, we can't go back in time and tell our earlier selves about the wisdom that we have gained. We can advise others right now, however. Again, Job is talking about how we are shaped by our environment, and how we shape our environment. There is a determinism in Job's scenario, but that determinism is consistent with human interaction and the messiness of life.
----Job says that people should disobey unjust laws, and he cites Prohibition as an example of an unjust law. Job says that, under Prohibition, Jesus Christ would be thrown into jail for turning water into wine! This surprised me because my Grandma said that Job was a Baptist. This would be consistent with his Calvinism, since there are Baptists who are Calvinistic. (They're called primitive Baptists.) But why would a Baptist think that Jesus turned water into alcohol? My reading of Job, on some level, was predictable, but there were a few surprises!
The title long intrigued me. I had heard that James Job, Sr. was a rather cold and hard man, and I thought that his pamphlet might be about our human struggle to fulfill our moral obligations to God and to our neighbors. I tend to gravitate towards the theme of people who have weaknesses, and yet deep inside of them there is a humanity, love, and a desire to do what is right. How many times have I felt that underneath my cold and aloof exterior is someone who genuinely cares for other human beings, but who struggles to express that care in his day-to-day life? I can easily exclaim at times that "I can't help it", while asking if I do what I must, and, if not, why? I thought that Job's pamphlet would wrestle with those kinds of issues.
Because I wasn't going to church when I was in Indiana, I decided to read James H. Job's pamphlet and to blog about that on Sunday, in place of my usual Sunday post of blogging about the morning's church service that I attended. But, because the Internet connection was slow where I was staying, I decided to postpone my blogging for when I would return to upstate New York. Well, I have returned, and this is my post on James H. Job, Sr.'s pamphlet!
It turned out that the message of the pamphlet was not what I anticipated. It wasn't about the human struggle to be good. Rather, it was a defense of Calvinism. It's not that Job explicitly mentioned Calvinism or predestination, but his essential argument was that human free will is an illusion, which is why we need God to transform us unilaterally by God's grace. In certain respects, Job's argument overlapped with that of Jonathan Edwards in Freedom of the Will. Job contended that we have desires inside of us, and we follow the desire that is strongest at any given time. We did not choose those desires, but they are just there, and we cannot help but to follow the stronger desire. This is true of fallen human beings. It is true of converted people, who have good and sinful desires inside of them. It is true of God and of Satan. It is even true of plants, which gravitate towards the sunlight. We cannot act otherwise.
So, according to Job, how can we be held morally accountable, when we cannot help what we do? And what is the basis for society to enact laws, if people's acts are essentially determined? For Job, we're accountable when we know that something is wrong and do it anyway, though, on some level, we're also accountable if we sin out of ignorance (since Luke 12:48 says that the one who does not know his master's will and violates it will be beaten with a few stripes). The reason for laws, according to Job, is to maintain societal order. But how can laws maintain societal order, if we can't help what we do? According to Job, if I understood him correctly, laws can essentially influence our desires, strengthening some at the expense of others. Remember that Job said that we follow the stronger desire. Suppose that (say) Ralph desires to rob the bank. Ralph has a desire for money. But the law against theft means that Ralph could go to jail if he is caught. That reality brings another desire into play: Ralph may want money, but he may also want his freedom. If Ralph's desire for freedom is stronger than his desire for money, Ralph would be discouraged from robbing the bank. The law throws another desire into the mix, and that could dissuade Ralph from doing wrong. Job is deterministic, but he realizes that the desires that we have come from a variety of factors, including the impact of other people upon us: we, as we are, are shaped by our environment, and we also have an influence on others.
That's Job's overall argument. But there were a variety of side issues in his pamphlet that intrigued me. Here are some examples:
----When Job was comparing humans with vegetables and animals, I wondered if he was open to evolution. It turned out that he was not, for he said that evolution was unable to explain the existence of the male and female sexes, whereas the Bible was, and that evolution could not account for the variety of organisms in certain environments. Actually, my understanding is that evolution does explain why there are certain organisms in particular environments. I don't know how evolutionists would account for the existence of the two sexes, however, but I'm open to learning about this.
----Many biblical scholars contend that Genesis 1-2 has two different creation accounts, by at least two authors. Those who don't accept that have to deal with a problem: God creates human beings in Genesis 1, and God creates human beings in Genesis 2. So did God create human beings twice? Some say that Genesis 2 is a microscopic elaboration on the creation that occurred in Genesis 1: Genesis 1 says that God created human beings, and Genesis 2 shows how God did so. Arnold Murray (if I understand him correctly) maintains that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 present two acts of creation: the people whom God creates in Genesis 1 are not the same as the people whom God creates in Genesis 2 (which, according to Murray, would explain where Cain got his wife!). Job has another proposal: Genesis 1 is about the creation of the soul, whereas God in Genesis 2 places that soul in a body.
----I appreciated Job's discussion of how we often act according to the knowledge that we have at the time. When we make a mistake, we can learn from its consequences, but, unfortunately, we can't go back in time and tell our earlier selves about the wisdom that we have gained. We can advise others right now, however. Again, Job is talking about how we are shaped by our environment, and how we shape our environment. There is a determinism in Job's scenario, but that determinism is consistent with human interaction and the messiness of life.
----Job says that people should disobey unjust laws, and he cites Prohibition as an example of an unjust law. Job says that, under Prohibition, Jesus Christ would be thrown into jail for turning water into wine! This surprised me because my Grandma said that Job was a Baptist. This would be consistent with his Calvinism, since there are Baptists who are Calvinistic. (They're called primitive Baptists.) But why would a Baptist think that Jesus turned water into alcohol? My reading of Job, on some level, was predictable, but there were a few surprises!
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Going Out on Your Own
I recently read Numbers 32,
in which the tribes of Reuben and Gad prefer to settle in the
Transjordan rather than the land of Canaan. They agree, however, to
assist the rest of Israel in conquering Canaan.
The first time that this story became solidified in my mind was when I was a student at Harvard Divinity School. I did a lot of private quiet times while I was there, and there was a time when I was going through the Book of Numbers. But I think that I might have heard the story before, when I was a child. If so, then it was probably in a sermon by David Antion or Ron Dart, because they actually touched on some of the lesser known stories in the Hebrew Bible.
But, as a child, if my memory serves me correctly, I didn't know exactly what to do with the story. Why's that? Because it's not entirely clear what is right and what is wrong within it. In many of the Bible stories that I heard as a child, there were good guys and there were bad guys, or (since the good guys didn't always do good) there was at least God's standard about what was right and what was wrong. But my vague recollection is that the story in Numbers 32 struck me as different. We're not explicitly told what God thinks about the desire of Reuben and Gad to locate in the Transjordan. Reuben and Gad don't seem to be malicious in their request: they just like the Transjordan for its pastureland. But I had the impression that there was something wrong with what they were doing, only I wasn't being told what that was. And, as a child with Asperger's (though Asperger's wasn't exactly on my family's radar at the time), I liked to be told things explicitly rather than shown.
Years later from my childhood, I heard plenty of preachers who would tell me (well, not me personally, but me as a listener or as someone in their audience) what they thought was wrong with the request by Reuben and Gad: that Reuben and Gad were pursuing an alternative to God's plan for Israel to inherit the Promised Land, or that Reuben and Gad were cutting themselves off from the larger body of God's people by striking out on their own. Points of application for Christians were drawn from the story. For example, one claim that preachers made was that, in the same way that Reuben was taken out early by Assyria, so Christians who cut themselves off from the church body are especially vulnerable to Satanic attack. (Never mind the attacks that Christians may receive inside of the church walls----judgmentalism, authoritarianism, etc.) Another claim made was that Reuben and Gad, by separating themselves from the larger body of Israel, were missing out on the glorious things that God was doing for his people. Similarly, I was told, Christians who forsake the assembly of the brethren miss out on seeing and hearing about what God is doing in people's lives. (This may be a valid point, but God is everywhere, not just in the church.)
The thing is, though, that God tolerated what Reuben and Gad did. I don't think that it was considered to be ideal within the larger story of the Bible, for it's interesting to note that Ezekiel 48's prediction about the division of Israel gives Reuben and Gad land in the Cisjordan, not the Transjordan. But God tolerated Reuben and Gad's preference for the Transjordan. That didn't make much sense to my Aspie mind when I was a child: that there is not always black and white, but there is often better and worse. Come to think of it, I'm not sure to what extent a number of religionists would be comfortable with shades of gray, as they seek in the Scriptures clear rules of what is right and what is wrong for all time.
I found that my latest reading of Numbers 32 was different from some of my previous readings, and I mean as an adult. During my previous readings, I somewhat identified with Reuben and Gad because I myself was a lone-ranger Christian. Even though I went to church and a small group in the past, I recoiled from Christian community, since I had a hard time fitting into social settings, plus I felt more at ease when I was reading the Bible by myself. Part of this was my Asperger's, and part of it was my religious heritage, for I came from a family and associated with people who felt disconnected from church and decided to avoid the trap of organized religion by reading the Bible on their own, or with their families. And that was considered to be all right. It was mainly when I entered evangelicalism that I heard that it was not all right (though even evangelicalism had stories of people finding God alone in their hotel rooms as they read a Gideon's Bible, or similar occurrences).
But, this time around, when I read Numbers 32, I felt sad, especially by v 22, in which Moses tells Reuben and Gad that, after they fight the Conquest, they will be exempt from their obligations to the LORD and to Israel. Moses may have meant that they didn't have to fight the Conquest anymore, but perhaps he meant that Reuben and Gad didn't have to serve the larger body of Israel at all after the Conquest, if they chose not to do so. (And Judges 5:16-17 may suggest that Reuben didn't feel an obligation to Israel after the Conquest and sat out of Israel's war against Sisera.) For some reason, it saddens me that Reuben felt so disconnected from the rest of Israel----as if it could care less about what happened to the LORD's people.
I wonder if Reuben and Gad felt marginalized within Israel even before they chose to settle in the Transjordan. I can't really speak about Gad, for I don't know much about that tribe, but Reuben in the Hebrew Bible is criticized because Reuben slept with Jacob's servant-girl (Genesis 35:22; 49:3-4; I Chronicles 5:1), and Reubenites led a revolt against Moses and Aaron (Numbers 16:1). The Reubenites were once a prominent tribe within Israel, for Reuben was called Jacob's firstborn, but Reuben declined in number, according to Numbers 26 (if one compares the census there and the census in Numbers 1) and perhaps Deuteronomy 33:6. Did Reuben get to the point where it did not feel that it had a home within Israel----that it was not valued, and so it might as well go off on its own rather than have a second-class status within the larger Israelite community?
In terms of where I am now, I still value having an individual faith----of believing that God has a relationship with me personally and loves me, whether or not I fit into a Christian community (and, right now, I have an excellent church home). For me, it's important for my faith to be my own, not something that group-think imposes on me. But I also think that it's good to be connected with other people, on some level----to care about them, to be invested in them and their success, to care about the LORD's cause and whether or not people's lives are being improved for the better (as people come to know a loving God, or the poor are fed). Unlike a number of evangelicals, I don't make this into some iron-clad rule about how to please God, for there are many people who have difficulty finding a church community where they fit in----and beating them up with self-righteous platitudes like "Well, you need to reach out to people, too" (when an outsider reaching out to people in church may then be looked on as a freak by the in-crowd) or "You need to be the change that you want to see" does not really help matters. In my opinion, they can find comfort in a one-on-one relationship with God, and God does not look down on them for going that route.
The first time that this story became solidified in my mind was when I was a student at Harvard Divinity School. I did a lot of private quiet times while I was there, and there was a time when I was going through the Book of Numbers. But I think that I might have heard the story before, when I was a child. If so, then it was probably in a sermon by David Antion or Ron Dart, because they actually touched on some of the lesser known stories in the Hebrew Bible.
But, as a child, if my memory serves me correctly, I didn't know exactly what to do with the story. Why's that? Because it's not entirely clear what is right and what is wrong within it. In many of the Bible stories that I heard as a child, there were good guys and there were bad guys, or (since the good guys didn't always do good) there was at least God's standard about what was right and what was wrong. But my vague recollection is that the story in Numbers 32 struck me as different. We're not explicitly told what God thinks about the desire of Reuben and Gad to locate in the Transjordan. Reuben and Gad don't seem to be malicious in their request: they just like the Transjordan for its pastureland. But I had the impression that there was something wrong with what they were doing, only I wasn't being told what that was. And, as a child with Asperger's (though Asperger's wasn't exactly on my family's radar at the time), I liked to be told things explicitly rather than shown.
Years later from my childhood, I heard plenty of preachers who would tell me (well, not me personally, but me as a listener or as someone in their audience) what they thought was wrong with the request by Reuben and Gad: that Reuben and Gad were pursuing an alternative to God's plan for Israel to inherit the Promised Land, or that Reuben and Gad were cutting themselves off from the larger body of God's people by striking out on their own. Points of application for Christians were drawn from the story. For example, one claim that preachers made was that, in the same way that Reuben was taken out early by Assyria, so Christians who cut themselves off from the church body are especially vulnerable to Satanic attack. (Never mind the attacks that Christians may receive inside of the church walls----judgmentalism, authoritarianism, etc.) Another claim made was that Reuben and Gad, by separating themselves from the larger body of Israel, were missing out on the glorious things that God was doing for his people. Similarly, I was told, Christians who forsake the assembly of the brethren miss out on seeing and hearing about what God is doing in people's lives. (This may be a valid point, but God is everywhere, not just in the church.)
The thing is, though, that God tolerated what Reuben and Gad did. I don't think that it was considered to be ideal within the larger story of the Bible, for it's interesting to note that Ezekiel 48's prediction about the division of Israel gives Reuben and Gad land in the Cisjordan, not the Transjordan. But God tolerated Reuben and Gad's preference for the Transjordan. That didn't make much sense to my Aspie mind when I was a child: that there is not always black and white, but there is often better and worse. Come to think of it, I'm not sure to what extent a number of religionists would be comfortable with shades of gray, as they seek in the Scriptures clear rules of what is right and what is wrong for all time.
I found that my latest reading of Numbers 32 was different from some of my previous readings, and I mean as an adult. During my previous readings, I somewhat identified with Reuben and Gad because I myself was a lone-ranger Christian. Even though I went to church and a small group in the past, I recoiled from Christian community, since I had a hard time fitting into social settings, plus I felt more at ease when I was reading the Bible by myself. Part of this was my Asperger's, and part of it was my religious heritage, for I came from a family and associated with people who felt disconnected from church and decided to avoid the trap of organized religion by reading the Bible on their own, or with their families. And that was considered to be all right. It was mainly when I entered evangelicalism that I heard that it was not all right (though even evangelicalism had stories of people finding God alone in their hotel rooms as they read a Gideon's Bible, or similar occurrences).
But, this time around, when I read Numbers 32, I felt sad, especially by v 22, in which Moses tells Reuben and Gad that, after they fight the Conquest, they will be exempt from their obligations to the LORD and to Israel. Moses may have meant that they didn't have to fight the Conquest anymore, but perhaps he meant that Reuben and Gad didn't have to serve the larger body of Israel at all after the Conquest, if they chose not to do so. (And Judges 5:16-17 may suggest that Reuben didn't feel an obligation to Israel after the Conquest and sat out of Israel's war against Sisera.) For some reason, it saddens me that Reuben felt so disconnected from the rest of Israel----as if it could care less about what happened to the LORD's people.
I wonder if Reuben and Gad felt marginalized within Israel even before they chose to settle in the Transjordan. I can't really speak about Gad, for I don't know much about that tribe, but Reuben in the Hebrew Bible is criticized because Reuben slept with Jacob's servant-girl (Genesis 35:22; 49:3-4; I Chronicles 5:1), and Reubenites led a revolt against Moses and Aaron (Numbers 16:1). The Reubenites were once a prominent tribe within Israel, for Reuben was called Jacob's firstborn, but Reuben declined in number, according to Numbers 26 (if one compares the census there and the census in Numbers 1) and perhaps Deuteronomy 33:6. Did Reuben get to the point where it did not feel that it had a home within Israel----that it was not valued, and so it might as well go off on its own rather than have a second-class status within the larger Israelite community?
In terms of where I am now, I still value having an individual faith----of believing that God has a relationship with me personally and loves me, whether or not I fit into a Christian community (and, right now, I have an excellent church home). For me, it's important for my faith to be my own, not something that group-think imposes on me. But I also think that it's good to be connected with other people, on some level----to care about them, to be invested in them and their success, to care about the LORD's cause and whether or not people's lives are being improved for the better (as people come to know a loving God, or the poor are fed). Unlike a number of evangelicals, I don't make this into some iron-clad rule about how to please God, for there are many people who have difficulty finding a church community where they fit in----and beating them up with self-righteous platitudes like "Well, you need to reach out to people, too" (when an outsider reaching out to people in church may then be looked on as a freak by the in-crowd) or "You need to be the change that you want to see" does not really help matters. In my opinion, they can find comfort in a one-on-one relationship with God, and God does not look down on them for going that route.
Friday, February 15, 2013
The Law As a Mirror
My church for its Bible Study is going through Romans: The Letter That Changed the World, with Mart De Haan and Jimmy DeYoung.
I got to attend last night, but I won't be able to attend next week
because I'll be in Indiana for my sister's wedding. But I'll still be
blogging about next week's lesson, since I was able to watch it online,
plus I can answer the questions in the booklet, in my own way. The
only problem is that I won't be able to communicate to you what others
in the group say, but at least I'll be writing something!
But let's proceed to last night's session! I have three items.
1. One question that I have often asked on this blog is whether Paul understood the law of Moses to be for Israel alone, or for Gentiles as well. I've written posts in which I've speculated about this issue myself, and I've written posts in which I've gone through what biblical scholarship has said about the topic. See here and here if you are interested in these posts.
How does our curriculum handle this issue? Well, my impression is that it regards the law of Moses as something that God gave to physical Israel alone. Why, then, does Paul talk to Gentiles about how the law points out people's sin, how the law condemns people because they do not obey it, and how trying to be justified by the law is futile? Does that not imply that the law is somehow relevant to Gentiles, not just Israel? The answer that I got from the curriculum is that Paul was not just criticizing the use of the Mosaic law to achieve salvation, but any law, including Roman law. Over the past several weeks, the curriculum has said that the Romans tried to appease the gods through their own efforts: through sacrifice, through adherence to virtues (i.e., self-discipline), etc. But the message of the Gospel is that we cannot climb our way to God through our own efforts, for we are sinful, and so God has come down to us by sending Jesus Christ to save us.
(UPDATE: I do remember someone implying on the DVD that Roman law was not good enough, for it fell short of God's standards for people. Roman law stressed outward compliance, but God desired for people to be morally pure on the inside, not just the outside. The idea may be that, even if Gentiles were not subject to the authority of the Mosaic law, God still held them to certain standards. In my opinion, Romans 2:14 expresses this.)
The irony is, however, that, when our group went on to discuss how the law is a mirror to us in that it points out our sin, we didn't look at Roman virtues; rather, by "law", we meant the Ten Commandments, which are part of the Torah that was supposedly given only to Israel. That brings me to my next point.
2. When we talked about how the law is a mirror that points out our sins to us, and how we all fall short of the law, we mentioned the Ten Commandments, but we did not really talk about which specific commandments we have violated. I seriously doubt that anyone in the group has killed anyone (though people there may have hated others, and Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount says that hate is murder, but I'm really hesitant to say that Paul had the Sermon on the Mount in mind when he said that we disobey the law). Rather, when we discussed our shortcomings, we focused more on how we have failed to behave consistently in a Christ-like manner. We may blow our stack with certain people rather than treating them with respect and kindness, for example. But "Thou shalt not lose your temper and blow your stack with people" is not one of the Ten Commandments (though I do recall that, as a child, my Dad assigned us kids to come up with our own commandments, and "Thou shalt not lose your temper" was the very first one). So, by "law", the people in my group seemed to mean more than the Ten Commandments.
Maybe. Someone in the group later referred to Jesus' summary of the law in Matthew 22:36-40, as Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18: that we love God with every fiber of our being, and that we care for our neighbor's needs the same way that we care for our own. The person making this point said that this is a high standard that we can't reach. Apparently, for my friend, we actually do fall short of the Mosaic law, for we do not love God with every fiber of our being or love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
I wonder, though, if this standard was intended to be so high that we could not reach it. In II Chronicles 15:15, we read that the Judahites during the reign of King Asa swore with all of their heart and their whole desire to love God within God's covenant. Apparently, they met the standard! II Kings 23:25 says that King Josiah turned to the LORD with all of his heart, all of his soul, and all of his might.
Apparently, Josiah met the standard! And these were imperfect human beings, just like we were. I'm somewhat doubtful, therefore, that Deuteronomy 6:5 calls for absolute perfection. There is some standard there, but I don't think that, within the Hebrew Bible, it's as high as the person in the Bible study group may think it is. What about Leviticus 19:18's command that we love our neighbor as ourselves? I'm not certain that it does mean that we have to care for every other person's needs in the exact same proportion as we care for our own needs. Of course we care for our own needs first. When most people have a job, they're working primarily to support themselves and their families. But I think that the Mosaic Torah exhorted the Israelites to think of others besides themselves: to help out the poor with gleanings, the corners of the field, and tithes; to let the poor person who owes money to sleep in his own cloak; to respect people's lives and properties; etc. I still find that I fall short of even the Mosaic law's standard, though, for I bear grudges (in violation of Leviticus 19:18) and I usually don't rebuke my neighbor when I have a problem with him (contra Leviticus 19:17).
3. Okay, my friend in the Bible study group said that it's impossible for us to love God with every fiber of our being and to care for our neighbors the same way that we care for ourselves. That's why we need Christ as our Savior, the evangelical message runs. So, once we accept Christ, do we no longer have to love God with every fiber of our being and care for our neighbors as we care for ourselves? Is the point of Paul's Gospel that we're sinners and Christ has paid the penalty for our sins, so now we'll go through the pearly gates after death rather than hell? I've thought about this as we've gone through our Romans curriculum. Some in the group present salvation as a free gift that God has given to us, which we cannot lose. Yet, they also maintain that God has changed the hearts of those who receive Christ. In the DVD that we watched, one of the people talking did not only refer to faith, but also surrender to God. So there do seem to be elements of Lordship Salvation, if you will, in our curriculum and in our group discussions. And yet, there's also a recognition that, even when we are Christians, we are far from being perfect. That makes me wonder how good I have to be before I can have assurance that I am saved, something that I have discussed on this blog before. Nowadays, though, I just don't worry about it. If I have a theology, it's that God is love, and that I'm on a path of becoming more loving, even though I fall short.
But let's proceed to last night's session! I have three items.
1. One question that I have often asked on this blog is whether Paul understood the law of Moses to be for Israel alone, or for Gentiles as well. I've written posts in which I've speculated about this issue myself, and I've written posts in which I've gone through what biblical scholarship has said about the topic. See here and here if you are interested in these posts.
How does our curriculum handle this issue? Well, my impression is that it regards the law of Moses as something that God gave to physical Israel alone. Why, then, does Paul talk to Gentiles about how the law points out people's sin, how the law condemns people because they do not obey it, and how trying to be justified by the law is futile? Does that not imply that the law is somehow relevant to Gentiles, not just Israel? The answer that I got from the curriculum is that Paul was not just criticizing the use of the Mosaic law to achieve salvation, but any law, including Roman law. Over the past several weeks, the curriculum has said that the Romans tried to appease the gods through their own efforts: through sacrifice, through adherence to virtues (i.e., self-discipline), etc. But the message of the Gospel is that we cannot climb our way to God through our own efforts, for we are sinful, and so God has come down to us by sending Jesus Christ to save us.
(UPDATE: I do remember someone implying on the DVD that Roman law was not good enough, for it fell short of God's standards for people. Roman law stressed outward compliance, but God desired for people to be morally pure on the inside, not just the outside. The idea may be that, even if Gentiles were not subject to the authority of the Mosaic law, God still held them to certain standards. In my opinion, Romans 2:14 expresses this.)
The irony is, however, that, when our group went on to discuss how the law is a mirror to us in that it points out our sin, we didn't look at Roman virtues; rather, by "law", we meant the Ten Commandments, which are part of the Torah that was supposedly given only to Israel. That brings me to my next point.
2. When we talked about how the law is a mirror that points out our sins to us, and how we all fall short of the law, we mentioned the Ten Commandments, but we did not really talk about which specific commandments we have violated. I seriously doubt that anyone in the group has killed anyone (though people there may have hated others, and Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount says that hate is murder, but I'm really hesitant to say that Paul had the Sermon on the Mount in mind when he said that we disobey the law). Rather, when we discussed our shortcomings, we focused more on how we have failed to behave consistently in a Christ-like manner. We may blow our stack with certain people rather than treating them with respect and kindness, for example. But "Thou shalt not lose your temper and blow your stack with people" is not one of the Ten Commandments (though I do recall that, as a child, my Dad assigned us kids to come up with our own commandments, and "Thou shalt not lose your temper" was the very first one). So, by "law", the people in my group seemed to mean more than the Ten Commandments.
Maybe. Someone in the group later referred to Jesus' summary of the law in Matthew 22:36-40, as Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18: that we love God with every fiber of our being, and that we care for our neighbor's needs the same way that we care for our own. The person making this point said that this is a high standard that we can't reach. Apparently, for my friend, we actually do fall short of the Mosaic law, for we do not love God with every fiber of our being or love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
I wonder, though, if this standard was intended to be so high that we could not reach it. In II Chronicles 15:15, we read that the Judahites during the reign of King Asa swore with all of their heart and their whole desire to love God within God's covenant. Apparently, they met the standard! II Kings 23:25 says that King Josiah turned to the LORD with all of his heart, all of his soul, and all of his might.
Apparently, Josiah met the standard! And these were imperfect human beings, just like we were. I'm somewhat doubtful, therefore, that Deuteronomy 6:5 calls for absolute perfection. There is some standard there, but I don't think that, within the Hebrew Bible, it's as high as the person in the Bible study group may think it is. What about Leviticus 19:18's command that we love our neighbor as ourselves? I'm not certain that it does mean that we have to care for every other person's needs in the exact same proportion as we care for our own needs. Of course we care for our own needs first. When most people have a job, they're working primarily to support themselves and their families. But I think that the Mosaic Torah exhorted the Israelites to think of others besides themselves: to help out the poor with gleanings, the corners of the field, and tithes; to let the poor person who owes money to sleep in his own cloak; to respect people's lives and properties; etc. I still find that I fall short of even the Mosaic law's standard, though, for I bear grudges (in violation of Leviticus 19:18) and I usually don't rebuke my neighbor when I have a problem with him (contra Leviticus 19:17).
3. Okay, my friend in the Bible study group said that it's impossible for us to love God with every fiber of our being and to care for our neighbors the same way that we care for ourselves. That's why we need Christ as our Savior, the evangelical message runs. So, once we accept Christ, do we no longer have to love God with every fiber of our being and care for our neighbors as we care for ourselves? Is the point of Paul's Gospel that we're sinners and Christ has paid the penalty for our sins, so now we'll go through the pearly gates after death rather than hell? I've thought about this as we've gone through our Romans curriculum. Some in the group present salvation as a free gift that God has given to us, which we cannot lose. Yet, they also maintain that God has changed the hearts of those who receive Christ. In the DVD that we watched, one of the people talking did not only refer to faith, but also surrender to God. So there do seem to be elements of Lordship Salvation, if you will, in our curriculum and in our group discussions. And yet, there's also a recognition that, even when we are Christians, we are far from being perfect. That makes me wonder how good I have to be before I can have assurance that I am saved, something that I have discussed on this blog before. Nowadays, though, I just don't worry about it. If I have a theology, it's that God is love, and that I'm on a path of becoming more loving, even though I fall short.
Monday, January 7, 2013
Can Religious Truth-Claims Be Verified?
I finished Paul Knitter's No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Toward the World Religions. In this post, I'll use as my starting-point something that Knitter says on page 269:
"[Alan Race and I] both agree that religious truth-claims can be made only in the actual praxis of dialogue and that whatever claims are made, the mystery encompassing humanity will always be more than any religious truth can express. Race, however, insists that the criterion for verifying truth-claims within dialogue can be only subjective; any further verification can come only 'eschatologically'...The criteria I have drawn from Jung and from the liberation theologians try to reach beyond such subjectivism; they are intended to examine whether the 'vision of life' of a religion actually promotes the psychological welfare and the liberation of both individuals and societies. Such criteria, it is hoped, can be applied now, in this ambiguous and ever incomplete course of history, and do not have to wait for some kind of eschatological judgment at the end of time."
How can we verify whether religious truth-claims are true or false? Apparently, the view of Alan Race is that we really cannot in this day and age, but we have to wait for God to reveal himself to everyone at the end of history. (Or so I am interpreting Race, based on what Knitter says.) But Knitter believes that we actually can evaluate religious truth claims. Do they promote psychological health and individual and societal liberation? If so, then, according to Knitter, those religious truth claims are true.
I should make a note about religion and psychological welfare. When I think about this issue, my initial impulse is to say that religious truth-claims that comfort me are true, whereas those that do not comfort me are false. Overall, I wouldn't throw this criterion totally out of the window. But I don't consider it to be the end-all-be-all. On page 69, when Knitter is summarizing Jung's view on religious truth-claims and psychological health, Knitter states: "If religion is a crutch, if it does not allow us to assume responsibility for our own lives...then its truth must be seriously doubted." The notion that I should passively wait for God to do stuff for me may comfort me, but that does not make the notion true or psychologically healthy.
So what can I say about the views of Race and Knitter? Do I agree with Race that we need an eschatological revelation to know for sure what religious truth-claims are correct? Or do I agree with Knitter that, on some level, we can evaluate religious truth-claims in the here and now, according to whether they promote psychological health and individual and societal liberation? I think about one relative I have, whose worldview has elements of both. On the one hand, he does not believe that God in this day and age judges people according to what religion they accept (if any), for he does not think that there is any clear evidence that one religion is right while others are wrong. On the other hand, he himself is a Christian, and one reason is that he feels that he has experienced God through Christianity, and that he has seen that Christian morality works better for him and makes more sense to him than other worldviews.
I have to admit that there are religious truth-claims that work for many people. The thing is, some of them are based on things that (in my opinion) cannot be verified in the here and now. For example, I can have inner peace if I accept the idea that Christ defeated death and the devil by rising from the dead. But, in my opinion, there is no proof that Christ rose from the dead. So there's a sense in which even certain religious truth-claims that give Christians comfort, courage, hope, and even inspiration to pursue liberation need eschatological verification for us to know that they are true.
But my impression is that, for Knitter, eschatology may not be overly important. I'm open to correction on this, but he seems to me to be rather utopian about humans' ability to get together and effect justice, as opposed to despairing in the human ability to do so and waiting for Christ to come back to bring about a paradise. As I read Knitter's book, there was a part of me that had chills. Why? Because, over my life, I've been influenced by an eschatological mindset that regards people coming together to create a one-world government as the Beast system of Revelation 13. Moreover, I was raised to believe in original sin, the idea that humans are corrupt and thus cannot create a utopia on their own. I don't take this in the direction of saying that I shouldn't help the poor, even through support for certain political policies. But I tend to regard globalist language as frightening, and optimism as naive and sappy. Maybe I'm wrong on this. Or perhaps I can believe that positive social change is possible, while also holding to a degree of realism.
"[Alan Race and I] both agree that religious truth-claims can be made only in the actual praxis of dialogue and that whatever claims are made, the mystery encompassing humanity will always be more than any religious truth can express. Race, however, insists that the criterion for verifying truth-claims within dialogue can be only subjective; any further verification can come only 'eschatologically'...The criteria I have drawn from Jung and from the liberation theologians try to reach beyond such subjectivism; they are intended to examine whether the 'vision of life' of a religion actually promotes the psychological welfare and the liberation of both individuals and societies. Such criteria, it is hoped, can be applied now, in this ambiguous and ever incomplete course of history, and do not have to wait for some kind of eschatological judgment at the end of time."
How can we verify whether religious truth-claims are true or false? Apparently, the view of Alan Race is that we really cannot in this day and age, but we have to wait for God to reveal himself to everyone at the end of history. (Or so I am interpreting Race, based on what Knitter says.) But Knitter believes that we actually can evaluate religious truth claims. Do they promote psychological health and individual and societal liberation? If so, then, according to Knitter, those religious truth claims are true.
I should make a note about religion and psychological welfare. When I think about this issue, my initial impulse is to say that religious truth-claims that comfort me are true, whereas those that do not comfort me are false. Overall, I wouldn't throw this criterion totally out of the window. But I don't consider it to be the end-all-be-all. On page 69, when Knitter is summarizing Jung's view on religious truth-claims and psychological health, Knitter states: "If religion is a crutch, if it does not allow us to assume responsibility for our own lives...then its truth must be seriously doubted." The notion that I should passively wait for God to do stuff for me may comfort me, but that does not make the notion true or psychologically healthy.
So what can I say about the views of Race and Knitter? Do I agree with Race that we need an eschatological revelation to know for sure what religious truth-claims are correct? Or do I agree with Knitter that, on some level, we can evaluate religious truth-claims in the here and now, according to whether they promote psychological health and individual and societal liberation? I think about one relative I have, whose worldview has elements of both. On the one hand, he does not believe that God in this day and age judges people according to what religion they accept (if any), for he does not think that there is any clear evidence that one religion is right while others are wrong. On the other hand, he himself is a Christian, and one reason is that he feels that he has experienced God through Christianity, and that he has seen that Christian morality works better for him and makes more sense to him than other worldviews.
I have to admit that there are religious truth-claims that work for many people. The thing is, some of them are based on things that (in my opinion) cannot be verified in the here and now. For example, I can have inner peace if I accept the idea that Christ defeated death and the devil by rising from the dead. But, in my opinion, there is no proof that Christ rose from the dead. So there's a sense in which even certain religious truth-claims that give Christians comfort, courage, hope, and even inspiration to pursue liberation need eschatological verification for us to know that they are true.
But my impression is that, for Knitter, eschatology may not be overly important. I'm open to correction on this, but he seems to me to be rather utopian about humans' ability to get together and effect justice, as opposed to despairing in the human ability to do so and waiting for Christ to come back to bring about a paradise. As I read Knitter's book, there was a part of me that had chills. Why? Because, over my life, I've been influenced by an eschatological mindset that regards people coming together to create a one-world government as the Beast system of Revelation 13. Moreover, I was raised to believe in original sin, the idea that humans are corrupt and thus cannot create a utopia on their own. I don't take this in the direction of saying that I shouldn't help the poor, even through support for certain political policies. But I tend to regard globalist language as frightening, and optimism as naive and sappy. Maybe I'm wrong on this. Or perhaps I can believe that positive social change is possible, while also holding to a degree of realism.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Jonathan Edwards (and the Puritans) in High School
As my readers know, I finished George Marsden's excellent biography
of Jonathan Edwards. In this post, I'll talk about some of my
experiences with Jonathan Edwards' works, particularly when I was in
high school.
If my memory is correct, I first heard of Jonathan Edwards when I was in the eleventh grade. We read Edwards' sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God". The sermon itself did not make much of an impression on me, to tell you the truth. I was from a denomination, Armstrongism, that did not believe in eternal torment in hell. My family took that doctrine in a rather generous direction, probably more generous than the church itself intended the doctrine to be. One of my relatives thought that no one in this life could be lost, since there was no solid evidence that one religion was superior to another, plus there was a lot of deception, and so how could God judge so many people for having the wrong religion?
Even though I did not take Edwards' fire and brimstone sermon seriously, I did enjoy my eleventh grade English class's unit on the Puritans. Eleventh grade was when we learned about American literature, and the Puritans were unit one. Or, actually, we started with Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, which was set in the time of the Puritans, and immediately after that we launched our study of Puritan literature. I could really identify with the Puritans, in a number of ways. The eleventh grade was a time when my own faith was really deepening. I read a lot of religious literature, even carrying my Bible to school. I rested on the Sabbath and the annual holy days. I took walks in nature as a way to get closer to God and to appreciate the beautiful world that God made. Similarly, the Puritans read their Bibles. The Puritans rested on a Sabbath----only their Sabbath was Sunday, whereas mine was Saturday. And Jonathan Edwards enjoyed taking long walks in nature.
I'm not sure where exactly I first learned about Jonathan Edwards' nature walks. Perhaps it was in our textbook's introduction to "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"----the part of the book that gave us background as to who Edwards was. But I obviously learned about it sometime in high school, for I participated in an essay contest in high school on what some aspect of American history can teach us about protecting the environment. I chose to write about Jonathan Edwards' appreciation of God's creation.
On a related note, when I was in the eleventh grade, I enjoyed other things by the Puritans that we read as well: Mary Rawlinson's story of being captured by Native Americans, and Anne Bradstreet's pious poetry. As an adult, at the place where I am now religiously, I doubt that I would enjoy living in Puritan times----where people are evaluating where I am spiritually and are judging me negatively, where people get puffed up on account of their spiritual experiences, where having an alternative worldview is considered heresy, and where preachers use the fear of hell as a way to keep people in line. I much prefer living in today's era. And yet, I do feel rather nostalgic, warm, and cozy when I read about the Puritans, as I did when I recently went through George Marsden's biography of Jonathan Edwards.
If my memory is correct, I first heard of Jonathan Edwards when I was in the eleventh grade. We read Edwards' sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God". The sermon itself did not make much of an impression on me, to tell you the truth. I was from a denomination, Armstrongism, that did not believe in eternal torment in hell. My family took that doctrine in a rather generous direction, probably more generous than the church itself intended the doctrine to be. One of my relatives thought that no one in this life could be lost, since there was no solid evidence that one religion was superior to another, plus there was a lot of deception, and so how could God judge so many people for having the wrong religion?
Even though I did not take Edwards' fire and brimstone sermon seriously, I did enjoy my eleventh grade English class's unit on the Puritans. Eleventh grade was when we learned about American literature, and the Puritans were unit one. Or, actually, we started with Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, which was set in the time of the Puritans, and immediately after that we launched our study of Puritan literature. I could really identify with the Puritans, in a number of ways. The eleventh grade was a time when my own faith was really deepening. I read a lot of religious literature, even carrying my Bible to school. I rested on the Sabbath and the annual holy days. I took walks in nature as a way to get closer to God and to appreciate the beautiful world that God made. Similarly, the Puritans read their Bibles. The Puritans rested on a Sabbath----only their Sabbath was Sunday, whereas mine was Saturday. And Jonathan Edwards enjoyed taking long walks in nature.
I'm not sure where exactly I first learned about Jonathan Edwards' nature walks. Perhaps it was in our textbook's introduction to "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"----the part of the book that gave us background as to who Edwards was. But I obviously learned about it sometime in high school, for I participated in an essay contest in high school on what some aspect of American history can teach us about protecting the environment. I chose to write about Jonathan Edwards' appreciation of God's creation.
On a related note, when I was in the eleventh grade, I enjoyed other things by the Puritans that we read as well: Mary Rawlinson's story of being captured by Native Americans, and Anne Bradstreet's pious poetry. As an adult, at the place where I am now religiously, I doubt that I would enjoy living in Puritan times----where people are evaluating where I am spiritually and are judging me negatively, where people get puffed up on account of their spiritual experiences, where having an alternative worldview is considered heresy, and where preachers use the fear of hell as a way to keep people in line. I much prefer living in today's era. And yet, I do feel rather nostalgic, warm, and cozy when I read about the Puritans, as I did when I recently went through George Marsden's biography of Jonathan Edwards.
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Edwards' Personality and Beliefs about Slavery and the Millennium
I have two items for my write-up today on George Marsden's Jonathan Edwards: A Life.
1. On page 255, Marsden says the following about people's reactions to Jonathan Edwards' personality:
""While opponents found [Edwards'] scrupulousness cold and lacking in charity, those in Edwards' own party saw it as admirable integrity. The arguments that Edwards used in his attempts to demolish opponents' positions might be seen as arrogant sophistry or as brilliant clarity. The passion in his sermonic rhetoric might be seen as ruthless manipulation or as warm, loving spirituality. His reserve in conversation about personalities might be seen as cold disregard of others or as self-renouncing discipline. His single-minded dedication to his work could be seen as self-centered lack of sociability or as selfless dedication to serve God and neighbor with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind."
The lesson here, for me, is that there will be people who will put a negative spin on anything you do, however well-intentioned you are. But there may also be people who will put a positive spin on anything you do! I try to disregard the former. Regarding the latter, sometimes I scream on the inside that I'm not perfect, and so not everything I do deserves a positive spin. But I do appreciate it when people give me a pat on the back for trying my best.
2. Marsden discusses Edwards' stance on slavery. Essentially, Edwards had slaves and thought that slavery was biblically permissible. But Edwards also regarded the African slave trade as wrong, for he did not believe that Europeans had a right "to steal from the Africans" (Marsden's words on page 257), since all were neighbors. And yet, Edwards spoke against criticisms of a certain clergyman for his ownership of slaves, arguing that New England itself benefited from slavery on account of its trade with "the slave economies of the Caribbean" (Marsden's words on page 258). Edwards was asking the critics of the clergyman: So it's wrong to own slaves, but it's all right to benefit from slavery? But did Edwards believe that the logical moral step was to stop benefiting from slavery? No. In effect, according to Marsden, Edwards was saying that we live in a sinful world and thus it's impossible not to benefit from other people's evil, and so, "until the millennial conversions got to the heart of the problem, one should simply make the best of imperfect social arrangements" (Marsden on page 258). I should note, though, that Jonathan Edwards, Jr. was a vocal critic of slavery.
I'd like to mention something that Edwards says about the millennial reign of Christ, which pertains to Edwards view of Africans and Native Americans. Edwards thought that African and Native American cultures were inferior to the culture of Christendom, and he held that they had lived for years under the rule of Satan; yet, he did not believe that Africans and Native Americans were inherently inferior to whites, for God made everyone with the same nature. Edwards even envisioned that Africans and Native Americans would contribute to civilization during the millennial rule of Jesus Christ. Edwards said: "It may be hoped that then many of the Negroes and Indians will be divines, and that excellent books will be published in Africa, in Ethiopia, in Turkey----and not only very learned men, but others that are more ordinary men, shall then be very knowing in religion." Here is the sermon where Edwards said this.
The millennium is a topic of interest to me, since one of my relatives believes that the millennium will be a time when people who did not have a real chance to know Christ in this life will have that chance to be saved. He associates this with the second resurrection in Revelation 20. Charles Taze Russell, whose movement led to the Jehovah's Witnesses, wrote a book in which he argued that the millennium would be a time when people who died without knowing Christ would get a chance to know him. But does not Revelation 20 say that the second resurrection will occur after the millennium, which precludes the millennium from being a time when people from the second resurrection will learn about God and God's ways? I don't have a clear idea about how my relative would answer that question, but Russell addressed it by essentially arguing that Revelation 20 should not be interpreted literally on this point. After all, Russell points out, John 5:29 appears to present the resurrection of the good and the bad as occurring simultaneously, rather than being separated by a thousand years.
But there are prophetic texts that treat the earthly reign of the Davidic king as a time when people would learn about God. One way that Christians have handled those texts is to say that they are fulfilled through the church----as Gentiles become a part of the people of God. And, in my opinion, that view has validity, for there are times when the New Testament appears to apply texts in the prophets that concern the future inclusion of the Gentiles in the worship of God to the work that God is doing through the church (Acts 15:16-17; Romans 15:12). But another way that Christians handle these texts has been to apply them to the earthly reign of Christ during the millennium. My relative has this view. So did Charles Taze Russell. And so, apparently, did Jonathan Edwards.
But my question is this: If these texts apply to the millennial reign of Christ, where exactly did the people who are learning about God during the millennium come from? In the Book of Revelation, there appear to be two groups of people: those who are saved, and those who have the Mark of the Beast (Revelation 13:8). Will the people who are learning about Christ during the millennial reign include people who had the Mark of the Beast, or people who were saved but did not have the time before Christ's Second Coming to grow in that salvation? My relative and Russell would say that the people learning about Christ during the millennium are people who have been resurrected----they died without knowing Christ. But I doubt that Edwards believed that. Where did he believe that the people learning about God during the millennium would come from? Did he hold that not everyone who would take the Mark of the Beast would be thrown into hell but would receive a second chance? And, come to think of it, did he even think that the Africans and Native Americans had the Mark of the Beast? Edwards believed that the Beast was the pope, and most Africans and Native Americans were not Catholic.
1. On page 255, Marsden says the following about people's reactions to Jonathan Edwards' personality:
""While opponents found [Edwards'] scrupulousness cold and lacking in charity, those in Edwards' own party saw it as admirable integrity. The arguments that Edwards used in his attempts to demolish opponents' positions might be seen as arrogant sophistry or as brilliant clarity. The passion in his sermonic rhetoric might be seen as ruthless manipulation or as warm, loving spirituality. His reserve in conversation about personalities might be seen as cold disregard of others or as self-renouncing discipline. His single-minded dedication to his work could be seen as self-centered lack of sociability or as selfless dedication to serve God and neighbor with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind."
The lesson here, for me, is that there will be people who will put a negative spin on anything you do, however well-intentioned you are. But there may also be people who will put a positive spin on anything you do! I try to disregard the former. Regarding the latter, sometimes I scream on the inside that I'm not perfect, and so not everything I do deserves a positive spin. But I do appreciate it when people give me a pat on the back for trying my best.
2. Marsden discusses Edwards' stance on slavery. Essentially, Edwards had slaves and thought that slavery was biblically permissible. But Edwards also regarded the African slave trade as wrong, for he did not believe that Europeans had a right "to steal from the Africans" (Marsden's words on page 257), since all were neighbors. And yet, Edwards spoke against criticisms of a certain clergyman for his ownership of slaves, arguing that New England itself benefited from slavery on account of its trade with "the slave economies of the Caribbean" (Marsden's words on page 258). Edwards was asking the critics of the clergyman: So it's wrong to own slaves, but it's all right to benefit from slavery? But did Edwards believe that the logical moral step was to stop benefiting from slavery? No. In effect, according to Marsden, Edwards was saying that we live in a sinful world and thus it's impossible not to benefit from other people's evil, and so, "until the millennial conversions got to the heart of the problem, one should simply make the best of imperfect social arrangements" (Marsden on page 258). I should note, though, that Jonathan Edwards, Jr. was a vocal critic of slavery.
I'd like to mention something that Edwards says about the millennial reign of Christ, which pertains to Edwards view of Africans and Native Americans. Edwards thought that African and Native American cultures were inferior to the culture of Christendom, and he held that they had lived for years under the rule of Satan; yet, he did not believe that Africans and Native Americans were inherently inferior to whites, for God made everyone with the same nature. Edwards even envisioned that Africans and Native Americans would contribute to civilization during the millennial rule of Jesus Christ. Edwards said: "It may be hoped that then many of the Negroes and Indians will be divines, and that excellent books will be published in Africa, in Ethiopia, in Turkey----and not only very learned men, but others that are more ordinary men, shall then be very knowing in religion." Here is the sermon where Edwards said this.
The millennium is a topic of interest to me, since one of my relatives believes that the millennium will be a time when people who did not have a real chance to know Christ in this life will have that chance to be saved. He associates this with the second resurrection in Revelation 20. Charles Taze Russell, whose movement led to the Jehovah's Witnesses, wrote a book in which he argued that the millennium would be a time when people who died without knowing Christ would get a chance to know him. But does not Revelation 20 say that the second resurrection will occur after the millennium, which precludes the millennium from being a time when people from the second resurrection will learn about God and God's ways? I don't have a clear idea about how my relative would answer that question, but Russell addressed it by essentially arguing that Revelation 20 should not be interpreted literally on this point. After all, Russell points out, John 5:29 appears to present the resurrection of the good and the bad as occurring simultaneously, rather than being separated by a thousand years.
But there are prophetic texts that treat the earthly reign of the Davidic king as a time when people would learn about God. One way that Christians have handled those texts is to say that they are fulfilled through the church----as Gentiles become a part of the people of God. And, in my opinion, that view has validity, for there are times when the New Testament appears to apply texts in the prophets that concern the future inclusion of the Gentiles in the worship of God to the work that God is doing through the church (Acts 15:16-17; Romans 15:12). But another way that Christians handle these texts has been to apply them to the earthly reign of Christ during the millennium. My relative has this view. So did Charles Taze Russell. And so, apparently, did Jonathan Edwards.
But my question is this: If these texts apply to the millennial reign of Christ, where exactly did the people who are learning about God during the millennium come from? In the Book of Revelation, there appear to be two groups of people: those who are saved, and those who have the Mark of the Beast (Revelation 13:8). Will the people who are learning about Christ during the millennial reign include people who had the Mark of the Beast, or people who were saved but did not have the time before Christ's Second Coming to grow in that salvation? My relative and Russell would say that the people learning about Christ during the millennium are people who have been resurrected----they died without knowing Christ. But I doubt that Edwards believed that. Where did he believe that the people learning about God during the millennium would come from? Did he hold that not everyone who would take the Mark of the Beast would be thrown into hell but would receive a second chance? And, come to think of it, did he even think that the Africans and Native Americans had the Mark of the Beast? Edwards believed that the Beast was the pope, and most Africans and Native Americans were not Catholic.
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