Church Write-Up: Pie-Eating Contest, Forgetting, and Salt

For church last Sunday, I attended the evangelical church that I call the “Pen Church” (since I get a free pen there), and the African-American Baptist church.  In this post, I will talk about something that happened to me at the Pen Church, then I will discuss the sermons at the churches.

A.  I went into the Pen Church, and a woman asked me if I wanted to be part of some drawing.  I initially declined, but then I asked if it cost anything, and she said no, so I got a ticket with a number.  I was hoping that my number would not be called, but I had a vague sense deep-down that it would be.  And, sure enough, it was the first number that was called!  I went up to the stage, three other numbers were called, and all four of us participated in a pie-eating contest, with pumpkin pie.  This was the first pie-eating contest that I had ever done.  There was a fork in the pies in case we wanted to eat them with a fork, and a towel in case we wanted to stuff our faces!

I had some strikes against me.  For one, this was around 9 A.M.  I do not have much of an appetite in the morning.  That’s why I don’t eat breakfast, even though people insist to me that it is the most important meal of the day.  I’m just not hungry in the morning, and I feel queasy when I eat.  Second, this was pumpkin pie, which has a weird sweet taste.  Third, while I like pumpkin pie, I do not like downing it really quickly.  The clock started, and I took my bites and chewed.  I could not down it quickly, since I needed to chew and swallow my food!  I lost the contest, but it turned out that I did about as well as the others.  Nobody finished their pie.  The winner only finished half of it in the allotted time!  I finished a little over a fourth of it.

B.  The sermon at the Pen Church was about the Joseph story and about how God can use the things of our past that we would rather forget for God’s glory and to help others.

Earlier this past week, I was reading a book about forgiveness.  Reading that book, and hearing the sermon at the Pen Church last Sunday, reinforced in my mind a question that I have frequently asked myself: if I could take an eraser and erase the painful memories from my mind, would I do so?  A lot of times, forgiveness is presented as forgetting the pain that we have experienced from others.  We are not to dwell on the past, we are told, but we are to stay in the present and move on.  But I think of what Captain Kirk said in Star Trek V, when the Vulcan Sybok offered to take away Kirk’s pain: “Our pain makes us who we are.  If we lose that, we lose ourselves.  I do not want you to take away my pain.  I need my pain!”  My pain has produced negative effects: resentment, jealousy, hatred, and a dearth of hope.  But, at times, it has produced positive effects, such as compassion for others.  And, as the pastor said, what would Joseph’s story be like without the painful aspects of his life?  He would look like he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but that was not the case, for Joseph suffered.

In terms of how I believe I should deal with the past, I do not think that I should dwell on negative memories as much as I do.  But I can still acknowledge that they are there and that God can use them.  They are a part of me, whether I dwell on them or not.

C.  The sermon at the African-American Baptist church was about how Christians are the salt of the earth.  They are to pray for people, live lives of dignity and righteousness, and make people thirsty for what Christians have, as salt makes people thirsty.

I could identify with what the pastor said about praying for our leaders.  I do so regularly, on account of Trump being President and my fear of disaster that can result from him saying something inappropriate.  But I have particularly been praying for President Trump and the mayor in Puerto Rico to cooperate and to help Puerto Ricans get the food and water that they need.  Maybe both are responsible for their conflict with each other, on some level (and I will NOT get into a debate about that on this blog, or anywhere else), but my hope is that they can bury the hatchet and work together on what is important, rather than squabbling.

In terms of making people thirsty, I do not do that, or even try to do that.  I am all for trying to be a good person, but, speaking for myself, I find being an advertisement for Christianity to be phony.  It entails me acting as if I am better than I am, and as if I have solid answers that I do not have. 

That said, I found an interesting blog last week, and I included it in the Asperger’s section of my Blogger Blog.  This blog that I found is called “Asperger Ministry.”  One post was entitled “How Neurological Differences Affect Our Christian Witness.”  I liked this statement from the post (and I have slightly modified it):

“[In f]ocusing on being a good witness[,] the focus is on self and not Jesus. We need to approach others with the mindset of Philippians 2:3. Christians, being human as we are, can easily get effect and cause subtly twisted backwards. Jesus never asked His Heavenly Father to show Him how He could be a good witness. The reason He didn’t need to do this was because He was humble. Walking in the Spirit can’t be done unless we’re humble.”

Book Write-Up: The Tao Te Ching

I recently read the Tao Te Ching.  The version that I read was Dr. Wayne W. Dyer’s Living the Wisdom of the Tao: The Complete Tao Te Ching and Affirmations. Dyer draws from a variety of English translations.

The book is like a daily devotional.  You read a verse of the Tao Te Ching on one side of the page, and Dyer offers a take-home application point on the other side.  I decided to read this version because I expected the Tao Te Ching to be very abstruse and complicated, so I figured that it would help me if someone provided a concise take-home point, and Dyer seemed well-read on Taoism.

In this post, I will talk about my exposure to Taoism prior to reading this book, then I will list some of my reactions to the Tao Te Ching.

I first learned about the Tao Te Ching in college.  I was a Christian fundamentalist at the time, and a fellow student wanted to enlighten me about another religion, namely Taoism.  I was not as backward as he thought, though, since I was asking him questions about Taoism, and I observed common ground between Taoism and Christianity.  The theme of the Tao Te Ching that he emphasized was that of observing the natural order and gaining wisdom from that.  He said that he read the Bible and it never made a connection with him, but the Tao Te Ching made a connection.  When I asked him what a particular line of the first verse of the Tao Te Ching meant, he responded that he thought about that, and he shared with me his conclusion.  That reminded me of how Christians read and meditate on verses in the Bible.

My second exposure to Taoism was in a college philosophy class.  We were reading Lao-zu, and some of the students in the class were baffled.  Some thought that the reading was rambling.  Another student believed that it addressed an obvious and unnecessary question: Would you prefer a long life without fear or pain, or a short life with fear or pain?  “Of course I would prefer a long life without fear or pain!”, he said.  “A better dilemma would be whether you would choose a long life with fear or pain, or a short life without it!”  The question in the reading indeed looked obvious, and yet it reflects central themes of Taoism: going with the flow, not stressing out, and partaking of a lifestyle that can lengthen life and lessen pain, even if that lifestyle may look counter-intuitive to possessive, accumulating people like us.  The readings also shared a scenario of what one can do when one is experiencing illness and death: simply take a step back and say, “This looks interesting!”

My third exposure to Taoism was during my first year of divinity school.  One of my roommates had a copy of Benjamin Hoff’s The Tao of Pooh.  Another roommate shared that he struggled to read the Tao Te Ching, so he fell back on The Tao of Pooh.  I borrowed The Tao of Pooh out of curiosity.  I wondered if Christianity was a better religion than Taoism, or if there were overlapping themes between Taoism and Christianity.  Hoff in the book treats Winnie the Pooh as a Taoist.  Whereas Tigger is high energy, Eyore complains, and Rabbit intensely calculates, Pooh just is.  Pooh is relaxed and has no pretense, and things usually fall into place when he is the protagonist.

This background equipped me to read the Tao Te Ching, without being utterly confused by what I was reading.  At least it provided me with an idea of some of Taoism’s basic beliefs.  Some passages still perplexed me, though, and I am sure that there are still gaps in my understanding.

That said, here are some of my reactions to the Tao Te Ching:

A.  According to the Tao Te Ching, where was the Tao, and the material world is a manifestation of the Tao.  That made me wonder if Taoism is panentheistic or pantheistic.  In reading the Tao Te Ching, I was reminded of Proverbs 8, which presents wisdom as a key figure in God’s creation of all things; wisdom, in a sense, is like the Tao: both are orderly, both bring shalom, both are moral, both relate to the natural order, etc.  The Tao Te Ching does not explicitly say that the Tao created the cosmos, however, but rather that the cosmos came from the Tao.  That could be consistent with emanationism: the idea that the cosmos is an emanation from God, rather than God’s creation.

B.  In reading the Tao Te Ching, I had “problem of evil” questions.  If Taoism regards the natural order as good, I inquired, how would it account for the apparent evils of nature: animal violence, sickness, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.?  On one occasion, the Tao Te Ching seemed to regard vicious elements of nature (i.e., storms) as a brief gliche, as if the overall tone of the cosmos is one of peace and order and the violent elements are mere interruptions.  On another occasion, it said that humans interfere with the Tao and bring havoc as a result.  The Tao Te Ching has a clear answer for why there is human evil: humans disregard the Tao, with its path of peace, virtue, generosity, and humility, and they choose greed, violence, pride, and stress instead.  It was a little more obscure in accounting for natural evil.

C.  That said, there was an indication that people who are especially in touch with the Tao can manipulate nature.  Verse 50 says that, with respect to such a person, “tigers and bulls keep clear[,] weapons turn from him on the battlefield, rhinoceroses have no place to horn him, tigers find no place for claws, and soldiers have no place to thrust their blades.”  Dyer’s take-home application point is that “I am an immortal spiritual being having a temporary human experience.”  He may be interpreting this passage to mean that, when we do not fear death, we are invulnerable to threats: even if a tiger mangles us to death, so what?  We live forever anyway!  Indeed, eternal life and not being afraid of death are significant themes in the Tao Te Ching.  But, in my mind, verse 50 seemed to be saying more than that: that people can be so in touch with the Tao, that nothing in this life can hurt them.  They can be bullet-proof!  I thought of different things in reading this verse: the movie The Matrix (with the invulnerable Neo), the Star Trek episode “Spectre of the Gun” (bullets went right through the Enterprise crew at the OK Corral!), Psalm 91’s affirmation that God will preserve God’s people from destruction and pestilence, and a statement I once heard from a pastor that, when you serve God, all of creation will serve you.

D.  The Tao Te Ching exhorts people to look within.  A number of conservative Christians recoil from such advice.  Look within?  Does not the author know that the human heart is deceitful and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9), that from it proceed all manners of sinful propensities and actions (Mark 7:21-23)?  Maybe, but the Bible also says that humans are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), and that the requirements of God’s law are written on people’s hearts and in their consciences (Romans 2:15).  In light of that, should we treat looking within as an utterly fruitless exercise?  In any case, in reading the Tao Te Ching’s exhortations to look within, I thought of the Hellenistic distinction between the logos within and the logos without: there is an order to the universe, but there is also an order inside of us that coincides with the order in the universe.

E.  Related to (D.), verse 67 has a puzzling statement: “The Tao is not something found at the marketplace or passed on from father to son.  It is not something gained by knowing or lost by forgetting.  If the Tao were like this, it would have been lost and forgotten long ago.”  I contrasted this passage with the Book of Proverbs, in which wisdom cries out in the marketplace and is passed down from parents to child.  There are some passages in the Tao Te Ching that reminded me of Proverbs—-verse 6, for example, presents the Tao as a female to which one should listen, which is similar to Proverbs’ portrayal of Lady Wisdom.  But verse 67 appeared different from Proverbs.  The Tao Te Ching may have a problem with wisdom being conceptualized as a path that is taught through tradition and family, seeing it instead as something that is inside of us and all around us.  At the same time, it does value teachers: humble people who highlight the way, often through their demeanor and their lives more than their words.

F.  The Tao Te Ching is critical of trying to become virtuous through rigorous obedience to rules.  It wants for people to yield to the Tao, which has a moral/ethical component, but it seems to believe that, if people have to obey rules to be moral, then something is wrong.  Virtue should flow more naturally than that.  There are verses that are rather explicit about this (i.e., 18, 67), but I think that this concept sheds light on an odd statement in verse 38: “When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.  When goodness is lost, there is morality.  When morality is lost, there is ritual.  Ritual is the husk of true faith, the beginning of chaos.”  In reading these passages, Pauline concepts come to mind: the idea that the law was a temporary measure to respond to, expose, and restrain sin.  The law could not cure sin, in Paul’s mind, but now believers have the Holy Spirit, who enables them to conform to God’s righteous requirements through a transformed nature.

G.  The Tao Te Ching struck me as politically libertarian.  I do not want to go so far as to suggest that it would support the government eviscerating the social safety net and allowing social Darwinism to take its course.  But it is critical of government intrusion.  To quote verse 75: “When taxes are too high, people go hungry.  When the government is too intrusive, people lose their spirit.  Act for the people’s benefit; trust them, leave them alone.”  Incidentally, the college student who exposed me to the Tao Te Ching was a libertarian Republican.

H.  That said, I have read concerns that Taoism slows economic progress and is incompatible with capitalism.  Taoism supports a relaxed attitude, which lets things happen rather than making things happen, and which is contrary to greed and ambition.  These attitudes arguably run counter to the rushed pace of dog-eat-dog capitalism.  In reading the Tao Te Ching, I wondered how practical it was.  It advocated keeping a low profile, painting a picture of the humble being exalted.  Can people truly succeed in this world without promoting themselves?  And do things really happen without us working and trying to influence them to happen?

There is overlap between Taoism and the Bible.  Proverbs 27:2 says that we should let others praise us and not our own mouth, and the Book of Proverbs often extols the virtue of silence.  Jesus in Matthew 6:34 says that we should not be worried about tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself.  At the same time, the Book of Proverbs also stresses the work ethic, which can be reconciled with Western capitalism.

I think that there is some wisdom to the Tao Te Ching and the Bible, on these issues.  Humility can be attractive, for people may trust those who humbly desire to be of service rather than seeking their own exaltation.  I just wonder if such a path should be absolutized.  In this world, people who express and promote themselves are often the ones who advance.  And things do not always work well on their own, without some effort to influence things to happen through action.

I.    There is a lot of emphasis in the Tao Te Ching on emptiness.  A number of conservative Christians criticize Eastern religions for this.  “Eastern religion says that we should empty our minds, whereas the Bible says that we should fill our minds—-with God’s word.”  Some conservative Christians go so far as to suggest that emptying one’s mind creates a void that demons will be happy to inhabit!  The Tao Te Ching stresses positive concepts, such as virtue, generosity, and love for enemies.  It also suggests that people can enjoy the Tao, whatever their station is in life.  That sounds like something positive, not nothingness or emptiness.  Why, then, does the Tao Te Ching advocate emptiness?  I do not entirely understand this, but it may be using the concept of emptiness to highlight certain values: there is a value to clearing one’s mind every so often, for that can encourage relaxation; there is also the value of emptying oneself of pride.

J.  Verse 41 took me aback.  The first paragraph states: “A great scholar hears of the Tao and begins diligent practice.  A middling scholar hears of the Tao and retains some and loses some.  An inferior scholar hears of the Tao and roars with ridicule.  Without that laugh, it would not be the Tao.”

This may conflict with some of what I said in (E.), assuming I knew what I was talking about in (E.), which is not a guarantee!

This passage took me aback because it seemed to be criticizing the inferior scholar who laughs at the Tao, and yet it appeared to see value even in that laughter!  When a person laughs at the message of the Tao, then you know that you have the genuine article!  The reason may be that the Tao does advocate a counter-intuitive life, one of humility, generosity, and love for enemies.  Moreover, it maintains that such a path benefits the person who practices it.  A domesticated version of the Tao, which does not draw laughter or inspire a response of perplexity, is not the genuine article.  There are Christians who claim that the same can be said of Christianity.

K.  Verse 70 had some odd lines: “My words have an ancestor; my deeds have a lord.  The people have no knowledge of this, therefore they have no knowledge of me.  This is why the sage dresses plainly, even though his interior is filled with precious gems.”

How does the sage’s modest apparel relate to people’s lack of knowledge about the antiquity and majesty of the Tao?  If the sage wanted people to see the Tao as majestic, would he not wear fancy clothes rather than modest apparel?  Perhaps the passage is saying that the sage is approaching people where they are rather than attempting to dazzle them.  Dazzling them, when they are in no position to be dazzled, would be like throwing pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6).  Jesus himself came to the world as a humble human being, rather than parading his exalted status.  People could relate to that and be more open to his teaching.

Reading Vanhoozer in Light of Ancient Aliens

I reviewed Kevin Vanhoozer’s Pictures at a Theological Exhibition a few days ago.  I forgot to include an item in that review that I was planning to include.  Maybe that’s for the best, as you will see below.

Basically, the deal was this: I was watching an episode of Ancient Aliens not long ago, and that was generating in my mind some theological questions.  Vanhoozer actually addresses similar questions and issues in an essay in his book.  The essay is entitled “Enhancement in the Cathedral: Power, Knowledge and Smart Pills.”

Let’s be clear: Vanhoozer does not interact specifically with Ancient Aliens.  I probably did well not to include a reference to Ancient Aliens in my review, since many scholars scoff at that show, or roll their eyes at it.  Just tossing out the term “Ancient Aliens” in my review would be poison.

But allow me to share my thought process.  I was watching an episode of Ancient Aliens entitled “The Next Humans.”  It was episode 3 of Season 11.  See here for somebody’s review of it.  On that episode, people were talking about how we may be on our way towards positive breakthroughs, in terms of our health, lifespans, and intelligence increasing.  Aging may be counteracted.  Organs can be replaced.  Cells will be repaired.  Technology can play a role in a lot of this.  According to the episode, we are actually moving in this direction right now.

How true this is, I have no idea.  My Mom’s husband is a scientist, and he was disputing what Ancient Aliens said on another episode, about human and rabbit DNA being mixed together.  He was saying that this was not what happened!  In addition, when I am watching Ancient Aliens and see a person labeled a “Futurologist,” I wonder what the heck that is.  Where do futurologists get their qualifications?

But suppose that there is some validity in what Ancient Aliens was saying about “the Next Humans.”  Would that be a good thing?  Would that be a bad thing?

I thought about the Tower of Babel story in the Book of Genesis.  God stepped in to stop the people from building a tower that would reach to heaven, saying that, if they have started to do that, nothing they imagine will be impossible for them (Genesis 11:6).

Then there is the question of whether we would want a world without any suffering and death.  You know the usual theistic theodicies: God permits suffering because that builds in us character.  It gives us depth.  People who have not suffered can be pretty shallow.  Suffering makes us more compassionate.  The possibility of death humbles us.  Our limitations, in general, humble us.

Then there is the practical issue of over-population.  If people are not dying, won’t there be too many people, but not enough resources?  Maybe our augmented intelligence will be able to find a solution to that problem!

But my mind had its share of “on the other hands.”  For instance, I have no objection to other inventions and devices that have reduced suffering and prolonged life.  I use soap.  I take an Aspirin when I have a headache.  Looking outside of myself, I am happy that more women can bear children and live through childbirth, rather than dying.  The mother can then enjoy her children.  The children can have a mother.  Should I oppose these things on account of some “no pain, no gain” belief system?  I don’t think so.

Another question enters my mind.  God is powerful, right?  God is far more powerful than we are.  Why, then, should God be intimidated by us trying to enhance ourselves?  God would still be more powerful than us, even after we enhance ourselves!  And, because of that, people may still feel some need for God in their lives, even after their enhancements.  Yet, God did seem to feel somewhat threatened in the Tower of Babel story, and this was at the prospect of building a Tower.  We know now that the Tower would not have even reached the heaven where God dwells, since there is so much outer space out there.  Why would a great God feel threatened?

Now for the Vanhoozer essay.  Like I said, Vanhoozer did not mention Ancient Aliens, nor did he really interact with anything that was on that Ancient Aliens episode.  But he was talking about attempts to enhance human nature.  He referred to smart pills, which would be like steroids for the mind.  Vanhoozer was critiquing enhancements from a Christian and a bioethical standpoint.

Vanhoozer took great pains to distinguish enhancements from healing or medicine.  Healing and medicine restore our bodies, rather than enhancing them.  For Vanhoozer, enhancement is a bad idea for a variety of reasons.  For one, God made us as we are, and we should not try to tamper with that.  Also, our limitations build in us character.  And, according to Vanhoozer, seeking to enhance ourselves in this life focuses on prospering in this life and this world, when we should be seeking treasures in heaven (a la Matthew 6:19-21).

I am still rather ambivalent in terms of how I feel about this issue.  I doubt that God is threatened by anything human beings can do.  At the same time, God may not feel that human beings are ready for certain things.  He may believe that they lack the character to handle certain things properly.  There are plenty of sci-fi stories about people attaining godlike powers, yet lacking the wisdom or the character to use them in a way that benefits themselves or others.  I think of the Star Trek episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”
The New Testament teaches that God has a plan to exalt human beings, at least the ones who follow him (see II Timothy 2:12, for example).  In a sense, Christianity itself is about human enhancement: God gives people the Holy Spirit, and they grow in wisdom and character and even gain eternal life.  But that is enhancement God’s way, and it entails having a good moral character.

I have no plans to oppose technological advancements, even those that can enhance human nature.  God will permit what God wants, and God will step in and stop what God wants.  That does not mean there should be no bio-ethics at all.  If we are to enhance our nature, we need to make sure that everyone gets enhanced, if possible, so that nobody is left out in the cold or gets stigmatized or marginalized.

Wanderlust: The Parable of the Prodigal Son, Star Trek, and Philo

At church this morning, the pastor preached about the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). Earlier in the service, there was a skit about the parable.

The pastor made a point about the parable that overlaps with other themes that I have encountered this week. The themes relate to happiness and struggle.

The pastor was saying that the younger brother of the parable obviously had wanderlust. Granted, the younger brother took that wanderlust in inappropriate directions. Still, his desire to experience new things and to see the world was understandable. In the skit, the younger brother was reading a National Geographic, commenting on how he wanted to see the world. The pastor speculated that the boy’s father may have envied the boy: the father may have wanted to see the world himself, but he could not because he was taking care of the farm.

The pastor also commented on the older son, the one who dutifully stayed behind with his father. The older son was expecting to inherit the farm, and he resented the younger son coming back and being welcomed with open arms. According to the pastor, the older son may have had tunnel-vision because he had not seen the world, as the younger son did.

The pastor said that maybe God has given us wanderlust, since that is what motivates us to explore and to discover. The pastor referred to the astronaut who recently returned to earth.

The pastor said other things about the parable, things that are more conventional in sermons about it. But I am focusing on the wanderlust part because it is a topic that has been in my mind over the last few days.

Last night, I saw an episode of Star Trek entitled “This Side of Paradise.” In this episode, there is a planet where there is radiation killing off life, and yet the people there are alive, healthy, and happy. The reason is that spores from certain flowers are giving them that perfect health and happiness. Spock is hit with the spores, and he gets a feeling of happiness and belonging. He can finally love a woman who loved him six years before.

But Captain Kirk thinks that this state of affairs is unnatural and dangerous. Because people are healthy and happy, they are not progressing. They are not discovering, inventing, learning, and growing. They are not struggling, which is what brings about growth and progress. They do not have wanderlust, for they are perfectly content where they are. Kirk does not think that humans are supposed to be in this state of paradise.

It turns out that extreme negative emotions can counter the soothing effects of the flowers. After Spock is returned to his old self, Spock tells the woman who loved him that everyone has a self-imposed purgatory to endure. At the end of the episode, Spock comments about the time when he was under the influence of the spores. Spock says that this time was the first time in his life when he was happy.

Later, I was reading Philo’s Special Laws II. Philo was a first century Jewish exegete. In Special Laws, Philo gives his opinions about the meaning and significance of the laws of the Torah. Special Laws II focuses on the biblical festivals. The first festival that Philo mentions is every day. Philo says that every day is supposed to be a festival. Every day, we are to find joy by contemplating nature and God.

While the “Side of Paradise” Star Trek episode seemed to place joy at odds with struggle and discovery, Philo believed that they coexist. Contemplating the world and God are part of joy, so Philo does not divorce happiness from learning. Yet, because of how we are and how the world is, we often find that attaining and maintaining joy is a struggle. We have to struggle with our passions and our sinfulness, which undermine our joy. We have to deal with a world where things do not always take place as we want. Echoing Stoicism, Philo advocates lowering one’s expectations so that life’s disappointments are not as hurtful. Philo believes that humans can arrive at a state of happiness, but that, ultimately, God is the only one who is perfectly happy.

Speaking for myself, I can identify with the people on the planet in the Star Trek episode. So what if they never built skyscrapers? They were happy and content. Why did Kirk have to take that away from them? At the same time, I have to admit that discontent and internal desolation do get me off my rear end. They motivate me to learn, to try, to grow, to search. And then sometimes, like Spock, I try to make due with my own self-created purgatory. Ultimately, I land where Philo is: I try to be happy, but I seek a happiness that coincides with learning and growth.

Leaders 4

In my post today about Richard Nixon's Leaders , I will discuss things that Richard Nixon says about Chiang Kaishek.  Chiang was the leader of mainland China before it became a Communist country under Mao Tse-Tung.  Chiang would then go on to lead the country of Formosa, or Taiwan.

What I often heard in junior high school and high school history classes was that Chiang Kaishek was a crook.  We were told that Chiang took the aid that the U.S. gave him to fight the Communists and lined his own pockets and the pockets of his generals.  My junior high school social studies teacher said that, when the Japanese were coming after China, Chiang did not lift a finger to fight them, whereas Mao did.  This teacher also said that the popular designation of Taiwan as "Free China" was not entirely accurate, for there are many rights that people do not have in Taiwan.  In the right-wing literature that I read, I encountered at least two perspectives.  The first essentially acknowledged that Chiang was far from perfect, but it said that he was better than the bloodthirsty Communists (for both the Chinese and also for the rest of the world), and so the U.S. should have supported him more.  The second portrayed Chiang as a great guy.  Robert Welch of the John Birch Society, in his book Again, May God Forgive Us!, depicted Chiang as a devout Christian.

In my reading of Leaders, I didn't see anything about Chiang Kaishek's alleged corruption, but Nixon did have his share of criticisms of Chiang, or he mentioned criticisms that other people had.  First, Nixon says on page 245 that Chiang was very "by the book" and rigid, and that this hindered him from coming up with innovative strategies.  Nixon states that "history is made by those whose innovations exploited the opportunities of the moment", and that "It was Chiang's misfortune that Mao was among the latter."  Nixon strikes me as someone who likes boldness in a leader.  I wonder if he was a fan of Captain James T. Kirk!

Second, Nixon on pages 115-116 speculates that Chiang might have hindered the Communists from taking over mainland China had he pursued a policy of land reform.  Chiang did precisely that as leader of Taiwan, as he "paid the landlords for their land and distributed it to their peasantry", and the "former landlords invested much of their money in industry while the government encouraged foreign investment" (pages 244-245).  According to Nixon, that led to an economic boom in Taiwan.  Had Chiang done that sort of thing as leader of mainland China, Nixon speculates, "Mao might not have been able to exploit the rural discontent that contributed to the success of the Chinese Communist revolution" (page 116).

And third, Nixon on pages 125-126 refers to the thoughts of Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida about Chiang.  Yoshida had his doubts that Chiang could still play a role in mainland China, for "Yoshida argued that although Chiang was himself a Confucian scholar, he had irreparably alienated the intellectuals, and...this was politically fatal."  While this was a negative on Chiang's part, it interested me to learn that he was a Confucian scholar.  He wasn't some unsophisticated despot.

I'd like to turn now to three issues that pertain to Chiang Kaishek: his revolutionary beliefs, his authoritarianism, and his Christian devotion.

Let's start with his revolutionary beliefs.  Nixon says on page 241 that "Chiang revolted against the domestic corruption and international weakness of the Manchu dynasty..."  Chiang was also against widespread opium addiction and foot-binding.  In the 1920's, Chiang was with "Sun-Yatsen's revolutionary Kuomintang party", and he even fought alongside Communists.  This was the case in World War II, as both factions united against the Japanese.  But Chiang turned on the Communists in 1927, as he feared their increasing strength.  Another consideration that Nixon raises is that Chiang and Mao had two approaches: that "Mao sought to erase the past while Chiang sought to build upon it" (page 241).  According to Nixon on page 242, the Communists hated Chiang, yet they still "respected and even admired him"; Chiang, however, did not respect the Communists.

On Chiang's authoritarianism, Nixon says on page 244 that Chiang "was not a democrat, even though he did introduce constitutional government."  Chiang thought that the Chinese had too much freedom and needed discipline.  Nixon may have agreed with my junior high school teacher that Taiwan was not exactly "Free China."  At the same time, I question whether Nixon would have seen that as necessarily a bad thing, for Nixon in more than one place says that democracy is not the best system for everyone.  Nixon does laud Taiwan's free-market policies, though.

On Chiang's Christian devotion, Nixon tells the story of how this came to be on page 243.  Chiang wanted to marry a woman named Mei-ling, whose father manufactured and distributed Bibles.  But Mei-ling's family was hesitant to let this marriage happen, since Chiang was not a Christian.  Chiang offered to become a Christian, but he also decided to do a serious study of the Bible, for he did not take his religion lightly.  During Chiang's marriage to Mei-ling, the two of them would "often pray together for an hour in the morning."

I wonder how Chiang could have been the crook that my teachers and history books say he was, when he appeared to have so much substance.  He opposed injustice in China.  He cared about his country.  He was a scholar.  On many mornings, he and his wife would pray to God.  Was he a mixture of good and bad?  Did selfishness get in the way of his ideals?

The Genesis Code: Overall Review

I recently watched the Genesis Code, which is a 2010 movie.  The movie explores the question of whether science and Genesis 1 are compatible.

I'm glad that I finally got to see it, for I was curious about it when I first watched its trailer online.  I learned about it as a result of doing an online search about Catherine Hicks, whom I love in Star Trek IV and 7th Heaven.  I wanted to see if she was in anything lately, and I saw that she was in the Genesis Code.  I also noticed that Fred Thompson, a 2008 Republican candidate for President, was in the movie, and, being someone who doesn't watch much Law and Order, I wanted to see how good of an actor he was.   Later, I learned that actor Ernest Borgnine was in it as well, and I loved Borgnine in the 1955 movie Marty and the two-parter Little House on the Prairie episode, "The Lord Is My Shepherd" (see my post about Borgnine here).  Another noteworthy actor in the Genesis Code was Louise Fletcher, who won an Academy Award for playing the chilling Nurse Ratched in the 1973 movie, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.  

To be honest, when I first saw the trailer for the Genesis Code, I thought that it might be a Christian movie, but I was not entirely sure.  It looked to me like it might be an impartial exploration of the question of origins, with strong religious and skeptical characters.  After seeing it, and after learning about the immense support that elements of the right-wing gave to it (see here and here), I now know that it's a Christian movie.  Moreover, the guy who plays the pastor in the movie, Jerry Zandstra, is the President of the company that produced The Genesis Code, American Epic Entertainment.  Zandstra, as you can see from the wikipedia article about him, is a minister and has a history in Republican politics.  See here for his thoughts on the film.

The thing is, this movie cannot be characterized as young-earth creationist propaganda.  Actually, it's point is that science and Genesis 1 are compatible because time is relative, and so a day to God may be a much longer time for human beings.  The movie is essentially acknowledging an old earth.  And it also makes the point that the sequence of creation in Genesis 1 is similar to what science says about the order in which things came to be.  Moreover, the movie does not say that dinosaurs co-existed with human beings, but it places the existence and extinction of dinosaurs within the sixth "day" of creation, the sixth day being from 250 million years ago to the time of Adam.

Tomorrow, I'll have a post addressing the question of whether the film fudges on science or Genesis 1 to make the two agree.  I think that it does, in a sense, and yet I am pleased that conservative Christians have become excited about a film that has such a progressive approach to the issue of science and Genesis 1 (though the movie has had its share of conservative Christian critics----see here and here).  I wish that the film had gone a step further and affirmed the theory of evolution, but, unfortunately, it had a couple of swipes against macro-evolution, some of them pretty misinformed (i.e., humans descended from apes), and some of them exemplifying standard creationist or Intelligent Design arguments against macro-evolution.  But the scene in which the pastor, scientists, and students are talking about the age of the earth and the sequence of events in the universe's history makes the movie worth watching (although I could have done without the Christian protagonist smugly saying at the end of the discussion that science has caught up with the Bible).  I wish I could find the entire scene online, but here is a YouTube video that contains pieces of it. 

As far as the rest of the movie was concerned, I thought that it was way too long, but there were a couple of gems.  First, there was the scene in which a skeptical youth is talking with the pastor about faith.  The youth is saying that he was convinced by the presentation about the harmony between science and Genesis 1, but he expected for faith to be a heart-issue rather than something that proceeded from hard intellectual work.  The pastor responds that people come to faith in different ways, some of them pretty mundane.  I appreciated this scene because it highlights that one does not have to believe in God as a result of a flashy experience, as some evangelicals seem to imply.

Second, while I didn't care for most of the inane banter in the movie, I did like one scene near the end, as one of the characters refers to the TNT movie Purgatory, in which an angel said that the creator is tough, but not blind.  I love Purgatory, and I'm glad there are other fans out there!

I'll be writing another post about this movie tomorrow, and maybe more posts after that.  We'll see!

Festival! Festival!

For my write-up today on Circle of Life: Traditional Teachings of Native American Elders, I'll use as my starting-point something that James David Audlin says on page 12:

"Among many nations, including the Hodenasaunee and Tsalagi (Cherokee), these [New Year] ceremonies were times of sacred chaos, of completely unrestrained behavior, and cleansing.  At the New Year itself, the usual patterns of appropriate behavior were suspended.  All debts were forgiven.  All those punished were released from punishment.  Inebriation, sexual activity, and other bawdy behavior were the 'rule' rather than the exception.  The purpose of the chaos was to cleanse the psychological detritus from the previous year, so the new year could begin with a clean slate.  The newcomers to this continent still have a lingering cultural memory of this ancient worldwide tribal tradition in the exuberant behavior they exhibit on New Year's Eve and Mardi Gras----though it is, ironically, now limited by law and custom, forbidding the healthiest and most purgative kinds of chaotic behavior, such as sexuality, and limiting revelers to the most unhealthy kinds of license, such as drunkenness and rowdy behavior."

Are there any parallels between this and what we see in the Pentateuch?  I'd say yes, on some level.  The Pentateuch has Yom Kippur, which takes place soon after the Fall New Year, and it is a time of new beginnings, as the Israelites' sins are forgiven and the sanctuary is cleansed (Leviticus 16).  At the same time, in contrast to certain other cultures' New Year's festivals (as Audlin describes them), Yom Kippur is not a day of license and partying for the purpose of purgation, for what accompanies the atonement on that day is the Israelites' affliction of their own souls (Leviticus 16:29, 31; 23:27, 32; Numbers 29:7).

But the Feast of Tabernacles is a time of rejoicing and partying, when the Israelites can use their second tithe for "whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth" (Deuteronomy 14:26, in the KJV).  And the Feast of Tabernacles may have been the original new year's festival, since Exodus 34:22 says that the Feast of Ingathering occurs at the coming around (the NRSV renders it "turn") of the year.  Do we see in the Feast of Tabernacles a remnant of the ancient tribal tradition that Audlin talks about?  Perhaps, but it's worth noting that there is no explicit indication in the Pentateuch that the rejoicing on the Feast of Tabernacles has a purgative purpose; rather, its purpose could have been to celebrate God's role in providing Israel with a bountiful harvest.

On that note, what I thought about when I read that passage in Audlin's book was the festival in the Star Trek episode "The Return of the Archons", though I doubt that the cultures that Audlin talked about had a festival as chaotic as what is on that episode (see here)!

William Windom

I just learned that actor William Windom passed on last week. 

Of course, he's known as Commodore Decker on the Star Trek episode, "The Doomsday Machine".  That's one of my Dad's favorite episodes (we called it "the tube one"), but there are other Star Trek episodes that I like much better!

Windom also played Ray Krebbs "father", Amos, on Dallas.  I put father in quotation marks because Ray's real dad was Jock Ewing.  My favorite scene was when Amos Krebbs tried to get Jock's attention on the street by saying "Mr. Ewing", and Jock looked behind him and gruffly said, "Yeah?", like Jock didn't want to deal with any riffraff.

I also liked Windom's role as the cold pastor in the Highway to Heaven episode, "A Child of God".  I wrote a post in my first year of blogging about this episode----see here.

And William Windom played the prosecutor in the movie, To Kill a Mockingbird, starring Gregory Peck.

Windom was in a lot of other stuff, but I remember him most for these roles.

R.I.P., William Windom.

Actors' Sacrifices; Two Views on Forgiveness

I have two thoughts for today:

1.  Yesterday, I watched an excellent documentary called The Captains, in which William Shatner of Star Trek fame interviewed other actors who played captains on a Star Trek show or movie (Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew, Scott Bakula, and Chris Pine), as well as shared his own reflections about Star Trek.

What particularly stood out to me in the documentary were comments by Scott Bakula and Kate Mulgrew, both of whom I love as actors.  Scott Bakula was saying that working on Quantum Leap essentially cost him his marriage, since he was working 12-hour days (at least), with rarely a day off.  Because he was a fairly new actor and thus did not have the leverage to negotiate his hours, he showed up when he was needed.  Kate Mulgrew of Star Trek: Voyager said that she was a single mother during the Voyager days, and she did not get to see her kids that much on account of her long workdays.  To this day, she said, her kids are not interested in the show—-they do not want to watch it—-for they resent how it took their mother away from them.  I can’t imagine not wanting to watch Star Trek: Voyager, but, of course, I enjoy it from a distance, without being exposed to all that it took to make it, or how that affected other people.

2.  Rachel Held Evans has a post, Ask a Seventh-Day Adventist.  As I discuss the issues of forgiveness and salvation in the comments section with Delina Pryce McPhaull and Nicholas, I am seeing more clearly the type of Christianity that I had growing up, and how that contrasts with the sort of Christianity that I encountered among evangelicals.

The type of Christianity that I had growing up (in Armstrongism) went like this: I accept Christ as my personal savior and my past sins are forgiven.  But I need to continue to ask God for forgiveness to keep my slate clean, and God forgives me continually on the basis of what Christ did on the cross.  But asking God for forgiveness is not enough for me to be forgiven on a continual basis, for I also need to repent (i.e., try not to do the sin anymore) and forgive others.

The sort of Christianity that I encountered among evangelicals went like this: I accept Christ as my personal savior and God then regards me as righteous and as a child of God, even though I still have imperfections.  I confess my sins to God, ask God for forgiveness, repent, and forgive others, not to keep my slate clean, for it’s already clean in God’s sight after I accept Christ.  Rather, I do these things to enrich my relationship with God and perhaps even to make myself feel better.

These are my impressions.  I can’t be absolute here, for I think that there were some elements of the second view in my religious upbringing.  But there was enough of the first view swimming around in my mind that, when I was in an evangelical small group and heard the leader say that one did not have to repent of every sin to be saved, I was shocked.

Growth

At church this morning, the topic of the sermon was growth. The text was Genesis 32:22-32, in which Jacob wrestles with a supernatural being and receives a blessing. The pastor said that we, too, receive a blessing as we grow through struggle, but many of us prefer to stay in the same place because it’s familiar and comfortable to us.

I’ve long been leery of the words “grow” or “growth” for personal development. As I’ve said before on this blog, whenever people tell me that I’ve “grown”, they usually mean that I’m living more according to their standards. Moreover, I’m sick and tired of people grading my growth. Why can’t they just accept me, rather than judging me? In more than one setting, I’ve heard people say, “Well, if you don’t get outside of yourself and move out of your comfort zone, how will you grow?” But, if I’m comfortable where I am, why would I want to grow? Why do I need to grow? People then say, “If you don’t grow, you die.” What the heck does that mean? I can biologically continue to exist, even if I’m not changing a bunch of stuff!

The pastor made some of these points that get on my nerves, but he also said something that highlighted why growth is important: he said that old ways of thinking may not work for us, especially in times of crisis. And the pastor also gave examples of a lack of growth: being resentful rather than choosing to grow from a bad situation.

I once heard a saying that “If you always do what you’ve always done, then you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.” So, if I find that what I’m doing is a continuous dead end, then it’s good for me to learn other ways of doing things and of looking at situations, and to have people encouraging me along my path. Does that mean that life will be rosy? Far from it. But it may be better. And I may be better. Plus, as the pastor said, a significant part of growth is learning how to cope in times of crisis.

I got to see some of this illustrated in the church service itself. There was one lady who has been looking for a job for months, and we have been praying for her to find work. Well, she finally got a job! She has had to cope through uncertain times, but it is good that she had people rooting for her and praying for her.

Regarding resentment, what can I say? I have it. Christians have told me that resentment hinders my growth. I’m not so sure, because it does enable me to sympathize with others who have been wronged and have resentments, rather than judging them because they’re not happy happy, or because they are unable to perform a self-labotomy and deny themselves the natural feelings of anger when they have been wronged. I wonder what the opposite of resentment is. Is it feeling nothing? Is it compassion and love even for the person who wronged us? I would like to have the latter. But, like Captain Kirk on Star Trek V, I still need my pain! It is what drives me to pray to God, to seek inspiration, and to have compassion for others. At the same time, I have to admit that hating others does not feel right, for, in my case, that does come from self-centeredness and flawed expectations I have of how the world should treat me. It also does not put me in the mood to treat others with love and respect.

Still on This Rant; God’s Beloved Creation; Gnostic Jesus Making Waves; Charity Exception; We’re the Demons

1. Samuel C. Hyde, Jr., Pistols and Politics: The Dilemma of Democracy in Louisiana’s Florida Parishes, 1810-1899, page 57:

An 1850 bill designed to exclude from seizure the property or home of a debtor whose total estate did not exceed $450 would have protected large numbers of Florida parish farmers from possible confiscation of their homesteads.

Hyde mentions this in the context of his discussion about why Florida parish farmers were represented by people who voted against their interests. Reasons include their inexperience with representative democracy and their satisfaction with the elites, who brought a measure of stability to the area.

This 1850 bill brings to mind the economic problems of the last few years, in which people lost their homes because they couldn’t pay their mortgages. I got so annoyed with Christians who acted as if God was a conservative Republican because of the issues of abortion and homosexuality, yet they went with conservatism rather than biblical principles when it came to people losing their homes. The Bible has laws requiring creditors to respect the property and dignity of their debtors. Creditors were not to take the debtor’s millstone, which was his means of making food (Deuteronomy 24:6). If they took the debtor’s raiment as pledge, they were to give it back to him at night, since he needed it to sleep in (Exodus 22:26-27). They could not enter a debtor’s house to fetch his pledge, but they had to wait outside (Deuteronomy 24:10-11).

In light of this, would God approve of people getting thrown out of their houses because they couldn’t pay their housing debt? Isaiah 5:8 lambastes those who join house to house, so that there’s no place for people to live. I think that God wants people to be able to live in a home.

Whenever I bring up this point, conservatives respond that there should be consequences for risky behavior—which signing a bad mortgage deal out of greed was. One lady quoted Bible verses saying that we should pay off our debts. When I referred to Old Testament laws about the cancellation of debts and respect for debtors, she replied that we’re not under law, but grace, then she accused me of being a Judaizer. Ironically, her religion doesn’t have a whole lot of grace. Rather, it has a “they made their bed, let them sleep in it” attitude towards people who signed bad mortgage deals.

Personally, I don’t think people should get a free ride or escape responsibility for their poor decisions. I agree with Bill and Hillary Clinton and John McCain, who say that the housing mortgages should be renegotiated so that people can pay some mortgage, while being allowed to keep their homes. The Bible supports responsibility, but also humanitarianism. Sadly, there are people who love to shoot off their mouths about what they consider to be God’s stances on political issues, but they don’t grasp the humanitarian aspect of biblical politics.

2. Erhard Gerstenberger, Psalms, Part I with an Introduction to Cultic Poetry, page 111:

The personal God is the creator of this particular supplicant, therefore he has the obligations of a parent (see Pss 71:6; 139:13-16; Judg 16:17; Isa 44:2; 49:1; Job 10:19…).

I wrote about this a few years ago in my post, How Can I Be Sure God Loves Me? Part I. I believe that I’m special to God because he created me. There have been plenty of times in evangelical settings when I’ve heard this view. At the same time, that co-exists with the notion that God does not hear non-believers, or that God will put them in hell, where they will be tormented for all eternity, without any hope of the torment ending. How do those ideas jibe with God valuing his creation?

Yet, there are plenty of places in the Hebrew Bible where God destroys the wicked. The wicked are his creation, too! Yet, God destroys them. So that needs to be factored in.

3. Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, page 78:

Here, incidentally, we have as much as the “Christian” Gnostics in general could make of the passion of Christ and the reason for it: it is due to the enmity of the powers of the lower creation…threatened in their dominion and very existence by his mission; and, often enough, the suffering and death they are able to inflict upon him are not real at all.

I wonder how a Gnostic Jesus would have angered the powers-that-be enough to execute him. Gnostics rejected aspects of the Hebrew Bible because they believed that the God of the Old Testament was a sinister sub-deity. Many of them opposed matter, and, consequently, sex. That would anger a Jewish religious establishment, which upheld the Hebrew Bible, along with sex and marriage. Gnostics probably saw Judaism as a system that kept people enslaved to matter and the oppressive sub-deity, so, of course, Judaism would push back against that kind of Jesus.

The part about Jesus’ pain not being real reminds me of the Star Trek episode, “Spectre of the Gun”, and also The Matrix. In both, the world of sight is considered an illusion, which means that pain (and bullets) are not real to the enlightened person who grasps that fact.

4. Richard Sarason, A History of the Mishnaic Law of Agriculture: A Study of Tractate Demai, page 114:

M 3:1 allows him to give untithed [demai] produce to the poor, to transient guests, and, following Gamaliel’s precedent, to workers.

This is interesting. Israelites could only eat tithed produce, but an exception was made for the sake of charity. As my seventh grade Jewish social studies teacher said, Judaism holds that life is sacred! If an observant Jew was famished after spending time in a desert, he would eat a ham sandwich if it were offered to him.

5. Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, pages 42-43:

An eminent Assyriologist has stated, “The impression is gained that everyday religion [in Mesopotamia] was dominated by fear of evil powers and black magic rather than a positive worship of the gods…the world was conceived to be full of evil demons who might cause trouble in any sphere of life. If they had attacked, the right ritual should effect the cure…Humans, as well as devils, might work evil against a person by the black arts, and here too the appropriate ritual was required”…

The Priestly theology negates these premises. It posits the existence of one supreme God who contends neither with the higher realm nor with competing peers. The world of demons is abolished; there is no struggle with autonomous foes because there are none. With the demise of the demons, only one creature remains with “demonic” power—the human being. Endowed with free will, his power is greater than any attributed to him by pagan society. Not only can he defy God but, in Priestly imagery, he can drive God out of his sanctuary. In this respect, humans have replaced the demons.

So, in P’s view, when there’s evil in the world, is it because humans have caused it—through their ritual and moral impurity?

How Do You Feel?; Many of Them Stayed; Parts of a Speech; Barnabas on the Land Promise; Jewish Beefs with the Septuagint—Before the Christians Used It

1. Zosia Zaks, Life and Love: Positive Strategies for Autistic Adults, page 135:

If you feel as though you can discuss your inner emotional states with another person and that doing so would help you see yourself in new ways, learn new ways of expressing yourself, or otherwise improve your sense of getting along in the world, therapy can be very useful for you. However, some people on the spectrum may find the talking and self-reporting that traditional therapy relies on to be too overwhelming or too abstract. They sit in the therapist’s office wondering what to say or do. They don’t know why the therapist is asking them to interpret problems through the lens of subtle feelings. The social dynamic of therapy can be too taxing, negating any therapeutic value. The reflection of the inner self through the therapist’s eyes may be too indirect for someone on the spectrum to benefit much from.

If talking therapy doesn’t work for you, consider alternative forms of therapy that can be just as useful in sorting out your problems. Short-term therapy of a few weeks’ or months’ duration that focuses on one specific problem might be easier. For example, you could find a counselor who would be willing to spend eight weeks working with you on improving your way of dealing with anger. Others on the spectrum have tried art or drama therapy. Therapy that provides concrete behavioral exercises, emphasizes concrete plans of action, or otherwise assists you in discovering information about yourself without you automatically having to know what to talk about may be more useful than traditional therapy models.

Good stuff. All I will say here is that I absolutely hate it when therapists ask me, “What do you feel about that?” Remember Star Trek IV: “How do you feel? How do you feel?” Spock: “I do not understand the question.” Me: “I don’t know, and I find the question annoying.”

2. Sara Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought, pages 328-330:

According to the testimony of 2 Kings 17 and Ezra 4, all the Israelites were exiled from their land (2 Kings 17:20-23), and their cities came to be inhabited entirely by foreigners, the descendants of people deported to the land by Assyrian kings. In spite of the fact that they worshipped Israel’s God, they were considered aliens both by the returned exiles and by their own definition.

What is Chronicles’ view of these facts? We see the book’s outlook in its description of the population’s composition during this period: the entire historical narrative, from beginning to end, makes no mention of the presence of foreign peoples in the land of Israel. Hezekiah’s reign is particularly significant because of its historical conditions and the period’s singular importance in Chronicles. According to biblical and extra-biblical historical sources, members of foreign nations, deported by the kings of Assyria, already inhabited the land in the time of Hezekiah. There is absolutely no sign of their presence in Chronicles: only Israelites live in the northern region. The book’s lengthy account of the Passover celebration during Hezekiah’s reign depicts the time after the fall of Samaria and the deportation of her inhabitants. Hezekiah sends messengers throughout the land of Israel, calling for the Israelites to celebrate Passover in Jerusalem (2 Chr 30:1, 5, 6, etc.). The couriers travel the length of the country; in the “country of Ephraim and Manasseh, and as far as Zebulun,” they actually go “from city to city” (2 Chr 30:10), trying to persuade people to make the pilgrimage. The account portrays a clearly Israelite settlement in the North. According to the Chronistic outlook, the population’s composition remained completely unchanged following the downfall of the northern kingdom and the exile: members of Israel’s tribes lived throughout the region “from Beer-sheba to Dan” (2 Chr 30:5), and Hezekiah calls upon them to once again worship YHWH in Jerusalem. In his effort to cleanse the land, Hezekiah also demolishes the altars “throughout all Judah and Benjamin, and in Ephraim and Manasseh, until they were all destroyed” (2 Chr 31-1). The very regions that, according to all the other evidence at our disposal, were centres of foreign population are described by Chronicles as inhabited only by Israelites, members of the northern tribes.

3. D.A. Russell, Criticism in Antiquity, page 121:

There are always five main parts to a speech: exordium to conciliate the juryman, narrative to instruct, proof to establish your case, refutation to overthrow that of your opponents, and peroration to refresh the memory or excite the appropriate emotion—pity or indignation, as the case may be.

I have to look some words up! “Exordium”: Dictionary.com says that means the beginning of a speech. “Peroration”: Dictionary.com says that’s “the concluding part of a speech or discourse, in which the speaker or writer recapitulates the principal points and urges them with greater earnestness and force.” I probably could’ve guessed the meaning of these words by their context!

4. R.P.C. Hanson, Allegory and Event, page 98:

Barnabas interprets ‘the good land’ of Ex. 33.1, 3 to mean Christ in the flesh.

I took a look at Barnabas 6, which is the reference for this passage. I can’t say that I understand all of it, but Barnabas seems to be saying that we have been refashioned through Christ’s incarnation, which remakes humanity. Barnabas states that we (presumably Christians) have been led to a land flowing with milk and honey. That may relate to other things that Barnabas mentions in the chapter, such as Christ dwelling within as, as if we’re a temple. The milk and honey are interpreted in Barnabas 6 as our faith in God’s promise, which makes us alive. And, while we’re promised dominion over the earth, Barnabas acknowledges that this has not yet been fulfilled, but it will be when we have become perfect. Somehow, Barnabas ties the land promise of Exodus 33 to the incarnation, the Christian life, and the future reward of the believer.

5. N.F. Marcos, The Septuagint in Context, page 109:

Aquila made a Greek translation of the Bible in the second century C.E., one that was a literal translation of what has come down to us as the Masoretic Text. Scholars have argued that the Jews rejected the Septuagint because the Christians used it, and so Aquila produced a Greek translation that conformed more to the Masoretic Text, which Jews preferred. But Marcos doesn’t buy this. First, he notes that Jews rejected the Septuagint prior to the second century C.E. Second, he refers to the Twelve Prophets scroll at Nahal Hever, which is earlier than Christianity. It tries to correct the Greek text “to fit it to the Hebrew text then current.” So Jewish rejection of the Septuagint and attempts to produce a Greek translation that was closer to the MT were not necessarily the fruit of Jewish-Christian polemics. They date before that.

Marcos says that he shows at the close of Chapter 3 that Jews prior to the second century C.E. (the time of Jewish-Christian polemics) had issues with the Septuagint. I took a second look at Chapter 3 to see where he says this. I found a few statements. On page 44, he refers to a view that the Letter of Aristeas (second century B.C.E.) was written to defend the Septuagint against the attacks of Palestinian Judaism, which said that the Alexandrian Jews used “an inaccurate translation of the Pentateuch [(the LXX)] and were were not fulfilling the Law” (44). Second, on pages 46-47, Marcos refers to fears among Jews about profaning the Torah. For some, translating it into Greek did precisely that.

Ellen White and Josephus, Ps. Philo and Star Trek

1. Robert M. Seltzer, Jewish People, Jewish Thought: The Jewish Experience in History (New York: MacMillan, 1980) 216.

Josephus relates that [the Sadducees and the Pharisees] disagreed on the principle of immortal life, the Sadducees rejecting the belief that the soul survived death and the Pharisees holding that the soul of the good after death passes into another body. They also had different views on fate and free will, the Sadducees denying that there was a determinative fate and the Pharisees affirming fate and free will. (By fate Josephus may have meant divine providence.)

This quote about Josephus’ description of the Pharisees and the Sadducees reminded me of a couple of things I read in the writings of Ellen G. White, the prophetess of Seventh-Day Adventism. She was probably using Josephus in some of her works.

In Christ’s Object Lessons, Ellen White discusses Jesus’ parables. In her discussion of the parable of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:19-31), White appeals to first century Jewish beliefs regarding the afterlife. The parable poses a challenge to Seventh-Day Adventist doctrine, for it presents the rich man going to hell immediately after his death, while his brothers are still alive. Seventh-Day Adventists maintain, however, that the dead are unconscious until the resurrection, which is when the wicked will go to hell. As Ellen White affirms, “In the grave he has no power to choose anything, be it good or evil; for in the day when a man dies, his thoughts perish. (Ps. 146:4; Eccl. 9:5, 6.)” (270).

So how does Ellen White address the parable of Lazarus and the rich man? The answer somewhat took me aback:

In this parable Christ was meeting the people on their own ground. The doctrine of a conscious state of existence between death and the resurrection was held by many of those who were listening to Christ’s words. The Saviour knew of their ideas, and He framed His parable so as to inculcate important truths through these preconceived opinions. He held up before His hearers a mirror wherein they might see themselves in their true relation to God. He used the prevailing opinion to convey the idea He wished to make prominent to all–that no man is valued for his possessions; for all he has belongs to him only as lent by the Lord. A misuse of these gifts will place him below the poorest and most afflicted man who loves God and trusts in Him. (p. 263)

Ellen White essentially says that Christ was assuming an untrue opinion of his day (namely, “a conscious state of existence between death and the resurrection”) in order to communicate an important spiritual truth. Christ was “meeting people on their own ground.”

Others have made this sort of argument for other issues. Peter Enns says that the Bible reflects its ancient Near Eastern mileau because God’s word was made incarnate in human culture. That would explain the similarities between Genesis 1 and the Babylonian Enuma Elish, or those between the Pentateuch and the Code of Hammurapi, etc. God was speaking to people through their culture. Many have argued that this is why we shouldn’t treat Genesis 1-2 as a literal account of creation, for God was speaking to Israel in light of the science of their day, which has since been discredited.

Believe it or not, Seventh-Day Adventism is not rigidly fundamentalist, for it holds that God spoke through the personalities of the Bible’s human authors. I’ve heard Adventists say that the Bible is “thought-inspired, not word inspired.” At the same time, it’s very conservative in certain areas. Modern-day young earth creationism practically originated with the Adventists, for the Adventist George McReady Price came up with “flood geology.” And, as far as I know, many Adventists believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. But why can’t they treat these issues as Ellen White approaches the parable of Lazarus and the rich man: God speaks to people in light of their cultural presuppositions?

People have pointed out to me problems with this approach. Some say it assumes that God is telling us a white lie by acting as if a cultural presupposition is true, when actually it is not. Some may contend that one cannot separate the ethics of the Bible from its cultural mindset. Conservatives fear a “pick and choose” Christianity, in which people can label the parts of the Bible they like “an eternal principle,” while relegating the parts they dislike to the merely “cultural.”

These are valid concerns, in my opinion. But something appeals to me about God meeting us where we are, while also taking us beyond our current location.

In Desire of Ages, Ellen White’s book on the life of Christ, White says the following about the Sadducees’ rejection of fate and divine providence:

Their ideas of God molded their own character. As in their view He had no interest in man, so they had little regard for one another; there was little union among them. Refusing to acknowledge the influence of the Holy Spirit upon human action, they lacked His power in their lives. Like the rest of the Jews, they boasted much of their birthright as children of Abraham, and of their strict adherence to the requirements of the law; but of the true spirit of the law and the faith and benevolence of Abraham, they were destitute. Their natural sympathies were brought within a narrow compass. They believed it possible for all men to secure the comforts and blessings of life; and their hearts were not touched by the wants and sufferings of others. They lived for themselves. (pp. 604-605)

For White, the Sadducees’ rejection of fate and providence meant they believed that God was uninterested in human affairs, which inspired them to be similarly unconcerned. It also contributed to a proto-Republican notion that anyone can pull himself up by his own bootstraps, meaning the poor and the suffering were responsible for their own misery (which was nonsense, because many people worked, but so much of their income was eaten up by taxes, and not everyone was politically well-connected enough to avoid that kind of misery). Free will can have bad implications, but, in my opinion, so can a belief in providence, since the latter can lead to the conclusion that God wishes the poor to be in their miserable condition. I think a middle ground is best, one that says God is at work in the world and wants us to join him in helping others.

2. Geza Vermes, Scripture and Tradition in Judaism (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1961) 201.

Pseudo-Philo dates to the first-second centuries C.E. According to Vermes, the story in Genesis 22 of Abraham getting ready to sacrifice his son (called the “Akedah” in Jewish tradition) conveyed a point for Pseudo-Philo: that the Akedah confirmed God’s choice of humanity to be the heir of creation (Genesis 1; Psalm 8). When God created man, Jewish tradition narrates, many angels were criticizing his decision to make man and give him dominion, for they foresaw that man would be moral scum. At the Akedah, however, Abraham vindicated humanity as worthy to be the heir, for Abraham and Isaac sacrificed their own desires for the glory and honor of God.

There are many Star Trek episodes like this. Perhaps one can add the Planet of the Apes movies to the mix. An advanced race thinks that humans are barbaric and tests them to see how they will act, and the humans end up surprising them by showing courage and love for their fellow man. The advanced race’s initial belief about humanity had merit, for there are plenty of wars and evil on its record. But the view seems to be that humans have some good that can enable them to redeem themselves and create a better world, if only they will choose righteousness!

Many would argue that this view is not biblical, for Christianity says that God must change corrupt humanity and dramatically intervene in human events at the end of time in order for disaster to be averted. This view is biblical. Yet, there are times when people in the Bible show virtue, as Abraham and Isaac did at the Akedah (though some may view that act as barbaric). And yet, as Jonathan Edwards asks in Original Sin, why is it that human “goodness” doesn’t last?

My Issues with the Star Trek Movie

Don't get me wrong...I love the new Star Trek movie. But, after doing some thinking in the shower, I came to understand why some die-hard Trekkies are having a problem with it.

Essentially, the movie undoes much of Star Trek. Because Nero went back in time and destroyed the planet Vulcan, much of what I've grown to know and to love no longer exists.

For example, I absolutely loved the Vulcan Tuvok on Star Trek: Voyager. This is bizarre, because part of me sees all Vulcans other than Spock as Spock-parodies. But Tuvok has found a place in my heart, even though he is surrounded by other characters who are just as cold and rational as he is (Seven of Nine). Tuvok is not even unique on the Starship Voyager, but I still like him as a character.

And there are Tuvok episodes that are special to me. I think of the one that went back to his adolescence and explained how he became the way that he was. As a teen, he was struggling with his emotions, particularly towards a girl in his class (of course), and he found serenity through the discipline of logic.

Or the one where he was looking after a group of children, who were actually much older than they looked, since people on this planet reverted to childhood in their old age. My heart just melted when that little girl who was about to die said to Tuvok, "Thanks for spending time with us, even though we're not as behaved as Vulcan children." And Tuvoc stayed by her side as she died.

Or the one where Paris was on trial for murder, and Tuvok aggressively searched for the facts and proved him innocent. At the end of the episode, Paris reached out to Tuvok and asked him why he always sat by himself. "I do not need friends," Tuvok said. "Too bad, you've already got one," Paris replied.

Now, all of this is gone! Vulcan was destroyed, with only a few survivors. So there is a huge chance that Tuvok will not be born and have those experiences.

There's also the Pon Farr issue. Under Russell Miller's post on Star Trek, Aggie brings up the episode of the original series in which Spock had Pon Farr, which occurs when Vulcan males go into heat and desperately need a Vulcan woman. When Voyager was in the Delta Quadrant, light years away from Vulcan, Tuvok managed to get through his Pon Farr by creating a Vulcan woman in the holodeck.

But how will Spock handle his Pon Farr, when his planet has been destroyed, and the holodeck doesn't even exist yet? Sure, he has a romance with Uhura, but she is not Vulcan. And, yes, there is a remnant from Vulcan, but the people Spock saved were old men, as far as I could see. I hope I'm wrong on this, since there needs to be at least one fertile female Vulcan for the people-group to survive, let alone for Spock to survive Pon Farr.

Maybe these issues can be addressed in a book or a sequel. I hope so!

Star Trek: Spoilers Included!

I just came back from Star Trek. It's definitely a must-see on the big screen, and I just can't get the soundtrack out of my head!

The movie had some discontinuity with the original series, and a lot of that is because of the element of time travel: a Romulan named Nero went back in time to destroy Vulcan and other planets, as an act of revenge against Ambassador Spock for failing to save Romulus. But could Nero's presence in the past account for all of the discontinuities? For example, the Spock-Uhura romance. Remember the Star Trek episode with the flowers, the one in which we learn that Spock couldn't have a romance in his younger years because he was so emotionally detached? Then how come he was so passionate with Uhura? Maybe it's because she accepted him for who he was!

The acting was superb. Chris Pine did not imitate William Shatner's Kirk until the very end, but it was still enjoyable to see him evolve from a reckless, cocky kid into a leader with gravitas. Maybe I'll use his "Don't you want to at least know my name before you totally reject me?" line he used on Uhura.

Zachary Quinto was good as Spock. (And there was another Heroes actor in the movie: the cop from Heroes who reads minds did the voice of Jim Kirk's drunken stepfather.) From the previews, I thought Spock would be much more emotional and volatile, but actually he was just like the Spock we have all come to know and love: logical, cool, etc. He only blew up when he was defending his human mother, Amanda. Speaking of which, I just loved the Vulcan "trash-talking" when Spock was a kid. "I presume that you have some new insults for me today," Spock says to three Vulcan bullies. "Affirmative," their leader responds.

I always wondered why Spock's dad married Amanda, when he looked at humans with such disdain (as did most Vulcans). On this movie, his eventual response was that he loved her, but he initially said, "I am the Vulcan ambassador to earth, so it is logical that I marry a human so I can know the type of people I'm dealing with" (my paraphrase--I doubt Sarek ended his sentence with a preposition!)

Something I liked from this scene was where Sarek told Spock that Vulcans are actually worse than humans in terms of emotional volatility, which is why they especially must pursue logic to arrive at serenity. That was a good counter-weight to the usual Vulcan self-righteousness and disdain for humans.

Scotty and Chekhov were all right. Scotty's Scottish accent was underdone, and Chekhov's Russian one was overdone. Plus, the Chekhov on the movie seemed a lot more dominant than the one in the original series. But I liked the part when he was racing to get Kirk and Sulu transported to the Enterprise. And Simon Pegg actually looks like James Doohan!

The one who gets my award is Karl Urban as Leonard McCoy! He obviously was imitating Deforest Kelley's mannerisms from the original series, but not in a way that appeared inauthentic. He was far from being a caricature. He magnified the older McCoy's sarcasm, and he was a lot more high-strung than the Deforest Kelley depiction. But my opinion is that McCoy calmed down with age.

I don't think anyone can replace the actors from the original series, but the actors on this movie are lovable in their own way. I wouldn't mind seeing a sequel with them in it. And I will definitely get Star Trek when it comes out on DVD!

Art Influences Life

I watched the classic 1960's movie To Kill a Mockingbird this afternoon. Every now and then, I stopped the movie so I could check out what wikipedia had to say about it. In the book and the movie, Atticus Finch is a lawyer in the deep South of the 1930's, and he defends a black man accused of rape. Wikipedia says the following about the character (see here):

Alice Petry remarked that "Atticus has become something of a folk hero in legal circles and is treated almost as if he were an actual person."[2] Examples of Atticus Finch's impact on the legal profession are plentiful. Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center cites Atticus Finch as the reason he became a lawyer, and Richard Matsch, the federal judge who presided over the Timothy McVeigh trial, counts Atticus as a major judicial influence.[3] One law professor at the University of Notre Dame stated that the most influential textbook he taught from was To Kill a Mockingbird, and an article in the Michigan Law Review claimed, "No real-life lawyer has done more for the self-image or public perception of the legal profession[.]"

It's amazing how fiction can have such an impact on real life! Atticus Finch was not a real person. Gregory Peck wasn't even Atticus Finch, as much as he came to embody that character in the minds of many! Yet, this fictional character has inspired many to become lawyers, as well as influenced discussions in American law.

This reminds me of Star Trek. The acting could get pretty cheesy. The stories were unreal. The science wasn't all that good. The props were goofy and sometimes implausible. But look at all of the people it inspired: engineers, astronauts, actors, etc., etc.

Many of you may know the story of Nichelle Nichols and Martin Luther King, Jr. Nichelle Nichols played Lieutenant Uhura on the original series. At one point, she was thinking of leaving the show because she didn't have that many lines. But she was talked out of leaving by a big fan of the series, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King told her that her role was important on the show because it depicted all sorts of races and nationalities working together. Not only would her role communicate an important social message, King said, but it could also encourage black children to reach for the stars in their dreams.

And, sure enough, it did. According to this article: "Years later, women ranging from Whoopi Goldberg to Dr. Mae Jemison, the first African-American female astronaut, cited Lieutenant Uhura as a major inspiration in their careers. Nichols even spent time working for NASA on an astronaut-recruitment program—an initiative that roped in such people as Sally Ride and Guy Bluford, the first American woman and African-American in space, respectively."

Nichelle Nichols may have felt that her day-to-day work on Star Trek was unimportant, but she couldn't have been more wrong. Entertainment influences real life.

Of course, life isn't always what we see on television, and there is a good reason that cynics exist. But it's good that fiction can set positive trends and inspire us to live up to moral ideals.

Roots by Alex Haley, Read by Avery Brooks

I finished listening to Roots last night! And Avery Brooks (of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and American History X) did an excellent job in reading it. When he modulated his voice to fit the different characters, I felt like I was listening to a real radio dialogue!

The book overlaps with the television miniseries (both Roots and its sequel, Roots: The Next Generations), but there are also significant differences. With a few exceptions, the book focuses on the thoughts, feelings, opinions, and struggles of the African-American characters, whereas the whites tend to be in the background. There is no Ed Asner struggling over his role as a slave-trader. Mike Brady does not have a fling with Ben Cartwright's wife, who has Sandy Duncan (or, initially, Tracy Gold) as a result of the affair. Senator Burl Ives does not try to reinstate slavery after the Civil War. John-boy doesn't marry a black woman, leading to him being disowned by his father, Henry Fonda.

In the book, the only time that we get to see how a white person feels is when Haley says that Tom Lee (Chicken George's master and father) lost everything he had, but at least he had the consolation that he was white. That reminds me of something I read in Philip Yancey's book, Soul Survivor, in which he describes growing up in a racist family in the deep South of the 1960's: "We were white trash, but at least we were white."

Whereas the miniseries tended to focus on a few dramatic scenes that communicated a point, the book reports that the scenes actually occurred a number of times. For example, on the Roots miniseries, Kunta runs away, gets caught, and is beaten until he says his name is Toby. Later, he runs away again, gets caught, and his foot is cut off. The book just says that Kunta ran away a few times, so there is no dramatic "What is your name?" scene. But the book also relates that those who caught him offered him a choice: either they cut off his foot, or they castrate him. I think it's Cousin Georgia (a descendant of Kunta) who says later in the book, "Good thing for us he chose the foot!"

In Roots: The Next Generation, Alex Haley goes to the UN and asks an African ambassador if certain African words (e.g., ko, kambi belongo) mean anything to him. (Alex is trying to identify the tribe of his ancestor, Kunta Kinte.) The ambassador responds with a puzzled look, "Excuse me, but I haven't the faintest idea what you are talking about." The book just says that Alex Haley asked a bunch of African ambassadors about the African words, and they didn't understand what he was saying, probably because of his thick Tennessee accent.

The miniseries had a lot more gut-wrenching drama, but the book had valuable things that were missing from the TV series. In the book, when Kunta is on the slave ship, he hears another African promise Allah that he will pray five times a day, if Allah will only deliver him from his situation. That really evoked in me an emotion of hopelessness. Here is an African who will never see his home again--everything and everyone he knows is now in his past, and he is about to experience a lifetime of servitude. He tries to bargain with God, but God does not answer (or at least God lets free will run its course).

I enjoyed many of the discussions among the slaves about current events. One of them mentions Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty" speech, and another inquires why white people would desire liberty, since they're not the ones who are slaves. We also got to hear about Thomas Jefferson and his mistress, Sally Hemmings. So I take it that was a topic of discussion even in the 1970's, when Roots came out.

One thing that really saddened me was that Alex Haley's father, Simon Haley, passed away before Roots was published. On the miniseries, there was a considerable amount of tension between Alex and his father. Alex respected his father because he (Simon) got an education and made a success of himself, amidst considerable challenges. But Alex always felt that he fell short of Simon's approval, and he didn't want to follow in his dad's footsteps, since schooling did not appeal to him. On the miniseries, Simon tells Alex that he should apply himself like George, Alex's Republican lawyer brother. I often wondered if Simon got to see his son become the successful author of Roots, a book and television miniseries that boldly inspired Americans to evaluate themselves and their history. I guess not. But, as Alex says, he likes to think that his family is looking down on him from heaven!

Alex Haley closes his book by saying that history is written by the victors, which is why he wrote Roots. His point here seems to be that we mostly get the white side when we study history, whereas his goal is to relate to us the unseen African-American experiences of slavery and discrimination. I had a hard time identifying with Haley here, since I grew up in a Northern school, which frequently taught us about the evils of racism. We watched the Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman in the fifth grade, after all! But who knows? Haley may have set this trend when he wrote Roots, which went on to become a renowned miniseries. If that is the case, then he accomplished his goal.