Links on Rodney King

I have some links on Rodney King for today.

1.  I thought this article by Dylan Stableford was really good.  Stableford says:

"He 'never set out to be a James Meredith or Rosa Parks,' the Los Angeles Times wrote. 'He was a drunk, unemployed construction worker on parole when he careened into the city's consciousness in a white Hyundai early one Sunday morning in 1991. While he was enduring the videotaped blows that would reverberate around the world, he wanted to escape to a nearby park where his father used to take him. He simply wanted to survive.'  Instead, he became an 'icon of the civil rights movement,' albeit a reluctant one...'The King beating and trial set in motion overdue reforms in the LAPD and that had a ripple effect on law enforcement throughout the country,' Lou Cannon, author of 'Official Negligence: How Rodney King and the Riots Changed Los Angeles and the LAPD,' said."

This is a powerful passage.  It was also interesting to learn that Lou Cannon, the author of biographies of Ronald Reagan that I have enjoyed, wrote a book about the Rodney King incident and its aftermath.

2.  In 1992, Barbara Jordan gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention.  I was Republican-leaning at the time, but I still felt that Barbara Jordan's quotation of Rodney King was powerful, as she said that "we must be prepared to answer Rodney King's haunting question, 'Can we get along?'  To watch the speech, click here.  The part about Rodney King starts at 14:00, but the entire speech is worth watching because (in my opinion) it is an effective Democratic critique of the policies of the 1980's.

3.  On May 5, 1992, the New York Times had an article, RIOTS IN LOS ANGELES: The President; WHITE HOUSE LINKS RIOTS TO WELFARE.  I remember when I was in a high school history class and I said that the Los Angeles riots were due to welfare, and an African-American student shook his head no.  There are debates about whether welfare policies help or hurt the inner cities, and if alternative policies can work better.  But that incident in high school planted within me the seed that I might be wrong----that there was a side of the story that I did not know about with my white, middle-class background.

Ron Paul's Liberty Defined 6: Illegal Immigration

In this post about Ron Paul's Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom, I'll write about Ron Paul's views on illegal immigration.  Essentially, Paul is somewhere between amnesty, on the one hand, and building a wall to keep out illegal immigrants, on the other hand.  Some of his policies are hard-line, and some of them are compassionate towards illegal immigrants.

Let's start with the hard-line positions.  Ron Paul supports abolishing the welfare state, and he wants to "Stop all federal mandates on the states to provide free education and medical care for illegal immigrants" (page 155).  He is for more border guards, allowing private landowners to keep illegals off of their own land, and permitting states to enforce immigration law.  He does not favor granting children of illegal immigrants born in the U.S. automatic citizenship.  He opposes amnesty, and he thinks that legal and illegal immigrants who "incite violence or commit crimes of violence should be prosecuted under the law and lose their right to stay in the country" (page 156).  He favors the police being allowed to research the citizenship of a person who is "caught participating in a crime" (pages 156-157).

Some of this should be qualified.  First, while Paul is against amnesty, he's not necessarily for deporting every illegal immigrant, for he supports providing a green card with an asterisk.  Second, in terms of the police researching the citizenship of illegal immigrants, Paul distinguishes what he supports from "stopping anyone anytime and demanding the individual present documentation of a legal status" (page 157).  But does Paul, a believer in states' rights, think that state authorities should be permitted to stop anyone at anytime?

Now let's proceed to Ron Paul's policies that are compassionate towards illegal immigrants.  Paul supports a guest-worker program.  He wants a strong U.S. economy in which citizens and foreigners can participate, and he believes that getting rid of the Federal Reserve's inflationary policies will keep wages high.  Paul does not support punishing businesses for hiring illegal immigrants, nor does he agree with punishing Catholic churches for providing them with sanctuary.  

I should also note that Ron Paul supports legalizing drugs and believes that the drug war and the problem of illegal immigration are connected.

In terms of any questions that I have, there is one.  Suppose there is an illegal immigrant who is allowed to stay in the U.S. and to work, and his wages are high now that the Fed's inflationary policies are gone.  If his family can be legally excluded from U.S. public schools and medical care, is that much of a deal for him or his family?  At the same time, Paul appears to be for many things being private-sector anyway, so perhaps Paul would say that private schools and doctors under his system would be able (if they chose) to provide services to illegal immigrants and their families.

Deification

One of the chapters that I read in my latest reading of The Cambridge History of Christianity: Constantine to c. 600 was Alan Brown's "The intellectual debate between Christians and pagans".  An issue that Brown discusses is the deification of human beings through Christ.

Brown states on page 273 that, according to Christianity, Christ has united creation to divinity, healing such divisions as that between the sexes (through the virgin birth) and that between the observable world and the angelic.  Through baptism, human beings are incorporated into Christ, providing them with the potential to be deified.  They receive the Holy Spirit, and "their mode of existence [is] transformed from its previous lustful, unholy, vice-ridden, ignorant and self-loving mode to the mode of being manifested in Christ, which is non-sexual, holy, virtuous, knowing the true logoi of beings and possessed above all by a selfless love for God."  Brown states on pages 273-274 that "To the extent which the baptised person, by the power of the Holy Spirit, actively achieves this in his own freedom, his potential deification is actualised, as Christ becomes incarnate in him."

This topic is of interest to me because of my background in Armstrongism, which asserted that true Christians will become god-like beings in a God-family.  But that does not appear to be what ancient Christians (and even modern Catholics) mean when they talk about people being deified.  Rather, they mean being united with God, partaking of what is divine (i.e., the Holy Spirit), and having divine attributes of character.  My impression is that people don't become spirit beings, per se, for union with God entails the redemption of the physical, not the discarding of it.  (But I realize that there was debate in early Christianity about whether our resurrected bodies will be physical or spiritual.)

Brown distinguishes between the Christian view of deification and that of the pagans, but, if I'm correctly understanding the information that he presents, there appears to be some overlap.  Both are about healing differences and bringing people and things into union with the one.  Both assert that, on some level, this union is possible even now, in a world that still has limitations and differences.

Church and Fathers' Day Ramblings

This will be a rambling post about church this morning.

I find it interesting that my church focused a lot on mothers on Mothers' Day, but hardly any on fathers on Father's Day.  Fathers were acknowledged this morning: they got a candy bar, and they were mentioned during the announcements.  But the children's service and the sermon were not about fathers, as far as I could remember.  By contrast, mothers were the focus of the children's service and the sermon on Mothers' Day.

Incidentally, I read a post not long ago by someone who was complaining about how her church really focuses on mothers on Mothers' Day, which she believes excludes singles and exalts motherhood as the right vocation for all women.  Maybe her church celebrated Mothers' Day in a less-than-tactful manner, but I think that it's perfectly all right for churches to honor mothers on Mothers' Day and fathers on Fathers' Day.  I'm single, and I sometimes get tired of hearing about people's married lives and their kids.  But I still think that parenting is a noble job and that parents should be honored.  I'm reminded on these sorts of days that I owe my parents thanks for supporting me when I was growing up, and for helping me even in my adult years.  But there are people who have had different experiences.

Why didn't my church focus on fathers that much today?  I don't know.  Maybe it has to do with how many people see their parents: fathers are the firm distant ones, whereas mothers are the supporting nurturers.  I can't make this an absolute, though, for there are plenty of people who have different experiences.

(UPDATE: The service on Fathers' Day last year talked more about fathers.  See here.)

The theme of the service this morning related to love being the Kingdom of God, and how we become more loving by planting the seeds of God's word inside of us and by depending on God.  This overlapped some with my conversation with my Dad yesterday when I talked with him on the phone: How do we handle our sinful (or selfish) human nature?  Some believe we have to struggle against it.  Others believe that victory comes when we depend on Jesus Christ.  As I listened to the sermon this morning, I felt like the pastor was speaking about a foreign country, since I was so enmeshed in bitterness and cynicism (over various people and situations) that hearing about love and spiritual growth seemed alien to me----even inaccessible.  Love, for me, is not natural.  Or at least it's not an emotion all of the time, but rather a conscious decision to cause no damage.

Ron Paul's Liberty Defined 5: Global Warming

In this post, I'll talk about the chapter on "Global Warming" in Ron Paul's Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom.

Ron Paul labels himself a global-warming skeptic.  Paul says on page 139 that change in climate has been occurring for millions of years, and that there is even evidence that temperatures may be falling.  Paul appeals on pages 139-140 to Dr. Arthur B. Robinson, who, along with other scientists, contends that "climate change and temperature variations are related to sunspot activity and water vapor" rather than hydrocarbons (Paul's summary).  According to Robinson, the increase in hydrocarbon use since 1940 has not affected noticeably either "atmospheric temperature or...the trend of glacial length" (Robinson's words).  You can read about Dr. Arthur Robinson here.  I think that believers in human-made climate change would highlight that Dr. Robinson is not a climatologist but a chemist.

Ron Paul is a strong advocate of nuclear power, and he does not believe that wind power will meet America's energy needs.  Paul says that he has a windmill and that it saves him a few dollars on his electric bill, but he contends that "To replace one nuclear power generator you need windmills to cover an area the size of Connecticut" (page 135).  Paul says on page 141 that windmills and solar panels, were they to replace hydrocarbons, would destroy a lot of acreage and not even meet our energy needs.

Paul also argues that certain attempts to save the environment have a counter-productive effect.  The cost of cap-and-trade, for example, pushes companies to leave "more efficient conditions and [to be] pushed into third world countries where the cheapest form of fossil fuels is used" (page 138), resulting in an increase in CO2 emissions.  And Paul states on page 140 that recycling "consumes more energy than it saves", citing this article for support.  Paul goes on to say that "Recycling aluminum makes economic sense, but that would happen even without the demand to recycle everything from paper to glass and plastic."

I thought that Paul made fairly decent arguments.  His arguments are good, in my opinion, but not so much on the scientific front, for I believe that many climatologists have made a good case that global warming is happening, and it also makes sense to me that carbon traps heat, that the increase in CO2 emissions would make the weather warmer, and that the growing number of hurricanes and the winters that feel like tundras (on some days) indicate that global warming is occurring.  But Paul did well to question whether windmills could cut the mustard, and also to note that certain measures to protect the environment could have counter-productive effects.  But I wish that Ron Paul had spent more pages detailing how his libertarianism could actually help the environment, as other libertarians have done, rather than focusing so much energy on criticizing environmentalists.

Ron Paul's Liberty Defined 4

In my latest reading of Ron Paul's Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom, Ron Paul discusses such issues as the American empire (he's against it, saying that it's counter-productive and that terrorism is a small problem compared to the magnitude of other problems out there, since terrorism takes far fewer lives), evolution (he doesn't think that it's inconsistent with God's existence, and he believes that local school boards should decide how to handle the topic in schools), and the question of how we rank the Presidents (he cites a book that says that we shouldn't assume the war-time Presidents are the best, but that we should look at who presided over peace and prosperity).

These were interesting discussions, both when I agreed with Ron Paul's analysis, and also when I disagreed.  Ron Paul's chapter on "Envy" stood out to me, however, because he argued that envy of the rich is behind the call to redistribute wealth.  I've heard that from a number of conservatives.  In terms of my opinions regarding public policy, I don't care if someone makes more money than me or has more, newer, better, or fancier stuff.  What does concern me is that people are becoming bankrupted under our current health care system, that the middle-class and good jobs appear to be eroding, and that there are people who are suffering in poverty.  If a rich person has more than enough for his comfort, what is wrong with him contributing more in taxes so that these problems can be alleviated?  That's not "envy".

Psalm 81

For my weekly quiet time this week, I will blog about Psalm 81 and its interpreters.  I'll post Psalm 81 in the King James Version (which is in the public domain) and comment on select verses.

1To the chief Musician upon Gittith, [A Psalm] of Asaph.  Sing aloud unto God our strength: make a joyful noise unto the God of Jacob.
² Take a psalm, and bring hither the timbrel, the pleasant harp with the psaltery.
³ Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on our solemn feast day.

The phrase that the KJV translates as "on our solemn feast day" is regarded by many to mean "in the full moon on the day of our feast".  The reason is that a Syriac version treats the Hebrew word keseh in Psalm 81:3 as the full moon.  There are other interpretations, but we'll start with the one that considers keseh as the full moon.

So the Israelites are to celebrate on a new moon, then on a festival that occurs on a full moon.  What days is this verse talking about?  A common view is that we are talking about Rosh Hoshanah, a new year's day that occurs on a new moon, and the Feast of Tabernacles, part of which occurs on the full moon.  The justification for this view is that Psalm 82:3 mentions the blowing of the trumpet, and that occurs on Rosh Hoshanah (Leviticus 23:24).

The view of Keil-Delitzsch, however, is that Psalm 81 is for the first day of Nisan (a new moon and the start of the first month of the year) and the Passover (which occurs on a full moon later in Nisan).  This view makes sense, for vv 4-6 appear to associate the command to celebrate this festival with the time of the Exodus.  And what was the festival that God instituted at the time of the Exodus?  The Passover.  But what about the trumpet?  While there is no explicit indication in Scripture that the trumpet was blown on the first of Nisan or the Passover, Numbers 10:10 mentions trumpets being blown on days of gladness, feasts, and new moons.  Perhaps that means that trumpets could be blown on various new moons and festivals, including the ones in Nisan.

Now let's turn to other treatments of the Hebrew word keseh.  Rashi interprets it to mean the appointed time, and he cites Proverbs 7:20.  Incidentally, the KJV also interprets the similar word kese in Proverbs 7:20 as the appointed time, whereas other English translations render it as "full moon" in Proverbs 7:20.  The Septuagint has "in the distinct day of our feast".  And the Midrash on the Psalms has a view that associates keseh with the piel for k-s-h, which means "cover".  In Psalm 85:2, the piel of k-s-h is used for the forgiveness of sins, and so this interpretation understands Psalm 81:3 to be talking about the celebration of a day on which Israelites' sins are covered.  As far as I know (and I am open to correction), the Day of Atonement was a day of self-affliction rather than music and celebration.  But perhaps this interpretation of Psalm 81:3 would be consistent with regarding the day of celebration as Rosh Hoshanah, for that, too, was a day on which atonement occurred (Numbers 29:5).
  
⁴ For this was a statute for Israel, and a law of the God of Jacob.
⁵ This he ordained in Joseph for a testimony, when he went out through the land of Egypt: where I heard a language that I understood not.

On account of this verse, I agree with Keil-Delitzsch that there is good reason to believe that the festival of Psalm 81 is the Passover, since that was instituted at the time of the Exodus.  There are interpretations, however, which apply Psalm 81:5 to the release of Joseph from prison and his subsequent elevation by Pharaoh, rather than the Exodus.  The Targum goes with this view, and the Babylonian Talmud Rosh Hoshanah 10b affirms that Joseph was released from prison on Rosh Hoshanah, and so God ordained it as a festival at that time.  The phrase "when he went out through (Hebrew al) the land of Egypt" can be translated as "when he [meaning Joseph] went out over the land of Egypt", and such a phrase in Genesis 41:45 refers specifically to something that Joseph did in Egypt.

But many interpret Psalm 81:5 in light of the Exodus, perhaps because v 6 refers to deliverance from a burden.  According to Marvin Tate, G.R. Driver and W. Thomas interpret al to mean "from", since it supposedly can mean that in Phoenician, and thus they think that the phrase means "when he [indicating God] went out from the land of Egypt", presumably at the Exodus.  But al can also mean "against", and so some believe that the phrase is about God going out against Egypt to deliver the Israelites from bondage.

Tate discusses different views regarding the phrase "I heard a language that I understood not".  One view is that the Psalmist is assuming the perspective of the enslaved Israelites of the past and is expressing their inability to understand the Egyptian language.  Another view is that God is the one who is saying this, expressing that he has just started to hear and to understand the plea of the Israelites for deliverance from Egypt.  The second view is understandable, for the following verses (vv 6-14) are the words of God.

⁶ I removed his shoulder from the burden: his hands were delivered from the pots.
⁷ Thou calledst in trouble, and I delivered thee; I answered thee in the secret place of thunder: I proved thee at the waters of Meribah. Selah.

One interpretation is that "the secret place of thunder" is Sinai, where God gave the law amidst thunder.  Others, however, maintain that the thunder occurred at the Exodus, for the verse says that God answered the Israelites' plea for deliverance with thunder.  But does the Exodus story say that God used lightning and thunder at the Exodus?  As far as the Pentateuch is concerned, the answer seems to be "no", but Psalm 77:18 may be suggesting that God used lightning when he delivered Israel from the Egyptians at the Red Sea.

Regarding "I proved thee at the waters of Meribah", a common view is that God did so in Exodus 17, when the thirsty Israelites complained to Moses about their thirst, and so Moses (with God's power) brought water out of the rock.  How did God prove or examine Israel during this incident?  Essentially, God allowed them to be thirsty to see if they would trust in God or complain, and they failed the test because they complained.

Marvin Tate offers another view, however.  He thinks that Psalm 81:7 is referring to a variant of the Meribah story, in which God tests the Israelites at Meribah by giving them water and then telling them to obey his commandments.  According to Tate, the Israelites in this variant pass the test by accepting God's commandments.  Tate refers to Exodus 15:25-27, in which God proves the Israelites by sweetening bitter waters and then exhorting them to obey his commands.

I think that there's something to Tate's interpretation, and the reason is that Psalm 81:1-10 is so positive: celebrate, God delivered in the past, obey, God will provide, etc.  It's in v 11 that the Psalm takes a negative turn, as the topic becomes the rebellion of the Israelites against God.  Consequently, I have a hard time believing that Psalm 81:7 would toss in something negative----Israel failing a test at Meribah.

Meribah may be mentioned because it was a place of God's provision, for God's provision is a theme in v 10.  The idea may be that the Israelites should not be like the Israelites at Meribah but should trust in God's provision, or that they should be like the Israelites at Meribah by accepting the authority of God's commandments on account of God demonstrating his power and beneficence by providing for them.

⁸ Hear, O my people, and I will testify unto thee: O Israel, if thou wilt hearken unto me;
⁹ There shall no strange god be in thee; neither shalt thou worship any strange god.

I've been reading Theodore of Mopsuestia's commentary on the Psalms, but it only goes up to Psalm 81.  To replace my reading of that, I've decided to read the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture for the Psalms that I have not yet studied.  I decided to start reading this commentary this week, and I found one church father's comments on Psalm 81:9 to be intriguing.  Essentially, he applied Psalm 81:9 to the Arians, since the Arians make the logos who became Jesus Christ into a created god, thereby setting up a god in addition to the true God.  The position of the church father, by contrast, is that the logos who became Jesus Christ was the true God (along with God the Father), and so worshiping Jesus in this scenario is not idolatry.  I doubt this will be the only time when church fathers use the Psalms as a launch-pad in Trinitarian controversies!

¹⁰ I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt: open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.
¹¹ But my people would not hearken to my voice; and Israel would none of me.
¹² So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust: and they walked in their own counsels.

This reminds me of Romans 1:18ff., in which God turns people over to their own desires after they reject God.  But God did not desire to do so.  According to this Psalm, God's hope was that Israel would obey him and be recipients of God's blessings.  That, in my opinion, is the heart of God: God desires reconciliation with us.

It's interesting that a Psalm of celebration becomes a recounting of Israel's sin, as well as God's lament that he would have blessed Israel if only she had not rebelled.  Does this spoil the celebration?  Perhaps it exhorts Israel to do better than her ancestors: to obey God and to receive God's blessings.

¹³ Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways!
¹⁴ I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries.
¹⁵ The haters of the Lord should have submitted themselves unto him: but their time should have endured for ever.
¹⁶ He should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat: and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee.