A Brief Analysis

I watched the Republican debate last night.  I want you to know that I did so at great risk to my personal well-being.  Let me just get the obvious out of the way: I am a recovering conservative, which means watching the Republican debate is a bit like a 15 year AA vet going to Mardi Gras.  I remember the reasons why I used to think the way of Reagan and Bush the elder, and even Bob Dole in his failed attempt at derailing Slick Willy Clinton, was the best way forward for this great nation of ours.  What I have come to believe is flawed is the central premise of conservatism as it exists in the nation right now.  That premise is, as clearly as I can make it out, that the individual person is the only clearly inviolable and sovereign entity in our society.  This can be given a context of personal responsibility and positive collective action by those who are willing to walk that walk, or it can be reduced to an extremely short sighted (to the point of naivety) selfishness.  Before last night, I was not sure there was any example of the most positive aspect of that philosophy, today I suspect there might be, but I'm still not a hundred percent sure.  So let's walk through a (sort of) brief cast of characters.  I'm going to go in ascending order of functional adulthood, leading up to the one I would pick if you put a gun to my head.

Let's start with the stooges.

Ben Carson:  I am not implying that Carson is unintelligent, in fact, he may be the most intelligent person on the stage.  After all I would hope that someone who is capable of performing brain surgery would be pretty sharp. But intelligence is not enough for the job that we're talking about here.  Carson seems pretty lost when it comes time to actually defend some of his nutty ideas.  And I say nutty ideas even by the standards of the other people on the stage.  All of the serious politicians on the stage look at Ben as though he is sort of benighted, and I'm not sure they're wrong, at least politically he doesn't seem to have much of a clue. A while ago, I'm pretty sure I would have ranked Carson above Trump and Fiorina, but not now, his lack of a clue has become too obvious.

Carly Fiorina: Ms. Fiorina has made some noise in the early going.  I'm assuming because people were so enamored with the idea of trotting a female candidate out against Hillary-zilla that they didn't pay any attention to what she actually thought.  Not the first time someone's gender overshadowed the content of their minds, usually it just works the other way around.  Fiorina's critique of "big government" seemed forced, and her attempt at siding with the middle class against the big money interests seemed disingenuous to say the least (former HP CEO).  I don't think Fiorina realizes that the stakes are ratcheting up at this phase and people are actually going to start thinking about the statements she makes and the claims she tosses out there.  Which leads me to...

The Donald:  I know it kind of surprised me when he wasn't the first or even the second name I typed under the category of stooges.  Trump makes vague promises of grand plans, but provides zero evidence or logic or even a framework of a plan.  Trump uses the phrase, "many things," way too often to be trusted, and he is patently unwilling to provide us with any evidence as to what these "many things" are.  I get the distinct impression that Trump is used to being able to buffalo and obfuscate his way around difficult things like reason.  He does seem to be learning to turn the crazy down just a little bit and seem a tad more like an actual person than a cartoon character.  He's still ahead in the polls, but I think the real politicians are going to get a bead on him pretty soon.

My next category is the Idealogues:

Ted Cruz: Cruz is probably the most dangerous assassin on this list.  Cruz can make his particular brand of toxicity sound sensible and reasonable. He rarely raises his voice or gets emotional.  He keeps his anger under control and is therefore not prone to the sputtering gaffs that can derail an entire campaign (Howard Dean anyone? John McCain even?)  Cruz is a ruthless guy though, he will cut throats to get what he wants.  He is, in short, Richard M. Nixon.  The idea of President Cruz, quite frankly scares me more than President Trump, and not just because of my progressive leanings.  Cruz scares the old, conservative me, because he's so inflexible and calculating. He is absolutely sure that he is right, and that friends and neighbors makes him muy peligroso.

Mike Huckabee: Mike is a preacher, he gives a good sermon, he paints some powerful pictures.  Last night he talked about walking through the charred ruins of America with his two boys, and he wasn't talking about California after the wildfires.  He talked about fighting "The Clinton Machine" for his entire life, and finally he suggested that we solve our healthcare crisis by "simply" curing Diabetes, heart disease, cancer and Alzheimers.  (facepalm) Shucks Mike, why didn't Barack Obama think up that idea?  Let's just stop people from getting sick and then we don't have to worry about health insurance!  Brilliant.  Actually, as a preacher you ought to remember a story about a guy who was able to cure diseases with a word and make everything all better, they crucified him.

Rand Paul: I would almost let Paul into the next category, except for the fact that his ideas are shaky, and he seems to believe them pretty deeply.  But I have some sympathy for Paul, because it would appear that he is at least trying to be a grown up, which as you know, I admire in my politicians.  A few times last night Paul said, "you're going to  have to raise the age," with regard to medicare and social security, and he does seem to understand that fixing things is going to require sacrifice.  This in and of itself is important, because at the bottom of this list there are jesters and clowns who think that snapping their fingers and turning loose the dogs of the free market are like magic solutions to all of problems.  Paul seems to firmly believe that (regulated) free markets are actually better at finding solutions to the big problems, as long as there is a profit motive.  That remains to be seen.

Which brings me to my final category, Legitimate Candidates:

Marco Rubio: Rubio has a big problem: he is too young and he comes across as a bit of a Momma's boy.  His ideas are pretty much the stock Republican dogma of the past fifty years, and he has some real alpha males to fight off if he wants to get to the top.  For some reason, and this is a highly subjective judgment, I just don't like him very much.  He's sort of smarmy and I'm pretty sure Ted Cruz gives him wedgies after gym class.

Jeb Bush: All I really have to say is, please not another Bush.  Jeb seems to have magically developed a severe disdain for government, which would make me question why he wants to run one.  Except I don't really believe anything he says.  The Bush machine is working him like a puppet, and the scary thing is that machine just may have enough gas in it for one more run.  They did get W elected twice, so I'm not writing anything off yet.

Chris Christie: God help me, I like Chris Christie, and I'm not really sure why.  What I think I admire about him is his ability to have moments of clarity.  He can say things that I disagree with, but at least I can see his logic.  He can be funny and disarming, but at the same time you know you can't really trust him.  He has enough independent thinking ability to be a Cowboy fan as the Governor of New Jersey.  I'm not saying being a Cowboy fan is good, merely that it shows a good amount of chutzpah and a willingness to go against the grain.  In short, Christie is like that friend who you think is kind of fun to be around, but whom you also know would totally stab you in the back if it suited his purposes, in other words, he's a politician from New Jersey. Christie is a serious candidate because he is like Billy Clinton, teflon, nothing sticks to him, at least not for long.  He keeps popping back up, and the sheer force of his personality makes us take him back. Caveat Emptor.

John Kasich: If I had to, I could vote for Kasich.  He's a serious man, who has a serious political track record. His ideas creep close enough to a moderate position to at least not make me throw up in my mouth a little.  He also recognizes how screwy and crooked the whole political process is right now. He seems as cranky and angry at the gubmint as some of the others, but there seems to be a middle ground for him between the way things are now and let's blow it up as a reform strategy.  In short, I suppose he is the grown up I was looking for on this side of the aisle. He still seems to have a hostility issue with the media and the idea of government, which makes me wonder if he really could handle the job, but unlike a lot of the others, the more I listen to him the less crazy.  In the rather terrible format of a debate between 10 people, with three moderators who ended up being far too involved and deserving of some of the invective that the candidates launched their way, it's hard to really look sane (Think the Mad Hatter's tea party). I think Kasich actually is, or would be in a general election where he doesn't have to pander quite so much.

Goodness, that was exhausting.  Which leads me to one really solid conclusion: ten candidates is too much.  The GOP needs to weed out some of the mess for this garden to grow.

The Horror

Have you ever considered any real freedoms?

Freedom from the opinion of others... even the opinions of yourself.

-Colonel Kurtz, Apocalypse Now

It worries me a little when Marlon Brando's Colonel Kurtz begins to seem sane.  You need to know that Apocalypse Now is one of my favorite movies, and it is a favorite because it combines the rather insightful exploration of the human psyche from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, with some really great acting by Duvall, Sheen, Hopper, and especially a truly menacing and bald Marlon Brando.  One of the things that elevates the performance it gives us something that we rarely see in movies: ambiguity.  Kurtz is certainly unhinged, he's brutal, he is certifiably off of the deep end and in the grip of some pretty full blown psychosis, but he's also kinda sort of right about a lot of stuff, particularly the darkness and violence of war.

Brando was a nightmare to work with at this phase of his career, he made irrational requests and by all accounts got a little bit too in character when it came to playing a genocidal maniac hiding in a jungle ruin.  Making Apocalypse Now, reported sent both Francis Ford Coppola (director) and Martin Sheen (Captain Willard) into a state of nervous breakdown.  What they produced, however, stands up as one of the true works of prophetic art in cinema, and by that I don't just mean a good movie.  There are lots of good movies that tell a good story and maybe even have a bit of an edge to them, but what I mean for the purposes of this classification is a movie that challenges the audience to see something about themselves that they probably would rather not see.  War movies have a certain gravitas in this area and Apocalypse Now opened the door on our collective experience in Southeast Asia and led to other films which plumbed the depths of the soul of this American Empire (Full Metal Jacket, Platoon), but even those powerful films were sort of second tier reflections on violence and basically just reiterate the truth that war is hell.

It also does something else that, I think, is a quality of prophetic art: it provokes a strong feeling.  Either you love it or you hate it.  There's not a lot of middle ground.  I have watched it many times, and I always come away with a feeling of having been somewhere dangerous.  But I know people who have watched it and just felt confused and maybe even a little offended.

Other movies that provoke similar reactions are Citizen Kane, by Orson Welles, and Blue Velvet, by David Lynch.  They are doing remarkable things in telling a visual story, but they also run a high risk of alienating a good part of the audience.  I think really good art, whether it's painting, writing, music or cinema, ought to occasionally take that risk.  When it avoids that risk it runs towards insipidity, which is the affliction of a lot of popular music, television and movies.

Like it or not, art is a commercial venture.  I almost wrote that art has become a commercial venture, but then I remembered that it has sort of always been that way.  After all, the old joke is that most truly innovative and brilliant artists (think Van Gogh) were unappreciated during their lives.  While that is not as true as we sometimes think (for instance Basquiat had a few years of commercial success before kicking off at 27), there is always a bit of a tug of war between making "pure" art and art which is marketable.

A few years ago, my daughter, flush with the thrill of having scribbled enthusiastically for a while, thought she would like to be an artist when she grows up.  As her father, I am suitably impressed with her artistry, I think the things she makes are beautiful, and I will encourage her in any way I can.  She may even have the sort of eccentricity it takes to actually be an artist some day, but unfortunately I know she is probably going to need a day job.  As one who dabbles in writing, I have somewhere an inclination that I would like to do it more.  I see some very bad writing littering the bestseller lists.  E.L. James, Nicholas Sparks, Stephenie Meyer and her sparkly vampires, all make obscene amounts of money for writing terrible novels that have had the good fortune of becoming popular.

And no, I'm not a snob, I understand that not everyone can be Steinbeck or Fitzgerald, I understand the need to read things for fun, I have read Harry Potter, as well as The Hunger Games, as an adult, for fun.  But I question the system that encourages the cynical production of formulaic tripe, which is essentially pornography, and I'm not just talking about Fifty Shades.  Let's take the prolific Mr. Sparks, who has, thanks to my wife, wasted at least a dozen hours of my life by telling the same story over and over again: boy meets girl, boy and or girl have problems, and maybe even die, but love is great anyway, and even death can't stop a happy ending.  Add scenic, romantic setting, comic relief, two attractive young actors gazing intently into each other's eyes, steamy love scene that still manages a PG-13 rating, blend, serve and roll around in the piles of cash that people will shovel into your driveway.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you pop culture...

A Season of Faith's Meh

I follow baseball like a lot of people go to church, which is to say sporadically and with highly varied levels of enthusiasm.  In years where the Phillies, and Pirates are out of it (I'm thinking about maybe adding the Orioles to my list, because Maryland), I really pay only passing attention to the playoffs and the World Series.  Sometimes I have an anti-rooting interest, like when the Yankees are playing.  I might be enticed by a really good story, like when the Red Sox broke the curse, or if the Cubs ever do, but in a year like this one, where the Kansas City Royals are playing that other New York team... it's just kind of blah.
Don't get me wrong, the Royals are an entertaining bunch, and I thought the way that KC fans punked the entire MLB All Star voting process was fifty shades of awesome, but despite an innate rivalry between the Phillies and the Mets, I just can't get riled up enough about them to even root against them. They're like that team that seems like a lovable loser even when they're winning.  It's a talent I suppose, maybe the product of sharing a market with the Yankees (I think a similar dynamic exists with the NHL: Rangers, hate em, Islanders, aw come on guys).
So far, 2015 is a year of being underwhelmed with sports.  If I wasn't playing fantasy football I think I would be totally disinterested even in the NFL, because the Iggles and the Stillers are both slogging through terribly mediocre seasons (The Steeler's because Roethlisberger is injured and on the sidelines, the Eagles because Bradford is profoundly broken and is still on the field).  I'm not really sure how to even watch hockey anymore, the NHL seems to have been swallowed up by obscure cable channels, and I guess I really just don't care enough about it try and find it.  My only interest in Basketball is the NCAA tournament and the Sixers, the latter of which is a multilevel catastrophe of comical ineptitude and the former of which doesn't happen until March.
Maybe I could watch more Soccer, it was fun in Spain.
This all gets me thinking about how we can go dry sometimes.  Even the most passionate people just run out of ideas sometimes, and allowing your zeal to lag is not necessarily a cardinal sin.  Maybe it's just a part of life.  If you can become apathetic about sports, which really requires very little from you in order to "participate," then how quickly will you burn out of something (like religion) that requires you to actually participate.  I think this might go a long way towards explaining the popularity of TV and radio preachers.  You can listen to them without being required to do anything (except send them money).
I can get so bored with a football game that I find myself dozing off or flipping back and forth between the game and an episode of Mythbusters that I have seen four times before.  What's to stop that from happening in Church?  Seriously?
Look, if God showed up on a regular basis and put on a show, the church would be full every week.  If, all of the sudden, I could do miracles and healing like Jesus, my sanctuary would be filled to overflowing.  If every week in church there was a pyrotechnic display of theophany and choirs of angels heralding the presence of God, we would not have to do outreach or mission.  People would find us no mater what.
No faith would be required.  No hope would remain, there would only be the biding of time before the Lord spoke.
As I mentioned above, the thing that keeps me interested in football in an otherwise down year is fantasy sports.  And no not the for money kind, just the "old" fashioned kind where you track the stats of players on your team and put their points up against the players from another team.  What this does is give you a stake in what is going on.  It puts you in a place to care and make decisions.  Like when Roethlisberger when down with a knee injury, I was bummed because I like the Steelers, but it was double trouble because he was my fantasy QB.  I had to do something about that injury, I had to find a quarterback from among the leftovers who could get me through the 6 weeks or so that Big Ben was going to be sidelined.  It required some attention, and it got me involved with Tyrod Taylor and the Buffalo Bills, a team I would otherwise not even pay any attention.  Then Taylor went down and I had to go really deep for Blake Bortles of the Jacksonville Jaguars, holy cow, I have never even given a second thought to the Jags until now.
Participation increased my level of awareness and understanding.  By having a vested interest in events I was not bored.
Are you bored by church?  Try getting involved.
Does it feel like there's nothing there for you?  Of course not if you're a spectator or a consumer.  Faith requires investment and participation, honestly you'll be amazed how much of a difference it makes.

Mic Drop?

Watch this, I'm going to have an argument with nobody in particular.
I see these things, these posts on the interweb.  Memes and little inspirational placards that talk about salvation and how you ought to get right with God, or believe the right thing or something like that.  The one I've seen a handful of places is quote attributed to a young man named LeCrae, who is a Christian hip-hop artist (yes, that is apparently a thing you can be).  It goes like this:

If I'm wrong about God, then I wasted my life.

If you're wrong about God, then you wasted your eternity.

Boom, mic drop, exit stage right, haters sit down, Jesus is in the hizz-ouse.

Wait, what?  If he's wrong about God he wasted his life?  How exactly? By loving your neighbor? By forgiving people? By worshiping? By being part of a community that supports you in your struggles and your journey?  Maybe I'm losing it, but I don't feel at all like my relationship with God, and trying to follow Jesus is wasting my life.  On the contrary, it's giving my life a fullness and meaning that it absolutely did not have when I was an angry agnostic young man..

Don't get me wrong, I can say the last words of the Nicene Creed: "We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come," with conviction and assurance, but let's be honest, that should not be the focus of a life of faith.  I'm looking forward to the life of the world to come alright, but in the meantime I'm learning to love how faith in a Living God shapes my plain old Thursdays.

I'm wondering too, if maybe it's going to take a bit of a shift away from emphasizing eternity; heaven, hell, and the whole lot, in order for the good news to start running wild in the world once again.

Let's think about how this sort of "argument" sounds to an outsider, I mean if they don't immediately write it off as nonsense and write you off as a religious nut.  First of all the worldview it represents is that there is a way to be right about God (not be in a right relationship to God).  In this context, it means believing that God is real and that Jesus is the Son of God (or the second "person" of the Trinity).  Being "wrong" about God means basically disagreeing with the speaker on just about any aspect of faith and life.  Being wrong about God = Going to Hell, being utterly destroyed etc.

Deep breath.

I study theology.  In fact, I guess you could say I am a professional theologian.  I deal with Scripture and matters of faith all day, every day.  And the one thing I am absolutely sure about, in an irrevocable and humbling fashion, is that I am wrong about God.  I hope not entirely wrong, but I also will never claim to be completely right.  As a Christian, I believe that the closest I can get to knowing exactly what God is like is to look at what he showed us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus talked about the kingdom of heaven, but I know he was not talking about what we call heaven or eternity, a lot of the time. He was frequently talking about how we are supposed to treat each other as children of God, rather than some eternal reward.  However, there are enough times that he pretty clearly references resurrection and life everlasting, that I trust it.  What it's like, I don't know.  How it works? I don't know. I know and try to work at the part of it that is at hand, rather than what is coming.

Living with this faith and within this framework does not "waste my life," even if it's not true.  It gives me hope in hopeless situations and allows me to face challenges with dignity and it inspires me to love people in a way that I never would otherwise.

When the only power I had to answer to was my own self, I was not free. When the only guiding principle of my life was what felt good, I felt terrible.  When my highest principle was: "look out for number one," I was a miserable wretch.  When I started to build a relationship with God I was given life, real life, not the dim facsimile of life I had before.

It occurs to me with increasing frequency that we (meaning Christians) have put too many eggs in the eternity basket.  We use the word "saved" rather than "changed," which subtly peels the emphasis away from actually acting any different now.  It's mostly our loss, because we're missing the blessedness of the immanent kingdom of God.  But it's also a loss to the world, because we're not as busy being the blessedness of the immanent kingdom of God as we should be.

We're too busy telling people we're right and they're wrong.

The Times They Are a Changing

In my line of work you run, fairly often, into the brick wall of what people like and what they absolutely do not want to change.  Sometimes it's morals (you know traditional values), sometimes it's aesthetic preferences (music style, decorations), but it really can be anything that's changing.  On Sunday, I was talking to some folks at church about Bob Dylan and the backlash about his introduction of electric instruments.  As you can see here some people were really upset about this in 1966, just about 50 years ago.  Now, even among non-Dylan fans, Highway 61 revisited pretty much has to rank up there as one of the most influential albums of all time.
If you take the time to watch the video above you will notice that there is disgust and genuine outrage about Dylan's new sound.  It wasn't as if he was the first person to pick up an electric guitar, it was just that those folks all wanted Blowin' in the Wind and they got Like a Rolling Stone, which you have to admit are two pretty different sounding tunes.
Dylan didn't owe anyone anything.  He's an artist, and as such he reserves the right to make art, regardless of whether or not people like it.  I give Dylan credit for being willing to take a risk on something new, with successful innovations like Highway 61 and not so successful innovations like Self Portrait  and Knocked Out Loaded.  Recently (yes he is kicking the crap out of 75 and is still releasing new albums) he released an album of Sinatra-esque tunes called Shadows in the Night, which received some critical acclaim, but you really have to be into Dylan to dig his 70 plus year old vocal chords croaking through that sort of thing.  Dylan has been able to release a highly inaccessible failure like Planet Waves (1974) and then when all the criticism that he has finally lost the touch has died down, he blasts us with Blood on the Tracks (1975), which is another of the all time great albums.  In 1997, after nearly 20 years of shuffling along with albums that only die hard fans really liked (Oh, Mercy, in 1989 was a little bit of an exception) Dylan came at us with Time Out of Mind, which once again got all the music critic types all riled up about his genius and his place in music history.  You really just never know with Bob.  I wouldn't be too amazed if he decided to try Rap (after all, Subterranean Homesick Blues).
The point is, he will always take a risk, and he always seems to be willing to tick off the fan base.  I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that if you're not offending someone, you're probably not innovating in any way that really matters.  Think about how some people still react to social media, as if it's the worst thing that ever happened to the human race, or how the same crowd is usually pretty wound up about people using cell phones all the time and ignoring people around them, because this:

Is apparently different.  Because of the hats maybe?

Actually, as I looked for that picture, I found extensive and grumpy articles claiming that the comparison of people ignoring each other with newspapers was patently different from people ignoring each other with cell phones.  Not buying it.  It's the same thing, because people are people, we're stubborn, self-involved and easily habituated.  All of which means we are sort of hard-wired to resist change, even good change, even electric guitars, even this:

God said to Abraham, "Kill me your son."

Abe said, "Man you must be puttin' me on."

God said, "No."

Abe said, "What?"

God said, "You can do what you wanna but, the next time you see me coming you'd better run."

Abe said, "Where you want this killing done?"

God said, "Out on old highway 61."

Danger Lama

I'm not going to try and pretend I fully understand the complicated and tragic relationship between China and Tibet.  It does seem to me that if a group of people, living in a fairly easily defined geographical area want to be their own bosses, they should be allowed to do so (yes, Texas, I mean you too, and Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and South Carolina too if you want).  The Chinese government apparently does not share my generous attitude towards those who don't want join their club.
They consider the Dalai Lama to be a "dangerous separatist."  The Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of Tibet, he is considered to be the latest incarnation of the Buddha and has been exiled from his own country since he was a boy.  You know him you love him, he's this guy:

I know, you're thinking I just went and found a picture of the Dalai Lama looking like an adorable laughing old man, but actually it wasn't even hard to do that.  He laughs a lot, he is by all outward appearances a kind and gentle man who talks mostly about how we need to treat each other better than we do, and rarely, if ever, really takes the Chinese government to task for occupying his home for so long.  "Dangerous Separatist."

I confess that the Dalai Lama is on the short list of people living today I would really like to hang out with and talk about faith and humanity. (Desmond Tutu, Pope Francis, Colin Powell and Neil Gaiman are also on that list, maybe we could make that happen). So when I hear that the Chinese government actually severed diplomatic ties with Britain because Prince Charles talked to him (a situation that is in the process of being repaired as we speak), I'm all like, "what is wrong with China?"  If they are hating that hard on the Lama there is something fatally wrong with them, and we don't have to take a Donald Trump / Jim Webb hard-ass approach with them.  Just stand back and watch them implode.

Seriously.  Just stay the heck away from them, they're insane and eventually that insanity is going to bite them.  While I may not be a big fan of Laissez Faire economic policy, I am becoming more of a fan of a Laissez Faire policy when it comes to international political nuttiness. China has been trying to punch at the Dalai Lama for most of his whole life, and he still laughs at them, and I suspect he forgives them and loves them in the special way that only truly holy people can really love their enemies (I know, who would have thunk that Buddhism would be so Christian). 

I keep going back to a little bit of advice my Dad gave me a few years ago: "The Devil always over plays his hand." Which in practice means that when you have an "enemy" that seems overwhelming, a difficult boss at work, a troublesome family member, a totalitarian dictator or a party of obstructionists in the house majority (too specific?), just give them enough rope and let them hang themselves.

It really is remarkable how often and how beautifully it works.  I think that's the truth behind what Jesus says about not resisting the evil doer, it's not that we're just supposed to seek out all the suffering we can find, it is rather that he understood something about the nature of evil. Evil feeds on violence and hatred, so when you react to it with violence and hatred you are not "fighting" it, you are feeding it.

The Chinese government consider the Lama a dangerous man because he gives people hope, because they look at him and see a man who smiles, and loves and forgives despite all the reasons he has to hate and fear and seek revenge.

Keep smiling your Holiness.

The Limits of Self Interest

Thanks to Bernie Sanders the word Socialism has been pulled forcibly away from the inevitable association that those of us who remember even part of the Cold War have always had with the word.  After all, when I was growing up the greatest bogeyman of all was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR.  They were the ones we were facing down with the fate of the world in our hands, our nukes and subs and planes and missiles against theirs, our freedom ringing against their oppression, our noble democracy against their "evil empire."
There was this kid I went to high school with who was an admirer, for some reason, of the Soviets.  He was always going on about how the Spetsnaz, the Soviet version of Navy Seals or Green Berets, were totally hardcore awesome.  I thought he was a bit crazy. I thought he was crazy for reasons I didn't entirely understand.  It seemed like admiring anything in an enemy or an adversary was wrong.  But, in truth, not learning from your opponent is a terrible mistake.  Not looking at what they value, and seeing for yourself if there is any merit, is like wearing a blindfold.  Hatred and fear blind us to the truth, and there is truth to be found everywhere.
Eventually, I got around to reading Karl Marx for myself, admittedly after the Cold War was comfortably over, and I noticed that his critique of the so-called free market was actually rather spot on, if slightly overzealous in his indictment of the bourgeoisie, in that he assumed that the bourgeoisie were somehow acting with a consciousness of what they were doing.  Marx and Engels cross the line of what I would call sanity when they ascribe some sort of sinister master plan to what I truly believe is just the innate action of human greed and self interest.
However, consider the following from The Communist Manifesto:

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations.  It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self interest, than callous "cash payment." It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation.  It  has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of numberless and feasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade.  In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, naked, shameless direct, brutal exploitation.

Did Communism work better? Certainly not, but that does not mean that the diagnosis of the fundamental problem and limitations of self interest is not valid.  Somewhere, somehow, we need to get our heads screwed on straight and realize that, to a large extent human progress is going to lead us in circles. Marx described the dethroning of feudal oligarchs by the merchant class, who became the bourgeoisie, who in their turn inflicted the same sort of indignity on the proletariat that the kings and lords did before, but perhaps even worse because they had not the sense of duty that the best nobles had, human beings once again became chattel, only by a different mechanism.
I suspect Marx would look at the current trend of increasing income inequality and the frightful accumulation of wealth in the "one percent," and say, "I told you so." I'll use the trick Moses used on God: "Come on America, do you want to prove that those Commies were right about us?"
The theory and practice of laissez faire capitalism are proving to be as brutal to large portions of the population as Communism was.  The New Deal, which was profoundly socialist, brought us out of the Great Depression and created the safety net for the poor and the old that we spend rather a lot of time arguing about these days.  It would be madness to dismantle it.
It would be madness because our fundamental approach to money is still polluted by sin: greed, gluttony, pride, avarice, lust, most of the big ones.
The proof is, as they say, in the pudding.  Look at the world we inhabit, people who perform necessary and vital functions are undervalued, while those who literally deal in the abstractions of finance make millions.  And I'm not talking up the working class hero angle either, when I talk about people being undervalued, I'm talking about auto workers and plumbers to be sure, but I'm also talking about school teachers, nurses, some doctors and even (gulp) lawyers, particularly those lawyers who give themselves to public defense and civil service instead of going for big money working for corporations.
The system we have is rigged to allow wild success to a select few, and keep everyone else at bay with the vaguest of promises that it might come to them someday.  Consider the example of professional athletes. Colleges and minor leagues are able to thrive by dangling the mere suggestion that you might some day make the big time. The NCAA has even colluded with the NFL and the NBA to practically force high school students to attend college and work for free for at least a year before they're eligible for the big show.  When they do "make it big" they get supposedly get paid enormous amounts of money, at least if their agent is competent and no one robs them blind.  But you hear a lot of stories about athletes whose life falls apart at some point when the checks stop coming, which they can do as quick as you tear your anterior cruciate ligament.  This is no accident, this is a system that is broken and unjust at it's very core.
The only way this endures is for people to continue to wear the blinders of self interest.  When we fail to realize that we are all connected and that it is an outrage that poverty even exists in this country, exploitation will go unchallenged.
I started out down this track this morning by remembering a moment a few years ago when the town I was living in was holding public meetings regarding the installation of a municipal water supply.  The water in the town was bad to begin with, lot's of iron and sulfur, it sort of smelled funny and turned stuff brown, but to top it off, an underground gas tank had leaked years ago and some folks had benzene in their wells.  That's a like a super cancer causing sort of thing, and really not something you want to have in your tap water.  I actually heard some of my neighbors in this small town, get angry about the water project because, "My well is just fine."
It almost made my heart break.  This was a small town, everyone is all about being neighborly, until it might cost them money or "force" them to change.  Then it becomes, "sorry about the cancer juice in your water, but mine is just fine."  It definitely made me think that people (and it was not just one person that expressed that opinion by the way) cannot be simply left to their own devices.  Raw self interest will run us into the ditch every time.

A Thumbnail Sketch

Yesterday I watched the Democratic debate on the interweb, because on Tuesday night I chose to spend time with friends drinking Guiness and playing trivia at a bar rather than yelling at the TV.  So I'm a little late on my analysis, and quite frankly since I had already seen some reaction tweets before I saw the thing itself, I already had some things to look for, but here goes.
The Democratic nomination is being contested by a mere five (possibly six if Biden jumps in) candidates.  Hilary Clinton, current front runner and the object of passionately divided voter feelings, Bernie Sanders, your crazy uncle who has some really good ideas but may just be a little too unhinged to actually get elected, Martin O'Malley, the Ken Doll of politics (seriously, if you were going to invent a fictional politician it would look like that guy), Lincoln Chafee, New England switcheroo politician who claims to be a block of granite, and Jim Webb, who I think is sort of the Dem's answer to Trump, at least in the red, angry guy sense.
This is the first debate, and the issues are sort of still in the introductory phase.  In addition to that the debate format wasn't your standard equal time sort of arrangement.  The talk moved based on who was asked the question, and then gave anyone whose positions/records were attacked time to respond.  Webb was apparently not a fan of this format because it decidedly favored Clinton, Sanders and O'Malley over he and Chafee, who were positioned on the ends of the row and for most of the debate were a non-factor.  Unfortunately this caused Webb's most memorable contribution to be complaining about not getting a chance to talk and sounding like a particularly grumpy teenager trying to get the teacher's attention.
Webb and Chafee being present on the Democrat's slate is a testament to the fact that the Republican Party has migrated towards extreme and dogmatic positions.  Chafee actually used to be a Republican, fiscally conservative but with some socially liberal tendencies that put him out of the good graces of the GOP, he became an independent and now a Democrat.  Webb seemed hawkish enough to belong up there with Trump, he's a military guy and had some blustery things to say about Putin and China and how he would set stuff in order, but I don't think there's too many Democrats in the "kick-butt and take names" school of foreign policy these days.
The optics are bad for both the marginal candidates, and let's face it, in American politics, as much as we wish it wasn't so, optics are important. They both just sort of look wrong for this part.  Bernie does too, but I'll get back to him.
Clinton and O'Malley are the polished stones of this bunch.  O'Malley has worked his way up through the executive offices of Mayor of Baltimore and Governor of Maryland.  Not long after I moved here I saw O'Malley in Panera Bread over in Waldorf, and to tell you the truth he totally sort of blends with the business/political crowd that you often see around the DC area.  In fact, if it hadn't been for the person I was eating with saying, "Hey, there's Martin O'Malley," I probably wouldn't have noticed him.  Outside of Maryland O'Malley has the advantage of a pretty blank slate and the disadvantage of the fact that no one knows who he is and what he's about.  Which is why, if I had to pick a winner of Tuesday's debate, it would be him, because he showed up and didn't humiliate himself or make any Biden-esque gaffs.  He adequately introduced his record and his platform and he didn't look totally outshined by Clinton or Sanders.  First debate down, and you're not being laughed off the stage, that's success in politics these days (sorry Chafee, the interweb is taking you down for that whole "block of granite" comment).
Clinton, likewise came across as polished and confident, which should surprise absolutely zero people at this point.  If anything, Hilary suffers from over-exposure.  We have been watching her since Bill was in office and she was the first lady.  It has come to seem like a fait-accompli that she will be our first woman president, even after Barack Obama snuck up on her in 2004.  Benghazi and emails aside (and for everyone but Fox News they really are passe) she has only made her case stronger by serving as Secretary of State.  You can absolutely see her becoming POTUS, which makes some happy and gives others howling fits of angst.  She is a politician to the core.  She has compromised, changed and "evolved" her positions about many things, and of course the political sensibilities of the age call that waffling or being duplicitous (thus Chafee's block of granite statement). But as Clinton very shrewdly pointed out: changing your mind is a sign of wrestling with issues and being open to new information, and sometimes, gulp, compromise.
Honestly, compromise seems to be a totally lost cause in politics at the moment, and if there is one thing that makes me think Clinton would be a better POTUS than Bernie, it is precisely that part of her nature that can play both sides of an issue, and follow the course of expediency.  If politicians are wolves, she is the Alpha female, and maybe that means she's the right one for the job.  She is certainly no stooge.
Which brings me to Bernie.  Bernie is no wolf.  Bernie is an Israelite in whom there is no guile. Bernie is not trying to be cool, he is not trying to project an image.  He is a man of demonstrable integrity concerning his convictions. Other people have lamented Super PACs, but formed them anyway.  Other people have bemoaned the use of personal attacks and mudslinging in political discourse, but then crafted their own attack ads and got in the dirt. Bernie proudly announces that he has done none of that.  Sanders insists on treating his fellow candidates with respect, which actually looks weird when you see it (that's how far we have fallen). I heard him say positive things about the people sharing the stage with him and saw him refuse to take the bait when given the opportunity to take a clear shot.
I started by liking Bernie's policy angle (I guess I'm a bit of a socialist), I like his ideas about education, campaign finance, healthcare and I like the fact that he is committed to using military force as a last resort (as he proudly states in the 99-1 vote about the Iraq war, he was the 1).  Honestly, until Bernie came along, I had almost no hope that politics was going to get any better, ever.  What I saw in this debate, the general civility and reasonableness of the whole thing is, I think, a product of his influence.  He refuses to play certain games. He will always volunteer to be the adult in the room.  He will argue loudly and passionately about his positions, and he can seem a bit bombastic in certain moments (especially when he talks about the corrupting influence of money in politics), but when it comes to addressing the lady to his left, he was kind and gentlemanly.  When he talked to Webb on his right, he was respectful and honored his service. It's not about the people being bad people, it's about his belief that his ideas are better.
This election is, as many elections have been, a referendum on the soul of our nation. Can we dare to go to battle with a man like Bernie Sanders?  He's such an idealist.  He's willing to be the voice in the wilderness, and I suspect he would be utterly ineffective as POTUS. He would have to change a whole system that has been broken for a very long time, and I'm not sure one guy, even the Commander in Chief has that sort of stroke.
I suspect that none of his amazing ideas would ever make it into practice, because they would require to great a move from where we are now and the direction we're going.  I hope we stop the insanity of perpetual war, and the crushing expense of healthcare and education, and Bernie has pushed us in that direction.  I hope the disastrous decision of Citizen's United is reversed somehow some way, and Bernie will shout that from the rooftops. I just don't know if the American people are ready and willing to get on the bandwagon of putting the good of all over self interest of the few.  I sort of hope that the middle class is ready to realize the place they're in and who put them there.  I sort of hope they're ready to rise up and reject the narrative that we just can't do any better and vote in their own best interest.
The cynic in me says that dollars are going to rule the day, and that the ideas Bernie is cooking would just be too expensive and involve too much pain to too many rich and powerful people.  After the first debate, my head says that Clinton or O'Malley would probably be fine, but my heart still says Bernie.

I Read it For the Articles

I heard a BBC News report on the radio this morning: Playboy Magazine will no longer include pictures of nude women.  The BBC had an interview with a prominent feminist who was asked how she felt about this, and with a real sense of irony, she had to admit that it probably was not a total victory.  Removing the aspect of the magazine that objectified women, and reduced them to airbrushed and impossible things for men to covet and lust after, who were defined by their turn-ons and turn-offs, well that has to be good.
Except for the fact that, in addition to your Grandma would call smut, Playboy also, at one point was a cultural bell cow.  They did interviews with important people and they let them use bad words, which apparently is something many important people do a bit.  The feminist in question had to admit that Playboy probably did more to improve relations of all sorts between men and women, because it essentially taught men about what women like, and encouraged them to care, because if you want to have any chance with one of the girls that look like Miss September, you probably should do more than just grunt and stammer.
Lamentably, the reason why Playboy is making this move is not because they suddenly decided that they had objectified enough women and were changing their ways, it's because they can't (or maybe wont) try to out-porn the internet.  Yes, essentially they're just throwing in the towel.  Playboy has held on to what I suppose is the high ground when it comes to porn, meaning that they tried really hard not to be disgusting.  The silliness, contrived poses and obvious manipulation of women as sex objects, all well and good, but let's keep it "tasteful," within the bounds of what we do.  Let's try to sort of make it just a shade racier than the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, and not go much further.
The internet is a cesspool that probably makes even Larry Flynt, not to mention Hugh Hefner, a little uneasy.  This decision is a capitulation to that reality.  It also, I suppose, takes a certain restraint off of Playboy as a journalistic enterprise.  Playboy has actually had some relevant things to say over the years.  But if you wanted to read an interview or an article they published, you had to get over the sort of awkward moment of buying a Playboy Magazine at the Seven-Eleven.  "I read it for the articles," has been a punchline for years, well now that's the only reason to read it, so let's see if that flies.
This whole scenario interests me on a couple of levels, the first of which is the cultural slide that has led the company that pretty much introduced us to porn to throw up their arms and say, "Y'all are disgusting perverts, we are not going there."  I'm not one of those who says we are on the verge of complete destruction, or one who really even believes that we are becoming worse as time goes by.  What I believe is that evil and sin are pretty much constant factors in human behavior, sometimes they erupt and sometimes they just sort of simmer, but they are always there.  I have read the Bible extensively, and what I find there is pretty much of a type with the sort of twisted depravity that we live with today, and in certain cases (like the end of Judges) it actually turns the stomach of someone who has watched Eli Roth movies.
I believe we are making some progress on some fronts, and we're getting worse on others, nothing's shocking.  Playboy quitting the nekkid lady business does not solve our dysfunctional sexuality problem, or mean that women are no longer going to be objectified, it does demonstrate something that is even more interesting to me: adaptation.
My vocation is facing a similar challenge when relating to the changing culture.  In fact, we have many of the same problems as Playboy Magazine.  To state it as simply as I can, no one wants what we're selling anymore.  Is it a stretch to compare the church to Playboy?  Maybe, but bear with me a second.  Both of us were once a cultural force, and both of us are not any more (or at least not as much of one).  The church's cultural hegemony has been around a lot longer than Hugh Heffner (I know, that's hard to believe), but that probably just means the habits we picked up as a result are going to be tougher to kick.  We both have to deal rather directly with sin.  They picked a couple of  sins (lust and gluttony) and decided to roll with them, while we decided to try to take on and conquer all of them.  They tried to help people "get over hangups about sex," while we were busy trying to keep people hung up about sex, but somehow or other neither approach to healthy human sexuality really seemed to work out so hot.
Because sin.
Because sin is a force of nature, and it is utterly beyond our capability to control it.
That is why we must forgive and be forgiven.
That is why grace must be a thing.
What I admire about this whole shift is the guts that it takes to change the thing that you are famous for, because you won't capitulate to the demands of "the market."  How is it that Playboy has figured this out so much faster than the church?  We scurry about trying give people what they want.  We capitulate to a consumerist culture, we fight with the world and with each other in the name of the Prince of Peace.  We try to make like we are cool, entertaining, spiritual and all kinds of things that we think are going to be attractive to the world, and we are continually surprised when it doesn't work out. We sometimes have a hard time marking out those lines that we just should not cross, even in order to "reach more people."
The way I see it, we really only have one thing to offer this broken, sinful world: the grace of God in Jesus Christ.  That is, or should be, our content.
Everything else is vanity and chasing after the wind.

Three Things

Outrage is in no short supply.  Honestly, just on the ride into work today I heard a story on the radio about ethnic cleansing in Iraq that made me want to cry tears of rage and cry out to God to just wipe our miserable species off the face of the earth, yep it is that bad sometimes. I don't have anything to do about that stuff other than weep for the fact that we are still a savage race of (relatively) hairless, upright walking apes, who happen to be armed to the teeth.  But I have three things that I would like to remove from our list of outrageous outrages.  I'm trying to do you a favor, because I have heard people I know get at least semi-incensed about all of these.  So here are things you can cross off of your list:
1. Obama/ Hilary Clinton / the Illuminati / the smoking man from the X-files, are not coming to take your guns.  I know this is a bit of hot button at the moment, but let's be clear, even the most pro-gun control folks are not prescribing the removal of any and all firearms from the hands of responsible, law abiding people.  There is no need to get all riled up about that, really the best case scenario for gun regulation in the future is to simply make it harder to buy them and to certify in some manner the people that own and use them.  Your deer rifle and bird gun are not in jeopardy, and people who tell you that's the case are preying on your fear so that you will give them money to fight against things that, if you really stop to think about it, make sense for ALL of us.
2. Transgender people using "your" public bathroom.  Why is it that this is even a thing to worry about?  Is it that we find the whole issue of transgender people so odd that we search for something to be outraged about?  Three things about this, first of all, and this applies mostly to the ladies because y'all seem to be more wound up about who gets to go potty in your presence: how do you know?  The thing about transgender people is that they sort of try to live as the gender they identify with, ergo a transgender man who believes he is a she will look and act like a woman, including, I'm guessing, sitting down to pee, in a stall that is designed to give you some privacy while you do your super secret bathroom stuff.  Which leads me to the second thing, what are y'all doing in there that is so needful of privacy?  (tangentially, why is this argument making me sound so much more southern).
Thirdly, having just done some travelling in Europe, I have experienced unisex bathroom facilities, including shower facilities.  After the initial shock to my 'Merican sensibilities it's really not that big of a deal, it is in no way sexy, and honestly I think it would probably make everyone feel a little more connected to our common humanity if we all peed together (okay, maybe I'm going too far on that last one).
3. Finally, I would like to ask, nay implore, the American people, citizens of this immigrant nation, the great melting pot, this social experiment forged out of diverse people who come together to form one nation, E Pluribus Unum, out of many, one: can you stop being so angry when you are asked to press one for English?  Why does a Spanish translation on the menu at McDonalds give you case of the mads?  I get it, I no longer speak Gaelic, or even with an Irish accent, those people who are stubbornly refusing to learn English make for some troublesome moments here and there, but is it really that bad?  Again, having recently spent over a month in a country where I did not speak the primary language, I am aware of how it feels on the other end of that stick.  I was keenly aware of the difference between people who accepted my very poor spanglish and sometimes frespanol (french and spanish mixed up) as valid forms of human interaction, and those who got sort of indignant if I didn't know the right word to use for what I was obviously asking for. Being a stranger and an alien is not easy, and bilingual communication when possible is a simple matter of hospitality, so chill.
None of this is going to solve the real problems of the world, but if it helps you be just a little bit calmer as you work your way through the day, then I have accomplished something.  If it helps you to be a little bit more civil to people around you, then I will be very glad. If it actually leads you to treat people with more kindness because you're not so hopping mad, hooray.

Long Term Side Effects

Fall is finally coming.  For the past four months we have shut ourselves up in air conditioning and tried to deal with the murky humidity of mid Atlantic summer.  For most of that time I have been incubating the seeds that were planted on my pilgrimage, but the cool weather seems to be causing them to grow.  This is, of course, a bit out of place given the seed metaphor, but it actually makes complete sense in my world.  Heat and I do not get along.  I find going outside in face-hurting cold to be more desirable than going out into 90 degree summer heat.  Honestly though my favorite seasons are the transitions: spring and fall.  I like 60 degrees, and that crisp feeling in the air.  In the fall, I just want to be outside, even this fall.
During my last few weeks on the Camino, I began to say, "I am done with this."  Obligatory outdoor activity was getting a bit worn, but it was even more than that.  I was done with the whole experience, the pilgrims, the churches, the albergues, the mud and dust of the way, having to say, "Buen Camino" every freaking thirty seconds, especially on the final stretch where we ran into a boom of tourist pilgrims.  I was cranky, I wanted to be home more than anything.
I came home with a new appreciation of home and family and comfort.
And I'm writing this, in part, to remind myself of that fact.
The feet get itchy.  I'm actually feeling the urge to walk for six or eight hours straight.  On one of my routine walks around the lake the other day, I started to consider what I would put in my pack if I were to go for a 30 km walk one day.
I don't so much want to go back to Spain, quite frankly when I'm honest, I still think I'm done with "Buen Camino," but I do want there to be another thing like it, and there really isn't.  Michele will be happy to know that I'm not honestly planning to go anywhere.  I'm just observing what's going on in my head.  I'm sort of looking for new journeys, new walks, new ways to "go."
I sort of wish I had been a little more patient with the end of my Camino, but you can't usually control your own feelings about things.  In the final analysis, I think that impatience and crankiness was part of the journey.  I don't feel like I did the time we just went from Sarria to Santiago, there is no unfinished business with the Camino.  But there is unfinished business in me.
I think I'm going to have to walk more.
I think I'm going to have to put on that cursed pack again.
I think I'm going to have to do more than take a pleasant stroll.
I knew it wasn't about the destination.  I knew that Cathedral wasn't going to finish it.  I knew that even if I walked to Finisterre and Muxia, it wasn't going to stop, even at the very end of the world.
I came home.
I'm glad to be home.
But I keep looking around for the next yellow arrow.

Rickety Absolutes

So we are talking about a populace in which nearly everybody is needy, greedy, envious, angry and alone. We are talking therefore about a politics of estrangement, in which the two sides go at each other with the fervor of extreme righteousness in defense of rickety absolutes that are indefensible and therefore cannot be compromised.

-Wendell Berry, Caught in the Middle (2013), from Our Only World: Ten Essays

I read Wendell Berry for the sake of my sanity.  I read him because he is sternly and sometimes crankily on the side of humanity, being a human, being connected to land and community.  I read him because I think he is a prophet of common sense, of living within limits, but of living full and rich lives.  I read him because he cares about the things that I care about: stewardship of creation, the community of human people, sober and clear headed (some might say bracing) criticism of the violent, greedy darkness that surrounds us every day.

I read him, because more often than not, he hits the nail on the head.  I had a friend once who introduced me to the common grammatical error of modifying an absolute.  The most common one he felt was saying something was "very unique."  Unique means one of a kind, without peer, entirely differentiated from other things. Something is either unique or not, using the modifier "very" is therefore redundant, and from a grammar perspective, wrong.  This is not earth shaking information, in fact, whenever I have passed this on to others, they usually give me a little smile and look that implies I may not be getting an invite to their next cocktail party.

Absolute positions, like absolute words tend to resist modification or compromise.  As I discussed yesterday, if the right to bear arms is, in your mind, an absolute god-given right, if that absolute belief can survive the random killing of children, then you are probably not going to be able to work with anyone who suggests limitations on that right.

Likewise with abortion, if you believe either that a woman should always have the right to terminate a pregnancy for any reason, or if you believe that abortion amounts to murder, you are probably not going to be willing to modify or compromise those absolute positions.

The problem is that the world is not made of or for absolutes, everything is more complicated than we allow it to be, down to the most basic structures of matter, there are high degrees of variation and even a seeming randomness to everything.  If we are to take Scripture seriously, even God changes his mind, when confronted with a valid argument (sometimes even when confronted with a silly argument).  In Exodus we read about God and Moses getting frustrated with the Israelites on several occasions.  In Exodus 32, God is ready to be done with them and consume them in wrath and Moses says, "Why should the Egyptians say, 'It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains and consume them from the face of the earth?'"(v. 12)  He then proceeds to remind God of the covenant with Abraham and the promise, and it says, "The Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people."

God was holding an absolute position: the people are wicked and idolatrous, this is not what I want, I'm going to be done with them.  It's true, by the way, they were pretty wicked and idolatrous, and we remain so to this day.  If there's anyone who is justified in holding an absolute position, it would be God.  But Moses changes God's mind, even though, as we find out, Moses is pretty cheesed off as well.  What happens at the end of the chapter is a compromise, a plague, a punishment for idolatry.

Eventually what happens in the course of the Hebrew Scriptures is that God starts to realize that there is only one defensible absolute position, and that position is love.  Out of that absolute flow justice, mercy and grace, absolute love allows for faith and freedom, and is utterly unassailable: Love is stronger than death.  Any absolute position short of that, is flawed and rickety.  If you can define your position as truly and honestly loving, you stand a chance of defending it, but beware you will also be willing to compromise, forbear and forgive, because those are things that love does.

A defensible absolute can be compromised, because it has merit and strength and flexibility, in other words it acts less like an absolute idea and more like a living being.  That's why love is the greatest.

Defensive Posture

From what I hear Congress has prevented the Center for Disease Control from studying the root causes of this proliferation of mass shootings.  So I guess it's up to us.  If you're more concerned about losing your guns than losing your children stop reading.

Still going?  Okay, first of all let me just say that I agree with President Obama, that our thoughts and prayers are not enough and that we need common sense gun laws (I assume that means tougher background checks and more restrictions on where you're allowed to take them once you buy them).  But I am not under any illusions that those regulations are going to be enough to stop the mass shootings that have become all too familiar in our nation.  To the extent that rules and regulations can address the problem, we ought to stop at nothing to make those rules and regulations exist and have teeth.  To the extent that we can address this problem with better mental healthcare and intervention programs we should absolutely do that yesterday.
I'm going to stay within my area of expertise though and talk about this.  For those of you who didn't click the link thingy, it's to an article by Garry Wills, in The New York Review of Books from 2012, yep three years ago, after Sandy Hook but before a whole bunch of other mass shootings.  Wills draws the connection between Guns and Moloch, the biggest baddest idol in all of Hebrew Scripture.  For those of you not familiar with the cult of Moloch, here's a thumbnail: Moloch or Molech was an Ammonite deity, who was known to require the sacrifice of children.  "Giving your seed to Molech" was mentioned in Leviticus right in the middle of all the juiciest nasty bits.  It was similarly forbidden in Deuteronomy, but apparently Molech had some staying  power, because he was still hanging around in the time of Ahaz (2 Kings 16), Ahaz was apparently a real first class idolator, it says, "he even made his son pass through the fire," which was most likely a reference to the worship of Molech that was taking place in the Valley of Hinnom, which was later called Gehenna, which is the word Jesus uses for Hell.  So this thing is really persistent and really bad mojo.
You sacrificed children to Molech by burning them alive on the altar to the god, and it is pretty much the most abhorrent and abominable thing anyone ever did according to just about every place in the Bible it gets mentioned.
Why would people do such a thing?
Short answer: fear.
Long answer: the same reason a lot of people own handguns and assault rifles, you know, just in case "stuff" goes down.  I'm not going to say anything about people who who own guns for hunting, or because they collect them, or because they like to go out and shoot at targets.  I have a couple of shotguns from my days of hunting, I enjoy shooting even though I don't hunt anymore, and I understand the powerful feeling of packing heat.  But I am highly suspicious that it is a false feeling of security, because of the simple, and rather unavoidable tendency of violence to escalate and get out of control.  Soldiers and police officers train extensively and perennially to be able to use a gun effectively in conflict.  In my experience, shooting a handgun with any degree of accuracy is a skill that requires a lot of practice, when you are calm and the target is not a threat.  In the case of a threat to my security, honestly, I think I would rather be armed with a baseball bat or something that does not require such precision.  The feeling of security that comes with being armed is an important sign of the idolatry that underlies much of this argument.
An idol is something that offers you a feeling, and really nothing else. You are required to show your devotion to the idol with sacrifice, and the idol gives you the feeling that you will get what you want.
So what do guns as idols give us: the feeling of security.  Not actual security, in fact, they make us less safe for the simple fact that they are what is known as a force multiplier.  An unstable, angry person with a knife is dangerous, but their danger has certain limits, their range has certain limits.  People have been known to go on stabbing sprees, or violent rampages with other weapons, but the impact of those rampages is nothing like what happens when guns are involved.
For a rather vivid illustration of the effect guns might have on people who are unhinged, check this out.  Oh, yeah, do you think the same logic might apply to these mass shootings?  You know, if there was no gun, it wouldn't be quite so easy.  Most of these shooters are, in fact, suicidal, they have devalued their own life probably before they were able to devalue the lives of their victims.
What I'm really trying to dig at here is the idolatry that underlies our approach to violence.  I agree with some of the pro-gun crowd that guns are not the whole problem, but they are a part of it, and they are the part we can most easily take concrete steps to mitigate. At some point we need to understand that the evil behind the idol is the idea that violence can solve all of our problems.  We need to understand that whether you're talking about a revolver or a thermonuclear weapon, the equation remains the same: sacrifice children to us and we will help you feel safe.
That trade is not acceptable.

You're Giving Me Fear

Sometimes there is one scene in a movie that sort of makes the whole thing worth it.  For The Rum Diary, it was this scene where the two protagonists take a hallucinogenic drug and well, have a not so wonderful time.  Please excuse the blasphemous language:



There are three distinctly brilliant quotes in this one minute long scene (as well as one visual image that will probably haunt you): "it's an accusatory giblet," "your tongue belongs to Satan," and finally, "You're giving me fear, stop it!"
I want to shout that last one a bunch of times a day, at the TV, at my computer and nowadays at my phone. Look don't get me wrong, there are legitimate things to fear, which are in no way hallucinations.  Case in point: hurricane Joaquin, which despite it's sort of trendy sounding name, is actually not a joke.  Hurricanes are serious dangers, but if you watch the weather channel you will witness a level of panic that should honestly be reserved for a thermonuclear detonation.  A fact of life: all you can really do about a hurricane is store some drinking water and make sure your flashlight has batteries.  Watching computer simulations of what might happen on TV is quite frankly, futile and stupid.
In my line of work, I run across people who take a weather channel sort of approach to the end of the world.  Every time there's some sort of unusual heavenly event, like, oh I don't know a Blood Moon or just an ordinary little eclipse, they come out.  Whenever something ominous happens in the Middle East (which is like all the freaking time), they come out.  Whenever there's some odd weather, or a particularly galvanizing public figure (cough, Trump), they come out.
On most days, I find them kind of annoying, on some days, and increasingly so lately, I think they're dangerous.  Here's why:

When he (Jesus) had said this, while they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.  While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them.  They said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?  This Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven will come in the same way you saw him go into heaven." -Acts 1: 9-11 NRSV

As I'm often fond of doing, I would like to point out that the message of this text is not primarily that Jesus is coming back, although that is a promise.  The message of the white robe guys (angels) is: "Alright guys, show's over, get to work."
How do I know this you ask?  Because that's not what they said. I know this because the disciples didn't just keep standing there staring up, they went and did things.  Pentecost happened (which you might say was a sort of return of Jesus), Paul happened, Peter finally got his butt in gear, the church happened.  Jesus comes back all the time, and in more cases than not over-realized eschatology (that means focusing too much on the end of the world) causes people to miss the wonder of that because they're afraid.  They're afraid of the rapture, and yes I know, some people can sort of shrug that one off and say, "well if it happens that way then fine, I'm good," but I think that it brings ridicule at best and actually scares people at worst.  People read Revelation through the eyes of fear, of the tribulation, of the Beast, the Antichrist, the Great Whore of Babylon, ultimately they spend so much time afraid that they end up afraid of God, and all they really want is some magical way out of it all. And no, I'm not talking "fear of the LORD," as in reverence or awe of the holy presence of the divine, I'm talking about fear of God the same way you fear monsters, serial killers and big hairy spiders, childish, unproductive fear. In my opinion that is a tragic, terrible place to be, and not at all where followers of Jesus should be living.
This is getting tragically real as we watch the crisis with the Syrian refugees play out around the globe.  Yes, many of them are Muslims (and a bunch are Christian too BTW), yes some of them might be terrorists, but you know what else they are?  Homeless, vulnerable and hungry, many of them are children, and we are letting our "well founded" fears get in the way of helping them.  You can certainly give to organizations that are helping them, but the reality is that if you allow yourself to shut them out of your heart, fear has already won, compassion has already failed, and we have not come any closer to the kingdom.
I think our hearts need to be changed.  We need to say boldly and consistently: "You're giving me fear. Stop it!"  The message of God and his angels has pretty consistently been: "do not be afraid," even and especially when people had good cause to be, why do we think that would change?