Distant light Part 2 - Dinosaurs and Humans, living together

A responder on my Facebook page, after reading the first post about God's supposed lies, said,

"The Bible does mention dinosaurs."

Let's address that in detail.

First, the Bible makes several mentions to a "Leviathan."  They are as follows (all verses from NIV):

• Job 3:8
  May those who curse days curse that day    those who are ready to rouse Leviathan.
  (For context, Job 3:1 says, "After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth" and then provides his curses.  Job 3:8 is one of his curses.)
• Job 41 (all of it is a description of the Leviathan.  It starts with this, in 41:1)
  Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook
      or tie down its tongue with a rope?
• Psalm 74:14
  It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan
      and gave it as food to the creatures of the desert.
• Psalm 104:25-26
  There is the sea, vast and spacious,
      teeming with creatures beyond number—
      living things both large and small.
  There the ships go to and fro,
      and Leviathan, which you formed to frolic there.
• Isaiah 27:1 (Chapter titled: "Deliverance of Israel")In that day,the LORD will punish with his sword—
      his fierce, great and powerful sword—
  Leviathan the gliding serpent,
      Leviathan the coiling serpent;
  he will slay the monster of the sea.

So here's a brief summary of the attributes of the Leviathan:

1. It is a creature of the sea, as denoted in Job 41:1 and 31-32, Psalm 104:26, and Isaiah 27:1.  
2. It "glides" and "coils" as per Isaiah 27:1.
3. It has limbs as per Job 41:12.
4. It has "strength and its graceful form" as per Job 41:12.
5. It has a "double coat of armor" as per Job 41:13.
6. Its mouth is "ringed about with fearsome teeth" as per Job 41:14.
7. "Its back has rows of shields
       tightly sealed together
   each is so close to the next
       that no air can pass between.
   They are joined fast to one another;
       they cling together and cannot be parted" (Job 41:15-17).
8. "Its snorting throws out flashes of light" (Job 41:18a).
9. "Flames stream from its mouth;
       sparks of fire shoot out." (Job 41:19).
10. "Smoke pours from its nostrils" (Job 41:20a).
11. "Its breath sets coals ablaze,
        and flames dart from its mouth" (Job 41:21).
12. "Strength resides in its neck" (Job 41:22a).
13. "The folds of its flesh are tightly joined" (Job 41:23a).
14. "Its chest is hard as rock," (Job 41:24a).
15. It's impenetrable to all weapons at the very beginning of the iron age* (Job 41:25-29)
    *if this exhaustive mathematical calculation is correct in assuming that it chronicles events from 1280-1270 B.C., then it would be taking place at the beginning of the iron age.
16. "Its undersides are jagged potsherds," (Job 41:30a).
17. It leaves "a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge" (Job 41:30b).
    A threshing sledge is a board covered with spikes or shards so that when dragged across cereal grains, it good remove the cereal from the straw.  Note that I list this verse separately from the one above it because it's indicating that not only is this a creature that lives mostly in the sea, it also comes out of the sea, at least on muddy areas

Now, nothing in the dinosaur world conforms to that in any way.  Some people might claim it's talking about real dragons (that can't fly), but since we've never found anything remotely dragonesque, that seems unlikely.  Nothing in all of known creation breathes fire, of course.  If we assume the fire and light descriptions are more talking about its teeth and red tongue, then the rest of it we can actually draw a creature from.

Firstly, it has to be a sea creature.  It moves quite well in the sea, according to Job, Isaiah, and whoever wrote that particular Psalm that described it as "frolic[king]."  Historically, people have seen it in many different ways.  In 1865, Gustave Doré saw it as a giant sea-snake:

"Destruction of Leviathan". Gustave Doré, 1865

In Liber Floridus, from the turn of the 12th century, Leviathan looked something like this (pictured with the anti-christ riding atop it): 

By Lambert- Liber Floridus (1120) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

And in William Blake's late-18th century depiction, it was the creature at the bottom:

William Blake [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

None of which are very dinosaur-like.  For the creature to be able to glide through the water as described in Isaiah, it needs to be relatively fish-like or serpent-like, as in these drawings.  Since it has limbs, the closest to the Biblical description would be the middle drawing, which looks like a giant crocodile with a very long tail and wings.  Wings, again, aren't mentioned anywhere in the description, so they're unnecessary, as are giant tusks and horns.  

And of course, feathers aren't depicted in the Bible account.

You see, dinosaurs were feathered.  Our depictions of them in movies and museums are totally inaccurate.  

Wired.com shows an artist's rendering of what the feathered T-Rex might have looked like

So it's patently impossible for the Leviathan to be describing a dinosaur.  It mentions scales, and dinosaurs weren't scaled.  It's amphibious, so the best thing we could go with is a prehistoric amphibian, like Mastodonsaurus.  

But here's the next problem - let's just say that Mastodonsaurus is the leviathan of the Bible, and managing to live at the same time as Job - whence all the other dinosaurs?  

We know that dinosaur tracks have been found in Israel, belonging to a dinosaur called Elaphrosaurus:

By FunkMonk (Michael B. H.) (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

This thing was big.  Head to tail, it would be 20 feet long.  But besides the Leviathan, there is no record of any type of "dinosaur" or other giant creature in the Bible.  Ergo - how come people running in terror from this beastie didn't record it in Scripture?

Lastly, let's have a little bit of a logical fleshing out of something that was said in the video: that the fossil record is out of whack because of the flood.

Let's be really clear about that.

Assuming they're entirely correct, which I disagree with but I'll accept for this one simple argument, then how is it that the fossil record after the flood... isn't?

You see, leviathan is mentioned, as I said, in Psalms, Isaiah, and Job.  Psalms and Isaiah were clearly written after any such flood, as any reading of the Bible would tend to indicate.  As the Answers In Genesis folks but the date of the flood as 4362 years ago, and the writer I quoted above had Job written 3,284 years ago, give or take a few years, Job was also likely written after any such theoretical flood.

Thus, everything that occurred after the flood should continue to follow normal geological processes, regardless of what happened before it.  This means that there's no excuse for dinosaur fossils and human fossils to not be found right next to each other (especially when one of the creatures had us over for lunch, if you catch my meaning).  

But we have lots and lots of dinosaur poop.  There's never been the slightest trace of anything remotely resembling a human in it.  We have lots and lots of dinosaur fossils and human fossils, but never from the same place.  Layers of dirt would have been laid down at a steady rate after the flood, so those fossils buried in dirt would have no excuse not to be protected equally.  

It just doesn't happen.  That's because the idea of dinosaurs living at the same time as humans is preposterous.

Nope, not even Mastodonsaurus.

Try again.

Nudism Interview

I interviewed recently for From a Basement in Tulsa.  I talked briefly with him about the same kind of power issues I talk about here, so I thought I'd share here as well.  I'm thinking about expounding upon them in my usual nature here, but in the mean time, check it out.

Distant light, dinosaur bones, and the fully-formed Earth

Why do we believe that the Bible is telling us the truth?

It's not because the Bible tells us it does - that'd be circular logic: the Bible is true because the Bible is true.

Rather, it's because we already believe the Bible is true that we're willing to accept what it says about itself.  Why do we believe the Bible is true?  Because we accept the idea that God is true and that the Bible is His message to us about how to be restored to life with Him.

What necessarily follows, then, is that we believe the Bible is true because we believe that A: God is real; B: God does not lie; and C: God wants us to know Him.

If that's true - and it's necessarily true for an inerrant Bible, for if we argue against those premises, we have to admit the possibility that the Bible is lying to us - then whence came dinosaurs?

I used to believe this: God, when He created the heavens and the Earth, also created the dinosaur bones and distant light to try to trip us up, to make us doubt Him and what He has said about Creation.

That argument is not consistent with a God who does not lie and desires us to know Him. 

Because in that argument, God is the creator of two records - the Bible, and the physical reality (universe and planet).  We can "read" both, if we are literate in the languages they were written in.  One is true, the other is a lie - but both were written by God.

So isn't it true that accepting the science about the world is claiming that God is lying in the Bible?

No.  Remember that the Bible never claims itself to be inerrant, only God-breathed.  If we accept that it can be flawed - that is, that God did not write it Himself but through flawed intermediaries who took occasional shortcuts,  then we can still accept that God is always truthful and that the Bible is His way of teaching us about certain aspects of Him - namely, His love and grace.  If the Bible is, as my pastors told me so long ago, God's love-letter to humanity, why would we assume a love-letter is scientifically accurate?  There's no point to.  But it can still provide us insights about His love, if we're open to those insights.

There's also a way to read it, if you prefer, to say that the Bible is literally written word-for-word by God, and that, as with my love-letter argument above, God took shortcuts rather than attempting to explain everything to an ancient peoples who couldn't have possibly understood it.  If God had told them that the world is billions of years old, they would've laughed at Him, because they couldn't read the world, couldn't understand the things they looked at, and sought answers for them in inappropriate places (such as other gods).

Thus, you can't argue that God created distant light or hid supposedly-ancient dinosaur bones and still argue that God loves us and wants us to know Him - but you can argue (and I threw that out there if you want to take it) that as ancient people were bad at reading the physical world, we are still.  It's a fair argument, but good luck proving the science wrong.  You'll have to engage science where it lives for that.

Love, Morality, and Dawkins

I've talked a bit about the idea that love is the commandment that drives all others, and I'll certainly come back to that more later, but the comments by Richard Dawkins of late seem to necessitate a response.

From The Independent article on what he said,

“I honestly don't know what I would do if I were pregnant with a kid with Down Syndrome. Real ethical dilemma,” @InYourFaceNYer chimed in.
“Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice,” he tweeted back

Dawkins further fueled the fire with comments later:

"If your morality is based, as mine is, on a desire to increase the sum of happiness and reduce suffering, the decision to deliberately give birth to a Down's baby, when you have the choice to abort it early in the pregnancy, might actually be immoral from the point of view of the child's own welfare."  (Link)

What he's saying here, then, is that he believes children with Down Syndrome are suffering and unhappy, or perhaps bring suffering and unhappiness to others (e.g. through increased financial and temporal costs for care).  Amy Julia Becker wrote an account of her own experiences raising a child with Down Syndrome, noticing the same idea in society:

In other words, across the media landscape, children and adults who are going to work, interacting with their parents, experiencing the typical joys and sorrows of life, are nevertheless in a perpetual state of "suffering."

The fact of the matter is that children who have Down Syndrome are happier than the rest of us. Jevan (last name unknown) from The Tribal Way wrote a blog on this topic that did an excellent job collating the research on Down Syndrome and happiness.  He writes:

Findings from a study published in the American Journal of Medical Genetics surveyed 284 people with Down syndrome ..the results were as follows...

"The average age was 23, and 84 percent were living with one or both parents/guardians. The findings:

• 99 percent said they were happy with their lives
• 97 percent liked who they are
• 96 percent liked how they look
• 86 percent indicated they could make friends easily
• 4 percent expressed sadness about their life."

So the children themselves are happier; even happier, he notes, than the rich (and I've already provided links about their happiness in my blog on poverty).  If our defining characteristic of whether or not babies should be aborted based on the perceived suffering they will endure for the rest of their lives, it seems the rest of us should be aborted, and children with Down Syndrome are the only ones who should be living.

But what about the second possibility, that they bring suffering and unhappiness to others?  Fortunately for me, Jevan covered that topic, too:

People with down syndrome are loved and cared for. Studies show that 79% of parents with those with down syndrome said their outlook on life had improved since having their child and that 94% of siblings of those with down children were proud of their DS brother or sister.

So, by and large, having to "suffer" through raising a child with Down Syndrome is actually good for the parents and really good for their children who don't have Down Syndrome.

Now, there are plenty of other arguments about birthing children that Dawkins wasn't making, and I'm not going to cover them here.  It is, as he notes, up to the mom, and any mom who doesn't feel up to the task or doesn't feel she can provide the love and support a given child's needs must figure out for herself whether or not to have an abortion.  For my own part, though, I think kids with Down Syndrome are awesome, even if I, too, suffer from societal judgmentalism regarding them (another prejudice I'm trying to work out of my mind).

Shades of White, Part 3

I should mention that John talks of the Spirit's role in teaching...

"But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you." (John 14:26)

So there is how the Spirit helps us with Scripture - by teaching us "all things" and reminding us of Jesus's words.

Does teaching us "all things" mean that the Spirit is the exclusive source of knowledge?  No!  In the Venn diagram:

All things occupies the red circle, things we know occupies the green circle, and what is taught to us is in the yellow.  We are obviously not taught "all things" because "all things" would incorporate the hidden thoughts of people we've never met.  It would be too much knowledge for one brain to handle!  Does it mean that everything we learn will come from the Spirit?  No!  We learned things before the Spirit came into our lives, and those things still act as a filter for new, incoming knowledge.

Let's say you're a Christian who is just hearing, for the first time, about global warming.  The knowledge is coming from scientists.  Once you hear about it, then you are tasked with determining how that new knowledge applies to God.  It challenges what you think you know about the Bible.  So, going back to the Bible, you read with this new knowledge, and when you read the Old Testament account of Noah and the promise that God will never send another great flood on Earth, you realize that that promise only applies to God sending floods, not to mankind.

That moment of realization is a moment of teaching - a teaching of something that might be called truth, although even it could be changed, because you don't know what the Spirit will teach you next.  This is how the Spirit teaches us all things - by giving us a heart that is open to new knowledge, and the courage to know that any new knowledge that comes in doesn't destroy our faith or our ability to believe in the unbelievable.

Shades of White, Part 2

I feel I need to expound on a few thoughts from my pontification about Truth...

It's clear throughout that, I hope, that I still believe in Absolute Truth.  God is not "the source of" Truth, but rather something that is, I believe, true.  Truth is internal, rather than external - that is, it is the belief that something is ....

What?

We can't really define what Truth is, because to do so requires other words that all mean similar ideas to Truth.

We can give examples of Truth.  We know that when we throw an apple up in the air, it comes down and hits the ground.  The effects of gravity are true, and will always be true.  Regardless of what we know about gravity, how it's created, how it works, its effects are demonstrably true. 

We know it's true because we see it with our own eyes.  We feel it with our own heads when apples fall from trees onto us.  I've never had an apple fall on my head, but let me tell you a little story...

When I was probably 12, during the summer, I went to a summer cookout with my church.  For some reason that escapes me now, they had a piñata.  They put a blindfold on my head so that I could not see, and gave me a stick with which to hit the piñata, and pointed me in a direction.  Before I took my first swing, I *felt* gravity in a very real and very powerful way, as most of the tree branch - somehow missing the last few feet connected to the tree and, therefore, the piñata, but the rest of the branch beyond the piñata - came crashing down.  Two hundred pounds of dry lumber split open my left side like a gutted fish.  Had I been just a hair further left, that'd be a very terminal point to the story.

Gravity, I'm certain, is true.  And yes, you know it is from feeling, too, for you know you can't jump too high or too far, you can't throw a ball into space, you can't float through the clouds without a giant metal machine holding you aloft, and that only briefly. 

For many people, that's the end of the story on truth.  Things are true only if we can demonstrate them, or at least imagine a test that could be performed on them.

In a world of absolutes, everything that cannot be true is a falsehood.  Ergo, if God cannot be proven true, God must be false.

Christianity actually benefits from a more murky definition of truth than that, because the very idea of a God cannot be proven and, therefore, can never be demonstrable.  This is, I think, the difference between Fundamentalist Christianity and Fundamentalist Atheism - a difference in the definition of where truth comes from.  What is true for the former always descends from God, and therefore all proofs must come from God.  For the latter, what is true must always descend from observation, and therefore all proofs must be observable. 

But God never said that all truth comes from Him, and we have the ability to imagine truths that cannot be observed.  If, for instance, there are multiple universes, as some scientists believe to be the case, we may never be able to observe them, because we may never be able to set foot outside of our own.  We are, by our nature, creatures created by a single universe, a universe whose laws are favorable to us but also inhibit us from becoming more than the sum of those laws.

I think God is true, because I have seen things that are best explained by "God," such as dreams coming literally and precisely true, without the need for interpretation.  But I also think science is true, because when I test something in the laboratory, it works time and time again, and the only times it fails are when I've failed in my precision. 

The only way both God and not-God can be true is if the concept of truth is murky.

Let's go back to the circle metaphor from the previous post...

If Absolute Truth is a red dot in the center of some kind of field, that field is multidimensional and unknown - that is, we don't know the size of the field any more than we know the size of the universe.  We know the size of the observable universe, which is limited by the speed of light, the rate of expansion, and the time since the Big Bang, but we don't know the total size of the universe beyond what we can see.  The universe gets bigger for us every second, as more light from further away makes it to our eyes.

In the same way, the field upon which Absolute Truth lies is unmeasurable and vast.  We have no idea where its edges are.  We could have a map to the spot of Absolute Truth that says it is "5 billion miles from the southwest corner," but we don't know where that corner is or even have a compass to tell us which way is southwest. 

We know where we are.  But we don't know where we are in relation to everything else.  And thus, every reading we take is necessarily flawed by the fact that we don't know what those readings mean in relation to Absolute Truth.

Allow me one more scientific example... in the early days of nuclear chemistry - and this was not that long ago! - we thought that the atom was a kind of pudding, with protons interspersed throughout.  In more recent days, we saw the center of the atom containing the protons and neutrons, and then electrons occupying very specific positions around it.  Now, our idea of electrons around that center is more cloudesque.

In each case, we thought we had the truth, but as our instruments got better and better, we learned that we had been mistaken in the previous case.  We will, someday, upset even what we think we know now about atoms, although I think our understanding is very, very good now.  But part of the problem is that we don't know what questions to ask.  We have to stumble upon those questions.

Why?  Because we don't already know the truth about any of this.  If we did, we could say "here's how to get to that point from where we're at now."  But we don't - we are stumbling around, blindly.  Every once in a while, we realize that, in our stumbling, we've fallen on something profoundly different than what we expected, and it challenges our ideas. 

The same thing held true 2000 years ago in the Bible.  The Pharisees and Sadducees believed they knew everything there was to know about the law, and they were very, very good at understanding it.  And then Christ came along and told them that everything they knew about the law was wrong.  Not because the law was wrong, but because they weren't asking the right questions about it.

For example, when they told Christ that He couldn't heal anyone on the Sabbath because that was working on the Sabbath.  He corrected them:

Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”

The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water?  Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?”

When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing. (Luke 13:14-17)

In the same way, we've become Pharisees today, proclaiming loudly what we know about the Bible and insisting people follow it exactly our way.  But in so doing, we proclaim that all Truth is settled, and that we know it all.  We deny ourselves the ability to grow and to discover new ways of interpreting the Scripture and understanding God.  We also deny the Spirit, if the Spirit helps us to interpret (which I think He can, even if the Scripture doesn't say He does, but I hesitate to stand on that more strongly because to proclaim something is the responsibility of the Spirit when it's not is blasphemy - all we CAN say is that the Spirit helps us by giving us the gifts and fruits of the Spirit), because by proclaiming a single truth, we do not open our hearts to any new truths that the Spirit might want to teach us. 

This is a lesson for all people who believe firmly that Truth is set in stone: it might be, but you can't know it, and by thinking you do, you limit yourself from learning more.  Scientists cannot discover new things if they think they already know everything.  Christians cannot, either.

In the words of Neil Degrasse Tyson from one of the most touching moments of the new Cosmos series:
“It’s OK not to know all the answers; It’s better to admit our ignorance, than to believe answers that might be wrong. Pretending to know everything, closes the door to finding out what’s really there.”

Depression and the Church

I'm taking a brief moment as an aside from your regularly-scheduled programming to talk about Robin Williams' suicide and the issue of depression.  A page I follow cautioned pastors not to talk about the suicide, and I think it's for good reason...

I grew up with depression, which was caused by a myriad of issues, including being told from every angle that I was worthless on a daily basis.  By the time I was a teenager, I basically couldn't escape from the cycle of depressive thinking, and really needed psychiatric help.  I wouldn't get that help for 20 more years, and so I never understood how to escape from the thoughts that kept me locked in depression.

Now, it's important to note that I had good days and I had bad days, but I had something that I would say regularly - "nothing makes me happy."  And it was true.  I loved God, I loved spending time with friends, reading, playing video games, and many other things, but none of it made me *happy*.  Because, when you suffer from depression, it's not really a matter of "happiness"... it's more like life is just ... blah.  Sometimes, it's worse than blah. 

Happiness became this big impossible goal, which helped drive me further into depression because it was unachievable. 

One of the biggest struggles I faced was with the messages I got from Church - because I had learned from them, and truly believed it myself, that if I just loved God enough, I could be happy.  There was only one quote that ever seemed to help,

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39, NIV)

But this didn't make me happy, it just told me that even in my darkest days, God still loved me.  That's helpful, but I still struggled with why I wasn't happy. 

Yet the Church constantly taught happiness... and I am struck now how much happiness mirrors Prosperity Theology: God wants you to be happy / God wants you to be wealthy.

But here's the deal... nowhere in the Bible does it actually say that God wants you to be happy.  In fact, the New Testament talks often about suffering for Christ, and that we are supposed to somehow take joy in it.  The only thing I can find that talks about God giving us happiness is in Ecclesiastes (and, by the way, Solomon repeats this several times throughout the book):

A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. (Ecclesiastes 2:24-26)

Well, isn't that special.  So, we're not suppose to take joy in other things in life (except our wives, as Solomon says in 9:9), just in work.   That's all well and good if you've somehow managed to find something you love to do, but in this day and age, that seems to be getting harder.  In my own work, I felt (and still feel) that I got stuck in a rut - that, because I had started working in computers when I was 17, I was destined to always do hardware work in computers, a field that held no interest or joy for me.  I was, in fact, miserable at work, not only because of the fact that I was doing work I didn't want and couldn't seem to get out of it, but because depression doesn't really work that way.  Simply having a better job wouldn't crack the cycle of thoughts that kept me locked in.

"What were those thoughts?" you might be asking... well, a lot of it had to do with exactly the sermons I had been hearing.  It went something like this:

1. I'm unhappy.
2. God wants me to be happy.
3. God should be all I need to be happy.
4. If God is not making me happy, I don't truly love God.
5. Ergo, I am a horrible person for wanting more than God.

And #5 would push me further toward #1.

There were other cycles as well (First, I can't be happy until I fall in love, I can't fall in love until I'm happy; Second I can't be happy until I get a better job, I can't get a better job until I make more money so I can afford to switch careers, I can't switch careers because no one is interested in someone with no experience, I can't get experience because I can't get job in that field, There's no hope for getting out of this job; etc.). 

All of it was predicated on a mistaken idea that happiness was some goal I had to achieve or some place I had to get to in my life, and, like a physical journey, I was depressed that I couldn't make that leap from where I was to the new city of happiness.  What I had to learn was that every little step I took was a tiny victory, a victory to be celebrated because it was a step away from where I had been.  Instead, I was taking a step, looking at the journey ahead and mourning, and taking two steps backward. 


So... what's the point of all this?

When you tell people who aren't happy, "Get happy," you aren't helping.  You're actually making the problem worse. 

Instead, it's important to remember that not only did God give us His Word, but He also gave us talents.  Some of the people with those talents have turned them into successful careers in the psychology and counseling industry.  Instead of encouraging people to "let go and let God," you'll be doing them a bigger favor, and showing them you love them because you understand that their problems are more difficult than your skills are capable of, if you encourage them to seek counseling. 

And before you do, go into counseling yourself.  There is no stronger message that convinced me to seek it out myself than to talk to a friend who was going through it as well, and telling me how much it helped her. 

I now consider myself a happy person.  I'm certainly miles better than I was, and even though there are moments where I get overwhelmed still, they come less often and less powerfully than they did before.  I'm not "cured" or "better," I simply have a better toolset at my disposal for dealing with depression when it comes. 

Echoes

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the bed.

You see, I'm reading Umberto Eco.  But, before you think he is leading my postings and I am not crediting him for his thoughts, allow me to say that I am reading him after I write.

Yesterday, I read a lecture he gave titled, "Inventing the Enemy," which has to do with otherness and the need societies have for enemies.  Long after I had been talking about that very topic in my blog.

Tonight, I read another lecture, "Absolute and Relative" - again, immediately after a blog posting on the topic.

I have lots that I could add... but maybe for now I'll just let the ideas churn.  It is, nonetheless, an interesting coincidence, not unlike finding 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife...

Shades of White

During a town hall meeting, Tom Coburn said the following,

"We didn't get to where we are as a nation ... outside of a connection to the originator of it all.  Intellectual minds can argue that, but it's foolishness in the sight of the creator.  My answer to most things is go to the author and find out what He says..."

This brings up a point I wanted to talk about anyway... (and I'm sure there was more to talk about during that meeting, but listening to Coburn makes me ill.  And I voted for this guy, once, long ago...).

My initial idea of what was right and wrong was strongly rigid - I believed that there is Truth, and everything else is Falsehood.  Imagine, if you will, a bullseye, dartboard, or circle with a dot in the very center.  In that center is Truth.  Everything outside of it is Falsehood.

Only the Red in the middle is Truth

Now, I don't know where on that dartboard I appear, but I believe I'm close to the middle, that my Truth largely overlaps God's Truth, with maybe a few minor exceptions.  I believe this because I read the Bible and if the Bible says something's evil, I try to avoid it.  I fail miserably on a number of things, but my belief doesn't change for failing miserably.  There are a few places where I disagree with the Bible - things like slavery and letting women speak in the Church (my own mother is ordained, which helped make me a little more progressive in that respect), and I rationalize the difference by saying that God had been saying only what was needed by the people of that time and place needed to hear to survive in their world, and that those messages weren't meant for us now.

I believed that my ideas about God and Truth were so spot on that I could harbor no dissent.  Something was either True or False.  It was a black-and-white situation, and there could be no shades of gray.  Discussions of shades of gray were sin straight from the mouth of Satan.  When I began dating a Jewish girl, I did so under protest, because obviously Christ is Truth and therefore Judaism is evil. 

Largely, those beliefs were what I had been informed about by pastors, youth group leaders, Sunday School teachers, and the few Biblical scholars I had read.  I also read my Bible exhaustively and my copy had commentary in it as well that I used to help focus my theology.  By reinforcing them from these authority sources, I could justify believing that one thing was only true for a specific time and place, while another thing wasn't, because these authority sources became my gospel, unwittingly.  I was not a "Bible-only" believer, because I was taking input from outside sources.

I have way, way more to say on that topic... but now is neither the time nor place.

So I believed rigidly that what I believed was true; and even if it wasn't, I believed I had to act as if it was, because to do otherwise would be to court evil.  This is, certainly, one way to read Romans 14:23:

But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.

This reading says that anyone who believes must hold his beliefs strongly or admit sin into his life... that is, if you have any doubts about your beliefs, then everything that relates to them is sin as well.

What I didn't realize is how Truth as we know it is informed by non-Bible sources.

During my education and conversion to the Left, I was impressed upon by the Sophists and Plato.  The following will be an extremely-simplified version of history, which is to say that it will be wrong, but it is close enough that you can work with it to understand my point (if it's blatantly wrong, please tell me and I'll correct it).  Plato spoke about absolute truth (or, as I say it, "Truth" with a capital T) as a real thing that exists behind all other things.  It is from this truth that we can understand morality.  As a classical Greek philosopher, the Romans adopted him when they usurped Greek culture, and the Christian church, because it was Roman already when it was born and became even moreso when Constantine converted, inherited the philosophical background of Rome.  That background was re-strengthened during the Renaissance, as people fell in love with Greek culture all over again.  So, basically, Christianity as we know it today cannot be functionally separated from Greek philosophy, and this idea of Absolute Truth came with it.

When the Absolute Truth idea gets applied to Christianity, we would say that God is the absolute truth from whence all other truth derives.  Interesting, though, that Plato and the rest of the Greeks did not believe in a single God... but I digress. 

Gorgias, one of the Sophists that Plato wrote about as debating Socrates, famously had an opposite idea of Truth:

1. Nothing exists
2. Even if existence exists, it cannot be known
3. Even if it could be known, it cannot be communicated.

The last point is the point I latched onto.  You see, I also learned that language is horribly inadequate to express knowledge.  Even a simple bit of reasoning can cause a person to see how "true" this is - take how many times we have to ask a judge for clarification on legal matters.  When, for instance, the founders said, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" - did they mean that we shall all be free to own guns?  Or did they mean that if we were part of a "well-regulated militia" we should own guns?  This very debate rages today, more than 200 years later.  No matter whether you believe that it lands only on one side or the other of that debate, you must at least admit that it remains something that people are confused by.

Thus, if a document 222 years old and studied by millions of people can have a confused meaning by virtue of the obscurity of language, how much more would a document close to 2,000 years old and translated multiple times - from Greek into Hebrew and then into English for most of our translations of the New Testament - be confusing in its language?  We have evidence that it is, by virtue of having a nearly-limitless number of Christian denominations, all of whom disagree over relatively simple matters.  The Church, in fact, has been having such disagreements and schisms throughout its entire history.

And yet, we are convinced that the Holy Spirit translates the text for us.  It is how people attempt to bridge the gap between confusing language and Absolute Truth - namely, that the God inside us translates it for us.  This brings up a difficult conundrum:

1. Those who disagree with us must not be Christian
2. or Truth must be adaptable to the individual person

And this is, I think, the cause of a lot of our distress in the Christian Church.  We constantly vary between the two points, and we try to accept that variation without acknowledging its idiosyncrasy. 

Take, for example, Fundamentalism.

The Christian Fundamentalist movement was not a movement with an evil intention.  They recognized the problem of Absolute Truth and attempted to create a list of what was known and accepted as Absolute Truth so that believers could come together and share in that Absolute Truth without having to bicker and argue about it.  The rest of the arguments would seem relatively minor if we could agree on the "big things."  What it did instead, however, was create a sense of other - that is, by defining what Christianity IS, it also defined what Christianity IS NOT, and pushed all beliefs that did not share in those key points into the realm of the ostracized other.  And, as I've talked about elsewhere, what is other easily transitions into enemy.

I came up with a different rationalization: that Absolute Truth cannot be known.  We can know things that approximate Truth, but never quite reach it.

Why?

Well, no matter what happens, no matter how we are informed by the Spirit, we still think in terms of language.  When we try to rationalize things from God, we try to do so through words in our minds.  The moment we do that, we place a filter upon God, and limit the power of God.  We tell God that He can only speak to us through a filter of our existing knowledge. 

That's not to say God cannot speak to us beyond that, just that the moment He does, we will filter it.

As an aside - maybe this is the meaning of speaking in tongues - an understanding that defies language and comes out in utterances that are unintelligible.  Again, though, even with a Gifted translator, the moment it's turned into language it's stripped of its power.  If we try to rationalize the tongues we just spoke in, we rationalize them into language.  In Romans 8:26, Paul says that the Spirit prays on our behalf using grunts we cannot understand, so there's some merit to that idea.

Interestingly, no where in the Bible does it say that the Holy Spirit is here to help us translate the Bible.  2 Peter 1:20-21 says,

Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

But that concerns prophecy, not all of Scripture.  Just as the passage that people reference to say the entire Bible is perfect and without error doesn't actually say that, but rather "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness" (2 Timothy 3:16), which means that it's inspired by God but not necessarily "True."  That is, God could be speaking to us in ways we can understand, but that miss the mark of what is "True."  Would it have been useful for God to tell ancient Jews living 5,000 years ago that the world was created in a big bang?  Would they have understood the background science necessary to navigate that?  

Thus I now understand that Truth isn't relative, but is unknowable, at least as a discernible fact.  If it exists, it is so far behind reality that we can't understand it directly, and can only see its effects.  

Back to the question of Romans 14 - how does this inform that passage?  Well, in our own country, we have what's called "Reasonable doubt" - that is, is there a good reason for thinking that something might not be as we expect?  We can certainly have doubts - most Christians would be remiss if they didn't admit to having doubts about the existence of God - but "reasonable doubts" are another thing altogether.  I may doubt whether it's appropriate to get a tattoo, for instance, but is there something in the Bible that would cause me to have a "reasonable doubt."  In this case, there is a proclamation that altering your skin is evil.  But can I rationalize that in a way that makes sense to how I understand God?  If that proclamation is, for example, only applicable to Levites, then it's obvious that it was to keep them separate from the rest of the population and show clearly how they were God's representatives.  It doesn't necessarily apply to me, then, and I'm free to do so.

In the rest of Romans 14, Paul showed us how this works.  He talks about Christians who eat meat, and Christians who don't.  He says for his own part, he thinks that it's OK to eat meat.  But, for those who don't think it is, it's not.  They have doubt about it.  He has justified his doubts, and so it's OK for him.  He doesn't rub it in their face, but instead he says to accept those who disagree, and to keep from eating meat in front of them for fear of making them fall into sin.  There may be Absolute Truth about meat, but even Paul doesn't know it.  Ergo, what matters far more is what you do with the Truth you believe - and part of that is not being a jerk with it.

Now, this realization allowed me to soften my heart, and to come up with an additional benefit of seeing Truth this way...

When I believed I knew what was Right and what was Wrong, I created a space where even God was not welcome to speak to me.  If I heard a voice telling me that I was wrong about something, it must not be from God, because God agrees fully with me.  But if I was wrong, then that meant that God could not tell me - I was unable to hear from Him.  This means that if the Spirit was trying to speak with me about the Truth, I had shut Him out, and said "No, I will find my own Truth."  

Only in being able to accept that the things we think we know aren't True can we learn, even from the source of all Truth.

The Real Separation of Church and State

Going back to the poverty discussion for a moment, I mentioned briefly that those on the political Right see their job as donating to the poor, rather than taxing themselves.  The fact that they are no better at giving to non-religious organizations that might actually do some good, or that they do give to religious organizations that, typically, do not (or rather, their focus is not on poverty but on a slew of issues of which poverty is simply one), is not widely-known in the political Right.  When I was a member of that, I echoed the party line taught to me by parents and priests - we give, and we give generously, so that we might fight poverty without taxes, because taxes are wrong.

Tax is another place where the power of the self/other dichotomy comes into play.  We see tax as taking money directly out of our pockets and using it for things we never agreed to and don't generally benefit from.  It's one thing when our children need tax money to pay for their education, and an entirely different thing when someone else's children need it.

But it's not only that.  Government in the U.S. suffers by virtue of being a nameless, faceless bureaucracy.  It is the ultimate other.  It holds almost unknown power over us in our daily lives, and has the power to take money from our pockets, send us to jail, get us involved in war, and approve things that we don't like. 

Never mind the fact that it's still ours.

That's one conversation that's noticeably missing from the Right, and it was noticeably missing when I was a kid, too.  The government rarely did anything that directly benefited me, it seemed, but the ways that they fought against me were many and varied:

1. They fought against my values, by legalizing abortion, by protecting non-Christian religions I perceived as "evil," by teaching kids about evolution.
2. They fought against my rights, by enacting gun control, by invading my privacy through DHS (sending agents into a home to take a child away from his/her parents), by invading my right to teach my kids (should I have any) whatever I want, raising them as I see fit (evolution, again).
3. They fought against my pocket, by raising taxes on things and making me pay more of my money for government services and less on my own perceived needs.
4. They threatened to turn over our nation to the United Nations and our Social Security system to credit card companies, thereby heralding the Antichrist and the coming destruction of the world.

No, I'm not kidding with that last one.  It deserves a brief aside:

The narrative I heard throughout growing up was that the end of the world could occur AT ANY MOMENT.  Many "Biblical scholars" studied the Book of Revelation, and determined that the Antichrist would come when the nations of Europe banded together and whittled themselves down to just 10 nations.  Some believed that NATO was the fulfillment of that prophesy.  Some further surmised that the "mark of the beast" was not a literal tattoo on the back of the hand and the forehead, but a figurative one brought about by having to have some specific thing to make purchases.  They saw Social Security as a way to threaten that identity by giving a central government control over a person's identity, and when the government proposed to further create a national ID card and maybe make it even tied into your bank account, those of us who had been hearing these kinds of interpretations of prophesy LOST. OUR. S%#$. 

These interpretations of Scripture make the Bible out to be highly-individualistic - an individual, working against the society, can perhaps not prevent the end of the world, but can save himself or herself from that destruction. 

Also never mind that the Book of Revelation can be interpreted in non-individualistic ways, or that it specifically says,

I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this scroll. And if anyone takes words away from this scroll of prophecy, God will take away from that person any share in the tree of life and in the Holy City, which are described in this scroll. (Revelation 22: 18-19, NIV)

Those points were more for the amateur Biblical Scholar rather than the professionals whose books are vomited out onto the shelves of Christian book stores.

Of course, there is a lot of individualistic Scripture, and that Scripture gets repeated ad nauseam (maybe such nausea is the cause of the linguistic vomiting I just mentioned).  Some of that Scripture:

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:2, NIV)
You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.  (James 4:4, NIV)

"If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you." (John 15:19, NIV)

These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit. (Jude 1:19, NIV)

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. (1 John 2:15-16, NIV)

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. (Ephesians 6:10-13, NIV)

There are many more.  I include this last one especially to illustrate the narrative - the entire world is against you, and you are literally at war for your immortal soul.  You are called on to save as many people as you can from having their own souls tormented in Hell (their blood is on your hands if you don't), but those who die in the fight are just enemy combatants fighting directly for Satan. 

No, I'm not being hyperbolic.  That's literally how we were trained to think.

"The Matrix" was kind of our joyous anthem - a man who is highly individualistic, who realizes this world isn't "real" and that he can fight back against the dark powers, but who finds that to do so he has to brutally slaughter dozens, perhaps hundreds of innocents on the way.  Those innocents are unimportant, as its the individuals at the top of the fight that matter. 

Consider all of our movies, actually... we always act that way.  The hero goes in and shoots and kills every grunt along the way to the big boss at the end, who may or may not die, depending on whether the hero has to bring him to justice.  The deaths along the way didn't matter - they only served the purpose of getting the big guy at the end.

(Is it any wonder, then, that the deaths of Palestinian children are brushed off as being the responsibility of Hamas, not of Israel?  But I digress...)

So, how did I change?  How did I stop seeing the world in these shades and hues?

It all started with a re-framing of power.  I mentioned my thoughts about race and poverty, but perhaps even those were hidden behind this power structure that insisted that any change in my beliefs was an attack by Satan. 

You see, George Bush Jr. was president.  And under his presidency, we passed The Patriot Act.  Never before has a single piece of legislation so clearly embodied the attack upon individual liberty by an unknown and faceless government that I had been taught to expect was coming before the end of the world. 

It was signed into law by a highly-polarizing president who was supported by the political Right and seemed to be fighting against evil.  And yet, it was clearly evil itself.  He was using evil to fight evil - and that didn't seem like a Christian approach to world politics.  (Never mind the war in Iraq - at that time, I believed the war was necessary to take out an evil tyrant.)

Had I not, perhaps, been undergoing changes thanks to education, this legislation might have made me a hardcore libertarian instead of a leftist.  I think it's this legislation and the "religion" I had been indoctrinated into that we have to thank for the rise of the Tea Party.

I have since learned, thanks to all the changes I've undergone, that there is another way to read the Bible.  Yes, there is evil in the world that we have to fight against, but it's a lot harder to tell the difference between good and evil than I had thought.  But one trick I've learned is this: evil abuses its power to inflict suffering on the powerless.

Since then, I've started reading a different narrative into the Bible.

Before Jesus came into the world, and still now after it, the Jews did not expect a savior to come who would establish a Heavenly kingdom rather than an Earthly one.  They expected a man to come who would rebuild an Earthly kingdom and throw off their oppressors (at this time: Rome).  They expected a rebel.  Instead, we got this guy:

Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are. Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?”
But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” (Matthew 22:15-21, NIV)

Christ came into the world not to fight against the political powers, who, he warned, were in power and could use that power against you, as He said,

"The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat.  So you must be careful to do everything they tell you."  (Matthew 23:2-3a, NIV)

But instead, He came to teach us not to abuse others ourselves:

"But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them."  (Matthew 23:3b-4, NIV)

That is what the Separation of Church and State means.  It means paying taxes.  It means obeying legal authority.  But when you have power yourself, you do not place burdens on others.  You try to set people free from burdens.  At the very least, you don't place burdens on others.

My life became driven by one simple guiding principle: The world has enough suffering already.  I should act in such a way that my actions minimize the suffering I cause and maximize the suffering I relieve.

The War of the Races

You're about to learn something horrible about me.

I'm a racist.

The good news is that I can admit it, and more importantly, that I can strive to fight against it vehemently.  When it springs up in my life, I try to cut it off at the root.  That's easier said than done.  But I'm learning, and I think I'm growing.

I remember watching an episode of Oprah where that was basically her point - that we're all a little bit racist, and that it's OK to admit to that when you're working to understand your racism and where it comes from, and learn to recognize it for what it is.  It's a totally different thing to ignore it and embrace it as "truth."

Here's the really sad part, though.  There was a time in my life where I was not open with myself about it and trying to fight it, but rather where I gave into it heart and soul.  Ironically, perhaps, it was at Booker T. Washington High School - a so-called "magnet" school because it sought to attract white students to a "black" school to balance the number of black and white students (leaving a much smaller and unbalanced portion for members of other races).  In my freshman year, I had several wonderful black friends who were closer to me than most any of my white friends at school save perhaps one (and all of those mentioned, black and white, will be reading this, I think).  Yet I still harbored a disdain - not for those who were my friends, of course, but for everyone else.

Now, there's some issues I won't get into that caused me to hate a large portion of the population there anyway.  But this had nothing to do with those issues, I think.

Rather, I came from a culture that emphasized white supremacy without necessarily intending to.  My parents had a friend who unabashedly used the N-word, so I was surrounded by it constantly.  I learned to believe that "there are white n......s and black n......s".  I was told it was wrong for white women to marry black men, and I remember being mad when I had to compete with a black boy for a white girl's interest.

I already mentioned in a previous post that I had been taught to hate and fear the poor, but it's impossible to ignore the racial component that was attached to it.  There was a distinction in Tulsa between the north side and the rest of town; the north side of town notably more highly-populated with African-Americans than in other sections.  The fact that this is notable was also not lost on me.  The block I lived on growing up, despite being in Tulsa itself and in a lower-middle-class area was entirely white, until one black family moved in, which of course was a sure sign that the neighborhood was going downhill, even as impressive as it was that this black family was "trying to be white."

My church had no black members until around the time I was starting college, and then it was a single couple.  In fact, until I made a fateful trip to Indianapolis in 2005, I had never been to a church with more than one or two black families in attendance.  (I call it a fateful trip because it's what started the dominoes falling to the left in my heart, but I'll talk more about it later)

Politically, I heard and repeated the idea that blacks were attacking whites. Black people wanted our jobs without having to be qualified for them, so they invented Affirmative Action and racial hiring quotas.  I was highly angered by the fact that a black person who is less qualified for a job could get hired over someone who was more qualified simply by virtue of being black.  I was annoyed that the NAACP existed to promote black rights - and I perceived it as being an organization that only pushed for black rights, despite its apparent intention to support multiple races - while seeming to denigrate white rights.  It even got to the point where I believed it was wrong for an organization like that to exist, when an NAAWP (National Association for the Advancement of White People, of course) could not exist without being lambasted as racist itself.

And so it was that I believed there was an orchestrated national "war on whites."

If you've been paying attention to the news, maybe you see where I'm going with this.

But in my sophomore year, I genuinely hated black people, and I saw them as the problem causing my family to be poor, causing America to be turning into a liberal hellscape, causing me to lose out on scholarships and relationships and opportunities.  As I mentioned in that same previous post, it became a "me vs. other" situation, and black people were the other.  I began hanging out with a guy in my classes who was unabashedly racist, who talked angrily and in hardcore racist terms, about how blacks were killing us and destroying our opportunities and how he wanted to join the KKK.

I didn't want to go that far, because even with that racist upbringing, I believed "true racism" to be something uniquely bad... as if it was something I didn't personally condone, because I didn't believe myself to be racist.  I was just following everything I thought I knew about the world to its logical conclusion.

It got so bad, that I started questioning why segregation was bad, why slavery was bad... I thought it'd be a better world if we could ship all blacks back to Africa, and all gays to the moon while we're at it.  Then we could be pure, and Christian.

I'm better now, but before I get into why, I'd like to address what brought all of this up for me.

Representative Mo Brooks, from Alabama, had this to say on Laura Ingraham's show:

This is a part of the war on whites that’s being launched by the Democratic Party. And the way in which they’re launching this war is by claiming that whites hate everybody else. It’s a part of the strategy that Barack Obama implemented in 2008, continued in 2012, where he divides us all on race, on sex, greed, envy, class warfare, all those kinds of things. Well that’s not true. Okay?

Which Ingraham seemed to support:

No, they’re playing the ‘race’ card. They’re playing the ‘race’ card just like they’re playing the ‘war on women’ card. This is what the left does. But I just think that phraseology might not be the best choice. (Link).

You see, on the political right, there really is the appearance of a "war on whites," which Ingraham identifies in more "acceptable" language as "playing the race card."  That appearance is based on this concept that blacks:

1. Steal jobs from white people through Affirmative Action
2. Steal money from white people through Welfare (because the poor person who stays home to have babies for welfare money is always black, in the stereotype taught to us)
3. Steal education opportunities through education quotas and scholarships
4. Steal white women from white men (because us white guys are all owed hot women, and only white women are hot.  Got it?)
5. and sometimes just straight up Steal (by virtue of the "all blacks are poor criminals" stereotype)

It wasn't until the Spring of 2005 that that started to change for me.  Oh, my racism levels had been declining since high school - since I was no longer surrounded by black people, I was no longer facing them as other on a 6-hours-per-day basis, and so somewhere along the way my hate was somewhat replaced.  Not completely, of course, but lessened.  Then I took Linguistics at college.

What I learned there forced my eyes open for the first time to some of the reasons why things existed that I didn't care for.

For instance, one of the things that annoyed me about black people was their use of language, what a school in Oakland termed "Ebonics."  It sounded stupid and sloppy in my ears, and was the surest way to distinguish between a "real black" and an "Oreo black" (what I called, in those days, people I perceived as "black on the outside, white on the inside").  But a video we watched detailed the story of a young African-American inner-city girl who was about to graduate high school and had the opportunity for a full ride to college.  She spoke "white American English" (as I had previously seen it) to the camera, to describe her conundrum.  When she talked at home, around her extended family and around her friends, they thought she was trying to be something she wasn't when she used the Midwestern Dialect she had learned in school.  And as they thought that about her, they wanted less to do with her.  To avoid losing that connection with her family and her identity, she covered it up, slipping back into the dialect she grew up with.

I began to understand that America is constantly demanding that of other cultures - that they strip away their heritage and join us in "speaking English."  As I began to understand how my opinion of language was flawed, I began to deconstruct the rest of my ideas about race as well.

This was especially true on my trip to Indianapolis, where I visited one of my dearest friends in the world, someone who always surprises me by how loving she is toward those groups I had so long hated.  I admire that love and her devotion to serving her communities.  We drove around the inner parts of the city, and she showed me how wonderful and amazing downtown Indy was becoming.  Then she started showing me some of the neighboring areas - run down, impoverished, but with buildings being replaced at a startling rate.  The gentrification of the area was forcing poor people out, by rising costs of living and rising property taxes.  And they didn't have anywhere to go.

Then she took me to church with her, and it was one of the coolest churches I've ever been to.  It had integrated itself, willingly.  This church, Crossroads Bible Church, had roughly 50% black population, 50% white, and everyone was seated together, worshiping together, dancing in place and shouting "Hallelujah" together.  It was amazing to be a part of, if only for a day.

As I say, the work is not done, but it is something I continue daily to confront and challenge so I can change for the better.  Part of what has helped is to learn some truths about the things I used to believe:

1. Black stealing jobs via Affirmative Action.  If that's true, they've really done a crappy job of it, as the unemployment rate for blacks is 11.4%, compared to 5.3% for whites.  Now, you could claim that Asians have done well at "stealing our jobs," as their unemployment rate is 4.5%.  But that probably has a lot to do with racism as well, and the belief that Asians are better at scientific fields, are harder workers, etc.  (Link)
2. Blacks stealing money through Welfare.  Blacks are more likely to be on Welfare, it's true, but there's an economic reason for it.  Median income for whites in 1990 was 36,915 per family.  In 2009, it was 62,545 per family, an increase of 69.4%.  Blacks, on the other hand, earned only 21,423 in 1990, and 38,409 in 2009.  It increased by 79.3% in those 29 years.  So, while black families are gaining income increases faster than whites, the pay is still abysmally small.  When pay is not equal, is it any wonder than blacks would need Welfare more often than whites?   (Link)
3. How about education?  In this wonderful National Journal article, they point out that
   

   12.4 percent of black college graduates between the ages of 22 and 27 were unemployed. For all college graduates in the same age range, the unemployment rate stood at just 5.6 percent. The figures point to an ugly truth: Black college graduates are more than twice as likely to be unemployed.

   So we still have a long, long way to go... Oh, and just for kicks, here's some more interesting stats: blacks are now more likely than whites to earn Associates degrees, earning 13.7% of all Associates degrees despite accounting for 13.2% of the population.  And they're not much less likely than whites to earn Masters degrees - they earn 12.5% of this higher level degree.  Doctorates, however, are a major concern - only 7.4% of Doctorates go to blacks.  (Link)
4. Oh... and blacks are LESS likely than whites to receive scholarship funding.  6.2% of whites and 4.4% of blacks receive scholarships.  Given that, it's pretty darned impressive that 12.5% of Masters recipients are black.  Whites do receive less money than blacks, on average - about $300 less.  Whoopy.  (Link)
5. Yes, people are more likely to get married to someone of another race.  But maybe you just need to be a little bit more like Eugene Levy's character in Bringing Down The House.  Seriously, though, blacks are the race most likely NOT to be chosen for mixed marriages.  And in online dating, blacks are the race least desired for potential dates.
6. Crime is a huge issue - way too huge for me to begin to challenge... there are many issues involved, from the income and hiring inequality mentioned above, to gang violence, to a cultural perception of "thuggery" that makes us see all blacks as dangerous and leads to police and vigilantes killing "1 black man ... every 28 hours" in America (Link). 

Basically, it's a huge issue... but the fact of the matter is that whites are clearly in power over blacks, and still continue to abuse that power.  Laws to try to negate that abuse of power should not be confused with bullying in the opposite direction.  They are not reverse racism, as I once believed, any more than standing up to a bully at school is reverse bullying.

The Poor You Shall Always Have, Part 3

I'm working on a website that deals more in-depth with the concept I want to throw at you now (and as such, I would appreciate any feedback you'd like to give regarding it).

In America, all children are told about Santa Claus, although certainly not all are told as if Santa is a real person.  But many - nay, most - are told that he's real and believe in him until somewhere between the ages of 7 and 10.   Those who do believe are taught to pray to him, by sitting on his lap at the mall and whispering in his ear, or writing lengthy letters to him asking him for all the things they want.  Both believers and non-believers sing songs about him akin to worship songs we might sing in church.

In the pantheon of American civil religion, Santa is seated at the right hand of George Washington.

Both believers and non-believers are told one key thing about Santa - that you can ask him for presents, and if you're good enough, you'll get them.  Whether kids are taught to believe or not to believe, they both hear the same thing in songs and in writing:

He's making a list and checking it twice,
Gonna find out who's naughty and nice
...
He sees you when you are sleeping, He knows when you're awake;
He knows if you've been bad or good, So be good, for goodness' sake!
("Santa Claus is Coming to Town" by John Frederick Coots and Haven Gillespie)

The idea here is that Santa has a list of the good children and the bad, and those who are good get presents, and those who are bad get nothing (or, in even worse versions of the myth, an anti-Santa named Krampus comes and takes them away).

The problem with this myth of Santa and his presents for good children is the following logic: If Santa always gives presents to good boys and girls, then boys and girls who do not get presents must be bad.  Therefore, poor children whose families could afford no presents must be evil.  It's not a far stretch to also assume that the more presents Santa brings - or, at least the better - the better the child is.  When kids invariably go back to school and start comparing gifts, they're left with knowing that they aren't as good as another child because they didn't get the same quality stuff.

 Rich = good, poor = bad.

When we're children, we also pray to God in the same way.  Heck, at middle age I still do, sometimes.  But our approach to God is that God is a omnipotent Santa, able to dole out gifts to all of us.

Most obviously of this same genre is Prosperity Theology, of the same kind as Joel Osteen is famous for.  The basic idea of Prosperity is that if people are faithful to God, God will be faithful to them financially - meaning that God will reward good people with material wealth.  This clearly creates the same conundrum: if Prosperity was true, then all rich people are good, and all poor people are evil.

Prosperity Theology says that this guy is more likely to get into Heaven than you are.
By Bashar_al-Assad.jpg: Fabio Rodrigues Pozzebom / ABr derivative work: César (Bashar_al-Assad.jpg) [CC-BY-3.0-br (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/br/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons

Fortunately, most of the Christian world has theoretically rejected Prosperity Theology as heresy.  Unfortunately, that's only in theory.  Because we still teach it in church - we just mask it.

You see, when we believe the stuff I mentioned in the 2nd post on this topic - the idea, for instance, that the poor are all drug abusers and welfare fraud committers, we declare that wealth is good.  When we teach Santa Claus to kids, we declare that wealth is good.  We embrace Prosperity Theology because it backs up what we want to believe about our capitalist society, and the values we (I say we, having believed it in my past, though I am clearly no longer one) on the political Right espouse.  But we know it to be heretical.  And as such, it's important to reject those things that promote it.

The poor you shall always have, part 2

I read the following comment the other day:

"[Republicans] sincerely believe that helping the poor actually hurts them because it deprives them of the suffering they deserve for being poor"  (From user Wendy's Chili on Fark).

You know, it's interesting... when I was a hardcore Republican, what we were always taught about the poor was the following:

1.  People will take advantage of social welfare programs every way they can.
1. I was told a story about someone who claimed to have "horizontal inertia" - which was described as the inability to get out of bed - and this was their reason for getting disability checks.
2. I had a good friend until we got into an argument about this issue, but her story is of exactly the same type as those that I was told by others during my right-wing days - that she knows that the statistics about disability/welfare/SSI fraud are incorrect because she personally knows people who abuse the system (I do not know why she didn't report them).
3. I was told that people on welfare often have additional kids just so they can get lucrative welfare checks and not have to work.
2. People sometimes do need to be helped, but...
3. The government is inept to fight the problem, both because of fraud and because of red tape, so...
4. It is and should be up to people to donate to programs to help the poor.
5. And it must be programs, because when you donate directly to a poor person, such as when you see someone standing with a sign on the street, that person will abuse it.  
6. Poor people, when left to their own devices, will use donated money to buy drugs.
7. It's certainly good to fight poverty, to help those who are poor, but it's useless to try to find ways of eliminating it, because, "The poor you shall always have with you," (Matthew 26:11; Mark 14:7; John 12:8).
8. Poverty isn't really that bad, and...
9. Poor people who aren't on drugs are probably happier than rich people anyway, (see the Notorious court case: Mo' Money v. Mo' Problems).

This has the following results:

1. It encourages giving of funds to religious organizations.
2. It encourages voting for conservative policies, such as further tax breaks and the elimination of social welfare programs.
3. It helps to define "the poor" as a distinct social other, often the other that is responsible for taking your tax money and threatening your children's safety with drugs, an other that cannot be trusted to look after its own needs.
4. It encourages us to believe the poor may be responsible for their situation, and thus the suffering they undergo is deserved.
5. It teaches us to hate the poor.

That last point may seem extreme, but hate is exactly the response that people feel when they feel they have been taken advantage of by an other.  You may have an "other" if you think of another group as anything other than human.  It gives political and religious leaders a clear target to direct your rage toward as the cause of your problems.  It lets the "us versus them" mentality run far beyond simple debate and turn into war.  It's how Hitler honed the Nazi party, by identifying others (most notably the Jews, but he targeted lots of other groups, including gays and Freemasons), Hitler was able to consolidate his power.  He convinced the German people that the cause of their problems came from these others rather than from themselves, honed that belief into hate, and used it to go to war.  This is the danger of seeing people as other.


Of course, we can attempt to argue against these points, but we run into a problem immediately: the distrust of statistics.  Statistics are not given to us by God or by our preachers, but rather by guys in lab coats who make phone calls and ask questions, and those questions are kept secret from us, and maybe the people who are answering the questions don't have the best intentions or the utmost honesty, and so they are always suspect.  They are especially suspect when they seem to go against God or our preachers.

I can show any number of statistics showing that fraud is not rampant, that drugs are used more often by the rich than by the poor, that money actually does buy happiness, that the federal government is more efficient at delivering social welfare moneys and resources to the poor than any non-profit organization... but because those statistics are not trusted (after all, "I know people who..." always has greater impact than the statistics), there's really no point for me to do so.

It's a wasted argument until we can solve the problem of that mistrust of science.  That is to say, we cannot solve poverty until we find a way to teach evangelicals to love science.



If you know someone you believe to be committing fraud against one of our benefits systems, please report it.  Here are some of the links you can use to do so in the U.S.:

• Social Security Fraud: http://www.socialsecurity.gov/fraudreport/oig/public_fraud_reporting/form.htm
• Welfare Fraud: Contact your state agency.  In Oklahoma, where I'm from, that agency is: http://www.okdhs.org/contactus
• Medicare Fraud: http://www.medicare.gov/forms-help-and-resources/report-fraud-and-abuse/fraud-and-abuse.html
• Veterans Affairs Fraud: http://www.va.gov/oig/hotline/