Intelligence

When I first enrolled in college, I had the same evangelical fantasy you've probably heard before, that goes something like this:

A professor tries to teach class about the fundamentals of evolution.  In his class is a student who is a hardcore conservative evangelical Christian, who knows better.  The kid challenges the professor, citing Bible verse after Bible verse, and eventually the professor sees he's been bested, and runs out of the room crying.

No, this isn't just a meme.  It's the kind of thing churches, periodicals, and parents drill into kids' heads on the right.  Beware the evil liberal college!  If you must go, know that your professors will all be against you, ready to fill your head with lies!  You can only resist them by thoroughly knowing Scripture, and reading it every day!

So, when I got to college, I was fully prepared to be constantly at war with my professors.

Only... none of them seemed to know it.

Thinking back on this made me consider something deeper about how the political right constructs straw men around their ideological opponents. 

Notice in this fantasy that it is the professor who is evil; notice, too, that the professor knows better - that is, the professor really knows the "truth," knows that evolution is sham, knows that the Bible is a legitimate source of knowledge and wisdom, knows that it is, in fact, inerrant; however, the professor teaches against this, knowing full well he is teaching evil, because he IS evil.  He's there as a servant of Satan, deliberately trying to lead young, impressionable minds astray.

That is legitimately how right-wing Evangelicals see the world; that is, that they know the truth, and in fact the truth is obvious to anyone with the intelligence to see it.  If someone can't see the truth, then, they must either be an idiot (libtard) or intentionally attempting to deceive idiots into following false idols.  No one could come logically and intelligently to any argument other than those supported by their interpretation of the Bible.

So if you find yourself arguing with an Evangelical, and they're calling you a "libtard" - while they do mean it as an insult, they ALSO mean that you MUST by an idiot... because the alternative is unconscionable.

Also note the power dynamic in the example: the professor is one of the "liberal elite".  In this myth, professors, Democrat politicians, clergy who openly advocate homosexuality, and such, are all people who are intelligent... they're just also purely evil, seeking to deceive the masses.

And it's pretty hard to convince someone of your honesty and integrity when their myths identify you as a literal antichrist.

The Science of Political Suicide

Politics is an interesting beast...

I would like to think - and maybe I would be wrong, but follow me on this path for a moment - I would like to think that reasonable people should, at the very least, be able to agree on certain things.

As an example, let's take the issue of healthcare.  At the least, Democrats and Republicans should be able to look at the healthcare system in America and see that we're paying considerably more than any other countries per person (the next closest is Switzerland, at $2,000 per person less, and their GDP per capita is higher than ours).  That's a solid fact we should be able to agree on.

We should be able to agree that the total medical debt in this country is $81 Billion, or that more than 40 Million Americans have unpaid medical bills (note: that's counting only bills in default... some 30 Million Americans are in debt but making at least minimum payments toward their bills).

We should be able to agree that the average cost of insurance for a single person in 1999 was $2,196, and that in 2018 it was $6,896.

We should be able to agree that the trendline showing all the years in between 2018 and 1999 shows that prices haven't fluctuated wildly year over year - that is, they've been growing at a pretty steady $245.6 per year, and that even during the depression they were right on that trend line.

We should be able to agree that the average cost of insurance for a family plan in 1999 was $5,791, and that in 2018 it was $19,616.

We should be able to agree that the trendline there, too, doesn't fluctuate wildly.  Prices have grown fairly steadly at a rate of $724.23 per year.

We should be able to agree that the median household income in 1999 was $42,000, and that in 2017 it was $61,372.  We should be able to agree that this means the average household was spending 13.8% of its earnings on health insurance in 1999, and spending 30.6% in 2017.

We should be able to agree that the Affordable Care Act, AKA Obamacare, didn't cause any change in the increase in rates - to the chagrin of both parties (that is, it didn't go up as Republicans would like to claim, and it didn't go down as Democrats would like to claim).

We should be able to agree on these things because agreeing on them doesn't mean that suddenly your political opponents have been right all along, or that just because you agree on the problem you also necessarily agree on the solution.

But that's not where we're at.

Instead, even basic fact reporting has to be twisted and contorted into our personal world view.  We accept the facts that agree with us, and discard the facts that don't; worse still, we change the facts to fit our world view when we can't ignore them.

Unfortunately, the more we divide ourselves along party lines, the more we cut off competing news sources and amplify supporting news sources, the more we block and unfriend and ignore people who disagree with us, the more hardened in our ideology we get... and that seems like a problem that is only growing, with "news stations" that only provide one partisan version of news and events, with Facebook becoming an echo chamber, with trolls of all kinds intentionally attempting to subvert our information stream and mislead us.

Our elected officials seem to follow this trend.  Instead of acknowledging facts that disagree with their ideology, many times you'll hear politicians answer such a fact by saying, "look, all I know is..."

That's not acceptable, for either side.  We have to start fighting for politicians not because they agree with all of our beliefs, but because they are committed to the scientific method, because they are committed to studying problems and finding solutions through careful measurements, through trial and error.  We don't need politicians who are RIGHT so much as we need politicians who are WILLING TO BE WRONG.

But that, in this society today, is political suicide...

First Christian Church

Let's talk about the earliest Christian church.

As many of you are likely well aware, the New Testament (as we have it today) starts with the four Gospels and then proceeds immediately into the "Acts of the Apostles," or just "Acts," the book named so because it describes the actions of the Apostles in the aftermath of Christ's crucifixion. In Christian tradition, it and the Gospel of Luke were written by Luke the Evangelist (and it makes sense, as Acts fairly closely follows him around), but the author of both books never specifies a name.  I will refer to "him" as "Luke," following that tradition, but realizing that it may be horribly, horribly wrong.

In Tulsa especially, chapter 2 gets a lot of focus, as it starts out with the Holy Spirit suddenly filling the room where the Apostles met, appearing as tongues of flame over each of their heads, and causing them to "speak in other tongues" (which I won't get into and you can interpret however you see fit).  A great crowd appeared, and Peter began speaking to them.

Pentecost, by Jean II Restout, 1732.  Louvre Museum.  In Wikipedia.

And then the people assembled there began to fellowship together, as translated in the NIV:

    They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. (Acts 2:42-47)

Chapter 3 describes Peter healing someone and speaking to the crowd again, but then chapter 4 tells us that Peter and John were arrested, and that by this time,

[...] the number of men who believed grew to about five thousand.

It would not be unfair to surmise that this count was the count of people in Jerusalem who were part of their little community.  After the release of Peter and John, they went back to the community, and then we get this further glimpse into the life of this first church:

    All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.
    Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means “son of encouragement”), sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles’ feet.  (Acts 4:32-37)

As if it wasn't clear enough from chapter 2, Luke specifies that within this community, the idea of property ceased to have any meaning.  The apostles became the arbiters of who received what, and everyone was taken care of.

The last line about Barnabas seems rather unimportant, given the proceeding paragraph.  Everyone who had owned any property had done the same thing. Given that Barnabas is later integral to the story of the church, after the Conversion of Paul (and that Luke and Barnabas were both part of Paul's inner circle, which we also won't get into here), it seems this was likely tacked on by Luke to show when Barnabas joined the ranks of the church and how he had sacrificed everything for the community, to show him as a Godly man.

Then we get into chapter 5, and one of the most famous stories from the Bible that hinges entirely upon this very concept.  Ananias and Sapphira.

The Death of Ananias, by Raphael, 1515. 
Victoria and Albert Museum.  In Wikipedia.

The story:

    Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property.  With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet.  Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.”
    When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened. Then some young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him.
    About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Peter asked her, “Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?”
    “Yes,” she said, “that is the price.”
    Peter said to her, “How could you conspire to test the Spirit of the Lord? Listen! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also.”
    At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband. Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.  (Acts 5:1-11)

It's important when reading such stories to read them in context.  In the original Acts, there was no breakdown by chapter - the story of Barnabas flowed directly into the story of Ananias and Sapphira. 

It's easy to imagine, then, that Ananias and Sapphira did what they did out of a hope that they would be recognized as pillars of the community, for selflessly giving their property to the church.

But I think that's a rather American interpretation of it.  It's pretty clear in Acts that the community of believers didn't focus terribly much on individuals, aside from the Apostles.  Even Barnabas only got a shout out, and as I surmised above, likely because of his relationship with Luke or his importance to the later story.

Peter focuses here on how the two "lied to the Holy Spirit."  But let's be clear about what that means.

Ananias and Sapphira at no point said to God, "here you go, God, everything we have."  Rather, they did that to Peter, the other Apostles, and the church as a whole.  As a matter of direct course, their lie was to the church.  It was BY lying to the church that they lied to the Spirit.

Capitalist theologians often point out that it was their lie that got them killed (although it's important to note that we are never told what or who kills them).  But it cannot be overstated that their lie was in telling the church that they had sold everything they owned and given it all to the church, as that is the focus of not one but two sections of the immediately preceding chapters.  We are not specifically told why they did what they did, but when we focus on their greed in holding back a portion of their funds, we forget that they gave a portion, too.  That is, their lie could have served two purposes: to increase their standing in the community, or to join the community in the first place.  We're told that "No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had" (Acts 4:32b) and that "All the believers were together and had everything in common" (Acts 2:44), so even if the community didn't strictly require people to eschew property to join, it's clear that truly being part of the community meant sacrificing everything. 

Which brings us back to the church.  The church in this time was communal.  It shared everything.  Though it had administers, those administers were carefully chosen - first by Christ, and later (in chapter 6), by the people of the church themselves.  

The story in chapter 6:

    In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews [those who spoke Greek and likely incorporated a lot of elements of Greek culture and faith] among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.”
    This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.

Thus, by chapter 6, the early church had formed a bicameral political structure - the religious authority, which still held the true power in the church, but also an administrative body democratically elected to oversee the distribution of food and care for the poor.

What this tells us is that the communal system was far from perfect, but that didn't stop it, either.  What did eventually stop it was the persecution of Christians, namely from Saul (who later became Paul, and who joined the ranks of the Apostles in no small part thanks to Barnabas, who defended his conversion).  It's worth noting, as Dr. Michael Mullins (priest of the Diocese of Waterford & Lismore and author of five books on the gospels and the life of the early church) does, that when Christ appeared to Paul, Christ specifically said, "why do you persecute me?"  As with the lie of Ananias and Sapphira earlier, Paul wasn't persecuting Christ directly, but rather the church - which Christ shows to be the same as persecuting Christ. After Saul's persecutions started, the church broke apart, people fleeing in all different directions.

Mullins points out that the idea of community was consistently present in the writings of Paul, saying that "the
community should function in mutual dependence and harmony like the parts of a human body
(1 Cor 12:12-30; Rom 12:4-8)" and that the Holy Spirit is
"the giver of gifts for the building up of the community (1 Cor 12-13; Rom 12:6-8)."
  
Now, I don't know if Mullins would go to the extreme of advocating for communal living, but it is clear from Paul's writings, as he points out, that the idea of community is paramount.

The word translated in the Bible as "church" is the Greek word "ekklesia," and to understand that, we need to briefly discuss the Greek political system.

It's a pretty well-known fact that Greece was the birthplace of democracy.  Though it's pretty clear that democracy grew up in several places on the Balkan Peninsula, Athens is the one with the recorded history to show us what it looked like.  

It looked a lot like the early U.S.

Every citizen could vote.  Unfortunately, as with the U.S., citizenship was only for men 18 years of age or older, and specifically not slaves.  Unlike the U.S., they had no birthright citizenship - to be a citizen you had to be the son of a citizen of Athens and born in the city-state of Athens (or whatever polis you were hoping to be a citizen of).  

Citizens voted in a principal assembly.  If you remember your Plato, the Greeks loved debates, and so they would gather together in an assembly to hear nominations for public office, hear speeches, debates, etc., and then vote as a group (or to decide on major policy changes).

That principal assembly was called the ekklesia. 

Now, shortly before the life of Christ, Greece had fallen and Rome had risen and taken over the peninsula, Israel, and Egypt, but Rome liked to let countries continue to do as they had done, meaning the Greeks still held assembly under Roman rule (even if they weren't as powerful politically as they once had been).  

Paul was no stranger to the ekklesia.  As a citizen of Rome from Tarsus, he would have been exposed to Greek philosophy from a young age.  Strabo describes the city's love of philosophy in The Geography (as translated by Horace Leonard Jones): 

The people at Tarsus have devoted themselves so eagerly, not only to philosophy, but also to the whole round of education in general, that they have surpassed Athens, Alexandria, or any other place that can be named where there have been schools and lectures of philosophers. [...] Further, the city of Tarsus has all kinds of schools of rhetoric; and in general it not only has a flourishing population but also is most powerful, thus keeping up the reputation of the mother-city.

Paul surely had a classical education in rhetoric (with all that that entailed, including the sexual elements, but that's another conversation entirely) as seems evident from his writings.  So the fact that so often the word the Greek writers of the New Testament (especially Paul and those close to Paul) used to describe the church was the same word used to describe the principal assembly seems important in some significant ways.


Also of significant note on this topic is another Greek word - adelphoi.  It's usually translated as "brother" or "brothers and sisters" to avoid gender exclusivity (although it was, in the Greek, strictly male).  It was the word the men in the body of Christ called each other.

The word is the same word used to describe what people could vote in the ekklesia - that is, the citizens of the city-state.  While it could mean literal brother, it could also mean fellow citizen. 

The members of the ancient church were not merely participants in a church, congregants who sat in a pew and then went on with their day, but rather active citizens of Christ.  Citizens met as a body to decide on its leaders (as we've seen with regard to The Seven) and on important issues.  And, as with The Seven, the assembly considered it their national responsibility to care for the poor and the elderly in their Nation of Christ. 


As John said, "If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?  Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth"  (1 John 3:17).

This is not, then, merely a matter of giving and of charity.

The Antichrist and Trump

One of the things I see on Facebook feeds coming from leftists - both those I know and those I don't - is a sense of incredulity that people can call themselves Christian and keep supporting Trump, a man who admittedly has had multiple affairs, apparently paid for sex with porn stars, imprisons children in cages, mocks those with physical differences from him, and seems to call for his followers to murder journalists.

Unfortunately, having come from a right-wing evangelical upbringing, I understand all too well.

Our chief concern, when I was a part of that ideology, was that nations were trying to bring about Armageddon.

We believed that things such as the nationalization of services and identification (e.g. Social Security and the REAL ID Act) were tools that would give the Antichrist the ability to track and control us as predicted by certain interpretations of Revelation.  Specifically:

The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed.  It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.

This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666. (Revelation 13:15-18)

They believe that a national ID and nationalized services are the tools by which an antichrist could prevent people from making purchases.  Imagine if cash was done away with (as seems to be happening in many places), so that you were required to carry a credit or debit card to access your money.  In such a case, all transactions could be forced to go through a federal database, and such a database could approve or decline transactions based on criteria other than whether or not the owner of the card had money in an account.  Basically, they believe the antichrist would achieve power by starving people into submission.

Furthermore, they also believe that Europe is heavily involved in bringing this about, based on other interpretations of Revelation:

The dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. (Revelation 13:1)

The "ten horns ... with ten crowns" they believe are European countries (I'll come to more of why in a moment) or possibly a combination of European and American.  NATO plays into this for Evangelicals in that it is an organization already combining European and American nations in mutually-binding agreements.  There are, of course, many more nations than 10 in NATO, but they look instead to the largest countries of NATO, which are (statistically):

1. The United States
2. Germany
3. Turkey
4. France
5. The UK
6. Italy
7. Spain
8. Poland
9. Canada
10. Romania

Sometimes they group up all the Scandinavian countries together instead of worrying about Romania.

These countries are European countries for a few reasons.  #1: Because they've got a notion that only the most technologically advanced countries could achieve the whole 666 tracking thing I mentioned above, and #2: Because they interpret Revelations 16 (quoted below) as saying that there will be a great war between the armies of the East and the armies of the West (that is, NATO vs China/Russia/Communism) at Armageddon:

The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East. (Rev. 16:12)

Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon. (Rev. 16:16)

Euphrates was mentioned earlier during a scene that might be war:

The sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the four horns of the golden altar that is before God.  It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.”  And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind.  The number of the mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand. I heard their number.

The horses and riders I saw in my vision looked like this: Their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur. The heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke and sulfur.  A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur that came out of their mouths.  The power of the horses was in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails were like snakes, having heads with which they inflict injury. (Rev. 9:13-19)

So... yeah.  

As you can imagine, Evangelicals fear the European Union was a step even further in the direction of reaching the "ten crowns."   They feared the US joining the EU, and cheered for Brexit to hopefully stop it somehow.

So when Trump goes to Europe, goes to NATO meetings, and lambasts Angela Merkel and others, the Evangelicals who make up his base cheer and believe that he is doing God's work.  He is actively trying to break up NATO and prevent the coming of the apocalypse for a little while longer; or, if not delaying the coming of the apocalypse, then perhaps preventing the US from being one of the ten crowns.

God and Guns

This popped up in my feed today:

From multiple places on Pinterest.  Original author unknown.

Let's take a look at this argument.

First, it conflates the idea of a gun with a sword.  People could still very well buy a sword if they were trying to "literally" follow the Word of God.  The interpretation seems to be that God is okay with us arming ourselves, ergo we should be able to arming ourselves with anything.

That's not quite what the Scripture says.  As always, context is everything.

“Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

But he replied, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.”

Jesus answered, “I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me.”

Then Jesus asked them, “When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?”

“Nothing,” they answered.

He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.  It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.”

The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are two swords.”

“That’s enough!” he replied. (Luke 22:31-38)

This comes at one of the most famous moments in the story of Jesus' arrest, when Jesus tells Peter that Peter will disown Him.  The very next thing Jesus does is to mention how He sent them out to witness, and said, "When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?"  This reflects other times when Christ had said that His followers would not need to worry about the future, about what they ate or drank, or what they wore.  Here, He's asking them to confirm that that's exactly the experience they had, to show them that faith in Him is exactly what He has said it would be all along.

Then He turns around and says, "but now..."

This isn't a nullification of His command not to worry.  Instead, He's telling them they SHOULD worry about those things.  Why?  There can be only one reason - because they are no longer His followers.  That is, they have all turned their backs on Him, like Peter would do.

That's why, when the disciples show Him their swords, He says "That's enough!" - not because they need swords, or even that they need two swords among all of them, but because they aren't getting it.  Those swords aren't protection, they're an indictment of the faith of His followers, and as such, are quite enough.

Need more proof of this?  Look what happens in the very next scene.  Christ leaves the house and goes to pray on the Mount of Olives, and Judas brought men to arrest Jesus, and one of the disciples cuts off a man's ear.  For a more thorough account of that, read my post: Swords

Hubris and Awe

Imagine an alien world;

A planet somewhere else in space.  A planet where evolution is a reality (if you don't believe in that here).

A planet where life springs into being thanks to a collection of raw chemicals and just the right conditions, and billions of years to sort itself out.

The life springs up, eventually spreads across the entire planet and begins changing, evolving into new creatures and new plants and eventually into a species that is intelligent enough to ask questions like "why?"

Now, because life evolved on the planet, that life adapted to the climate of that planet.  Whether the planet was warmer than ours or colder than ours, drier than ours or wetter than ours, whether it has an acidic atmosphere, a caustic atmosphere, or perhaps no atmosphere at all - all of that is irrelevant.  Why? Because life still evolved, and that life is perfectly adapted to that environment, whatever the environment may be.

And it looks around at, what would to us certainly look like an "alien world," and it sees a world that it has adapted perfectly to.  The world looks perfect for it.  It is perfectly content with the environment of the world.

And it asks the question, "why?"

"Why am I here?"  "Why is this world so perfect?" "Where did I come from?"

and because its science hasn't caught up, it doesn't have good answers to those questions.  Instead, it looks around at the planet and sees how perfectly adapted it is to the planet and it thinks, "This planet is perfectly adapted to me."

And therein lies its first mistake.

And seeing how perfectly adapted the planet is to it, it starts to answer the other questions.  Because of course, if the planet is so perfect for this creature, then it stands to reason that the planet was *made* for the creature... that is, that some external force specifically crafted the entire planet and its ecosystem for that intelligent creature... and therefore, there might be a god, and that god is clearly benevolent because it gave the creature such a beautiful and wonderful planet, full of abundant life and all the various things the creature needs to live.

And so the creature crafts a religion...

And it looks around the universe and it sees no evidence of other creatures, no planets on which other life exists, and it thinks, "how lucky I am to have a planet that just happens to exist in the habitable zone of its star; clearly, that's not just chance.  This is further evidence of a divine creator."

Rather than realizing that the only reason it is able to draw such conclusions is because it sprang forth from the process of evolution, a process that only occurs on planets that have the right mixture of chemicals and temperatures and so on, and that therefore creatures capable of asking such questions will naturally occur on such planets.

If it's not immediately obvious, this is exactly what we do when we look around our planet and think that it is crafted for us.  When I hear arguments like that of Tom Harrison this morning on his newest ad talking about how wonderful it is that we just "happen" to have a planet that is perfect, so clearly this is evidence of a creator, this is what I think about - no, it's not that we just "happen" to have all of these things, it's that a creature capable of asking such questions can ONLY occur on a planet with all of these things.  None of this is evidence of divinity.

This leads me into the story of my adventure to see the Solar Eclipse last month...

My trip to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons was full of some of the most awe-inspiring and beautiful things I’ve ever experienced.  Among them – giant waterfalls framed by cliffs that looked almost fake in how profoundly brilliant their red and golden hues shined in the sun, and the stark contrast they gave to the white water crushing and crashing down between them, roaring so loudly that even from a mile away it nearly drowned the combined voices of the hundreds of tourists overflowing the overlooks and craning to see and get the best pictures; rapids that suddenly appeared beside the road, whipping and tumbling over a thousand jumbled messes of rocks and downed trees, battering against narrow cliff walls amidst tight turns; pools of pungent sulfuric acid bubbling and steaming up from the ground, carrying with them minerals of a thousand different colors that all turned stark white when they dried and killed everything in their path, so they created an unbelievably dead and desolate landscape while they still flowed and burped up from below the ground, the only kind of life in the area, and painted it with vibrant reds and blues and golds and greens; there were of course the geysers, belching out sulfuric gasses nearly constantly for thousands of years, and sometimes spraying hundreds of gallons of boiling water hundreds of feet into the air; there were still, serene lakes before impossibly jagged and steely mountains, grey, green, and purple, rocks jutting out in all directions; there were Moose and Buffalo that stood regally as the kings and queens of large, open grasslands, completely unconcerned by the threat of wolves, cougars, and overly zealous picture-takers.  

And then there was the eclipse.  It both literally and figuratively overshadowed all of the other amazing sights.  There’s a lot of build-up to the eclipse – the expectations set by news stations and people who’ve seen it before, and the internal anxiety of seeing it first-hand and watching it slowly approach.  For over an hour, I sat there impatiently waiting totality, periodically looking up and seeing the moon slowly crawl across the sun, until the light from the sun was a crescent, and then a sliver, and then a bright speck.  Meanwhile, the world is getting slowly darker, and the temperature is dropping.  As totality got close, my shadow became fuzzy; as it became imminent, I could see waves of light and dark on the ground.

And then the light from the sun disappeared, and I could see nothing through my eclipse glasses, so I took them off.

Never before have I been that completely floored by a natural sight.  When the Sun is covered by the Moon completely, it turns into a ring of stunningly brilliant silver light.  The Sun’s corona is visible, shooting out from the Sun in hundreds of millions of miles in either direction, appearing like wispy strands of gossamer silk that spread outward or loop back in on themselves.  There are also bright specks of red along the surface of the ring, million-mile-long flares of fusion fire that appear as mere flecks of red along the ring.  The stars come out, and even Mercury becomes visible.

The description does not do it justice.  People who see a total eclipse often describe it as life-changing, especially in the immediate aftermath of it.  At our viewing post, the reactions ranged from stunned silence to non-stop peals of joy and amazement, with one young woman in tears and unable to stop herself from talking and screaming about how beautiful it was. 

In my younger days, such sights were clear signs of God’s grace and beauty, and how much He loved us to provide such beauty for us.  When someone I spoke with mentioned the same viewpoint after the eclipse, I was suddenly shocked to realize this was no longer the approach I took.  Now, I see the science behind it all – why the Sun appears as the way it does, why strong acids bubble up from below the ground, why rivers carve out such amazing channels, and why, as creatures who evolved in a world of such things, we think all of these things had to be created just for us rather than realizing we were created just for the universe.

That was the takeaway of a gentleman I talked to shortly after, who was still in awe of it and said that he couldn’t understand how people could see such a sight and not believe in God.  I smiled and agreed, knowing full well how they could.

That isn’t to say I didn’t witness God’s presence and God’s power, I just didn’t see it directly in the eclipse, as amazing as it was.

Instead, I got to thinking about why the eclipse is significant.  On the entire planet, only people in a narrow swath of land got to experience totality, but people outside of that path had their own unique experiences – a sun that was partly covered but never reached totality, leaving perhaps just a small sliver of sunlight, or a large crescent – or, perhaps they never saw anything different at all.  Witnessing totality was entirely dependent upon the individual human beings who sought it out.

But every second of every day, there’s totality somewhere.  Seldom on Earth, but beyond the Earth, there are points where the Earth, the Moon, Venus, and every other planet block out the sunlight and an observer in that exact spot could see the sun blocked and witness its corona alone, brilliant amidst the stars.

The significance of this is entirely predicated upon the human perspective.  It is important and unique only because it offers us a chance to witness something common amongst the stars, but uncommon for us here.  It is important only because we witness it, and it is our subjective experience that makes it important.

This also makes it important because we can see how it affects others; that is, knowing that it is important for humans, I paid attention to other humans.  I spent much of the eclipse itself, and the days before and after, carefully observing humanity.

And what I saw was intriguing and profound.  The emotions that the eclipse brought out – the feeling of galactic insignificance, the awe, and the happiness that it triggered in the hearts of all who observed it was exciting to see.  Whether it was the girl who we met from Yucaipa, California, who was fairly excited beforehand but when she saw totality she started laughing and shouting about how unbelievable it was while tears streamed down her face; her boyfriend, who talked about trying to figure out how to get to Antarctica for the next one; the man who raced like mad to get ahead of a rainstorm just to find a tiny window of clear sky through which he and his family could watch, and who was just ecstatic that they had made it, that he had been able to provide that opportunity for them; the aforementioned man who was moved by a spirit of worship for God as he watched through a telescope; or the hundreds and hundreds of people I encountered in passing who were simply nice. 

And there was plenty of opportunity for the whole thing to unravel.  The traffic after the eclipse was some of the worst I’ve ever seen.  The line of cars waiting to get into the city of Jackson was over 5 miles long, and not moving at all.  Getting into and out of Yellowstone required similar lines.  The streets of Jackson were crowded well beyond capacity, as were the viewing platforms of both national parks, leaving no legal places to park.  Despite all of this, people stayed nice, they kept smiling and talking to anyone and everyone who would share the time, and they waved people in ahead of them in their long line of traffic, whenever another car approached. 

It was as though witnessing such an event brought everyone together.  Everyone wanted to talk about it, even while walking around awesome natural wonders in the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone – they not only wanted to share their own experiences, they wanted to hear the stories of others who had experienced it.  Like people talking about 9/11 or any number of natural disasters and catastrophes, it made people need each other again, made people realize that they were not alone, that they were all in this world together.

That is where I saw God in all of this – in the love that people experienced for one another, however brief.  I’ve seen it again in our response to the hurricane, though it is much easier to embrace and appreciate in the face of something as beautiful as the eclipse.  Such love is truly awesome to behold, and I hope we can find many more eclipses and many fewer hurricanes in which to see it.

False Advertising

As mentioned in a previous post, if we want to change the knee-jerk reaction of many in the state to always vote Republican because it's the party of Jesus, we need to spend a lot more time explaining how the Democrats are the party of Jesus.  Like it or not, Christianity is a major player (if not THE major player) in state politics, and you can't win elections here without cozying up to it.

The big elephant in the room is and likely always will be abortion.  For some, no matter how you spin it, how you show how liberal policies more closely align to the message of Jesus, etc., they will never be able to vote for us based on that issue alone.  I've spent a lot of time in this blog talking about abortion, so I'm not going to address it at the moment, other than to say that any time your political opponent tries to drag you into an argument about abortion, you have to walk away.  It's not a winnable argument.

That said, there are lots of winnable arguments.

I mentioned before that I'd like to see billboards quoting the Bible posted around town.  This would be a great way to change hearts and minds.  Why?

Because reading the Bible turns you into a liberal.

As we already know, there's a tendency that the more educated you are, the more liberal you are.  This seems logical - liberal means "open to change" at its heart, and we tend to embrace new ideas more strongly when those ideas are backed by sound reasoning and research.  The more you accept the scientific method as a rationale for understanding the world, the more you'll accept its findings, and accept that change is necessary to model society around those findings.

The same seems to hold true for the frequency with which you read the Bible.  The more you study it, the more you understand how various arguments in the Bible feed into one another, and the more likely you are to catch the deeper meanings that the Bible itself says it has.  For instance, the scholars of Jesus' time - the Pharisees and Sadducees - were highly legalistic and, for their time, conservative.  Jesus spent a very large part of His time trying to reeducate people about Biblical legalism and about focusing on the deeper point to the Bible - namely, its focus on love of God and love of neighbor - rather than the minutia of the law. 

For many Christians, however, the only time they interact with God's Word is in Church or in a Bible Study group - places where their thoughts on various topics are led by spiritual leaders rather than by the Holy Spirit.  Though they're taught in church to read their Bibles, life happens.  Life happens to all of us, so this should come as no surprise.  It's difficult to spend time in deep personal study of the Bible when things are exploding all around you.
 
So we need to advertise.  Gentle advertisements, divorced from any obvious political bent, can make people ask questions that they might be uncomfortable answering.  In the presence of a political agenda, those questions get answered in politically-aligned ways - if a liberal sees that an advertisement came from a conservative thinktank, for instance, the liberal might automatically assume that the opposite belief from the one advertised is the correct one.  However, divorcing the political agenda from such advertising forces people to confront their own thoughts, rather than jumping into an echo chamber... and this can yield some surprising personal revelations.

Are you on board yet with this idea of advertising a liberal religious agenda?  If not, message me so I can talk more about it to address your specific concerns.  I'll proceed in this post as if the answer is "yes," however.

So, what kinds of advertisements should help?  My thoughts are to do simple black-and-white billboards of the style popularized several years back, attributing quotes to God.  They would post simple quotes from the Bible:

"The mouth speaks what the heart is full of." - Jesus
"The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt." - God
"Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same." - John the Baptist
"Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love." - Paul

More to come...