Bandits No More

Mary Eberstadt analyzes the social matrix from which so much of the violent youth music of our day comes. She summarizes:

And therein lies a painful truth about an advantage that many teenagers of yesterday enjoyed but their own children often do not. Baby boomers and their music rebelled against parents because they were parents — nurturing, attentive, and overly present (as those teenagers often saw it) authority figures. Today’s teenagers and their music rebel against parents because they are not parents — not nurturing, not attentive, and often not even there. This difference in generational experience may not lend itself to statistical measure, but it is as real as the platinum and gold records that continue to capture it. What those records show compared to yesteryear’s rock is emotional downward mobility. Surely if some of the current generation of teenagers and young adults had been better taken care of, then the likes of Kurt Cobain, Eminem, Tupac Shakur, and cer­tain other parental nightmares would have been mere footnotes to recent music history rather than rulers of it.

This is a long essay (read the whole thing – an excerpt form her book Home-Alone America) with many examples given from a multitude of muscians, both from their songs and from their commentary. It’s heartbreaking.
Surely at some point parents will come to see that their actions (and non-actions) have consequences.

It sounds like Catherine Westerhoff has written an interesting – and high relevant – book on the subject. I think I’ll get a copy and read it.

We have a tendency to think that for any given issue only two options are possible. I believe this lazy thinking is a factor behind our easy acceptance of arguments like “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and “the friend of my enemy is my enemy.”

Consider Saddam Hussein. From 1979 through about 1991, Iran was our big enemy in the Middle East. During those years, Iran & Iraq fought a big war. Since Iran was our enemy, we decided their enemy, Iraq, must be our friend. This is why critics of Republicans and the current war with Iraq can point to pictures of current administration leaders being chummy with Saddam. We shared a common enemy, so he was our friend.

Not leaving that part of the world, we see a similar phenomenon. Those who hate George W. Bush have decided that whoever is HIS enemy, must be their friend: thus the common defense of some radical Islamists whose apparent misogyny and homophobia are overlooked so that hatred (or opposition) to GWB can be extended.

We have other ways of oversimplifying and seeing only two options. WHen GWB said, vis-a-vis the war on terror, “You are either for us or against us,” he over simplified a comlex reality. When John Kerry was attacked for not approving the 87 billion dollar bill for work in Iraq, a complex reality (when bills stretch to over a thousand pages and congress people regularly pass them without reading them, I’d call it complex) has been oversimplified. Even today, opponents of the current Intelligence Reorganization bill are labeled as “Soft on terror,” when their motivation is nothing of the sort.

In the first case the assumption is: There is one way to be against terror, the GWB way. If you don’t do it this way, you must be pro-terror.

In the second case the assumption is: There is only one way to support the war and reconstruction of Iraq. This particular bill is it. Therefore if you vote against this bill, you are saying you are against the war and do not support the troops who are fighting it.

In the third case the assumption is: The 9/11 Commission has spoken. A bill has been created that puts their suggestions into place. This is the only way to solve the problems that led to 9/11. If you are against this bill you are for another 9/11.

All are examples of faulty reasoning.

This week Rev. Elizabeth Stroud goes on trial in Pennsylvania for being a “self-avowed practicing homosexual,” a condition the Discipline clearly identifies as excluding one from ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church. I don’t quite understand the trial process. But what is the point of a trial? She has avowed that she is a practicing homosexual. It still seems to me that this calls not for a trial but for discernment and action on the part of the bishop.

The Discipline is clear. After years of pretending that they don’t know what a “self-avowed practicing homosexual” is, the opponents of the Discipline seem to be left only with the claim of character ; “But she’s such a nice person! She has a call to ministry! She’s been effective in her ministry!” I have no trouble believing all this to be true. But according to the Discipline of the UMC (and the order of most churches I’m aware of) these are not adequate qualifications for ministry; nor are they sufficient to overcome other possible disqualifications.

The Washington Post’s article on the trial reports from her Senior Pastor:

The Rev. Fred Day, who has been Stroud’s senior pastor since she entered the ministry five years ago, said that if she is removed, it will send “a message of discrimination, and one of real incongruity” with the United Methodist Church’s logo: “Open hearts. Open minds. Open doors.”

I’m afraid Rev Fred is absolutely right. The trial – and possible removal of Stroud does conflict with our advertizing campaign. According to that campaign we have no rules, no doctrine, no exclusiveness of any kind. Anything goes. We’re open – apparently to everything.

I think it is possible to make sense (Christian sense) out of our slogan, but it takes more work than can be accomplished in an advertising campaign. It is only natural to take “Open hearts. Open minds. Open doors” (in our culture) as a claim that we are substituting modern liberal relativism for traditional Christian doctrine. We stand more for “Openness” than we do for Jesus. Of course proponents of this Openness would argue that Jesus himself is the best model of openness. Just ask the Jesus Seminar folks. If we can look at this so called Christian Openness and see no significant difference with secular Openness, then it sure appears that the former is the later with a Christian veneer.

I can’t tell for sure, but it seems like Christmas decorations are going up earlier this year. The reason I can’t tell is that it doesn’t feel like it has been a year since Christmas. I heard someone say yesterday that “it used to feel like three years between Christmases, not it feels like we have three a year!”

Much to my chagrin, I have joined the ranks of folk who claim time is going by faster now than it used to. I don’t want to get into an argument about physics or the relativity theory, and I am fairly sure that “real time” is progressing at exactly the same rate now that it used to. But is sure doesn’t seem that way.

I know what part of the difference in. When one is putting up with English, Trig, and Chemistry at the same time, hours may very well stand still. Now, on the other hand, doing what I love and am called to do, and getting paid for it, why, how could time not fly by?

But I am a little concerned, too. Much as I enjoy life now, and am learning to appreciate how quickly difficult or challenging times will pass as all times do, I worry that as we age, and as time picks up speed, we don’t miss out.

I remember watching the sheer joy in my daughter’s eyes of some of the games we used to play or adventures we would go on. I also remember we could do it all again the next day, and she had every bit as much excitement and eagerness and joy, though it was the same game or the same adventure. Children, often far better than adults, can live so entirely in the moment that it doesn’t matter what has gone before. What may happen tomorrow is irrelevant.

Jesus said we cannot control our height, our lives, or tomorrow. He challenged us to live today, and trust God for everything else. Can we do that, even as the today’s go by faster and faster? As we accept the fact that the next Christmas is around the corner, let’s live today with the joy and adventure of a child. And trust God for the rest.

I guess this is a safe place to admit I play video games. I have since they came out in the late 70’s. I used to pop quarters into machines just to see how long I could keep playing. I was never very good at any of them, but I have kept playing anyway.

Video gaming has come a long way since “pong” hit the scene. Now single games span disks and offer graphics so lifelike they look almost real. One thing, though, that hadn’t changed about video games until recently is their linear nature. This means that one thing has to happen before another can. It means also that the order and direction of the game is decided by the maker of the game rather than by the player.

There are games out now that are non-linear in nature. In other words, the player has some freedom to choose the order in which “missions” or “tasks” are accomplished. In some games, the player doesn’t even have to try to accomplish anything if he or she doesn’t want to.

Life, after all, is not linear. Things happen that don’t seem to follow from what happened before. In life we also have the choice of whether or not we want to go from task to task, and even whether we want to pursue tasks at all. Games are becoming more life-like.

We like to believe that our lives are lived linearly. We look at the world as a set of directly and necessarily connected events, each setting up the next. Our lives are shaken, then, when things happen to challenge that way of seeing the world. And such things will happen.

What are we to do if the way we understand the world is shaken? We do well to realize that the order and direction of life is not up to us; but up to the Maker. He knows where this thing called life is going. Trust Him.

Does the reality depicted in these posts represent at least a small opening for some Christian mission work?
From , Why Theo Van Gogh Was Murdered, in The City Journal.

In fact, Islam is as vulnerable in Europe to the forces of secularization as Christianity has proved to be. The majority of Muslims in Europe, particularly the young, have a weak and tenuous connection to their ancestral religion. Their level and intensity of belief is low; pop music interests them more. Far from being fanatics, they are lukewarm believers at best. Were it not for the abuse of women, Islam would go the way of the Church of England.

If something as bad as abuse of women is required to energize this variety of Islam, surely we can find ways to offer a productive and healthy replacement.

Most people care deeply about at least a few subjects. I wouldn’t be suprised if there were a number of things most of those same people didn’t care about.

I have recently encountered some who seem to see their conservative politics as a direct entailment of their conservative theology. There seem to be no political issues that they don’t see as being closely related to theology.

I have plenty of strong views in both theology and politics. Most people would call my views conservative. But when I read the bible I don’t see the level of specifcity on public policy that so many seem to find there. This is the case for several “hot-button” issues, including war, death penalty and “social justice” – care for the poor.

Are we as Christians allowed to have subjects which are adiaphora – indifferent? We bandy the quote: “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.” But are there any non-essentials? Sure seems that way to me.

Some claim that since arguing against capital punishment is a way of devaluing life. Since human lives are worth so much, how can mere imprisonment ever pay the price due for taking such a life? If all we ask of a murderer is life in prison (at most), then we are in effect saying that is all the life they took was worth.

I have some questions, and then some comments for this way of thinking:
Some questions:
1. Why do we need to think of “lives” in economic terms? Is this what Mat. 10:27-31 teaches? [I don’t think so]
2. At what point do “lives” cease to have value – or decrease in value?
3. What is the social location of those who see Christians opposed to capital punishment and conclude from that opposition that life should be devalued?
4. What (if any) is the positive rhetorical impact of capital
punishment? (Other than the suggested(?), “Since we value life [unless that life is forfeit] we will kill killers [and others guilty of capital offences?]”)
5. What (if any) is the negative rhetorical impact of capital punishment?

Now some observations on “value”:
My youngest brother has a degree in forestry. I’ve been to years of
school yet I’ve never had any classes in forestery or any similar subjects.

I remember years ago, back when he was still in school, we were all at a cousin’s house in Illinois. Robert was impressed with the large trees surrounding the house, and started telling us how much each tree was worth (he’d just taken a course in tree valuation). I remember a particular Red Oak that Robert said was worth $30,000.

My questions then were: To whom? Under what conditions?

We may ask how much a life is worth. Scripture doesn’t address this question in any systematic way. When Dinah is raped, her honor (her life?) is worth the lives of every person in Shechem’s village. At least that’s what it costs them. What are the lives of billions of miserable sinners worth? The life of Jesus, we might say.

But why do we need to translate these things into market terminology? I know that capitalism and the market system is an important part of our culture, but have we reached the point that people are valued in the same terms as pork bellies, cars and mansions?

A thousand years (or so) ago when Anselm formulated the penal
substitution theory of the atonement, he used pictures drawn from the society of his day. In this age of capitalism, do we lay a veneer of market economics over that theory – and stretch it co cover our ethics also?

In other words, the question, “How much is a life worth?” strikes me as a wrong question of the same sort as “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?”

Just looking at my own children – moving beyond the abstract “a life” to some particular lives – I cannot set a value on their lives. I can buy life insurance for them – but nothing could replace them. No money, no thing, no retribution would be sufficient. If my car is totaled, I could replace that. If some evil person destroys my books, he could pay restitition and I could get new ones. Because they are things, they can be replaced. People are not things, and cannot be replaced.

Those who argue against abortion are sometimes the same people who argue for capital punishment. Those who are for abortion will then claim this is an inconsistency on the part of anti-abortionists. But why do we need to argue for the one and against the other?

To those who think the practice of abortion should be ended
(or severely limited) AND think capital punishment should be maintained (or expanded), which do you consider more important? If you could only get one, which would you take?

Personally, I think an end to abortion would be the greatest good of the two – and greater by a very large margin. As a non-proponent of capital punishment, I have the option of using the rhetorical strategy of focusing on what I consider to be the greater evil, and allowing liberals (I know not how monolithic they are on this issue) to have “their way” in not practicing capital punishment.

But is the non-practice of capital punishment a devaluing of life, as some have suggested? My guess is that liberals take their opposition to capital punishment as an expression of valuing life. One might argue that they are simply wrong, but I don’t see how they could be, since valuing is a subjective process. Now it may be that they are wrong to value the lives of guilty murderers (or homosexuals, or horse thieves or traitors – or whoever Caesar might decide to punish), but that is not the same as saying they
don’t value it.

If Caesar says, “Let’s have a war. Those people in that other country are a threat to us and to our way of life (or they might be tomorrow),” and then Caesar sends soldiers off to kill (and quite possibly be killed), is that a valuing of life or a devaluing of life? Might the question be answered differently depending on the object of one’s allegiance? If one gives allegiance to Caesar and his kingdom, one might be inclined to take Caesar’s actions as valuing life. If, however, one owed allegience to the other country (and its leader), would one still be inclined to judge Caesar’s actions as valuing life?

I can imagine in such a situation that one might say, “Well, I can see how Caesar would take our actions as a threat to his kingdom and way of life. So the fact that he is here killing our people is an expression of his valuing the lives of his people. But how ought the fact that I can understand his action as a valuing of the lives of his people – though not of some abstraction called “life” or “lives” – what ought I to learn from this as I seek out my own course of action?