Death and Dignity

Those who have read this blog know that I do not like war. Apparently, I am in the minority when it comes to this view. When I posted “Study War No More”, it generated several comments and a follow-up, “Maybe We Should Study War No More”. This generated even more comments. The majority of the comments were surprisingly pro-war. I say that they were surprisingly pro-war because the commentators have identified themselves as ministers or ministerial candidates.

I should have not been surprised that I received such comments. When I posted my thoughts about the shooting at Virginia Tech in the spring of 2007 (“It Happened Again” and “It Happened Again – Part 2”.), the most striking comment was made by a minister who suggested that if one of the victims had carried a gun then the shootings or the multiple killings would never had occurred.

If ministers are for violence, then why shouldn’t we expect more violence to occur? Perhaps there is a justification or a rationale for war; perhaps there is a justification or a rationale for armed retaliation when violence strikes our loved ones. I am also reminded that the Amish community of Pennsylvania did not strike back when a gunman killed a number of innocent children in a community where violence is seldom present (see my thoughts at “What Do We Say?”).

When my wife was growing up at the beginning of the Cold War, the priests and ministers preached against war. People were terrified of “the bomb.” Peace was preached from the pulpit because no one wanted to see nuclear war. There was an understanding then that war has no winners, only survivors. Now, we don’t care. Those who grew up in the days of World War II remember the death and carnage. It has been said that the War Department in 1943 was very tempted to censor the photographs of the dead Marines on the beaches of Tarawa because the scene was gruesome and the number of dead was way beyond expectations.

My wife was 8 years old when she heard those words of ministers and priests; those words have stuck with her all these years. Others heard the words but it seems that they have forgotten them.

It isn’t that our culture is pro-violence or pro-war; it is that our society doesn’t realize what the price of violence or the cost of war really is. It is one thing to hear about a drive-by shooting in some inner city; it is another to know the victim or the relatives of such a shooting. It is quite easy to say that drive-by shootings are the product of a decaying society; it makes it quite easy for us to ignore the shootings. We can escape the inner city and forget those who live there. We don’t have to go into such places so we can ignore the shootings. If we ignore the shootings, we don’t have to seek solutions.

And if we make war into an advanced video game, then war becomes fun. We can easily send young men and women off to die because we don’t have to watch them die. And we don’t see the coffins come home because our Defense Department won’t allow them to be filmed. The dead come home without fanfare and no one, other than the family, knows. Only the family grieves. We can support a war because someone else dies and we don’t have to know.

And our ignorance of war extends to the wounded. The three posts that I posted during the spring and summer of 2007 (“Supporting Our Troops – The Tragedy of Building 18”, “The Tragedy of Building 18 continued”, and “The Tragedy Continues”) pointed out the lack of care received by veterans wounded in Iraq. We care little about those who have died and we apparently don’t care much about the ones who are wounded.

Now, it appears that we do not care about those who were killed in attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. In the February, 2008, issue of Sojourners (see “At the Hour of Our Death”) Rose Marie Berger writes about the lack of respect given to the dead buried in the rubble of the towers. The goal of the rescue effort, it seems, was not to recover the victims or find the bodies of civilians, firemen, or policemen but rather to recover the millions of dollars in gold and other metals stored in the vaults. Once the recovery of the metals was accomplished, then the rest of the material was simply trucked over to the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island.

It seems that very little attempt was made to actually recover any human remains or artifacts. There are body parts and bodies being discovered even today, despite every assurance from various Federal, State, and Local government agencies everything was done to recover the remains.

What does this tell me? Among other things, we don’t care if someone other than our own family dies. We are quite willing to sacrifice civilians and soldiers alike if it will advance the goals of our greed and our self-interests. We apparently don’t care how the families of those who died for that advance feel.

This is not an argument for some sort of memorial for the dead and wounded of 9/11. Others are doing that.

Rather, this is a statement that says we as a society had better look at what we are doing. We shunt the wounded off to the side and hope that no one sees them. We hide the dead when their bodies come back from war. At home, we ignore the homeless and sick. And now, innocent victims are cast aside because we don’t care.

There is a common conception of Neanderthal man being some sort of brutish “sub-human”. But we have found archeological evidence that they mourned their dead. See http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2002/1015doser3.shtml and http://www.britarch.ac.uk/BA/ba66/feat1.shtml for a discussion of the meaning of burials in early pre-historic society.

The 15^th century poet and philosopher Giambattista Vico identified the burial of the dead along with marriage and religion as the three characteristics of a civilized society. He said that these three institutions are the origin of all civilizations and therefore must be the most devoutly guarded (adapted from “At the Hour of Our Death” by Rose Marie Berger, Sojourners – February, 2008).

If you want to call these the end times, today I won’t argue with you.

Isn’t It Time For A Change?

I started this piece because I was thinking about what I was going to write for my Sunday blog. But as I started writing, it took on a life of its own. I do know this; Sunday’s blog will be entitled “By What Name Shall You Be Called?” and it will be about hearing and then answering the call that God has made to you, even if you are not aware of it.

Introduction

Things are happening in two areas of society that bother me. The first is what is happened to Christianity and the modern church. The other is education and our schools. This rather long post is a discussion of what I think are the problems with both of these areas and what we, the people, must do to fix them.

It seems to me that the theme of the current political campaign is change. But change will not occur in this country at this time because people are afraid of change. Change requires going into areas that are often unknown and that is something many are unwilling to do. Change requires understanding and understanding requires takes both time and effort. This country and this society would rather spend their time doing other things.

Christmas has become a time of frenzied buying of material goods, not a time to pause and wonder at the single star in the sky or the Babe lying in a manger. Memorial Day has become the start of leisure and fun, not a day to pause and remember who has died and what the horror of war really was and is. Labor Day has become the sad ending to a short summer and the beginning of another school year. Every national holiday becomes a celebration of the dollar and the need to buy more material goods. We hold George Washington as the “Father of this Country” and we proclaim Abraham Lincoln as one of the greatest presidents ever; yet, we have combined their birthdays into a single holiday and placed it on a Monday so that we can have a three-day weekend and buy things with our credit cards.

I doubt that too many people can remember why we once celebrated the first Monday in September. But then again, we no longer care about workers’ rights; we no longer care about environmental or workplace safety. Management is all that matters and we can always find workers somewhere willing to work for a little less so that the profit margin can be maintained or increased.

It seems to me that one of the political issues that will dominate the presidential election (once we finally decide on the candidates) will be illegal immigration. Everybody is against illegal immigration but the solutions to the problem do not solve the problem.

Why do people immigrate to this country? From the first day that someone from another country stepped foot on the shores of this continent, people came to this continent for the opportunity that this place offers. Most illegal immigrants can get better jobs here than they can in their home countries. And why do we punish people for doing the jobs that we will not do? Why do we not punish the people who hire the illegal immigrants? It seems to me that the solution requires more than simply arresting illegal immigrants and deporting them back to their home country. Building a wall along the United States – Mexican border will not stop the problem. But then again, the actual solution requires a change in thinking and we are not accustomed to such complicated efforts.

We no longer hear about the problems of homelessness, the lack of health care, or the continued inequalities caused by differences in race, economic status, gender, sexuality, or lifestyle. To do so would be reminded that we are not the great nation we proclaim to be; to do so would remind us of the things that we have failed to do and continue to fail to do.

The buzz word for this year’s political campaign seems to be change. We desire change but we haven’t got the faintest clue what it means. That’s because we have changed the things that once were the implements of change.

The church was once the conscience of mankind; now it is the protector of the status quo. Once the church provided hope; now it takes it away. Once education was the way to improvement; now it is simply a way to acclimate children and young people to an almost “1984” mindset of acceptance and mediocrity.

Marketing the Gospel message

It seems to me that too many churches today engage more in marketing the church than they do in telling the Gospel story. Churches no longer look like churches or feel like churches. In fact, many churches have changed their name; now they are worship centers or some sort of variant on that. The word “church” scares people. So we make church a comfortable place.

I am not saying that it shouldn’t be comfortable; believe me, I have sat in many a hard pew and would much rather be sitting in something easier. But there is no sense of holiness when your seats are theater-type seats.

There is no sense of holiness when you cannot tell who the minister is. The minister is apt to be dressed casually, perhaps in blue jeans and the shirt tail hanging out. This is to show the people that they are “cool” or “hip”. But the message is often empty and vague. It is not necessary to be “cool” if you preach the truth. It is not necessary to be “hip” if you speak from your heart and not with your eye on the bottom line.

By the same token, there are many pastors whose clothing budget surely exceeds the monthly salary of many members of the church. Of course, if you preach the prosperity gospel, then you had better dress for success. But that also means that the money that the people are giving in hopes of getting financial rewards is going into the pocket of the minister asking for the money.

And the presentation of the message or the music is adapted to the ways of the secular world. We put the words to the music we are to sing on screens that everyone can see. Since they watch television and videos at home, why not make the Gospel presentation a video presentation? We have changed the nature of church so that it is like everything else. We have changed the nature of what we are saying and doing so that it will fit onto a single slide in an audio-visual presentation.

We live in a sound-bite society; we know put the Gospel into sound-bites or reduce it to bumper-sticker slogans. There is no challenge in the message because challenge requires changing things.

The Prosperity Gospel and Gospel-Lite Message

It seems to me that most of the modern churches today present one of two forms of the gospel message. They either present what is called the prosperity gospel (or “name it and claim it”) or they present what is called gospel-lite. Neither has any relationship to the true Gospel and neither has any relationship to the historical nature of the church. The prosperity gospel says that you can have riches beyond belief if you plant a seed with the minister. In other words, give the minister your money and it will grow. It will grow, all right, but not your garden. The only ones getting rich under the prosperity gospel are the ones who preach it.

If there is any truth to the prosperity gospel, then why are we not hearing their stories?

There are also others who take the substance out of the gospel message and preach a do-good and feel-good message. People like hearing this message because it does not call for them to do anything; there is no need for them to give up anything or take the message out into the world because it is not needed. You will find no guilt in the gospel-lite message of so many pastors because their message is to make you feel good about yourself, not have you worry about the nature of the world.

The True Gospel message was a message of sacrifice and hard work; it was a message of equality and perseverance. There is nothing in many modern churches that even comes close to the true words of Jesus and the apostles.

We have changed the nature of the message and we have changed the nature of the church.

Megachurches

Let’s face it; we like the idea of big. So it stands to reason that we should have BIG churches. It could be that I am uncomfortable with the concept or idea of megachurches because it is possible the membership of every church I have been a member of or served could probably fit into the auditorium of anyone of many megachurches in this country.

Megachurches seem more like office buildings or large amphitheaters than churches. Instead of pews, you get theater-type seats. Instead of an altar, you get a stage. And don’t even look for a Cross or some sign of the presence of God. It might be there but it is off to the side and hidden by the great screens that televise the minister so the people in the far back rows can see him.

If megachurches are to be the 21^st century version of 14^th and 15^th century cathedrals, they fail. The great cathedrals of Europe and America were built by the people for the Glory of God. Perhaps many of those cathedrals shouldn’t have been built but the people built them for God, not for the church or church authorities. It seems to me that many of the megachurches that are being built today are being built to satisfy the egos of the pastors and the congregations, not for the Glory of God.

When you look at the structure and organization of these many megachurches, you find that they have subdivided the congregation into various groups based on common interests. Since a megachurch is actually a collection of many small churches, why not put the time and energy into small churches? Why not put the time and effort into helping put the presence of God where it is needed, not where it can be built. A baseball field was built in a cornfield in Iowa because the people will come. But the people of the inner city or the rural parts of this country can’t necessarily make it to the megachurch in the nearby suburb.

People like megachurches because it is easy to go to one. With so many people present, you can easily get lost in the crowd. With the focus of the service no longer on the True Gospel, you don’t have to worry. You can now go to church (even if it isn’t called that) when you want and feel good when you come out. The problems of the world have disappeared for a few hours and you have had a great time with your friends.

Praise Music

I am very leery when I hear the term praise music. Modern day praise music was developed because people said they were tired of traditional organ music and wanted to hear guitars and drums and the sounds that they hear every day.

Music has always been in worship for the purpose of praising God. I have no problem with bringing new music or new ways to play the music. The lute, the harp, the flute, and the cymbal were all instruments played in the early church. I am sure that when the harpsichord, the piano, and the organ were invented, traditionalists complained about the quality of music. And the players who brought the new instruments into the sanctuary probably rejoiced at the change they were bringing into the worship.

There is great music that can be played on guitars, electric basses, electric keyboards and drums. But, like the music of old, it requires work to achieve the desired goal. Many praise music teams sing great music, music that moves the heart and inspires the soul but it isn’t the music that the congregation sings and this is the problem with praise music.

The praise music that congregations sing is tepid at best. It does nothing to praise God or inspire worship. It merely replaces old music that you don’t like with new music that you don’t like. It has no feeling; it inspires nothing in my soul. With my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, I would say that most praise music today doesn’t even have a good beat and it is lousy to dance to.

I know that people have complained about the traditional music of the church. Often times, the congregation cannot sing the music because they are not familiar with the tune or the words. Congregations get locked into the songs they know and they complain when they are forced to learn something new. But what is wrong with learning new music? Can we not express our joy in worship with new words, instead of mindlessly repeating old words? Let all of us bring all of our talents into the worship of God and let see what happens then.

The only problem is that when you remove any meaning from the worship service after you have removed the meaning of the Gospel, there is nothing left. This has allowed many, whom I have taken to call quasi-religious, to change the meaning to fit their view of the world.

A New World Vision

I grew up in the South and I heard and saw quasi-religious figures try to use the Gospel to justify segregation, exclusion, and hatred (both organized and un-spoken). But I also saw many in the church who believed in the Gospel message and fought to bring equality to this country. Now, it seems that we have forgotten that the fight for equality is a constant one; those who opposed the efforts of the church to bring equality to this country now seem to dominate. Now it seems that the church is the agent for exclusion and hatred.

It also appears to me that many quasi-religious figures are trying to change history to fit their view of the world. They are also trying to eliminate or alter science so that no questions can be asked about the world around us.

It always amazes me how those who proclaim to know the truth are quite willing to blame others for the problems. They are the ones who complain that their children don’t learn values in school today. They are the ones who say that our schools began to fail when prayer was taken out of the classroom.

But the days of prayer in the classroom were days when the classroom was homogeneous and differences between Christian denominations were minimal. In the South (where I grew up), the classrooms were segregated. Now, the classroom is heterogeneous and there are likely to be representatives from every major religion. A single prayer that accommodates every religion is a meaningless prayer. And prayer must be more than a few moments of silence. Prayer is an interaction between the individual and God; it cannot be done in a few moments of silence at the beginning of the school day.

Who is God?

Is my God better than your God or is your God better than my God? Whether one chooses to use Yahweh, Allah, or God as His name, it is the same God. So Yahweh cannot be better than Allah and Allah cannot be better than God and God cannot be better than Yahweh; because they are three names for God. All that is accomplished when people use the arguments of a superior God is that it shows their lack of understanding about God. Right now, we do not need people who do not know God telling others what to say, do, or believe.

Ignorance, Understanding, and Control

Ignorance is not a lack of education; it is a lack of understanding. There are many who are educated but ignorant. I have known a great number of people whose reading and writing skills were extremely limited yet their understanding of God exceeded that of many educated people.

Understanding requires questioning and questioning requires thinking. If one is not capable of thinking, then one is incapable of truly understanding. If you take away the ability to understand something, then you can exert control. Authoritarianism, be it sectarian or secular, is always marked by the effort to control what the people can think or say.

As long as the people were ignorant, the church could control their lives. It seems to me today that many quasi-religious figures miss the good old days of that control. For a long time the church didn’t want the people to be able read and write. But as people began to read and write, the more they began to understand. The more they could understand, the more they would seek improvement.

In fact, it appears to me that the church didn’t even want the Bible to be available to the people. If you wanted to print the Bible, it had to be in Latin so that only a select few (and not necessarily the local priests) could read it.

But one of the hallmarks of the early Methodist movement was education. John and Charles Wesley started Sunday schools because the people needed to read and write so that they could understand the Gospel message for themselves. The first universities of this country were founded to insure that ministers had the fundamental skills necessary for understanding. It will come as a shock to many on both sides of the political and religious spectrum that Harvard and Yale began as religious supported institutions, institutions that would supply the preachers for this young country.

Those who worked to build this country understood the need for education as a defense against tyranny. Now education is merely a period of time when a lot of facts are presented for memorization and regurgitation on a test, only to be quickly forgotten.

Education was and should be more than simply learning facts. The problem is that education no longer has the stature that it once had.

People complain about the quality of education but won’t fight to improve the quality of education. It seems to me that the predominant attitude about pre-college education today is that “what worked for me will work for my children”. The problem with education today is two-fold. First, the money for salaries and support does not go to the instructional staff but rather to administrators. That is wrong. If you want quality instruction, then you must pay for quality instruction. The salary gap between CEO’s and workers is not limited to the industrial sector; there is and has been a similar gap between school administrators and classroom teachers.

Second, how many classrooms are equipped to meet the needs of the society that the students will encounter when they leave formal education? Nobody seems to care that the majority of classrooms in this country are under-equipped, if they are equipped at all to teach and prepare for the future. Education has always been about preparation but it gets harder when you don’t have the tools.

We have sought to correct the problems of education with testing. But all we have done is prepare our children for things that they will not encounter in later life.

There is also no sense of balance in our education. Our Founding Fathers understood that education covered both the rational world and the moral world. Thinking involved questioning and we do not do enough of that in our educational system today.

We no longer teach critical thinking or ask students to make evaluative decisions because our educational systems fear the backlash that such processes would bring. This is especially true when it comes to values education.

Values Education

It is very difficult to teach values in the school because those who demand that values be taught only want their values taught. I have come to the conclusion that those who call so loudly for such teaching are insecure in their own beliefs.

Values education cannot be taught from the viewpoint of a single values system. To teach values is to teach children and young adults to think and analyze. It will produce questions and the one thing that those who want only a single value system taught do not want is questions about their value system. Any value system that does not allow questioning is based more authoritarianism and blind following than it is a true understanding and will fail when scrutinized.

I have come to the conclusion that those who wish to impose their value system on others do so out of fear of what might happen if their system were analyzed. Out of fear, we seek to control the unknown but in fear we cannot proceed into the unknown and find out what is there. If our value system is strong, it will endure any questions.

Liberals and Conservatives

Obviously, I am not crazy about conservatives and those who would seek to hold on to the status quo. By the same token, I don’t like people who think that Christianity is what I have described. I don’t like it when people write off Christianity because of what they see on television, hear on radio, and read about in the broadsheets and tabloids of this country. Most of that information is not what Christianity is about but people don’t know or understand that. They are too smug to admit their ignorance and unwilling to find out what the truth really is. I don’t like those on either side of the religious and political spectrum who are not willing to speak to the other side with an open mind.

The Next Step

We are fast approaching a time when the cost of our ignorance, both secular and sectarian, is going to exceed the resources that we have available.

It would be nice if the people of this world would stop for a moment and look at what they are doing to the world and the other inhabitants.

Global warming, though a theory, seems to be the correct explanation for what is transpiring in Greenland, the Artic, and on the Antarctica continent. Divisions between people grow each day; our own national political campaigns have become consistent episodes of mud-slinging, back-biting, and name-calling. Our political campaigns have turned into nothing more than overblown kindergarten disagreements but with far more disastrous consequences.

And we, as a collective society, have allowed this to happen, more out of ignorance than anything else. Keep in mind that most of the children of the world have never had the experience of seeing a person walk on the moon. That means that any political campaigns that they have lived through have been the ones of the 1970’s, the 1980’s, the 1990’s, and now the 2000’s. The only political campaigns that they have listened to or studied have been negative in nature. The winner has often been the one to whom the mud stuck the least.

Computers are not necessarily a part of the instructional process. In most schools, computer education is a period during the school day and/or week. Computers become another thing that must be learned, not a tool to be used.

It is quite easy to get lots and lots of information with computers today. But we have lost the skill of analyzing this information. The rapidity in which we send salacious or vitriolic e-mail messages to our friends without questioning the content of the message has always amazed me. If it comes from a friend and it is shocking, then it must have some truth in it.

All our children know about computers and technology is that you can play games and send quick messages. Their grammar and language skills are limited because instant messages require acronyms and abbreviations. Computers are only useful for playing games and we are beginning to see the effects of the lack of socialization.

Our children and young adults have no concept of what war is, other than reports on television. They see no dead, they see no grieving. War has become nothing more than another video game, bloodless and painless, without suffering.

If we are to change this world; if we are to provide hope and meaning for the days to come, then we must change. We must change our view of God from a multi-fragmented mythical being to the source of our existence. We were created in His image; isn’t it time that we start reflecting that image instead of trying to hide it?

And we must start demanding that education do what education is supposed to do. Through education, we are supposed to learn how to think and imagine, to move beyond the boundaries of our present existence. It will cause many to challenge commonly held viewpoints and it will cause many viewpoints to disappear because people will quickly find out how weak they are.

Society is going to go in one of two directions, either into a new era of discovery and promise or into an era of destruction and desolation. I fear that it will go into the era of destruction and desolation because we are unwilling to change our ways. But if we are willing to change, then we can begin to see a new era of discovery and promise.

So isn’t it about time we change?

What I See

As many know, every four weeks or so I present the message and lead the worship at Dover United Methodist Church in Dover Plains, NY.  From the pulpit, this is what I see.

View from the pulpit at Dover UMC

The congregation sees this picture above the altar.

View over the Altar at Dover United Methodist Church

I have been told that these were painted in the 30’s as part of the Works Progress Administration.

I don’t know about you but they do add something to being a part of a worship service in that church.

To Give Our Best

Here are my thoughts for this coming Sunday, The Baptism of the Lord.  I will be preaching at Dover Plains UMC, Dover, NY tomorrow.

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The comments between John the Baptist and Jesus (1) that are the centerpiece of today’s Gospel reading are very interesting, if for no other reason that they speak highly of how we see our relationship with God today.

John understands the relationship between Jesus, his cousin, and himself and he is not willing to baptize Jesus as he has baptized others. He understands quite easily that he does not have the stature or the ability to truly baptize Jesus. Yet, as Jesus points out, John must baptize Jesus if righteousness is to be fulfilled.

We do not make that distinction. We accept quite willingly and almost deliberately the idea that Jesus is our servant, the person who does our biding. We quite willingly place ourselves, individually and as a society, above Jesus and expect Jesus to do whatever it is we ask of Him.

We are told today by so many self-proclaimed ministers of God that all we have to do is give them, the charlatans, our money and God will return it to us seven- or ten-fold, because that is the power of the Holy Spirit. We no longer see Jesus Christ as our Savior and God as our Father but rather a means by which we can achieve money or whatever we desire or seek.

We have confused the role of God in society. God is no longer the reason for what we do but rather the vehicle for what we seek.

We hear nothing today about the mission of Christ, which He Himself proclaimed in the synagogue in Nazareth some two thousands years ago, a mission first proclaimed by the prophet Isaiah. (2) At a time when I needed to know if there was ever an answer to the problems of the world, if it was ever possible to end war and hatred, segregation and injustice, I found the answer in the church. Now, it appears that the church supports war and hatred and is moving to increase segregation and injustice.

The awe and respect that we should give God has been taken away by those who seek to limit His presence to one or two hours on a Sunday morning. We measure the effectiveness of a preacher by the shortness of their sermons, not by how they inspire us to action. In Memphis and other parts of the South, even perhaps in other parts of this country, a good service is one that lets out early enough so that the congregation can get to Applebee’s or Shoney’s before the other churches do.

We hear too many preachers and ministers preach against sin yet repeatedly get caught in the very act they preach against. It is no wonder that the cry of hypocrisy that was first voiced by John the Baptist along side the River Jordan is voiced by so many young people today. The youth of this country are turning away from the church, not because the church doesn’t care about them (which is true) but because the church doesn’t care that its message is so often empty, meaningless, irrelevant and seen as an attempt to market the Gospel instead of telling the story and spreading the Word of God.

The God who may have inspired the first successful peasants’ uprising in history (the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt) is a God of revolution. Yet, it has often been said those who make up the three faiths that He has inspired (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) have failed to live up to this ideal and have transformed this God of revolution into a God of the status quo. (3)

We have been commanded to go out into the world and make disciples of all whom we encounter. And this we do quite readily, offering bribes to some and threatening others with death, so that they will convert. We do so without concern for where we are or whom we are with. We proclaim that our God is the only God, even when the historical records tell us that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all worship the same God. We expect the people whom we expect to convert to think and believe as we do. There are those who are quite willing to tell devout believers in other faiths that they, the devout believer, are doomed because they do not follow the same path of faith as others do. If we do not understand what and why others believe, then we have no business trying to explain what it is that we believe.

A person who walks the path of faith dictated by their religion is walking a different path than the one we walk. They will reach their goal if they hold true to their beliefs, just as we will. We should not be condemning them or chastising them just because their belief system is different from ours.

But those who proclaim a belief system but do not follow the belief system, those who flit between one system and another, and those who try to choose the best virtues of all systems must be shown that such an approach will not work. But to say that our system is the best system is egotistical at best and shows a great lack of understanding about what others believe.

It is true that when Peter spoke to the crowd that he repeated the commandment that Jesus had given to the disciples. (4) But Peter added two other comments that reflected what Jesus also said; respect those who know God and do it in the right way.

When mankind first came to know God, it was done with a certain amount of fear. We were to see God with a sense of wonder and awe but that was because we didn’t know who God was and what God meant. Through Jesus Christ we have come to know that God is our Father and that He loves us. Now, when we hear the word “fear”, we should realize that it means more to understand and know more than anything else. As Peter reminded the people, we are to respect those who know God.

In part, that is why we celebrate the baptism of Jesus. Last week we celebrated Epiphany, the Magi’s recognition of the true nature of the Christ Child. These are occasions that illuminate God’s nature. These are occasions when God chooses to reveal who He is. These are also occasions that not only demonstrate what God is like but also who God wishes us to be.

Baptism is like so much of the church today. It is something we desire but it is something that we don’t understand. We often forget that baptism is the celebration of the incomparable gift we have received from God. It gives us an identity. But it is also about fully engaging the responsibility that this identity entails.

Just as the baptism of Jesus initiated his public ministry, so to is it our call to the community of the church. It means that together as a church we are meant to be witnesses for peace in an often cruel and violent world. We are to bring a message of hope in a world of despair. Whoever the worldly powers may be, Christians are called to witness to another, greater power. (5)

It has often been said that Christianity began as a way of life, an alternative to a set of creeds and doctrines that demanded total agreement. Christianity was a reaction to a religion narrowly defined by law, by ritual, and by an angry God. It was a way of life that demanded radical inclusion, not exclusion, as an expression of faith in action. It offered hope and aid to those who needed it.

Yet today, we see a church that is becoming increasingly rigid and orthodox, a church that is becoming more and more exclusionary in nature. What we were taught by Jesus before Easter has become less important that the things the post-Easter church insists that we believe. We have created a God in our image.

God sent His Son as a sign that He cared about us. He did not send a substitute but the best. Are we able to say that when we represent the church in today’s society we show the best?

The readings from Acts (6) and Isaiah (7) offer us a glimpse of that quality that we profess but do not possess. We do not have a God who is limited by our understanding of baptism and what it signifies; we have a God who created humanity in His image and whose love for us is so great that it embraces all people with no exception. (8) He has given us His best and He expects us to do the same.

I have seen churches, both large and small, that were built by their respective congregations who gave of themselves in terms of time, money, and energy all for the Glory of the Lord. But I have seen too many churches, both big and small, that were built to glorify the building and the congregation.

I have heard and sung music that reflects the joy and power found in the Glory of God. I rejoice in music written and played that uplifts the congregation. But I have also heard music played in churches and in religious situations that is only played for the glory and enjoyment of the player. I have left those performances wondering why there was no feeling in the songs that were sung or the music played.

When He first articulated His mission, He proclaimed that He had come to feed the hungry, heal the sick, and bring hope and freedom to the oppressed. He stated that the prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled in His presence. Yet, today there are still homeless and we probably have only an estimate as to how many there are.

The infant mortality rate in Orange County (and perhaps elsewhere in this country) rivals that of many third world countries. This country’s overall healthcare system ranks nineteenth among the major industrial nations in preventable deaths. I won’t even begin to comment on the ranking of our educational system when compared to those same countries. For a country that is so often pre-occupied with being number 1, we have a rather dismal record. We say that we are a Christian country but we are more interested in ourselves than we are others.

To give your best is probably the hardest thing you will be asked to do. But God sent His Son knowing that His Son would die on the Cross for us. His Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, began His ministry at the River Jordan knowing full well that the path He walked would take Him to the Cross.

We are called to give our best, not just part of it. We are called to give our best each day, not just one day a week. It is a call that says “in the years of your despair, I called you out from the world to fashion for myself a people who know my grace and are formed by love; but now the hour has struck for you to see the signs of new hope that I am giving to my people in the world; and to join me in the midst of the struggle, interpreting that hope, struggling to keep it free, and helping people to know me as their Lord and Savior in the midst of the events of their daily lives?” (9)

Too many people today see Christianity as a part time thing, a hobby at best. But to be called by Christ is a full-time experience. It does not matter what you do in life, for each person’s role in life is different. But as Paul wrote to the people of Colossus, “whatever you do, do it from the heart, as though you were working for God and not men.” (10)

God gave us His best, so why should we not also do so?

(1) Matthew 3: 14 – 15

(2) Isaiah 42: 1 – 9

(3) Adapted from Karen Armstrong’s History of God, page 20

(4) Acts 10: 34 – 43

(5) Adapted from “Marked for a purpose” by Kathleen Norris, Christian Century, December 25, 2007

(6) See footnote 4

(7) See footnote 2

(8) See footnote 5

(9) Adapted from “Evangelism in Our Day”, Faith in a Secular Age, by Colin Williamson

(10) Colossians 3: 23

Some Thoughts on Education

The following are just some thoughts I have formed recently about education.

It is an axiom that each individual learns at a different rate and in a different style.  Yet, our educational systems are designed to have each student learn at the same rate and in the same style.

Also,if you were to take 100 randomly chosen classrooms of the same class or age group from across the country, you would find that materials available to the students in that classroom differ widely and according to the locality in the country and the economic status of the region.  Education should be a level playing field and it is not.

Finally, education should be about encouraging creativity.  But it turns out to be more about developing commonality. As a student progresses through each year of organized education, their creativity diminishes.

Star Light, Star Bright

Here are my thoughts for this coming Sunday, The Epiphany of the Lord.

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We have always been fascinated by the stars. From the day that mankind first looked skyward, we have wondered about the stars. No matter what the culture, mankind has seen patterns in the stars and created stories to go with the patterns. Over the years, we have come to realize that stars are not merely pinpoints of light fixed on the celestial heaven but rather celestial bodies in similarity to our own neighboring star, the Sun.

Mankind’s exploration of the heavens began when we were able to differentiate between stars and planets because planets wandered across the fixed, relative unchanging background of the stars.

Early on, mankind realized that it was possible to find their way by following the stars in the night. Tradition has it that runaway slaves used the song “Follow the Drinking Gourd” as a means of finding their way north to freedom. The “drinking gourd” was another term for the “Big Dipper”, the constellation in the Northern skies that points to the North Pole.

For early mankind, though, the stars were more than simply signposts in the skies that gave directions. In conjunction with the planets and other heavenly bodies (comets, meteors, and so forth), early mankind saw the handiwork of the gods.

Whether it was the conjunction of several stars and/or planets or a comet passing through the skies, something occurred some two thousand years ago that shook the scientific worlds of people far away from Bethlehem.

Today, we would call those who attribute occurrences here on earth to the alignment of the stars astrologers and, hopefully, we give little credence to what they say or do. There is no evidence to suggest that a particular alignment of the stars at a particular time of a person’s life will have any influence on what will happen to that person. All one has to do is consider the dire warnings that were broadcast when all the planets were essentially aligned, as was the case in 2000.

It was said that the combined gravitational pull of all the Jovian planets would have dire consequences on the planet earth; unfortunately, this was not a unique occurrence. The same thing had occurred in 1962 (with the added benefit of a solar eclipse). Neither of these were an exact alignment but the planets were close enough that, if anything was going to happen, it would have happened. (1)

But, two thousand years ago, as knowledge was developing and other gods still dominated daily life, there was something in the sky that spoke of great things about to occur. The Magi were men of science who saw the signs in the sky and deduced that something great was occurring. They were not necessarily magicians or sorcerers, though those are often the images we associate with them. For them, the signs of the sky were an announcement that a new king was being born and such a birth was worthy of their attention and presence. (2)

But the star that they sought was not just a simple combination of planets, stars, and other heavenly bodies. It was the star whose light has shown throughout the ages. It was a light that shown in the darkness and illuminated the world so that all could see. The prophet Isaiah wrote that darkness covered the world but the Lord illuminated the world so that all could see. (3)

The idea of light as part of the Word and as part of Jesus presence is one of the central tenets of the Gospel message. Jesus spoke of not being able to hide the light in a bushel basket and how evil would come to fear the light, for the light would bring the truth.

Even Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians (4), alluded to the opening of God’s word through Christ. God’s mysteries were closed to man until Christ came. But through Christ, the mystery is solved and all are aware of it.

We call this Sunday “The Epiphany of the Lord”. Epiphany is often used to mean that we come to an understanding of what we have been studying. The Magi, however many there might have actually been, came to Bethlehem thinking that they had come to a new-born earthly king. They left aware of a new-born King who transcended heaven and earth. Their own understanding of God’s message to the world had changed.

We live in a society and at a time when we are more interested in the gifts that we can get during the season of Christmas. We focus on the gold, frankincense, and myrrh that the Magi brought to the new-born child. We forget the meaning those gifts would have in the years to come. We have been given the opportunity for a great Epiphany of our own, on the order as the one the Magi received. We have the opportunity to change the direction of our life, to go like the Magi in a different direction because of the birth of Christ.

We saw the star, we wondered at its brightness and its luminosity. Did we understand what it was that the star meant?

(1) See http://www.etsu.edu/physics/etsuobs/starprty/22099dgl/planalign.htm among other sites for more on such planetary alignments.

(2) Matthew 2: 1 – 12

(3) Isaiah 60: 1- 6

(4) Ephesians 3: 1 – 12

I Have An Idea

There has been some talk about reinstating the draft.  For whatever reasons that people may want to do so, I am opposed to the idea.  The draft was used to find personnel for the Viet Nam War and there is every indication that it was very biased in who got drafted.  If they were to bring back the draft today, there would be as many loopholes in it as were in back in the late 1960’s.

But, if people are serious about reinstating the draft, then let’s change the parameters and the meaning.  Instead of just serving in the military, let us call it national service.  Make everyone from 18 to, as an upper limit, 30 required to register and serve when drafted.  But (and it is a very big BUT), don’t limit the service to just the military.  Put the Peace Crop on the list of organizations where a person can serve.  Put “Teach for America” on the list as well.  In other words, make service truly possible.

Make the pay equitable so that it is reasonable to serve and not a hardship.  Make it so people will want to serve.

I am sure there are going to be some who think this is stupid or naive.  We are running up the national debt in a war that doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon.  Eventually, we are going to have fix what we have destroyed; eventually, we are going to have to remove the causes of war or war will always be a part of our lives.  That is not the legacy I wish to leave my children and grandchildren.

If my memory of times past is right, the Peace Crops was the greatest single effort that the United States put forth in the 1960’s.  Governments may have bad-mouthed the United States but they welcomed the volunteers.  There are so many places in the world today where we need to be working in peace, not trying to prevent a war from developing.

It’s just an idea but I think it is an idea whose time has come.

How Did You Get On The Information Superhighway?

Abstract

In this little manuscript, I want to describe how I got on what has often been called the Information Superhighway. It is a journey that has transcended almost four decades and the transition from main-frame computers with punch card readers to the wireless technology of today.

I also want to ask some questions that not too many people ask today. In our desire to utilize this technology, are we really using it or misusing it? Do we really understand what is on the highway or have we sacrificed true understanding and knowledge for ease and comfort?

How Did You Get On The Information Superhighway?

Actually, a better title for this might be “How did we get on the Information Superhighway and isn’t it time that we get off?” But there is only so much space available for a title and I will settle for what I have.

It would be safe to say that I got on this virtual highway that so dominates our lives today quite by accident. Now, I have been interested in computers and the application of computers in education since I was an undergraduate in the early 1970’s. When I graduated with my Bachelor’s degree in 1971, I had twelve credit hours in computer science and programming courses on my transcripts. That may not seem like a lot but it was six more than were in the catalog (I took two programming courses at other schools during summer vacation).

I attempted to use my knowledge of programming in many ways, from preparing a lab report in Physical Chemistry to developing a program to analyze football plays after I graduated. The lab report wasn’t accepted because I was the only one in class who understood how to format an output in a “readable” fashion. The program to analyze football plays might have worked except that this was still the era of punch cards and I didn’t have ready access to the necessary equipment. I also quickly found out that FORTRAN was not an appropriate language for this sort of thing.

When I began working on my doctorate, things had progressed somewhat. Instead of punch cards or tape readers, we know could sit at a keyboard and input our information and programming information through a process of time-sharing.

I found out that there was a rudimentary word-processing system on the college’s main-frame computer and I began preparing my various graduate papers that way. I added to my programming skills by becoming somewhat of an expert in SPSS (for the record, I needed a foreign language in order to complete my doctorate and it was my proficiency in SPSS and FORTRAN than enabled me to complete that portion of my studies) and again found myself doing things with the language that the creators never intended. I actually created a database of addresses for a business using SPSS and set up a series of graphs detailing the output of an experiment we ran in the introductory chemistry laboratories. Graphing in SPSS was possible but not to the extent that I used it. I also found that many of my fellow students, who did not have the same mathematical background that I had, were not comfortable with the SPSS language (or computers in general). I found myself helping them as much or more than I was actually working on my own projects.

About this time, the first of the personal computers began appearing on the scene. There were some on that particular campus who could see what this would mean to the educational process and they began moving in that direction. There were also others who saw the potential but did not understand how to fulfill that potential.

The local school system bought personal computers for every classroom in the system and then told the teachers that it was up to them to use them. No support was given; no additional information was provided. It was assumed that all a teacher had to do was turn the computer on, type a few words that would appear on the screen and magical things would happen. Students would be learning more and retain the information longer. If the teachers needed some sort of program, they would be able to write the program, debug the program, and test the program on their own. Of course, that didn’t happen.

The teachers had no idea what a computer operating system was or what computer software was. In fact, not too many people in education understood these points. During these wonderful days of the early 1980’s, computer software was virtually non-existent and misunderstood. The visionaries on my campus began providing courses, not in software development but rather in software analysis (will this work in my classroom?).

When I moved to Iowa to continue working on my doctorate, computers in the classroom were still in their infancy. Software was being developed but the operating systems and the capabilities of the hardware limited its usefulness.

Then I moved to Texas. By this time, there were movements in the various states to make sure that teachers were “computer-literate”. But the definition of such literacy was still somewhat nebulous. In one of our first published papers, Marcin Paprzycki and I discovered that computer literacy was defined in terms of the ability to program. In other words, anyone who was proficient in a computer programming language was considered computer-literate. But this didn’t help individuals who were first and foremost afraid of computers to begin with and, second, could not transfer what they learned in a programming course into what they were doing in an elementary level classroom.

During that time, a friend of mine asked me if I could get her a copy of “The Cuckoo’s Egg” by Cliff Stoll. This book was ground-breaking in many ways. It described the Internet and outlined the first serious attempts at computer hacking. It showed that computers could be used for more than simply processing numbers and preparing papers; it showed that computers could be used as a communication tool.

Later, when I moved from Texas to Minnesota, e-mail was the method by which Marcin and I would communicate and prepare the manuscripts that helped us to redefine computer literacy. It was through this early electronic media that we developed a research group that spanned three continents and included people who never met.

Now, these were still the days when windows were things in walls that enabled you to see outside or into other areas of the building. Though the floppy disk had been reduced from 8-½” to 5-¼”, the operating system of the computer was still limited. It would be a few more years before our “floppy disks” would be 3-½” across and encased in a hard shell. Multi-tasking was still a few years off.

But computers had possibilities and I wanted to use them as much as I could in my classroom. I would take my students down to the room where the terminals for the main-frame were and give a rudimentary lesson in logging on and off, setting up an e-mail account, setting up the word processor, and the rudimentary bulletin board that was part of the main-frame operating system. Now, keep in mind that my students could not enter my classes unless they were “computer-literate” but what they had learned in programming courses did not prepare them or enable them to use any form of computer. And like students throughout the ages who are faced with a new technology or a new way of doing things, they were very (and extremely) reluctant to try what I wanted them to do.

One student complained that I was throwing them into the pool without teaching them how to swim. But as one other student noted, they were in the shallow end of the pool and all they had to do was put their feet down and stand up. Interestingly enough, while the information technology people supported my efforts, my own division viewed these efforts with skepticism (in part, because they did not understand what was being done).

Much transpired from those days to the present time. Now, we have operating systems that are faster and we have the capability of operating several programs at the same time. (I remember when it took me over fifteen hours to download a Lotus spreadsheet into a Word Perfect document; the day I got a 486 based laptop computer, the whole process took less than ten minutes.)

I will admit that I have not always been ahead of the curve. The development of the World Wide Web caught me by surprise and it took me a while to understand what a “URL” was. I am not as proficient in HTML programming as I should be now but I no longer have to be. I also missed being involved with the development of computer interfaces but others did the “hard work” and now we have to figure out ways to utilize what those interfaces can do.

I am told that our students are the most computer literate generation ever but I think that we need to reconsider what they are saying. In our papers on computer literacy we (Marcin Paprzycki, George Duckett, I and several others) showed that, outside computer science, computer literacy was better defined in terms of how people use computers, not in their ability to utilize a computer programming language.

Computer literacy is still taught today as a separate entity, not as part of other classes. The computer is a part of our lives but not a part of our educational system.

I am not convinced that students today are as computer literate as others might think. They are comfortable with instant messaging and sending text messages via any number of methods. But the cost and bandwidth have forced the development of a number of acronyms that reduce the size of the text string that is sent. While these may be coherent messages to the recipients, they do not help in the development of proper grammar skills.

The information superhighway has an uncalculated amount of information available to people today. And people today quite easily use the information that they find. But they do not process the information and determine the validity of such information.

I have an assignment involving scientific fraud that my students can complete with information available on the Internet. The majority of my students tell me that one of the individuals on my list is guilty of scientific fraud but never discovered that the information that leads to this conclusion is limited and incomplete. The Information Superhighway is good for finding information but it does not help process the information (in fact, no computer at our level is capable of doing so).

Through the web, it is possible to bring a wide range of people together. You can have video conferencing through the Internet and on-line, real-time interaction. It is helpful when communicating with family and friends, as so many of our soldiers and sailors overseas can tell you. But is it the answer to educational settings.

That is a far cry from the days when Marcin, George, and I began developing the first of our collaborative papers. More and more institutions are going towards on-line classes. But are these classes going to be interactive, which require that everyone be on-line at the same time? Or are they going to be merely modified versions of classroom lectures where the instructor posts information in a text form and students print it out? In my own field of chemistry, how are laboratory exercises going to be handled? It is possible, thanks to the pioneering work of Stan Smith and Loretta Jones, to have virtual laboratories. But such laboratories cannot give the student a sense of the feel of the apparatus they are using.

We must also understand that not every school has the same computer capabilities as other schools. Students who graduate from the top of the line research universities may have the best and latest of equipment available for their research but they quickly find that such equipment is virtually non-existent at most other schools. The same is true for computers. Often times, educational systems are behind the curve when it comes to computers, computer systems, and the ability to interface the computer with and within the classroom.

Conclusion

The Information Superhighway is out there and it is part of our life. Its uses and applications are probably greater than anything Tim Berners-Lee envisioned. But it does not have the answer for all questions. As a species, we are defined as much by our interaction with others as anything else. Traveling the Information Superhighway is an individual thing, not a group effort.

And not everyone out there has the ability to travel the Information Superhighway. There are parts of this globe that do not have any access to the worldwide web. There are many people, I am convinced, that believe that when we are done with a computer that it will be useful for other, less developed countries. If we consider a computer to be obsolete because it cannot do certain things, how will it be useful for someone else who must do the same thing we are trying to do?

The Information Superhighway is a fun way to travel but it is not the answer. In fact, it does not have the ability to answer our questions. Perhaps we need to get off this vastly overused and overrated path and try something else.

The Road Not Taken (Robert Frost)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

 

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

The New Year

From my family to yours, may this be a safe, prosperous, and happy new year!  I find this new year beginning with many hopes and many fears.  I hope that the peace brought forth by the birth of Christ carries through and we are able to achieve the peaceful kingdom that Christ sought when He walked among us and with us some two thousand years ago.  But the violence in Kenya, the violence in Pakistan, the continuing violence in Iraq, the threat of violence in other parts of this world threaten that peace.

There are divisions between the people of this country; divisions brought about by race, economic status, creed, and sexuality.  Each day it seems that the divisions grow bigger.  Our leaders (both sectarian and secular) seek to widen the divisions, not remove them.  Our leaders (both sectarian and secular) seek to use fear as a means of control.  As this new year begins, I hope and pray that we will use the gifts that God has given us and we will see these leaders for what they really and truly are.  And then we will say that enough is enough.  We need to build, not destroy.  We need to have hope, not fear.

A phrase that I have come to use more and more is “If we are who we say we are” and it is very much applicable.  If we are who we say we are, then we will work to make the fulfillment of the Gospel message a reality.  We will no longer drive people away from the church and its promise for the future but bring people in.

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On a personal note, I begin this year in less than an optimal economic status.  I have placed a copy of my resume on another page of this blog.  It may be like the proverbial “message in a bottle” and it will float through cyber-space without anyone reading it.  On the other hand, it may be that someone sees it and some sort of positive action results.  Let us hope for the later.

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Again, may this be a safe, prosperous, and happy new year for you and your family.  May your path through life this year be with Christ and may others come to  know Christ through your words, your deeds, your efforts, and your presence in life.